Over the last few years, I’ve started to pay attention to the specific ways writing functions in my life outside of a creative outlet. Aside from being a space to explore my imagination and storytelling, these are the specific ways writing has served a therapeutic function in my life: My private writing allows me a space of unbridled honesty. The catch is, I have to be willing to be honest. As Octavia Butler once said, “Perhaps the act of writing itself was a kind of therapy”. Unlike public platforms which are subject to other people’s opinions, my private writing…

If you saw any of the shows on my Becoming//Black Spring Tour, there is a 50/50 chance you heard me recite “The Gospel of Colonization”. Though my tour this spring was to push Becoming//Black once more before writing my next two books, I shared newer pieces if I had…

how you treat a woman should never be based on her proximity to another’s humanity. perhaps she is someone’s daughter.mother.sister.wife. (perhaps even yours) but first, and always, she should be… …is her own. so many girls are brought up hungry to receive the reverence relations to men claim to offer, so many girls grow into women starved of their own humanity. — — I wrote this piece reflecting on how often men are told that they should respect or honor women because “she could be your sister/mom/woman family member”. Fuck that. You should treat women with respect because they are human beings, not because of their proximity to malehood -_-

it would starve in a house made of kitchens (it seems to only knows how to make meals of women’s bodies), it thinks Mr. Clean is a real live person, it is still telling people the air is suddenly ‘dusty’ every time you watch Set It Off instead of just…

Read the story behind the TEDWomen talk here

after crossing waters where my kin still stand, unable to find eternal rest on ocean beds, i find myself floating in a sea of Black faces from every current that licks the coast of this continent. i am lost at see. i am emerging in every face my eyes behold…

Imagine you’re driving home from work. Expecting an uneventful ride, you’re surprised to see the blinding glare of police lights in front of you. As your eyes adjust to the scene, other things start coming into view. A woman who is holding a baby. A police officer who is holding the woman holding the baby in some sort of chokehold. A crowd slowly swelling around them. You stop your car in the middle of the street and run over to them, thoughts racing of their potential fate. You get ahold of the child and hand them off to a bystander, and hear yourself repeatedly calling to the officer — “Be human!” — only to be met with a blank stare as he maintains his hold on the woman.

Follow my work/join my newsletter at www.freequencyspeaks.com | instagram: @MwendersInSuspenders |Facebook Artist Profile — Venmo @Mwende-Katwiwa | CashApp $mkatwiwa | Paypal: www.Paypal.me/freequency OR Mwende Travel@gmail.com — On Sept 27th, 2017 I received an email from TEDWomen inviting me to share my poetry…