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Pieces of Me

10/25/2018

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Anger.  This was my immediate feeling when I heard about the interaction between the tennis umpire, Carlos Ramos, and Serena Williams.  Male tennis athletes have done and said much worse to umpires with hardly any consequences of that magnitude. Serbian tennis great Novak Djokovic is known for smashing tennis rackets into the grass in anger.  Tennis great Andy Roddick once berated an umpire questioning his education and whether or not he had ears.  And how can any of us forget tennis legend John McEnroe’s famous temper?  

The words of tennis great Billie Jean King ring true here: “When a woman is emotional, she’s 'hysterical' and she’s penalized for it. When a man does the same, he’s 'outspoken & and there are no repercussions.  Thank you, Serena Williams, for calling out this double standard. More voices are needed to do the same." After reading racist comments in which some linked Serena’s anger to her blackness, I thought: “And how many of us, as black women, have to hide our anger and outrage about workplace discrimination we’ve experienced because we do not want to be labeled as angry and black?  How many of us, as black women, have to strategically reveal pieces of ourselves when we experience sexism and racism?” Reflect on those words - pieces of ourselves. Now, reflect on those words personally - pieces of me - while I tell you a story.

When I was 18 years old, I was a freshman at the College of William and Mary.  As is the case with most first semester college students, my grades were not the best.  In fact, during orientation, professors and college administrators often remind first year students that everyone will need time to adjust to college life socially and academically.  Failure will happen. I had a meeting with my college advisor after the first semester. He did not know me at all. He only had a file of information about me, which included my high school grades (I graduated Valedictorian) with test scores, and a picture.  He also had a copy of my first semester college grades which were terrible.

The advisor met with me and said without compassion or grace, “You need to get acclimated to William and Mary’s standards or you won’t graduate.  You graduated Valedictorian? Well, that was at your high school.” Now, I was not sure if he had said these words to other students. I do know that I left the meeting - a meeting with someone I thought was going to help me and give me other academic tools to use - feeling discouraged, defeated, and filled with shame.  I learned that, as a black woman, I am not necessarily permitted to fail, a central human experience. I also learned that, for this reason, I could only reveal certain pieces of me - my failures, my anger, my disappointment, my sadness - in safe, nurturing spaces.

But, while this strategy is wise, it does not allow for others to see me - a black woman - as a human being.  It allows others to paint a caricatured picture of me seeing only parts of me, and not my whole self in all of my humanness and complexity.  When we only see pieces of one another, it flattens us all. It makes us into human beings in the eyes of others, rather than human beings created in the image of God.  When we only see pieces of one another, we fail to see the work each person has done and is doing on themselves - everyday - to become complete, whole, and healthy. When we only see pieces of black women - the parts that make us feel comfortable, pleasant, and safe - we dehumanize and racialize an entire segment of humanity God has created and blessed.

The way I resist others seeing only pieces of me everyday is to show up and be present.  I look others in the eyes when I am speaking with them. When I fail, I take ownership of my mistake.  I accept that there are limits to my capabilities and ask for help. I boldly use the gifts, skills, and capabilities the Divine has given me to work, live, and play.  I boldly share my experiences with others claiming the identity God has given me.  To some, this form of resistance may sound pedantic and silly.  However, to those for whom showing up and being present is painful, frightening, and endangers our lives, this form of resistance is radical, courageous, and hope-filled.  Sometimes, I think I have a choice to show up and present. And I do. However, as a mother and life teacher to four future black women, I do not have a choice. I must show up, stand the way God made me with God’s strength, and be present - be present in all I feel, experience, think, and do each day.  Because they are watching.

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Enger Muteteke is a provisional minister of the Baltimore-Washington Conference currently serving in the Greater New Jersey Conference.  She has a passion for justice ministries, community-based outreach ministries, critical learning, and critical pedagogy.  Enger has served in pastoral ministry in Severna Park, MD and Glen Burnie, MD.  Most recently, she served as national program director at Lutheran Volunteer Corps in Washington, DC.  Currently, she serves in a cross-racial appointment as Lead Pastor at Grace Union United Methodist Church and Winslow United Methodist Church.  Enger holds a B.A. from William and Mary, two Masters’ degrees in Theology from Wesley Theological Seminary, and a Master of Arts in Social Responsibility and Sustainable Communities from Western Kentucky University.  Enger lives in southern NJ with her husband, 4 daughters, and their dog, Belle.  In her spare time, Enger loves exercising, cooking, writing, reading, and drinking great cups of coffee with good sister-girlfriends.

