In my most recent years going to college, there was a huge outgrowth and pour for me to create meaningful support, wisdom, advice, and groundedness. This required me to slow down and self-recreate meaningful care work through self and collective work. This foamed up and arrived at the shores of my great grandma’s feet. She said, “There is nothing wrong with treading water in place or going to the side for a break.” That was the beginning of our blossoming relationship in the face of so much personal change.
She frequently talked about her journeys back home resetting and her mom brushing the dirt off her shoulders as she turned around to face the world again, trying again – having the courage to start from scratch. These stories guide me present-day from her out-of-the-blue phone calls speaking directly to my experiences without mentioning any of it explicitly and uplifting values I can move with, carry, and care-on-for. Always speaking in double meanings and descriptions: a way of not retraumatizing, but cleverly affirming and healing wounds with wisdom.
Foreword of Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston
The initial conversations with my great grandma was, is, and will continue to be around family: ancestors and descendants. It’s been a journey of hearing stories in repetition. It has been learning and being guided in reading archives and cursive from over 200 years ago (which I would argue as a language in itself to learn to read). These stories and the recovery of records have really supported and highlighted the power of the oral tradition and how many of these stories and nuances will continue to pass as such. The cursive records have been a great affirmation of the power of Black women’s existence amongst (m)any and all odds. These stories have many times animated my current day realities: generational trauma as well as healing and blessings. Learning of family has been an intentional tradition of care, heritage, and place-making amongst a multitude of other practices. Oral tradition has been the recovery of many narratives that often are convinced to be fully lost.
But these myths are among some things that erase the constant work and practices of oral traditions which – in actuality – counter and repurpose this myth. Oral traditions have been a sharing and concerted empowerment of mind-body-soul nourishment. Oral tradition is a black feminist principle of personal embodiment which uplifts the ideas of deprogramming and rest.
This project has been a long process of rest and slow movement. This project has been several years of care work and will continue for many years going forward, (evolving from ancestry research to recorded conversations). I hope you enjoy this process and journey of Black family life, culture, and wit being shared.
Often, we interview folks to see how they fit into the bigger picture of history or records. I am flipping the script to say that these records may not fit into my great grandma’s story or even be in the records which makes my great grandma (as well as (m)any and all Black elders) invaluable, and so needed in community: family, local, city, regional and, really, any histories. And even more so, in this moment.
Black Feminist Cultural Geography
Independent Thesis
zee rashida mills