Thursday, August 26, 2010

Insert Snappy Title Here

I've been inspired by this post over at She Writes.  In it Kamy Wicoff discusses the five ways blogging has helped her writing.  Most useful for me in that post was the reminder that blogging is a useful way to exercise the writing muscles on a regular basis.  There's something to be said for forcing yourself to sit down and churn 500 or so intelligent and intelligible words about whatever happens to be on your mind at the moment.  Plus, people keep asking me when I'll post something again and it seems so lame to say that I'm just too lazy tired to actually write anything other than a syllabus.

But what to write is the question, isn't it?  Going back to the reason I started this blog in the first place is a good place to start.  I felt and still feel that there are too few afrogeekmoms speaking their truth in the world.  I'm convinced our numbers are legion (surely there's nothing special about my love of comic books and Star Trek and the Jonas Brothers [I totally blame that one on my children] or about my blackness), yet too few of us speak up and demand to be counted.  And so here I am to be counted.

I'll try to post regularly about things that are foremost in my mind lately:

(1) Our oldest kid is going to middle school next year and our youngest is starting kindegarten.  That means, for those of you doing the math, that Brian and I will spend this fall touring and applying to tons of schools.  In a perfect world, buckets of money would fall from the sky so that we could send Cate to a Montessori school and Frances to an all-girls prep school.  But since I decided being an English professor at a public university was a good career move, that seems unlikely to happen.  The entire process, which I haven't even begun yet, makes me want to crawl in a hole and cry. 

(2) I am working on a project (the shape of which has yet to be determined) on contemporary African American romance and erotica.  I'm currently writing an article on two Zane novels and trying to figure out why no one has written a book on African American romance in film (if I'm wrong about that, please please tell me).  I have many thoughts on black women and sexuality and depictions of black love that will probably never find their way into a book or article.  I should share them here.

(3) There should be more geeky stuff in a blog that features the word geek so prominently in its title.  I'll try to fix that problem with tales of my geeky adventures.  For instance, last weekend I watched, for the very first time ever, an entire episode of the original Star Trek (several episodes actually).  I alternated between unadulterated giddiness at the sheer greatness of the storytelling (why didn't anyone tell me how great original Trek is?) and utter horror at the incredible, unapoolgetic sexism (have you seen "Who Mourns for Adonais?" and don't get me started on Uhura's outfits).

Stay tuned.

2 comments:

Aasha said...

we seem to be having the same epiphany/re-realizations about why we started our blogs in the first place. ive always been interested in the things that you have to say. i'm not a mom, but i am definitely, without a doubt an afrogeek. hahaha! my most recent term for this is "quirky black girl" <--you should check out their manifesta, you'll like it. anyhoo continue blogging and if i come across about any about black romance in films (that isn't about how powerful black women seem to be portrayed as man eaters) then I will shoot them your way.

:-)

Lisa said...

Please post where we can read your article on Zane when it's done! Though I am a teen librarian for my system, many teens do read her books -- and I keep up with books for adults, too.

I struggle with old Trek, too. The sexism works hard to cancel out the can't-we-all-get-along messages.