I come from Black women who knew America could not be America without the presence of their arms, women who never hid their arms, who carried their arms brazenly, and sometimes because it was the only work we could get, lost an arm while working at the chicken or flashlight factory. Women who liked their arms, needed their arms, and shot out their arms to shield someone they loved. As a girl I saw Black women regularly pushing up their long sleeves or boldly sporting a sleeveless Sunday Easter dress because Black arms had to breathe, stay free, be quick to open and ready to fly. Free arms can swim upstream, climb a hill, break a fall, propel a dance, arm-wrestle southern white folk’s daily foolishness. Babies had to be held, hugging had to happen, and signs had to be hoisted: ‘A Man Was Lynched Yesterday.’
— Nikky Finney, The Bare Arms of Angry Black Women (via beautiful-ambition)
