What Does It Take to Sustain the Lives of Black Feminists While We Are Alive?

Defining Affirmation Banking & Overcoming the Expected Humility of Accepting It

This is not a traditional poem, but I needed to experience & share the embodied process of reading this piece out loud. So, please enjoy listening to the audio of me reading this piece below 🩵.

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The decision to have a monthly minimum time period folks must be enrolled in The Clearing was an easy one to make. The choice stems from my belief that it is not enough to make one time investments in the lives of Black Feminists. Recurring investments, taking time to sit with the material, sitting with reflections/prompts, attending live facilitation events is not something that can be done in a week. Black Feminists deserve to have recurring financial means of supporting ourselves eliminating the guesswork of how we will make ends meet. I believe there must be a shift where people who spend $200 on a haul will consider putting that $200 behind a Black Feminists’ public practice instead. The work has always been valuable & the amount of people willing to pay for access does not determine if the work is worthy of continuing to show up for. What does it take to sustain the lives of a Black Feminist while we are alive? Freedom, flexibility, & overcoming the affirmation banking we are expected to accept with immense gratitude simply because the work is circulating. All too often Black Feminists are told to be grateful we were even included in the first place.

Just be happy that you are in this room
(who are you to desire more such as financial well being?)

You should be grateful for being apart of this panel 
(they just needed a Black peson to put Black Feminism in the panel title)

We all have to start from somewhere, right?
(normally used to justify the exploitation of your labor & time)

No, it’s not paid but it’s a great opportunity for you to make connections!
(used to make Black Feminists ignore the immediate material needs of our life for the promise that showing up for free will pay off one day)

Howardena Pindell’s words from free, white, & 21 continues haunting my mind. “You won’t exist until we validate you.” I am expected to smile when people verbally affirm my work & to silence the hunger of the material necessities we all need living under a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. While we are working towards dismantling these interlocking systems of oppressions we must acknowledge that the Black Feminist doing the work deserve to be cared for now—not in a distant “someday” once our efforts have paid off. The reality is, Black Feminists are owed & initiating a process of circular reciprocity that leaves us nourished while we do our work is a kindness we can show ourselves simply by setting the standard.

Black Feminists’ are expected to accept verbal affirmations as tokens of appreciation. To be clear, those verbal affirmations are greatly appreciated! Unfortunately, those tokens cannot be deposited into the fiscal bank that supports our lives. The method of affirmation banking never generated the support needed to sustain a Black Feminists’ life. If it did, the material & physical well-being of many Black Feminists whose work was beloved, would’ve been completely transformed. These Black Feminists’ would’ve been able to chart their own path while providing the upmost level of care for themselves & their communities.

For a long time, Black Feminists accepting & metaphorically cashing in on affirmation banking was seen as a badge of honor. The affirmation banking badge represented selflessness, consideration of others, an extension of grace, immense understanding, & a love for the greater good. This badge affirms doing your work even if you are not able to give yourself the representative qualities you so easily give to others. Moreover, giving tangibly to others is seen as righteous even if it leaves you unable to provide tangible desires for yourself. Here, I chose the diction tangible desires because I want to make the case that Black Feminists are deserving of the necessities of life as well as the beauty we pour into others lives simply by being present in our own.

Assemblage: Baby’s Breath was previously a paid subscriber only publication. Meaning, each piece I wrote was behind a paywall because of this belief. However, my public practice has since shifted & I now share a sample of my work freely. In gaining increased clarity on my public practice & offerings, Syllabi as Citational Love Letters, I have been able to reaffirm this belief by practicing agency through pricing. 

I am a Black Woman crafting my own life with a fierce dedication to quilt a masterpiece from bountiful pieces of beauty around me. I have witnessed the first-hand powerful experience of stories. Additionally, I have been witness to activists, artists, and loved ones who have continuously shown up for others while no one has ever bothered to return the favor. While my inclination to write is innate to me, the right to healthcare, access to whole foods, therapy, and many more resources are not ones that exist freely (yet). Nor can these resources be fully accessed through affirmation banking.

