Abstract Faith Barter (University of Oregon) interviews Karla FC Holloway, the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emerita of Duke University. In addition to being a prolific feminist scholar of African American literature and culture, bioethics, and law, Holloway is a novelist and memoirist and one of the foundational supporters of Meridians. Their conversation includes discussion of writing as freedom practice, shape changing as a Black feminist methodology, and the nature of fiction as a container for literary and legal imagination.

Abstract This cross-national discussion examines the racialized logics of policing and incarceration in Brazil and the United States—homes to the two largest Black populations outside of the African continent. The article is an abridged transcription and translation of a panel dialogue that engages the knowledge and lived experiences of Andreia Beatriz Silva dos Santos and Cat Brooks, cofounders of Black-led political organizations in Brazil and the US, respectively, focused on contesting penal state violence. Moderated by sociologist Maria-Fátima Santos, the dialogue reveals their regions’ interrelated yet distinct colonial, economic, and political histories to clarify the broader workings of state power and racialized violence—from origins tied to enslavement of Afrodiasporic peoples, to contemporary penal policies, administrative innovations, and the discourses that legitimize both old and new forms of violence and terror. Drawing from their work and that of their organizations, Andreia Beatriz Silva dos Santos and Cat Brooks elaborate different models and strategies for collective resistance and their visions for contesting anti-Black violence. They also highlight their distinct relationships to the movements and struggles of other communities systematically subjected to state repression, both past and present. The article’s introductory remarks situate this dialogue’s significance to advancing contemporary understandings of racialized violence and transnational anti-racist movements.

Abstract In spring 2022, the authors co-led an experimental course and artists’ residency called “Decolonizing Museums.” The major outcomes were a possum-skin cloak (the first of its kind made in the United States) and a series of high-art photographs of project participants wearing the cloak. This project is part of an initiative to imagine and forge a Living Archive of Aboriginal Art, based in Australia. The objective: to radically reimagine what archives are and what they do, from Indigenous perspectives. The authors argue that photography-as-documentary practice (artists reflexively take photographs to document every aspect of their work) and photography-as-high-art-practice (a way of insisting on Indigenous forms of knowledge transmission and aesthetic expression) are inextricable from each other. These understandings of photography are also inextricable from cloak making: all of the making is all part of the story. The making is the story. In a collaborative visual essay, the authors mobilize photographs as an invitation to readers/viewers to be in relation with Indigenous knowledge holders and to join in the work of amplifying Indigenous sovereignty. The authors emphasize matriarchal knowledge transmission: women are leading efforts to reclaim autonomy over bodies and lands. The authors also call attention to intercultural collaboration as a source of innovation in both contemporary culture making and in pedagogy.

Abstract Mbari (or mbarihouses), found in some parts of eastern Nigeria, are ritual houses filled with colorful tableaux of life-sized painted figures representing Igbo beliefs and deities, especially Ala, the Earth Mother/goddess. While many Mbari structures and art focus on spiritual themes, some include sexual imagery. The author’s study analyzes and sheds new light on these often misunderstood sexual themes. Adopting postcolonial, gender, and Igbo-African spirituality frameworks, the author challenges Eurocentric perspectives popularized about Indigenous African art and critiques the colonial ways in which such art has previously been studied. The author argues that the sensuous and sacred are intertwined, with the sensuous being essential to the sacred. By situating Ala and the visually expressive nature of Igbo religio-cultural practices at the center of this research, the author decolonizes perceptions of the erotic, deemed “lewd” by colonial officials, and offers a more nuanced understanding of religiosity, sexuality, and sensuality to counter colonial misrepresentations in Igbo art and religion. This study affirms that Igbo art has historically celebrated the divinity and sensuality of the female body and calls for an appreciation of the cultural and religious expressions of sexuality, female power, and spirituality in Indigenous African art while challenging prevailing narratives that have marginalized these themes.

Kai Two Feathers Orton’s “Tree Women” Project has spanned two decades as an exploration of women as arboreal caregivers. Bare arboreal female bodies with delicate but contorted limbs are seen with roots holding rocks and winding along rivers as they care for the earth, waters, and skies. The collection of works explore the often unrecognized and non-maternal role of women as keepers of sacred stories, places, and elements, as well as being the relatives of these creations.

Abstract What does it mean to be both Black and Tunisian, Black and Maghrebi, when the two identities are defined as different from each other, and in opposition with each other, in both North Africa and its diaspora? This article is an annotated conversation with Dr. Maha Abdelhamid, a Tunisian Black activist and scholar who has been crucial to the creation of the Black movement in Tunisia and Tunisian diaspora. This conversation examines the construction and negotiation of Tunisian-Black and Maghrebi-Black identities through Abdelhamid’s experiences of living in and working against racism in both Tunisia and France. It details Abdelhamid’s trajectory in becoming conscious of her Black and African identities, her complex relationship with her Arab identity, her role in building the Black movement in Tunisia after the 2011 revolution, and her arrival in France and experiences of exclusion in both Maghrebi diasporic as well as Black feminist civil society organizations. The interview points to the possible essentialization of Maghrebi and Black as separate identities not only in socio-political discourses that racialize and marginalize these groups, but also among groups challenging Islamophobia or anti-Blackness, leaving those with overlapping identities and racializing experiences outside their scope.

