"Take Root Among the Stars" Charis' 50th Birthday Celebration!

“Our tomorrow is the child of our today. Through thought and deed, we exert a great deal of influence over this child, even though we can’t control it absolutely. Best to think about it, though. Best to try to shape it into something good. Best to do that for any child.” Octavia E. Butler

Whether you are new to Charis or have been with us since our earliest days, on November 2nd, 2024, we invite you to help us celebrate the unlikely survival and radical success of this queer, feminist, literary space in the heart of the South for the last 50 years. We invite you to join us in honoring Charis’ unique role in supporting, shaping, and defining the essential feminist struggles of our times.

Our celebration, “take root among the stars,” is an invitation to dream beyond the heartbreak and alienation of living under capitalism that tells us to abandon ourselves and our people. It is an invocation of our foremother Octavia E. Butler, who, in Parable of the Sower, gave us an unlikely prophet named Lauren Olamina. We meet Olamina on July 20, 2024 in a dystopian world not so different from our own as she realizes the only way forward for humanity, as futile as it may seem, is to “take root among the stars.” We’ve chosen this invocation from Butler because it dares us to change the world. It dares us to struggle through scarcity and collapse, to build community with the tools available to us, and to imagine a future that is only possible with our people alongside us. 2024 is a pivot point in Parable of the Sower and in Charis’ history, just as it likely will be a pivot point in human history. We mark this 50th anniversary as a moment on a continuum followed by tomorrows we are still creating.

We choose this moment to envision what the next 50 years of feminist culture-making and movement-making can bring. The concerns of the past might have been expressed in different languages or shaped by different movement leaders, books, or technologies, but the concerns themselves remain strikingly similar. We want control of our bodies, safe and affordable food, housing, and healthcare, the support to raise a child or not to, the right to choose who we call family, and the right to age with dignity; we want rest and pleasure and love and art, free expression, access to information, a connection to the earth and the protection and renewal of ecosystems, privacy from surveillance, the right to migrate freely and safely, and freedom from interpersonal and state violence. We have been with you in these evolving struggles–helping hone and celebrate solutions and strategies while also helping mourn losses and griefs too numerous to count. We will be with you helping to shape and reflect what comes next.

Charis’ story has been as much about survival and weathering economic and cultural change as it is about community and success. We weathered the hardest parts of our history because of the mostly invisible labor of a handful of staff, board members, and volunteers, and the commitment of a small number of donors who helped us keep the doors open when so many other feminist, queer, and literary institutions could not survive. We did this by refusing many traditional capitalist and nonprofit modes and returning again and again to the will and the wisdom of our people.

“take root among the stars” is an invocation of possibility, of change, and it is about celebrating our collective feminist future from 1974 to 2024 to 2074 and beyond. It is about honoring all of our selves past and present and joyfully investing in the child of tomorrow.

Won’t you celebrate all we have been, and all we have yet to become?

We are SO excited to announce the speakers and performers for our upcoming 50th birthday party on the evening of Saturday, November 2nd. Join us for a night of music, poetry, dancing, and fun as we “take root among the stars” and celebrate 50 years of Charis!

Indigo Girls (@indigogirlsmusic) are an American folk rock duo, consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. They met in elementary school and began performing together as high school students in Decatur, Georgia, part of the Atlanta metro area. They started appearing under the name “Indigo Girls” as students at Emory University, performing weekly at The Dugout, a bar in the Emory Village. They have reunited with their strongest backing band to date to create Look Long—a stirring and eclectic collection of songs that finds the duo of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers chronicling their personal upbringings with more specificity and focus than they have on any previous song-cycle.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs (@alexispauline) is the author of several works of poetry and of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Animals, which won a Whiting Writers' Award in 2022. In 2023, she won a Windham Campbell Prize for her poetry. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Ra Malika Imhotep, ph.d (@storytellers_dawta) (Ra/They/Them/doll) is an ancestor-accountable living thinker whose work aspires to further the traditions of revolutionary black feminisms and black diasporic theorizing. Born and bred in Atlanta, GA, they are currently in service to their community as an Assistant Professor of Global African Diaspora Studies at Spelman College. Their intellectual and creative work looks after the ways Black feminine figures across the African diaspora subvert preconceived notions about black womanhood and labor through aesthetic practice. They hold a PhD in African Diaspora Studies and New Media Studies from the University of California-Berkeley. They are the author of the poetry collection gossypiin (Red Hen Press, 2022), co-convenor of The Church of Black feminist Thought and a member of The Black Aesthetic curatorial collective.

Susana Morris (@susiemaye) is Associate Professor of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has been an Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University and was most recently the Norman Freeling Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Close Kin and Distant Relatives: The Paradox of Respectability in Black Women’s Literature (UVA 2014), co-editor of The Crunk Feminist Collection (Feminist Press 2017), and co-author of the young adult handbook, Feminist AF: The Guide to Crushing Girlhood (Norton 2021). She is the co-founder of The Crunk Feminist Collective and has written for Gawker, Long Reads, Cosmopolitan.com and Ebony.com, and has also been featured on NPR, the BBC, Essence magazine, and the New York Times. She is currently at work on a cultural biography of Octavia Butler, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler.

Graciela Cain (@geexella), professionally known as GeeXella (pronounced Jee-EL-LUH), is a transdisciplinary artist currently occupying space in Muscogee Creek Land, also known as Atlanta, GA. A skilled curator with a multicultural approach when it comes to setting a vibe on the dance floor, they have become sought after thanks to their soulful DJ sets that blur the lines between house, reggaeton, soca and everything in between.

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• Get your Charis Merch here!
• Wish Charis a happy 50th Birthday by sharing a memory, posting a photo, or telling a story via audio or video on Kudoboard!
• Plan to join us for a full week of celebrations, reflections, and organizing, November 2-9th!

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What to wear?

Our theme, "take root among the stars" is about organic futurism--how can the lessons of the planet, our ancestors, and this moment help us build the future all beings need and deserve? So choose whatever makes you feel celestial, fancy, and free! Or check out our mood board for some inspiration!

Parking

The November 2nd celebration will take place at Letitia Pate Evans Dining Hall which is located on the main campus of Agnes Scott College, directly across Candler St. from Charis.

The address for rideshare drop-off is 155 S Candler St Decatur, GA 30030.

If you do not need wheelchair accessible parking, please park in the large shared lot behind Charis and to the right of the building. Charis is located at 184 S. Candler St. Decatur, GA 30030.

From the parking lot, cross Candler St at the crosswalk in front of Charis and walk one block to enter the main campus on your left. You will walk through an archway and down a short path before turning right at the Alston campus center (which will be on your left). Pass one building and the Letitia Pate Evans Dining Hall will be on your right. Volunteers will be available to assist you.

There will be a golf cart and attendant available for attendees who need to be transported to and from the parking lot site to the event venue.

Accessibility

Wheelchair accessible parking is available to the left of the Charis Books and More building. The Letitia Pate Evans Dining Hall at Agnes Scott College is fully wheelchair accessible. Additional accessible parking will be available behind the dining hall. Volunteers will be available to assist you.

There will be a golf cart and attendant available for attendees who need to be transported to and from the parking lot site to the event venue.

There will be ASL interpretation available for the duration of the program.

COVID-19 Protocol

We encourage all attendees to wear a mask.

We encourage all attendees to test 24-48 hours before the event.

The event is primarily indoors but there will be some outdoor seating with heat lamps.

If you have specific questions about the space or how an event can be made more accessible to you, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@chariscircle.org or 404-524-0304.