Free Palestine.

These last few days have left me with more questions than answers and deepened my commitment to thinking, living, and creating beyond binaries. What we are witnessing with the escalation of violence in historic Palestine moves beyond “conflict” and reductive colonial logics. This violence is rooted in 75+ years of an (illegal) Israeli military enforced occupied apartheid state and over 16 years of Palestine existing as an open-air prison. I have grappled with the right words, the right resources, and how I understand solidarity and accountability beyond identity politics.

I am sitting at the seat of empire as a documented citizen of the United States of America and live on unceded land shepherded by the Tigua Pueblo peoples – right on the border of the United States of America and Mexico. The dehumanization and criminalization of immigrants along this border feels echoed in the nonchalant admission from Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that Palestinians are “human animals”, and the normative framing of whose lives are grievable – who we deem innocent and the communities who are disposable. There are no clean equations for human rights and what one’s right to liberation looks like. There are no clean and neutral definitions that make “condemning violence” simple.

Today I became a doctor and I am SO proud of myself - all that I survived, created, achieved, and let go in a journey that took so much from me. Without my people, I would not have made it to my final graduation stage. To my people, I love you:

Explore this collection of resources meant to nurture our mental health and wellness needs. The university works to disappear and exploit Black women intellectuals and I want us to survive the journey in one piece and in peace.

*It's important to note that the design and intention of this thread, originally developed for the Our Sistren's Garden Discord, is not meant to operate in place of mental health professionals and/or services.

This thread on the Our Sistren's Garden serves as a place to share anything "audio" that you keep on repeat or listen to as a reminder of who you are in spite of American academia's commitment to keeping us at the figurative bottom. Maybe its Tina Turner's entire discography (a personal fave), a podcast you love, spoken word, or something in between - share your soundtrack to this season of our lives as emerging scholars!

Please enjoy our playlist, Soundtrack to the Season - a compilation of songs that got us, the sistren of the study, through the journey when we needed inspiration, a pick me up, or an invitation to dance it out.

The Our Sistren's Garden's #communityIRL thread acts as ahub to share/discuss community resources in real life and on the web - organizations and groups may offer services or a place for support as Black women navigating this chapter of life. The degree and the process are only one component of the full lives we're meant to lead - so grow your community!

A collection of funding opportunities that I've compiled over the course of my doctoral journey. This feels especially important considering how challenging it is when we don't receive full-funding and trying to be well can sometimes feel impossible when we are not paid living wages. Have suggestions? Holler at me here!

The Our Sistren's Gardens Discord server is our slice of the internet that heavily draws inspiration from the life & legacy of bell hooks and Alice Walker. I’m interested in curating spaces for us – educators, dancers, scientists, creatives, activists, dreamers, disruptors, and artists – to “talk back” as Black women, femmes, and non-binary folks.

The universe 🪐 threaded us together, tightlywoven like my favorite hand-me-down sweater. Our friendship holds me tighter though, with a softness that rivals the finest silks. Though ‘friendship’ feels incomplete, and the syllables of ‘sisterhood’ makes far more space for who and what we are to one another. One year has passed since we first linked up and I’m so very grateful that the magic of our ancestors and mentors stitched us together. With you, this patchwork quilt, my sistren, of kinship brought me much solace and laughter in one of the most challenging chapters of my life.

2022 was not always kind to me. I was overwhelmed & often lonely. I grew tired of one-sided friendships & carried shame in my posture. Writing became burdensome & I felt pushed out by academia. I did not take care of my body & it kept the score. I said goodbye to too many loved ones & got lost in grief. My doctor told me I ate too many uncrustables & I cried because, sometimes, it feels like no one understands me. I completed my dissertation research in five months (in a fugue state) & grew confident in my work. I started working with my favorite author & took hella naps.

2022 was not kind to me, yet in every climb up from what I thought was my worst low, there were hands reaching out for me, promising to never leave me behind or give up on me - even when I so desperately wanted to. As I welcome in 2023, I do so with an immeasurable gratitude for those who grabbed my hand & pulled me forward.

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My mother is an enigma. She held secrets in the furrow of her brow and decades of unheard wishes in the soles of her feet. A cryptex wrapped in cinnamon skin, I always wondered what lay beneath her rigid backbone.

My mother knows obedience like the back of her smooth hands and holds tight to convention the way we cling to one another during every goodbye. In the years we felt like strangers, I wondered if I could ever decipher the riddles of her true nature.

Happy Birthday to THEE Icon

You first came to me in regalia and delivered a convocation speech fused together with Words of Fire.

In dog eared pages of Gender Talk, I scribbled in the margins questions of reclamation, power, and found the courage to intertwine the syllables of feminism with those of my own name.

We shared mojitos and piping hot tea ( ) in conference hallways and ornate hotel lobbies, shared scones and secrets, late night calls and long hugs.

