Dearest Angela Davis,

You wrote that some of the main themes of the blues were sex and travel -- in any way do
you see these things as linked? I saw them in some ways as a resistance to containment.
Liberation, which meant different things and was sought differently for black men and
women, also differs among races. You wrote about how love was, in a way, gendered and
racialized. Gendered for being associated with domesticity when applied to white families
and racialized for meaning different things to white and black people. Should the same
word even be used for different groups and does this in a way homogenize their struggles?
Similarly, many feminists consider the sexualization of women to be a form of objectification.
However, it seems that at the time of the blues, black womens’ decision to sexualize
themselves was a form of liberation. In something else you wrote, you stated that feminism
should be a considered a methodology. Is there a way to implement this methodology when
studying history and considering these divergent experiences? Similarly, you quoted Ralph
Ellison in saying that the blues have an ability to “imply far more than they state outright.” In
writing about how the meaning of the blues is not immediately understood and therefore
often misinterpreted I thought about how white patriarchal hegemony forced black women to
achieve their goals through less visible, immediate means. What would feminism as a
methodology look like in understanding the dimensional parts of this history?