Draft Introduction to "World Brave Sis"

Ever since I founded Brave Sis Project in 2019, I always knew I wanted to pivot to tell a story about Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous women from outside of the United States. My entire life has been that of a citizen-historian, amateur cultural ethnographist, and story-weaver. I also want to travel, not just to countries I may never have the privilege and honor to visit, but also back in time, to contexts that were heroic — maybe only in retrospect. Because after all, much of life is about just doing the daily doings, keeping one foot in front of the other. So many of these women were not seeking out to be superheroes, or memorialized in this anthology. They just wanted to make things a little better.

I was recently talking with my older daughter about what is the “purpose” of a life. As a young woman coming up in the go-go 80s, I was acclimated, by dint of my education and teetering rung on a so-called ladder of “privilege” (being First-Gen is a constant reminder of There But For the Grace of God), to thinking I had to do “big things” in life. I had to “give back.” There was an expectation of striving, never attaining, but certainly not complaining. We were conditioned to think material gain, wealth, and comfort were the payoffs for the sacrifice. Today, in a world and moment where “Women of Color” were offered so many exciting promises, only to have them snatched away with such ghastly gusto, I have enormous pause. I started this book, though it was in me for a long time, as a response to my disappointment in the 2024 election. Like many Black American woman, I was “done.” Done with an America that only seemed to want us to hold a prescribed, lesser, helper role. Done with taking on the symbolic burdens of a society, to be the Olivia Pope fixers of the world, the caretaker, the smiling friend. I didn’t want any part of it. I needed to retreat, into a sisterhood of melanin and anti-colonialist, liberatory dreaming. I wrote this book for myself. 

This book is entitled: “World Brave Sis: 100 Dreamtime Dialogues with Women Who Led the Way.” “Dreamtime” Dialogues because the alliteration is evocative and fluid, as these are imagined interviews with Foremothers from outside the US* who are no longer with us on this earth, but who can inspire us greatly today. I feel this book is me in dialogue with the past, looking towards the future, thinking of the present. I seek to channel the essence and voice and stories of these women, placing them in the context and morés of when they lived, but with the wise attitude of today (not in an overbearing or snarky way, just with strength, conviction, and the necessary finger-waving at the stupid boys and men and their grisly ways, seen again and again throughout history). I want to give these women a chance to tell their story.

At the same time, they are educating us, by this I mean myself, about the vastness of our world, the valor of the histories we are not ever taught, and the value of these lives of our planetary co-inhabitants, far from what can be matrixed through a GDP, carbon footprint, or birthrate. How, and what do these 100 women teach us about so many countries (and countries within countries) and cultures that we might do well to know, and respect, and in many ways, emulate?

I need to give them a chance to tell their story. All 100. My husband and I dispute the number. He says that’s too many people. Maybe this book will be two volumes. Once I found the women and their stories, jettisoning any one of them was as impossible as loving one child more than another. 

So what you are holding in your hands this time, is part cultural-history book, part historical fiction, with “dreamed” psychic channeling (I like that idea, psychic channeling: I have become the portal, as the person “capturing” the interview) and a bit personal history, for I insert just a few memoir-esque insertions from me (sparingly, only as relevant to the “interview”; good interviewers never make it about them, nor do they shy away from inserting themselves carefully, closing the intimate circle with their interlocuteur, and revealing the glory and beauty of life’s chance operations and synergies.) I have met and connected with many amazing humans from around this planet in ways that I think matter to how I situate these narratives. 

Like “Our Brave Foremothers,” I focus (here, entirely) on women who have left our astral realm. These Foremother interviews serve as a place setting of the time, place, culture, and history. Only a couple of them are “ancients”; most are roughly from the 1600s to 2020s. The century I was born into was one of extraordinary change, and we need to know it. 

All of these women, no matter what time they lived in, were dedicated to making things better. Some wanted to make things better for women and girls around them. Others wanted to make things better for their communities and others wanted to free or defend their nation from outside forces. No matter what our current situation may be in these countries, whether they be free or in bondage to politics, economics, climate, social and internal inequity or whatever other difficulties and disappointments, the dreams and the inspiration of these women for their people in their time holds important messages for us today.

Some were writers and artists, others were politicians, others combined their power across disciplines. Some were mothers of their country and some were mothers two individuals who in turn had world-changing impact.

By now, those who have seen anything I do needn’t ask: “Why only Afro-Descendant or other designated “Women of Color”? Where are the white women. As I said then, they are literally everywhere else. It isn’t hard to find them, and maybe in reading about some “other” women, we will all have a deeper sense of pleasure and respect in the plurality of “who gets to matter.” Another thing I will add about focusing on the 20th century, primarily: I found it easier to include women from Latin America, MENA, South Asia, etc. As the 20thcentury progressed, and colonialism fell as a geopolitical construct (though certainly lingering as a socio-economic one), along with rights and “empowerment” movements, these women were given liberty to jettison their whiteness adjacency. Enough of them to populate a book, at least. In the context of considering history today, I felt it was imperative to demonstrate that there were people even in those times who pushed back against that kind of cultural whitewashing. Who were proud of their heritage and considered their non-white, non-colonial ancestry a strength, not a secret. May they all inspire us to reach out, and inward at the same time, becoming a fuller version of ourselves and a more compassionate citizen of the world.