You held me through our shared loss and grief, encouraged me when the doctoral journey was depleting, and continue to remind me that my writing ain’t skimpy but worthy of being read.

Beloved Valerie,

It feels surreal to place your picture on my altar, to watch the flames of each candle wick dance across the contours of your smiling face. There are no words that suffice, no string of syllables that sound as comforting as your laugh, no way for me to express how much you are loved or how grateful I am for your gift of friendship.

And so I have taken the time to listen - to follow your example and embrace the strength of silence and distill what my body, my spirit, my heart is telling me as I consider your passing.

2021 feels unfinished - a series of days that felt like months and months that lasted days. There’s always more to do, more to fix, and always, more to learn.

Anti-Blackness is my oldest family recipe. Tucked away amongst the Adobo, coriander, and turmeric paste, it sat in the crook of our spice cabinet. I watched my father whisk its amorphous contents into the cast iron skillet on Sunday mornings; he’d fold it, lovingly, into his famous omelets as my mother stirred English Breakfast Tea in our mugs. I’d grow up with anti-Blackness woven into my haphazard braids, its aroma smoothed into my knobby knees with heapings of cocoa butter, and watch my mother adorn her mocha-colored skin with it like her favorite perfume. We’d break bread at family gatherings and take seconds, and thirds, of it at the buffet table. I’d hear its harshness in my abuela’s broken English as she’d scoff at my sunscreen-less face and drink its contents to wash down dry pieces of roti. As a mixed-race person, anti-Blackness is the confidence of bypassing “Black/African American” to swiftly circle “Other” on forms, the flushing of one’s cheeks when complimented on exotic beauty, the steady beating of your heart when walking past police, and the deafening silence behind closed doors where Black men and women are caricatures of humanity.

My father is weaver. He takes broken things - like hearts, promises, and relationships - and works to bind them whole once more with his love and grace. I watched him weave melodies and bass lines into new rhythms that begged my feet to dance. I grew up hugging blankets of security that he created with forgiveness, crazy glue, patience, and hard work. He took threads of our cultural history, passport stamps, prayer, and pinky promises and wove a bond that feels unbreakable in our family.

In the quiet moments after I unwind your fears and expectations from my neck, and the slowed rhythm of my breath is my only company, who am I in the absence of you?

I rework the question with my hands, my fingertips caught on the knots of discomfort, trailing it’s threads with feigned confidence - as If I am unafraid of what answers I’ll unravel.

It would be much easier to hold my breath and pull you tighter - to smooth the contours of your face, conceal the shadows of my loneliness, and melt my limbs with the outline of the woman you could never be.

Who am I in the absence of you? My mother who has hidden herself along the journey from continent to altar. A dark skinned girl with shinning teeth and unfulfilled dreams. I know you have lost me just as you, perhaps, lost yourself.

As a little girl, I did not dream of wedding dresses or happily ever afters. More of a magician than a princess, I played pretend in make believe libraries. I lost myself in the comfort of second hand books and wished I were a heroine in a 90s Bollywood film. I wanted to grow up and be everything my mother couldn’t. I plucked the unfinished blueprint of the American dream from my father’s back pocket and held it to my chest like a compass. There’s a certain safety in planning out your future - to curate a type of happiness that comes with complacency. I earned 4.0s, won the awards, and let the weight of other’s expectations steer me forward. I did not have time to dream about wedding dresses and happily ever afters. It was always easier to be a supporting actress than to take center stage as the heroine of my own story.

When I speak of you, I turn my face to the sun. The warmth of its rays feel like your embrace and the comfort of your guidance. I searched for wholeness in others - stitching myself to pain narratives and wayward souls, looking to mother my way into confidence. I came to you in pieces and learned to find peace in my own reflection. I untangled mottled chords of assimilation and self-abnegation and reclaimed a voice wrought with confidence and rebellion. When I speak of you, I turn inwards and have found your support in the fire of my backbone. I know what it is to stand tall with you as my example.

Our kinship helped me learn how to save myself - to choose me over and over again, to find joy in the fight for our lives, and to reach through my dreams and cradle the strength of my ancestors. I fell in love with polenta and finally understood neoliberalism. I retired my comedy act and voraciously dove into alternative knowledges and traced your words in sites of struggle. We shared laughter and style as I watched you grow into the fashionista you always were while I inherited the chicest attire and the language of one bad ass Marxist feminist.

Hiram,

How fitting it is to celebrate this new chapter of your life mere days before we celebrate my own? The universe made no mistakes in the weaving of our stories - we were meant to be bound together, the way smooth leather contains the chapters of our favorite stories.

My dearest Cancerian twin flame, happiest of birthdays to you! I cannot believe it has only been seven years since you came into my life, when it feels like I’ve known you since I took my first breathe. Lucky and blessed do not hold enough syllables for the love and gratitude I have for you and our siblinghood. To say you are special does no justice to the magic you bring to this world.