Never Too Much

On form, publishing frequency, & subscriptions

I have reached a milestone in showing up to write & publish weekly (a practice informed by THEE Ayana Zaire Cotton of Seeda School). In reflecting on this fact I have found my mind wandering around publication frequency & form. I am a writer & whatever I write finds the perfect form. Who am I to place restrictions on how Black Women Writers should show up on the page, if the page is the foundation, to be taken seriously? It is up to each of us to craft our methods & move in alignment with them as they shift like tectonic plates.

We unruly folk know sometimes our work takes the form of notes, lists, & haikus. Sometimes we even gut-traditional forms to create our own. None of these formatting choices negate the care we devote to our work. The form or length of what is written bears no correlation regarding the intention, consideration, & protection around the clearing required to bring the words on through. Sometimes, the care didn’t even make it to the page. Perhaps the care simply refused to be translated & made digestible to the masses. There is always protection in darkness. I often think about the many oral historians in my ancestral lineage who passed down stories steeped in tradition. I wonder what their revered title was. Was it their first name, a familial relational title, or maybe even griot? My ancestor’s oral storytelling traditions proved to suspend law & time when the clearing turned into a sinkhole that forbade reading & writing. The form is the vessel for the work & you get it how you get it.

“I do my work and I try not to blunder.” — Toni Cade Bambara

Toni Morrison used to write in cars & at the end of the day the work got done. Our job is to keep the wild clearing open, in whatever form & whatever frequency, to ensure we don’t get pulled into a sinkhole left giving directions to a clearing called home we can now only imagine. This sounds like the kitchen table conversations you weren’t supposed to be overhearing. This feels like knowing a summer storm is coming through & getting the house silent, dark, & charged for change. It’s a system of maintenance that frees you to shout & release in the dark knowing there is nothing to fear.

When the entire world expects your silence your once silk skin bubbles beneath the surface—an inflamed physical manifestation wrecking your nervous system. If it’s not the ink on the page it’s blood running from ruptured veins. If it’s not me sharing a recording of a poem it’s the course backroad vocal chords thick with gravel from lack of use. If it’s not molding time to my will, creating from the world I desire to inhabit, then it’s concrete inching closer to snap the stem of the fragrant pleasurable growing rose. This imagery may seem extreme but I write them with a full & deep heavy heart.

“Black women are more likely than other racial and ethnic groups to die from cardiovascular disease, hypertension, stroke, lupus, and several cancers. They are twice as likely than white women to develop diabetes over age 55 or have uncontrolled blood pressure. Black women also face greater challenges in accessing affordable and quality healthcare, including a lack of health insurance, higher medical debt, and longer travel times to hospitals.” — Boston University, Racisim, Sexisim, and the Crisis of Black Women’s Health, October 31st, 2023

No doubt these health disparities are impacted by generational trauma, race, stress & other factors the study goes on to address. Furthermore, the pressure to conceal inner emotions to keep the ship steering in the right direction often falls on Black Women. While ships are often described as women, Black Women are not the underbellies of grief-ridden ships. Especially when our bodies for centuries were labeled & considered “trafficked goods”. Black Women, & Black Women writers, do not have to stow away our emotions to continue the journey. The journey is steered by our desires, emotions, & the need to voice them.

There are physical consequences to the generational gift of protection embedded in the tactics of silence, saying I’m fine, concealing my feelings from myself & sometimes loved ones. When I press publish, currently once a week, it’s the re-writing of a new gift that doesn’t leave me holding my breath/hands/truth/words. There’s no code to switch or crack & I do not have to discern when is the right moment to exist in my fullest expression. I will not conceal my thoughts to ensure the comfort of everyone else & risk my own life. I will not make my mind & body combustible by ignoring what has a desire to be expressed (however often that is).

A still from a 1977 interview between Toni & John Callaway of WTTW

Since I’ve been honoring this weekly practice, releasing my words frees me from a prison whose caged bars are mallets used to beat the drums of liberation. In this milestone essay, I create the clearing to be still & feel that which the world would rather quickly have me move on from. Yes, my words are currently showing up weekly in your inbox but they were felt & transcribed in my heart first. In the minutes before I sleep, enveloped by onyx space & time the words come to me. This weekly return to self rains down on where my feet stand before showering over you. Rooting where I am allows me to gather the stories from sites of memory so that I may navigate the storms of life feeling grounded. No matter the form, it is still writing that abundantly overflows. It could never be too much.

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”

―bell hooks, Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work

The intention is to keep my spider lashes separated so I can see the clearing clearly & guide us there. If my lashes stay shut, behind my webbed vein eyes is a ghost of a space I used to feel in the summer storms & hear around the kitchen table. Keeping my spider lashes combed open so my words may hinge between this world & the one my pen is actively inscribing.

So perhaps the issue is not that writers are filling your inbox too frequently. The larger issue is the lack of intentionally behind subscribing to a writer’s publications. Subscriptions are not a tit-for-tat reward system. Choosing the folk you want to grow alongside is serious business. If the intentionality is never centered then one risks the chance of being invaded by witnessing growth you could never fully support. It is better to let the sun shine on publications you tend to regularly than to have a sprawling kudzu subscription list that prohibits the growth of a diverse ecosystem. Subscribing to my publication, or any other publication, that chooses to publish in a frequency that enables us to root is a full-body decision. Subscribing is an active choice to learn alongside us & choose to be showered as a result of the writer publicly sharing the practice that nourishes them first.

There are writers whose words nourish me from afar & engaging with their practice helps me mark the week with a sense of embodiment. A few of the publications I look forward to receiving, often dropping everything to read or making time to return to it when they arrive in my inbox include:

• Seeda School

• The Painted Veil

• between starshine and clay

• For Opacity

• New Terms & Conditions

Being intentional with my subscription involves acknowledging that it marks the start of gathering folks’ embodied wisdom, honoring their work by ensuring I spend time with their words (at whatever frequency or format they choose to share), & singing the words out loud to others who may benefit from the spell they are casting.

In releasing the drafts of a tangled web, I gain clarity that seems to draw the river to my feet & pulls the peach velvet sky so it’s always in my line of sight.

Please remember if you choose to quote this piece, share this piece, or any piece on this publication to always CITE BLACK WOMEN. Please always include my name (Kay Brown she/her pronouns) and a link to the publication of the Assemblage: Baby’s Breath substack in your sharing practice.

To further support my writing practice, receive additional offerings that connect to my pieces, & be the first to hear about other ways to engage in the theory of Assemblage, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. This October (2024) I will be inviting fellow unruly folks to practice gathering & honoring with me in a generous clearing ✨. Stay tuned for updates about the clearing that allows you to root, navigate life’s storm, & feel grounded through the Assemblage framework!

Lastly, remember, that referrals are now available! This means you get to speak the name Assemblage: Baby’s Breath out loud to your community while receiving unique grounded gathered gifts from me. Thank you for being here 💙.