To be honest, this whole experiment in writing something every day came from experiencing (because watching doesn’t quite cut it, does it?) “Formation” a few weeks back.
That video has so much to pick apart and look at and sit with- it is the Thanksgiving of music videos. I mean, I already was pantless (#TeamNoPants) and was watching football, so, all the elements were there.
As previously stated, I feel like I owe a lot of my development as a woman to black women- feminism, that led to intersectional feminism (a term coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, a black woman, in 1989) that led to womanism and mujerismo.
Gloria Anzaldua, Sylvia Rivera, Sor Juana Inez, Jovita Idar, Dolores Huerta, Cherrie Moraga and so many other Latino women have been essential in conjunction to Bell Hooks, Marsha P. Johnson, Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis, Correta Scott King, and Kimberle Crenshaw and so many other black women.
One of my favorite lines of the entire song: “okay ladies, now lets get in formation”. There is so much to pick apart, but let me say that today, on thinking of this, my thought was that there have been ladies who have had a sisterhood between them, sewed with the thread of those who worked before them. Being in formation is about binding ourselves to each other, and an invitation to do so- a reminder that Womanism and Mujerismo and Feminismo and Intersectionality or not things you do alone, that oppression is not something you have to face on your own and that you too, can be part of a formation.
