writer. teacher. anthropologist. yogi. laughing with my whole body. Books: Black Food Geographies and Black Food Matters
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Jan 20 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I'm teaching a new graduate course this semester called Embodied Ethnography. It is a practice-based course built around workshops where students will learn from some amazing ethnographers about how they "do" ethnography with their whole bodies. We will read:
Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance (D. Soyini Madison)
The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart (Ruth Behar)
Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (John Jackson, Jr.)
Aug 19, 2022 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
I'm teaching Black Geographies this semester. A thread of some of the texts. Happy fall semester, y'all!
“No One Knows the Mysteries at the Bottom of the Ocean” from Black Geographies (Katherine McKittrick and Clyde Woods)
“Geographies of Race and Ethnicity 1: Black Geographies” (Pat Noxolo)
Jun 16, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I was having lunch outside and a person came to ask for food, so I went inside to buy something for him. I told the woman that it was for the gentleman who had joined my table outside. she says, "he has to take it to go."
and I look at her puzzled, and she quickly says, "it's just that when we feed them, they don't leave." she looked almost embarrassed saying it, and I admittedly wanted her to feel something more than embarrassment. I ordered his food and went back outside to sit with him.
Mar 21, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
one of the midterm essay prompts in Black Geographies:
Reflect on a place that is home to you. Using Cedric Robinson’s theory of racial capitalism, Christina Sharpe’s concept of “the wake” and Kei Miller’s A Cartographer Tries to Map to Zion, consider the following questions:
How does racial capitalism shape the place and who is allowed to claim home in this place? How do humans living there relate to each other, to nonhuman beings, or the earth itself? How and where do you see resistance and/or “wake work?” What possibilities can you imagine?
Dec 4, 2020 • 23 tweets • 4 min read
A thread of some of the main parts of the Justice for Black Farmers Act, in case people have not read the full thing yet. I offer some thoughts about it along the way.
I still encourage you to read it yourself and discuss it with others if you can
Two things off top: 1) while this act focuses on Black farmers, it is hard for me to read it and not feel a tension that arises from knowing how much repair is necessary with and for indigenous folx too. I have no answers for this, but I wanted to name it.
Jun 30, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I see calls for Black or WOC leadership in the wake of Bon Appetit and SFA. Listen: asking a Black woman/WOC to take the helm of an org steeped in whiteness after white men have destroyed it is setting them up for failure if the right support mechanisms are not in place.
...and even with the "right" mechanisms, it is still risky and will require more of them than their predecessor. I'm not saying a Black woman/WOC shouldn't but I am saying that representation has very real limits when the only shift in power is on the surface.
Jan 23, 2020 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
New semester, new course!
Thread of some of the course readings for my Black Geographies course:
excerpts from McKittrick's Demonic Grounds (grad students will read the whole book)
@camillahawth's “Black Matters are Spatial Matters: Black Geographies for the Twenty‐first Century” and “A Seat at the Table? Reflections on Black Geographies and the Limits of Dialogue”
Aug 27, 2019 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Tomorrow's the first day of class...and I am always excited about the first day.
I'm teaching a course titled, "Food in the Racialized City." Some of the readings threaded below.
McKittrick, “Plantation Futures”
Wilson, “Capital’s Need to Sell and Black Economic Development”
Shange, “All It Took Was a Road/Surprises of Urban Renewal” from If I Can Cook/You Know God Can