I come from a Black Feminist Tradition deeply rooted in the importance of community. And yet, so many of the activists and writers I adore had limited access to financial support while they were alive. Despite their work consistently conjuring true liberation, their lives (as are all of ours), were still bounded by capitalism. I am proud to be of a lineage of freedom dreamers who have enabled me to prioritize sleepwalking. When I say sleepwalking, I mean the power of maneuvering this realm while actualizing my dreams.

In my dreams, I imagine a transformative world where Fannie Lou Hammer lived past the age of 59. I imagine a world where Fannie’s daughter could have lived after being accepted to a hospital that would have kept her earthside. In my transformative world, I imagine Fannie would have never gotten cancer and heart disease as a result of being a poor Black woman from Mississippi. 

I imagine a world where Zora Neale Hurston, daughter of Eatonville, lived out her last days at home resting not as a maid working to support herself. I imagine a world that financially acknowledged the profound ways she gave Black voices freedom to exist as is on the page. I imagine a world where when faced medical problems as a result of heart disease she would have the means to take care of them. I imagine a world where her spirit propelled her heart to continue, not freeze in a stroke and take her vessel away from her at 69. I imagine a world where we take care of our living and dead so that Zora would have reached a marked grave much later in life. 

I imagine a world where our poet of the people, June Jordan, had a more sustainable and consistent way of supporting her and her son other than fickle freelance journalism. I imagine a world where June received her roses while she was alive. I Imagine a world where June could have a room of her own, in a house of her own, earlier in her life instead of living in public housing projects for the majority of it. I imagine a world that held and empowered her as she has done the same for so many others. I imagine a world where after living a life based on non-negotiable ethics, at 65, June didn’t die of breast cancer. 

The list of Black Women whose lives are spent advocating for others ended by disease and without the financial resources needed to care for themselves as they desire is endless. I have named a few here to illustrate my choosing a memberships provides an equitable sustainable way to grow an intimate community to support me in crafting the life I desire. Which is to say, that I desire a life where my work creates community and pours into me spiritually and financially. This is why The Clearing Membership has a non-refundable upfront Sustain a Black Feminists Practice Fee, due at the time of enrollment, equivalent to four monthly payments. Following enrollment, folks will not be charged the monthly price until the fifth month, should they desire to stay in the membership longer. Furthermore, unruly folks may select to enroll using different membership tiers based on which one engages in a level of reciprocity that intuitively feels right for you. This allows you to honor what you can give to sustain a Black Feminist’s life & allows me to honor the baseline I need to show up to do the work feeling well. Regardless of which membership tier you select, all enrollees will receive the same access to the all inclusive resources in The Clearing library.

I imagine a world where I can share my practice on my own terms and care for myself, as I would like for my writing to care for/counsel you. I simply cannot afford to accept anything else. Not only because of Fannie, Zora, June, and more but because I deserve to be paid for my work. When I started this publication in October of 2024, The Writers Guild of America just ended a five-month-long hard-fought strike to increase payments. Writers and poets are one of society’s rare gems that deserve to be paid and respected more than we currently are. There is power in imagination, which is why I have started the last several paragraphs sharing mine, & while my imagination nourishes me it only provides for me if I choose to show up to answer the call I have tried to deny.

That call is showing up in my ever changing public practice, releasing The Clearing membership, & allowing myself to feel joy in the process of releasing. I will release poems & watch how they move. I will release letters & watch how they move. I will release mini syllabi & watch how they move. I will release whatever tells me it’s ready to move from my static page onto the animated dance floor of life.

If you feel moved to enroll in the The Clearing membership & are feeling hesitant about the minimum monthly commitment know that you are supporting me…a Southern Black Woman crafting a wayward, vernacular, assemblage to call my life and that alone is more than enough reason to financially support the journey. I will always be doing the work but I want to do it well & while feeling well. No worries if you are still deciding if The Clearing by Assemblage Conservatory is for you or if you are preparing your finances to enroll. In the meantime, I’ll be here honoring the methodology of this publication & the shifts of how my public practice is encouraging me to show up to allow me to breathe without hesitancy.

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.

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 💙.