Today, I work to help instill values of equity, racial justice, and anti-colonialism more broadly into our lives, with the publication of my book Our Brave Foremothers: Celebrating 100 Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous Women Who Changed the Course of HIstory. Illustrated by the wonderful Joelle Avelino, my book invites readers to embark on a personal journey into history and discover what lessons, inspirations, and activations these often little-known she-roes hold for us all today.
For me, my work, through Foremothers as well as the historical vignettes shared on the Brave Sis social media platforms provide an exciting aperture into collective celebration and shared empowerment. (note to those reading this post today; the #sistorylessons on Instagram are further down the feed, as I pivoted to new types of content since then.)
For Black women, it's a chance to go deeper into our history, and learn about women, whose accomplishments have been erased by the broader culture and positioning of “mattering” in historical narrative.
For non-Black women of color, it is an opportunity to look past what are often constructed or coerced divides and discover our shared heritage around bravery, brilliance, and resilience. I hope this book can help bond us as communities and bring us closer together towards collective uplift of station—in life and in society, while also providing a chance at the individual level to go deeper into our own sense of purpose.
And when it comes to white women, this work offers an enticing opportunity for you to move past the default narrative in the sectors of history, self-help, and celebration, and discover that we need not be so generically prescriptive and limited about who gets to star in the collective show.
I don’t like to use words like “empathy” in describing this shift (and certainly not “tolerance! That’s so 90s!) , because that implies that there is one group that holds all the cards and bestows them upon others, through a sense of largesse of noblesse oblige. Or worse, guilt. Indeed, many of the foremothers, like Kathleen Johnson, the human computer, already did that labor of space-making for us.
Then you have firebrands like Flo Kennedy or Yuri Kochiyama, who were busting down doors. And trailblazers like Sylvia Rivera or Susan La Flesche Picotte. And even quiet leaders who never expected to be lionized at all like Florence Ebersole Finch, or Clara Brown. Few have even heard of them, but shining a light on them and others continues to be an absolute thrill and honor.
They were carrying the flame of people like Harriet and Sojourner of course, who paved the way.
Collectively, these are 100 women who, where they alive in today's age of intersectional and multicultural feminism (a handful of them still are, thank goddess) would be on posters in college dorms, or on desk calendars in workplace or home offices as a matter of course.
They are all inspiring to that level!
These are about one-fourth of the growing database I have of inspiring Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous she-roes in our U.S. history. I love that some of the friends and fans of Brave Sis Project often point out additional women I should be highlighting! I LOVE LEARNING ABOUT THESE FOREMOTHERS!!!
It's my hope that in the future, I will be able to create Global Brave Sis editions. The next journey-journal is going to be a perpetual journal, so I am not as bogged down by the constraints of a calendar year in building these. And I will continue creating blank notebooks, t-shirts, totes, and other merch that lets people carry the sisterhood spirit with them throughout their day as well as pay homage to some of my favorite foremothers.
Optimally, when a person shifts something in their heart and mind about “who matters” (meaning "I matter, people who look like me matter, and, importantly, women who don’t look like me matter too—immensely!") we then start to create a joy-filled antidote to divisive and scarcity-minded narratives that are so prevalent in these times.
Brave Sis Project and Our Brave Foremothers can exist at a very personal level of reclaiming joy, wellness, hope, and celebration, but also at a meta-level it really can become part of a person’s toolbox for how they enact with, and drive social change — because by learning how to step aside and let others step in and shine, we are literally changing the world from the top down and the inside out.
Because, as many of us know by now, the only lasting change, from personal habit to transformative policy, is when the individual shifts their personal prism of what matters to them.
At the broadest level, I hope the spirit of this book and of Brave Sis Project overall can help a few people incorporate these women and others like them, into their circle of influence and inspiration.
Look forward to this next chapter with you!