Flower Crown Magazine: Issue 2

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Feminist Blogger of the Month: Hannah Giorgis Interview by Matlaleng O. Babatunde Source: instagram.com/ethiopienne With prose that flows like poetry and a sound mind to match, self-proclaimed awkward Black girl Hannah Giorgis is taking the internet by storm. If you’re apart of the activist tumblr community, you’re probably familiar with the short whimsical remarks, and mind blowing essays of Hannah from her blog Ethiopienne. Hannah’s writing and art has contributed to the activist mobilization of social media, and created more platforms and spaces for women to exist. She has succeeded in making (un)learning and pertinent topics that are often only available to those in academia, accessible to the public. Hannah proves the notion that compassion is the basis of activism, not just through her work, but through her existence. Each word she writes is an intricate love letter for her people, for her craft, and for those who have gone before her. It is through her audacity to exist compassionately that she has cultivated her profound Black feminist rhetoric.
I was first introduced to your work through an essay you wrote about how love in communities of color is a form of resistance. What struck me the most about the essay, and what continues to strike me about your writing, is the clarity with which you spoke about White supremacy and racism, concepts that are difficult to grasp and even more difficult articulate. How important is clarity and maintaining accessibility to all audiences, not just those in academia, to you and your writing? This is something I struggle with a lot, to be perfectly honest. I started writing for a public audience while in college, in the kind of academic environment that encourages the use of big words even in our social justice spaces. It’s taken a lot of active, conscious effort to unlearn the idea that my ideas are only valid if they are framed in words and concepts that academia and white, upper middle class audiences validate. I still struggle with that, but it’s so important to me to be writing things that are accessible and relatable to the people around me who have inspired me and my work. And I think sometimes when we talk about this, the desire to stop using big words or jargon in our writing, there’s a misconception that we do it because we think our communities aren’t able to understand what we’re saying. That’s so far from the truth; a lot of the most profound lessons I’ve learned have been from people around me who didn’t have a degree that validated their wisdom. For me, it’s about valuing and connecting to the wealth of knowledge that comes from inside our communities—on and in our own terms. When did you start writing and how has your writing evolved over the years? I think I’ve always been writing in one way or another. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t walk through life connecting things to words and stories and characters I had read. There’s this really incredible Zora Neale Hurston quote from Their Eyes Were Watching God that captures how I think of writing and the fact that for me, feeling is writing and writing is just feeling out loud: “There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought.” My writing has evolved in the sense that I give myself the space to actually do it. When I was younger, feelings would come to me as phrases and sentences but I didn’t believe I was worthy of turning them into paragraphs or pages. I knew something was coming together in my head but I closed myself off to the possibility of creating. I’ve learned to trust myself a bit more, to recognize that my stories are valid and my feelings aren’t trivial (and even if they are, it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t write about them). I’ve grown up. I’ve learned to nurture my writing, to love myself critically and critique myself lovingly. Who inspires your writing the most? I am blessed to know some phenomenal, dynamic, brilliant women. My friends, my former professors, women I meet organizing, my colleagues, the women writers I’ve read years ago whose work still sits on my heart like a warm embrace. I write a lot of things for my mom, whether they’re formally addressed to her or not. She’s taught me that activism is fundamentally about compassion, and I try to write her compassion into everything my fingers touch. A lot of my writing is about making visible what we have been shamed into keeping buried within us, and I feel especially honored when I am able to do that for and with other Black women. When were you first introduced to Black feminism, and what was your initial response to it? I don’t know that I can trace the moment I was first introduced to Black feminism. I think again of my mom, who worked and hustled and sacrificed so much for me and my siblings—is that not her own feminism? She weaves together so much, pulls the very fabric of our family together at times when it feels like it is going to unravel. She does it all with such unabashed femininity, without refusing to hide her flaws or fears. That’s Black feminism to me. I might not have always had the words for it or a theory to point to when people ask, but I think on some level I’ve always known that my mom is magic. And that’s Black feminism—our own special brand of live-saving, life-giving magic. Is it difficult to incorporate your activism into your daily life? I guess that depends on how you define activism. I think some of the most difficult activism we can do is at the interpersonal level. That’s not to say that systems change isn’t fundamental to fighting injustice, because I don’t think we can ever overstate the extent to which oppression is absolutely structural. But when you do little things, like have difficult conversations with friends and family, that’s a little step toward making this world a better one. And I think loving black people in this world that says we are unworthy of life—that’s activism, too. There are so many different ways to resist in your everyday interac-
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Table of Contents Letter from the e
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Click Here To Listen
Page 6 and 7: Outfits
Page 8 and 9: Performances Lianne La Havas The In
Page 10 and 11: Waiting for the train home both nig
Page 12 and 13: Alexis Brown of straight line They
Page 19 and 20: Where Are All the Disabled Women? B
Page 21 and 22: An interview with Shuga Henry by Ti
Page 23 and 24: Meet Aprill Hogue: Artist, Designer
Page 25 and 26: or a cute, compact, pocket mirror..
Page 27: Dominique Aizpurua an affair with m
Page 38 and 39: young woman, which she eagerly embr
Page 40: Merpunx by Natalie Reitz Model: Per
Page 45 and 46: Asian media that’s consumed by Am
Page 47 and 48: It’s pretty bad. Ok, like. . . it
Page 49 and 50: |Feminist Read of the Month| By Sha
Page 51 and 52: experience sexual assault in their
Page 53 and 54: An Interview with Jane Elliott By M
Page 55: What do you think is the best way t
Page 59 and 60: Sure, it can be easy to forget abou
Page 61 and 62: Forget the bulging eyes and twisted
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Flower Crown Magazine: Issue 2

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