Blaxhaustion, KARENS & OTHER THREATS TO BLACK LIVES AND WELL-BEING

Call it a memoir. Call it a manifesto. Call it whatever you want. But whatever you do, don’t call it fiction.

In a year marked by the disproportionate coronavirus deaths of Blacks and the Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd murders, Theresa M. Robinson offers a candid look at living while Black in the United States. Specifically, by giving voice to her lived experiences as a Black woman, she affirms Black women as owners of their unique narratives of oppression, marginalization, and disenfranchisement.

”I’ve written an account that I want to read as a Black woman– one that unapologetically centers Black women and our lived experiences without the tone-policing, the invalidation, and the white-washing.”

Blaxhaustion™, Karens, and Other Threats to Black Lives and Well-Being is guaranteed to have Black women proclaiming, “Guuuurrrrrrllll, yaaaaasssss!” over and over again as it moves from the complexities of microaggression fatigue and weaponized whiteness to the hazards of coronaviracism™ and performative white wokeness. Never has it been more critical than now for Black women to take center stage and raise their voices—and for everyone to listen.

This book is a “new thing” with the help of 62 incredible sistah Queens. The books aims for every Black woman to feel a part of this new thing. As a “new thing,” this book does not fit into any strict category or genre. It is stage and audience, pulpit and congregation, sermon and choir.

This is NOT a self-help book. It will NOT advise you on tips and strategies for

• getting a seat at the table

• going high when they go low

• reaching out to willfully ignorant racists

• fitting in with your white colleagues

• kissing the ass of your white boss

That stuff is NOT in the line-up. By design.

This book is a validation and affirmation of Black women’s lived experiences, a meeting and relating place, an opportunity to let the world know that Black women have plenty to say and that it should shut up and listen.

This book is part of the momentum of #MeToo, an expression and a movement that originated with a Black woman, Tarana Burke, and then was hijacked and “popularized” by white women celebrities like Alyssa Milano and Michelle Williams.

This book is part of the momentum of Black Lives Matter, founded by three Black women Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi, two of whom identify as queer. At its inception, Black Lives Matter was intended to put LGBTQIA+ voices at the center of the conversation, even while the biggest protests have involved violence against cis hetero Black men.

This book is a nod to Black women who’ve been engaging in activism and speaking for years and years and years, and whose voices are not regarded as “mainstream” or important until whiteness or maleness steps in. It’s kinda like the way white feminism has never really served the needs of Black women. Ha! It’s exactly the way white feminism has never served the needs of Black women!

This book is a symbolic “take-off-my-earrings” for all the times Black women have held our tongues in the face of white comfort and white entitlement.

This book is an open letter to a world that has never universally and unequivocally acknowledged that Black lives matter and that Black women’s lives matter.

This book is a tall cup of tea slowly brewed and scalding hot.

Comprised of five acts consisting of varying scenes, activist poems, and the “I’m Speaking” voices of 62 women of the Black diaspora, , the book is a raw and unapologetic examination of:

Blaxhaustion™

Karens, Her Ken, and Her Kin

Coronaviracism™: A Tale of Two Pandemics

Great White Lies

White Complicity & Performative Woke-ness