¿Sabes cómo duele creer que tu lengua nunca te querrá?No, hasta el punto de que nunca podrá quererte? Que tu corazónse va a ahogar en tu propia sangre por no poder reconciliarlos latidos de sus dos mitades?Creo que no sabes, otherwise alguien me habría llamado queridemucho más temprano.Cuando escribí que this non-binary mouthwill never be a home for this boricua tongue,lo creía con todo mi cuerpo. Estaba equivocado,pero lo creía. Cómo lo creía.I’ve never been comfortable with the F-slur in English.Es una de esas palabras que sabe a sangre ajenaeven though the wound is in your own mouth,que hace que no te reconozcas in the mirroramidst the encroaching flames. Pero maricónis a beautiful word, a word que te ruega que la mastiques.It begins softly: mari. Mari takes your hand y te hace creerque es una chica buena, the type you could bring home to introduce to your abuela,y luego ese puñetazo: cón,an exclamation point que te quita el aliento con el frío de su pasión.Yo jamás saldría con alguien como tú,Mari tells you.Tal vez me intriga porque es tan sencillo saltar a maricónfrom Mariceli, my name del que me escondo. Maricomo mariposa, como las dragas que giran hasta que sus faldas las dejan volar.Mari como Marielito, como les desterrades valientes que huyeron de Cubacon solo sus sueños tentativos para cubrirse y que llegarona ser les primeres caribeñes cuir que conocí, mis madres espirituales.Y sobre todo Mari como María, como la Biblia, como a name so sacredque Dios te ordena que lo repitas over and over again tu vida entera.Santa Maricón, amén.Eso sí es un amor verdadero.I would like to wear my name one day con orgullo, de una manerathat lets it underscore mi mariconeo. Mariceli me suena más dulcecuando me lo imagino with the contrast of a freshly shaved face,bien áspero debajo de pómulos afilados. Si yo lucieramás como lo que siento, my name would be a coatof glitter, light on my shoulders. Claro que Mariceli is a boy’s nameporque it’s my name and I’m a boy. Mariceli te diríaque soy un maricón que juega con los ángeles.Ahora veo que la posibilidad of this delicious contra-dictionha estado conmigo desde el comienzo, desde mi nombramiento,desde cuando mi papá misspelled Mariseli on my birth certificate.Veo que poder confrontarte en español ahoradoesn’t make me more latino than in tenth grade when we snuck out of classto kiss as an experiment in the bathroom, no me hace más cuir que este veranocuando pretendí ser esa chica llamada Mari para acomodar a mi abuela en Puerto Rico.Siempre he sido un hijo de fruto y pecado.Siempre he tenido una lengua que quiere enredarse con otra.Mira que my blood glitters when I spit it from my mouth.Mira que yo soy a quien le quieres rogar.Que soy a quien le quieres rezar.Y aunque no te perdono por hacerme creerque no merecía abrazar cada parte de este cuerpo latinX,todavía te voy a salvar.

Abstract This article offers a comprehensive overview of feminist development justice, a transformative framework designed to reduce global inequalities that is being advanced by the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law, and Development (APWLD). The piece aims to unsettle and expand mainstream development studies literature, which critical scholars argue remains plagued by Eurocentrism and ongoing colonial modes of knowledge production. Additionally, it advocates for more recognition and citation of the grassroots analysis and frontline praxis of progressive social movements in the Global South that are guided by emancipatory politics and feminist ethics. We begin with a synopsis of development studies’ lack of attention to the enduring consequences of race, colonial power, and imperialism, as well as highlight arguments being made about the radical potential yet qualified merit of knowledges generated by social movements. We then present readers with the concept of feminist development justice, the justice-based pillars on which the framework rests, and the political work of the APWLD. The article ends with a succinct conclusion on what is at stake vis-à-vis extractivism and the seemingly intractable “development” challenges at hand and how grassroots social movements can be rich sources to draw from regarding liberatory change and building better worlds.

In 2019, variations of these gourds known as calabash in the African diaspora, which exist all over the world, made themselves known to me as the primary materials of a new commissioned installation work.Indeed, I did not set out to explore the relationship between gendered labor, the quotidian, and the spiritual. Yet here they were. Entanglements exposed: The Sacred Medicine TheGreatWomb Laundry Conduit Bowls Bluing Cosmetics TwinningSource of Wisdom Water Bearer Measuring Device Libations Belly Portals Rattle Spoons DivinationCooking Foraging TripletsThe wonder in these Kwi formations is enhanced by the organic patina and pigments from natural items that have utilitarian uses in what is associated with women’s work. Such things imbued with colonial histories of extraction are also charged with properties that render them effective ingredients in all kinds of rituals and healing work.Photo credit: All artwork and photographs are by © Gina Athena Ulysse (2019)

Abstract With reference to Heperi Mita’s documentary Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen (2018) about his mother, Merata Mita, this article illustrates the importance of Indigenous filmmaking by providing insights into the work and life of New Zealand’s first female Māori filmmaker who made a feature-length narrative. Film is an important part of identity formation and shapes the perception of (Indigenous) cultures and peoples. From the late 1970s onward, there is a growing movement in Māori filmmaking which led to changes in the representation of Māori culture in film and influenced Indigenous filmmaking on a global scale. Merata Mita plays a major role in bringing Māori behind and in front of the camera and paved the way for Indigenous female filmmakers.