Mules Fight Back: 40 Activist Poems and Stories by Kristin Richardson Jordan

Raising questions like “What happens after breathing becomes a privilege?” Mules Fight Back is both one woman's story of activism in the Black Lives Matter movement and a poetic call-to-action for a better world. This poetry collection is thought-provoking, informative, and entertaining.

The title Mules Fight Back is inspired by a famous quote in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God which states that Black women are "the mule of the world.”

mule noun - plural noun: mules (definition): the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse, typically sterile and used as a beast of burden. (Definition from Oxford Languages)

Poems and stories throughout Mules Fight Back depict America's political journey (which is still in progress) through the lens of Black womanhood.

This book covers a variety of important topics including but not limited to the activism of the Black Lives Matter movement, family heritage, nationality, body image, history, and current events.


***sample reading 1***

"Ugly"
Today riding the subway I saw a woman putting lotion on a little girl sitting next to her. The little girl looked like the woman so I assume they were mother and daughter. The girl was about 5, very petite, dark skinned, and waring a red and black dress. The mother looked about 35 and started off lotioning the little girls legs which dangled off the side of the subway seat (they did not reach the floor). The mother then did her daughters arms and lastly her face ending with a dab of lotion on the little girls lips. I might have thought the whole thing innocent enough, perhaps even sweet, if not for the forceful strokes with which this mother applied the lotion to her daughter. The way she muttered at a scar on the child's knee. And...the fact that she called this beauti- ful little girl "ugly". She ended by palming the little girls hair and mumbling something about it being "too nappy". This poem is my response...

Ugly comes in bulk so all buyers beware you can buy it on the corner
you can spray it in your hair you can dress it up real fancy but in the end it will be shit
for this "beauty" is real ugly and for truth
we'll have to flip it
For ugly is not your daughter's lips
or "ashy" face
not nappy hairs, lived in skin and scrapes from play
ugly is everything from this society that has to be erased
ugly are these boxes and these hurtful things we say
For far from 5 year old black girls with slightly light knees
ugly is the epitome of beauty wrapped up in white supremacy's needs
for ugly is that air brushed beauty queen
that flawless skin that hot comb
ugly is our comfort with simulated simularity over letting difference roam
ugly is our love of certain looks and our love of looks over care and ugly is looking at your child and seeing only ugliness there

***sample reading 2***

Mules Fight Back
I've heard the Black woman's "lazy"
the Black woman's "mean"
She's just this crazy "Emasculator" or a "baby machine"
A "hoochie mama" or a gluttonous mess
My body is nonsexual, oversexed or "sassy" at best
And I've also been called stupid, emotional, unclean I've even been judged
by those who call me their "queen"
And I work like a beast but am stuck outside America's dream
Just trapped and attacked then labeled as "mean"
But I am still here and I still demand to be seen
See I survive all
I victoriously breathe
... (rest of the poem in the book)

Kristin is an activist poet and teaching artist passionate about anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-imperialist education. She loves to read and write especially poetry and she believes in the power of all people, and particularly Black people, to liberate themselves. Much of her work focuses on questions of Black liberation and women's liberation as it relates to Black women. In addition to being a published author herself, Kristin is the founder of Pens Up Press, a radical printing press for writers of color, and Uproar Poetry, an online poetry platform for activist poets.