had to take my time...

In response to the Patricia Hill Collins excerpt from Black Feminist Thought… Whoa. For such a short reading, it demanded a lot of my mental strength and focus. I am not sure if I was confused by the reading, if I was in the wrong mind-set while reading, or if it was just too much major information clumped into 4 pages. I was able to understand that the focus was Black Feminist Thought and how it developed throughout our history with strong black female leaders like Billie Holiday, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Nikki Giovanni. Although these women stem from more than one era, their combined impacts influenced what we currently recognize as Black Feminist Thought. Each of these women used her personal gifts and talents to express and share their stance as it related to Black Feminist Thought. The struggle was more than getting the message across, it was a process of mastering “white male epistemologies...[and] resisting the hegemonic nature of these patterns of thought in order to see, value, and use existing alternative Afrocentric feminist ways of knowing” (505). In order to express these messages, these Black Feminists and scholars had to also master the art of translating their ideas into “Standard English” (506) because it was heavily believed that they could only communicate using “Black English” (506). “Although both worldviews share a common vocabulary, the ideas themselves defy direct translation” (506). We eventually learn that it is “fruitless” (506) and pointless to attempt this translation.
The section that I most understood was the concept on page 506 first column. “In an attempt to minimize the differences communities and the expectations of social institutions, some women dichotomize their behavior and become two different people. Over time, the strain of doing this can be enormous. Others reject their interests by enforcing the dominant group’s specialized thought. Still others manage to inhabit both contexts” (506). It was interesting to learn how different women choose to internalize how they relate to their communities. It was also interesting to try to mirror it with personal experiences or events. Like Lorraine Hansberry stated… “Eventually it comes to you” (506).
I truly think I misunderstood this reading. Think I will re-read. Looking forward to the presentation for clarification.