Dr. Milena Radzikowska
Dr. Aynur Kadir
Dr. Shana MacDonald
Dr. Jennifer Roberts-Smith
Dr. Stan Ruecker
Dr. Brianna Wiens
This book is intended as a space for both reflection and recognition of the public figures who model for us the kinds of work that need to be done, and who inspire us with their brilliance, bravery, and commitment to greater social equity. We see reflecting on and celebrating our feminist models as an important form of what Sara Ahmed in Living a Feminist Life (2017) calls homework: acts of working out our feminisms as a means of transforming and rebuilding the master’s house (in Audre Lorde’s infamous words) that we are often asked to negotiate and reside in.
Colouring is a largely undervalued form of creativity, relegated to children’s play and trivial aesthetic pursuits. Like all normative patriarchal visions of what does and does not count as aesthetic, as creative, or as worthy of our time and efforts, colouring can be a space for mediation and release—a lower stakes way to make something beautiful, or ugly, generic, or spectacular, but always, always meaningful—because we are committing our time to expressing ourselves, even if it is for a brief, personal moment of respite.
Audre Lorde famously argues that our practices of care and self-preservation are acts of political warfare against colonial white supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalism. Let this book be a small gesture from us to you to be used as a means of care, reflection, and celebration. Let it be a space of respite, inspiration, world-making, and meaning-making that you can share with your feminist communities when things feel hopeless.
From the lab, we wish you all the best as you navigate these troubled times. May you always know there are others out there helping you to continue the fight to smash the patriarchy. In solidarity.
Inside you’ll find
Rosa Parks
Autumn Peltier
Rahile Dawut
The Jane Collective
Tarana Burke
Sophie Scholl
Harriet Tubman
Viola Desmond
Georgia O’Keeffe
Audre Lorde
Amelia Earhart
Loujain Hathloul AlHathloul Julie Rei Goldstein
Greta Thunberg
Malala Yousafzai
Dr. Marie Curie
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford Jaime Black
Doris Salcedo
Ada Lovelace
Lois Mailou Jones