To be a Black or African woman who is passionate, outspoken, loud, assertive, and independent is to challenge the status quo. Using our voice, even our sheer existence in certain spaces, comes with consequences. And yet, while there are so many Black and African women I know who choose every day to stand in their power in spite of this very truth, there are countless others who are afraid to step into their light; countless others who don’t even know how worthy they are. Who question their presence in rooms that weren’t even designed for them. Who never give themselves permission to be both strong and soft.
We are constantly the souls in survivor mode—carrying the burden of our loved ones, our community, and the fight of other marginalized groups. In our effort to make sure everyone else is ok, we hardly make time to ask if we are. The systems of society have placed us at the bottom of the totem pole, ignoring our struggle and dismissing us from the conversation. I’m not being dramatic either. Just look at media, politics, laws, and even the ‘Meet Our Staff’ company pages. We’re used as a prop, never seen as a person. Our bodies used to fill a quota, used as a pass for brands to say they’ve done enough because one Black woman is in the room even though her opinions don’t matter, used to determine what’s cool but never given credit, which is laughable because you can’t replicate authenticity. Still, we persist. Still we get up every day and do what needs to be done because if not us, who?
Society tries to program us to hate what makes us magic, but society be damned. In recent years I’ve seen shifts in the way that we see ourselves. I’ve seen us try, really try, to love ourselves. Not for the benefits of others, but for our own inner peace. We have gathered community, uplifted our personal tribes, and encouraged each other to share our vulnerabilities and lean on one another. This shift has led me to connect, meet and work with some pretty incredible women, one of whom I had the pleasure to interview. Please say hello to our #artist2lookout4: Keosha Love.
Photograph by Cinzia Kaje
Born and raised in Toronto, CA, Love is an award-winning artist & founder of Our Women’s Voices, a Toronto-based nonprofit focused on amplifying the voices of women and making social change through arts, education, and community organizing. Using the power of storytelling to promote social awareness and bring marginalized communities together, Our Women’s Voices is truly her labor of love.
“My community loves and nurtures me by supporting and protecting me”, she says, “I didn't feel protected for a long time as a Black woman—no one cared about who bullied me. No one really cared about the colorism, the misogynoir that I experienced. When no one cares, you feel unprotected and unsafe. Now in my life I really do feel protected. The people in my life are like, we will root for you, we will ride for you, we'll make sure that you are emotionally safe, we'll make sure that you're mentally safe. And that is so important.”
A lot of who Love is comes through in her artistry. While she leans into all of her qualities and experiences when she writes, she zeros in on her anger as well. When I asked her what she meant by that she explained that her anger derives from her silence, other people’s silence, confusion, lostness, and stillness. She allows herself to really fully explore her emotions, which in turn helps her understand herself and her needs. “What lengths are you willing to go to as a writer?” she asks. “How sacred does that look? Because there's a lot of places that you enter as a writer that are really deep and sacred and you have to ask if you’re ready to go there.” And I agree: how deep within are you willing to go? For to write is to surrender control and allow your different shades of vulnerability to shine through.
Photograph by Christine B.
Love recently produced and hosts her debut CBC series Black & Vulnerable, an interview series that amplifies Black stories and explores Black vulnerability to promote wellness, collective power and social awareness for the Black community. She was the recipient of the 2019 RISE Community Award and has worked in collaboration with Facebook, Nike, The Raptors, Art Gallery of York University, Never Apart Magazine & more.
What are some approaches or methods you use in your work?
I always write before I write. I have in my notes app Topics That I’m Intrigued By. Even if they're close to home, I’m like, this is for me. You need to say this for yourself. Then the second part is meditating on that feeling: What is it? Where does it come from? How does that make you feel? And sometimes it's sad because this is about me. I'm writing this and there’s this conflict where I think, am I a hypocrite? Is this a real feeling? Is this a real emotion? What does that look like? And then the third step is usually seeing what people are saying about this online—what are people saying about this word; does my definition look the same to others? So, then I have my disagreements and I have my agreements, and then I finally start writing. I talk about where it's showing up in my life and showing up in others. It's this weird thing of inquiry and curiosity, and also a lot of self truth. It's about equilibrium and balance. It’s the same for surrender and control. Sometimes you get to the balance of surrendering control, and the point is to surrender control to get to the truth of what you're writing.
Photograph by Vita Cooper
What motivated you to start Our Women’s Voices and what are some positive impacts that have taken place to help amplify the voices of woc?
I started Our Women’s Voices in my second year of university after realizing that women aren't all bad. I've had lots of bad experiences with women. I grew up in an all women household with a Black mom who I love dearly and has taught me so much. But there's a lot of trauma in Black women. I love my mom, I love my siblings, but we had it rough. I feel like we were our own enemies sometimes, like we were really against each other. This existed in school, too. All my friends were predominantly Black, but when I reflect on that: Did we really like each other? Did we really see each other's greatness? I don't think so. That always troubled me. I always felt that I didn't really fit in and I felt so isolated growing up with that feeling. But when I got to university, I met women and other artists I really love and had good experiences with, who wanted to talk about things and were willing to share. I was tapped into a piece of womanhood and sisterhood that I never really experienced before. I wanted other people to see that we are so similar more than we think. We're all from different walks of life and have different experiences. We come from different homes, but there's so much strength in our power. There are so many things that we're going through and we're so nasty to each other and just make it worse. We already have experienced so much misogyny by the hands of patriarchy and how we deal with that is being mean to each other when we're not the enemy. The systems are. I wanted to talk about those systems. I want to talk about how we can encourage each other, how to empower each other because it can be super isolating and disempowering as a woman of color. I started sharing stories of women in my university, women around Toronto, things that they were either going through, wanted to celebrate, that they were dealing with. I shared stories about Black women being biracial, being a student and dropping out, motherhood, like there are so many stories that we share that it just took off. Women were authentically talking about their problems. We started our first event also in my university and 50 people showed up. People needed this kind of space and our events have been taking off since. We have summits, workshops, virtual festivals, like Truthsgiving, in collaboration with other organizations. Now, Our Women’s Voices is a huge nonprofit that is focused on bringing resources, women empowerment, social change, and making sure that our stories are being redefined and told in an authentic way.