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Making the Digital Physical: AADHum’s “Intentionally Digital, Intentionally Black” Conference

10/23/2018

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​Following the opening session of University of Maryland’s African American History, Culture and Digital Humanities’ (AADHum) “Intentionally Digital, Intentionally Black” conference on Friday, the first thing I did was run up for a hug from a young man named Nathan Dize. Nathan and I were strangers in real life; but we were also twitter friends. This process of linking up with people that I knew digitally IRL was a huge personal theme of this particular conference. Not only were we in community by virtue of our research interest, but many of us were connected virtually. While the content of this conference, which I’ll get to I promise, was incredible, a large part of the joy I derived from this experience came from the opportunity to be in physical proximity with the people that provide me with a large amount of my academic support. What does it mean to make the digital physical? Better yet, how does it feel to make the digital physical? For me, it feels like the best of me is being seen, supported and loved. Now, how many academic conferences can you say do that kind of affective labor?
 
I understand that it seems gauche to talk about love in an academic setting, but so much of my intellectual growth stems from Black women scholars at this conference who loved me simply for being a “Black girl [doing] grad school.” Black women scholars both on twitter and in the digital humanities have nurtured me; they have pushed me; they have included me. While enraptured by wonderful panels featuring Black women scholars, such as Always at Work: Black Women Online and Do It For the Culture: Black Humor and Narrative Strategies Online, I found that some of the best intellectual conversations I had with Black women scholars were by chance.

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​ I ran into Dr. Gabrielle Foreman while trying  to catch another panel and she talked to me about how she came up with the idea of project CVs, which emphasize collective work for digital humanities projects. Dr. Raven Maragh Lloyd told me about a conversation with her Uber driver on the way to the conference in which she was asked how the work she creates benefits the community. These innovations and questions should lead us to ask our own important questions: who are we serving and why? How can our relationships with community partners be mutually beneficial? How do we adequately represent the work we do on collaborative digital humanities projects? As Dr. Andre Brock and Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson pointed out in their keynote, we also need to be occupied with the banal and the joy that brings— so I point to these examples of everyday joy I experienced while being in an extraordinary, yet admittedly still ephemeral, space.
 
Though only a  temporary space, it was constructed in such a way that everyone could feel included and cared for. From the pronouns on our badges and gender neutral bathrooms at the Riggs Center, to the lactation and quiet rooms, participants were cared for in a way which should be standard. Our humanity was acknowledged, respected and catered to. While I did not take advantage of many of these spaces, it was a comfort to know they were there should I have needed them. These touches (which were by no means “small”) helped effectively translate the communities of safety we have been building online into a physical space.

 
The lessons I learned while at #AADHum2018 will stay with me throughout my career as a scholar, especially as echoes of the conference will likely reverberate through tweets for months to come. I contended with Timeka N. Tounsel’s idea of “monetized resistance” as I work to reframe the way I think about my own blog for example. Tounsel argued that there’s work to be done in reframing the way Black women think about their digital labor— we should not cast it off as leisure, but acknowledge it for the intellectual intervention that it is. Grace Gipson’s presentation, “Exploring the Black Female in Comics Fandom through Digital Storytelling (Black Girl Nerds and Misty Knight’s Uninformed Afro)” gave me a colleague that discusses everything I’m interested in: fandom, aca-fans, Black girl nerds, superheroes, blogs and podcasts all rolled into one. I didn’t know it was possible to make sense of all of those things together, but then again Black women have always found ways to do the impossible. I’m still reeling from Marissa Parham’s incredible talk on the This Code Cracks: A #BlackCodeStudies Roundtable in which she had the audience consider what it would mean for a reader to remix an essay for oneself, amongst a number of other insanely evocative questions, all while dragging sections of her essay, “Break and Dance”, gifs and graphics around a remixable screen. Seeing these powerful Black women scholars captivating audiences with words and technical skill inspired me to walk in my own truth and power. My words are magic too, I just need to learn to harness their energy. 
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My primary focus on the Black women scholars at this conference throughout this piece stems from a lack of intellectual and emotional sanctuary and support at my own institution. Nevertheless, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the Black men that did not come to play. Dr. Julian Chambliss took time out of his day to talk with me, a budding comics scholar; Rashad Timmons had everybody retweeting quotes from his paper, “Hashtag Bodies, Hegemony and 
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the Deadly Terrain of Civil Society”; and Dr. Andre Brock snatched everybody’s edges with his assertion that colored peoples’ time is a, “Joyous disregard for modernity and labor capitalism.” (He said what he said, y’all.) 

