Lavender Fields: Black Women Experiencing Fear, Agency, and Hope in the Time of COVID-19 - Original PDF
نویسندگان: Julia S. Jordan-Zachery (editor)
خلاصه: I start this book on African/Black women’s testimonies of living with COVID-19 by situating myself and my role in it. Over my twenty-plus years as an academician, I have evolved. I started simply wanting to be a political scientist who focused on Black women and public policy. I saw my work as an extension of me, but not in the way I do at this stage of my career. There was a shift in my approach to being an academician at some point. I started journaling about being a storyteller of Black women’s stories. Research, what I had been trained in, took a back seat, and the notion of storytell- ing became more prominent. I cannot explain this shift, and I have learned that some things need not be explained over time. Sometimes, Black women simply know (see Hill Collins 2000). Then COVID-19 hit. At some point during shelter in place—I have lost count of how long I have been at home—the Black feminine ancestors whispered to me. They called on me to undertake this project on Black women and COVID-19. I resisted. The project felt too big for me. I was worried that I could not do it and do it well. I went out into my garden. The energy of the ancestors deepened, and the call seemed to wrap itself around me in a way that would not release me. I did not feel threatened. But I resisted. I stayed in my gar- den for hours in my efforts to resist—weeding, tending, and avoiding. Finally, the heat of the day caught up to me, and I slowly made my way inside. I needed to find something else to occupy my mind, something that allowed me to continue avoiding the call for this project