This is a two part question: What is the power of one’s voice? And what do you think makes a powerful voice?
I think the power of one's voice comes from imagination. People can move mountains with just their imagination, and that is for the bad guys and the good guys. There are people in our history that imagined a certain thing—they decided to speak on that and they either accomplished it and did horrible shit, or they accomplished it and lots of people's lives were saved. I think that we all have an imagination that gets buried, doesn't get spoken, or we think it’s just not possible. And that's why I always use the word ‘reimagining’ because I feel like our imagination is sometimes very conventional. To me, reimagining means to not think about the imagination you were taught as a kid, but to think of the imagination that is actually sacred to you and that you told yourself isn't possible. What does that imagination look like? And then speak it so. To what makes a powerful voice? I don't think there's such a thing as making a powerful voice. I think we all have a powerful voice. Some of us just choose never to use it.
Where does your writing and your activism intersect?
They intersect a lot. I use my writing to talk about things that I believe in. More often than not, my writing is rooted in my activism and the things that I believe are important for myself and people who look like me to thrive and not just survive in their skin. I always talk about being a Black woman and being a woman in and of itself. How there hasn't been a lot of conversations around what it means to thrive and not just survive—not to just keep pushing, keep going and keep strong, but to feel healthy. To have this consistent flow of abundance or ease or whatever it is that you want for yourself, as opposed to that constant feeling of sacrifice and struggle. This is what I talk about in my writing. Those are the things that I want other people to listen to. I want people to talk about Black livelihood, accessibility within mental health, womanism, and what it means to tap into themselves and unpack trauma.
Artwork by broobs
The heartbreaking and devastating murder of young, BLM activist Oluwatoyin Salau was felt by so many. It was yet another tragic reminder of society’s failure to protect & uplift Black & African women. In your grief you wrote A Prayer For Black Women, a beautiful, somber poem calling for the love, protection, and safety of Black women everywhere. Can you share your creative process when writing this piece? What was going through your mind at the time?
Toyin’s death really severely impacted me. Even just thinking about it I still get chills. She was loud and I always think about the ways that I'm loud and how that can come with consequences. Every time you use your voice someone is uncomfortable, someone is wishing you unwell. That makes me so sad; how we can’t even be authentically ourselves. It reminded me of my childhood. That same feeling of I can't use my voice in a free way. I can't really speak up in the way that I want to. So turn to writing, turn to the pen, don't say too much, don't say this, don't say that, don't interrupt. Even when you know you should be interrupting right now because they're saying something that's wrong, you know? And so I took her death personally, especially because she was missing as well. I was keeping up with her being missing so when she was found dead I was like, wow, we really aren't protected. Not only are we not protected, the more we speak up about not being protected the more we are subjected to violence. I look like her. I do similar things. That could have been me, it could have been a lot of other women in my life who do advocacy work. It could have been a lot of other Black women around me who decided to speak up about something, who decided to be visible, and that just made me so devastated that any one of the women in my life could choose to take that path of being hypervisible and loud and that comes with a consequence. So I wrote that piece for Black girls and women who aren't afraid to be brave, and also Black girls who are afraid to be brave for that reason. I'm just wishing protection honestly because I feel like we are not given that. I feel like a lot of people don't care about our safety enough. So that's where that piece stems from and I hold that piece dear to my heart.
Can you speak on your debut CBC series Black & Vulnerable. What strikes you as most interesting about these conversations? Can we expect more interviews?
What strikes me as most interesting about these conversations is that everybody's idea of vulnerability is different. We're all Black, but we all have learned what vulnerability should look like or isn't, differently. We might have similar ideas, but the way vulnerability was shown to us is gonna look different. There are only two episodes [in the series], but I have these conversations with my own peers and vulnerability really has so many definitions and so much nuance to a lot of different people. This one word can hold so much weight. I started the platform because it was a way for me to reclaim my own vulnerability. It was really my diary at first, but people liked it so I wanted to do more because my vulnerability is doing something for others. If I can be that person that people can see and relate to, and take it further and show another person’s definition of vulnerability, then I feel like it gives people a little bit more clarity of what they need to redefine vulnerability. That’s what I want for Black people. Too many of us are really suppressing our emotions, our volume, our vulnerability, our suffering and our silence, and we are not being supported.
Photograph by Lorde
What are you most looking forward to in 2022?
I'm looking forward to creating. This is my first year as a full-time freelance creator. I've always had a job on the side and I was always in school, but I'm now a graduate student. It’s wild and scary. This is a stage in my life where I’m really only tackling one thing and that is my art and my activism. So, I’m just looking forward to learning more about myself, becoming more myself—whatever that looks like, whoever she is.
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Interview by Rahel Tekle