In addition to the wonderful roundtables and panels that AADHum put together for participants, there were also  digital poster and demo sessions. This was one of the many moments where I wished I could be in multiple places at once during the conference. I wanted to see all of the posters, but I also wanted to experience a demo, as I had never seen humanities people give poster presentations; nor had I seen a digital humanities demo in the way that AADHum had conceived of it. I intended to stop in at each poster for a few minutes, but during the first session I was so enthralled by Sherri William’s presentation, “Amplifying Black Voices Through Digital Journalism,” that before I knew it, a member of the AADHum team was letting participants know that the session was over. The posters provided an excellent alternative presentation format which encouraged both small group and one-on-one conversations around the presenter’s topic; which for someone like me, who is often too intimidated to ask questions in large group settings, was a perfect opportunity to engage with scholarship on a more personal level.
 
It was beautiful. It was wonderful. It was Black. It was digital. It was an honor to have been in community with so many wonderful thinkers. It was a thrill to watch my digital world transform from pixelated into reality.

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Ravynn K. Stringfield is a Ph.D. student in American Studies at William & Mary, where she works at the intersection of Literature, Black Studies and Comics Studies. In addition to her scholarly work, she is in her second year working as the Graduate Assistant for the William & Mary Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation, which works to rectify wrongs perpetrated against African Americans by the College through action of inaction. She is also a HASTAC Scholar and a William & Mary Equality Lab Fellow. When she is not researching or working, she writes and curates guest posts for her blog/webmagazine, Black Girl Does Grad School.

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Why Every Book Made For Our Black Girls Ain't A Good Book

10/11/2018

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In 2017, the fact of the matter is that being a Black girl is undeniably lit.


It’s true.


Our public image today spans age, wealth, profession and interests with icons such as Black-ish’s Yara Shahidi, Chicago’s own yoga and wellness guru Lauren Ash and straight-forward and no-nonsense Senator, Maxine Waters.


Even so, many parents raising Black girls do not rely on media to make an impression on their children.


Multicultural books and literature are a common frontline approach for educators and families alike, to validate the lived experiences and cultures of non-white folks.


Think Marley Diaz—the 10-year-old Black girl, who, at the time was “tired of reading about white boys and their dogs.”


Her disinterest led her to create her now famous campaign, #1000BlackGirlBooks and now there is a surge in the scholarly interest of representations of Black girls in kid’s lit.


It’s important to note however, that just because a book a cute picture of a Black girl on the front of it, doesn’t mean it’s quality—by all means, it could be quite the opposite.


As reviewer for a national publication of children’s literature, I see absolutely outrageous and culturally inaccurate and insensitive books on a weekly basis but one book that I recently reviewed really struck a hard chord.


In hopes to keep the Black community informed, especially as we work towards educating and uplifting our young girls, I want to share this review with you all, in hopes that you get a glimpse into some of the hurtful and demeaning messages that are cleverly embedded into the colorful and fun looking books that catch our kids’ eyes.


Natalie’s Hair is Wild-Laura Freeman


Natalie’s hair is large and in charge. Paired with her bright African print clothes, she is the gleaming image of a carefree Black girl. In fact, there isn’t a comb, scrunchie, barrette or bobby clip that can “tame” or “restrain” her natural mane. So when a bird takes up residence in her hair, it’s no big deal. But soon, the pages are filled with the black cloud-like fuzz of Natalie’s growing hair as the birds are joined by a frog, owl, and a host of other creatures—even a lion. It’s not until the noisy animals keep her from sleeping that she finally decides something must be done. With the help of the fire department and local zoo, the creatures are captured and Natalie’s hair is hosed down—it was that big a job. Many garden shears and rakes later, we join Natalie back at home, happy with fresh cornrowed braids and this lesson learned: “the hair on your head, is no place for a zoo.” This title is the first authored book of Laura Freeman, illustrator of the early chapter series Nikki and Deja. A fair-skinned and loose curled African-American woman, she notes that, like Natalie, she too grew up “wild-haired.” However, Natalie is brown-skinned with a kinky hair texture—her Blackness not as palatable as Freeman’s. It is highly unlikely that should Freeman have portrayed a girl reflected in her own image, that the resolution to her problem would be cornrows and a warning to maintain personal hygiene from the local firemen turned hairdressers. While the vibrantly textured digital art is appealing, don’t be fooled—the accompanying text lacks flow and is mediocre and didactic at best. Perhaps if Natalie were depicted in the likeness of her illustrator this might have been silly and fun with no real implications, this book effectively works to undo much of self-reclamation work that Black women have done to combat the stigmatization of kinky Black hair. If you’re really looking for great hair stories featuring Black girls, skip this title and check out Crystal Swain-Bates’ Big Hair, Don’t Care! Or Natasha Anastasia Tarpley’s I Love My Hair! MK



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MK is a 3rd year doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the department of Curriculum and Instruction. Her research interests include gender, sexuality and multiculturalism in children’s literature, literary representations of Black Girlhood and the Digital Literacy Practices of Black girls and women.
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