Anthologies of African American Writing

Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought

"Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought." Ed. Briona Simone Jones. New York: New Press, 2021. 224 pp.

● Cheryl Clarke / Foreword: We Won't Stop the Rain
● Alexis Pauline Gumbs / Mouths of Rain: Be Opened
● Briona Simone Jones / Introduction: No Hand, No Gaze

Part I: Uses of the Erotic, 1909-2020
● Ma Rainey
● Cheryl Clarke
● Red Jordan Arobateau
● Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson / You! Inez!
● Alice Walker / Can It Be?
● Angelina Weld Grimké / A Mona Lisa
● Audre Lorde / Love Poem
● Audre Lorde / Woman
● Audre Lorde / Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
● Cheryl Clarke / Kittatinny
● Lucille Bogan / B.D. Woman's Blues
● Michelle Parkerson / Finer with Time
● Monica Arac de Nyeko / Jambula Tree
● Pat Parker / Metamorphosis
● Pat Parker / My Lover Is a Woman
● Pat Parker / Sunshine
● Terri Jewll / Celebrant

Part II: Interlocking Oppressions and Identity Politics, 1980-2020
● Audre Lorde
● Barbara Smith
● Anita Cornwell / Three for the Price of One: Notes from a Gay, Black Feminist
● Ann Allen Shockley / A Meeting of the Sapphic Daughters
● Dawn Lundy Martin / To be an orphan inside of "blackness"
● Kai Davis / Ain't I a Woman?
● Kaila Story / Not Feminine as in Straight, but Femme as in Queer #AF: The Queer & Black Roots of My Femme Expression/Experience
● Mecca Jamilah Sullivan / Wolfpack
● Pamela Sneed / We Are Here

Part III: Coming Out and Stepping Into, 1978-2020
● Catherine E. McKinley and L. Joyce Delaney
● Lisa C. Moore
● Beverly Smith / The Wedding
● Dionne Brand / poem from "No Language Is Neutral"
● Akasha Gloria Hull / Angelina Weld Grimké (1880-1958)
● J. P. Howard / aubade, in pieces, for my ex-lovers
● Janae Johnson / Black Butch Woman
● Jewelle Gomez / Curtain 1983
● Michelle Cliff / Notes on Speechlessness
● Moya Bailey / Living Single [with strikethrough on "Single"]
● Pat Parker / funny

Part IV: The Sacred, 1970-2020
● M. Jacqui Alexander
● Omotara James
● Alexis De Veaux / Interspecies
● Alexis Pauline Gumbs / her relationship to Africa lives in the part of her that is eight years
● Arisa White / Black Pearl: A poetic drama for four voices
● Cheryl Boyce-Taylor / How to Make Art
● doris diosa davenport / Erzulie-Oshun (Georgia Style)
● Pauli Murray / Without Name
● SDiane Bogus / Fighting Racism: An Approach Through Ritual
● Sangodare Akinwale / Anew
● Sharon Bridgforth / excerpt from "love conjure/blues"

Part V: Radical Futurities, 1976-2020
● Barbara Jordan
● Demita Frazier
● Charlene A. Carruthers
● Alexis Pauline Gumbs / The Shape of My Impact
● Audre Lorde / I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities
● Barbara Smith / Toward a Black Feminist Criticism
● Bettina Love / A Ratchet Lens: Black Queer Youth, Agency, Hip Hop, and the Black Ratchet Imagination
● Cathy J. Cohen / Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics
● doris diosa davenport / Never Mind the Misery/Where's the Magic?
● Kate Rushin / At Another Crossroads
● SDiane Bogus / The Myth and Tradition of the Black Bulldagger
● Savannah Shange / Play Aunties and Dyke Bitches: Gender, Generation, and the Ethics of Black Queer Kinship
● Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz / Archiving Black Lesbians in Practice: The Salsa Soul Sisters Archival Collection
● Susana Morris / More Than Human: Black Feminisms of the Future in Jewelle Gomez's "The Gilda Stories"

Acknowledgments
Biographies
Selections

● Winner, Lambda Literary Award for Anthology (2022)
● Winner, the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction (2022)

● Green, Charles. "Lambda Literary" (20 May 2021).

"The selections are wide-ranging enough so that every reader can find something of interest, from scholars and students to those just casually exploring the subject. One minor drawback, though, is a lack of publication dates for the older, “vintage” pieces. While reading them usually makes the era apparent, providing dates at the start might give a more immediate sense of the historical development. Still, the diversity of pieces, from across time and labels, written by “dykes, queer women, butches, femmes, and lesbians,” as Cheryl Clarke writes in her foreword, impressively shows the richness of Black lesbian intellectual life."

● Raskin, Jonah. "New York Journal of Books" (n.d.) [2021]

● Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. "How Black Queer Readers and Writers Nourish the Future." "LitHub" 16 April 2021. [Reprints "Mouths of Rain: Be Opened" from this anthology]

● Rutledge, Emerald. "Black Lesbian Thought: An Interview with Briona Simone Jones." "Black Perspectives" 19 April 2021.

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