A Secret Cup of Gladness: Cultivating Black Joy and Resistance Through Collective Black Spaces

• In Event: The Writing Reunion: Surviving the Academy Through the Black Familial Tradition

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine how participation in this collaborative writing group has contributed to the theorizing of Black joy as resistance in that space. Black joy in this space has served as a form of resistance and freedom from the constraints of academic spaces (Dumas, 2014) for us as Black graduate students, early-career faculty, and administrators in higher education. Joy has been reflected in our discussions of current events, sharing chants, songs, social media posts, and expressing personal joy through laughter, trading stories, sharing recipes, and discussing how we will celebrate our accomplishments from the writing sessions and our lives in general. Using collaborative autoethnography, this paper will reflect on the author’s experiences of this group to theorize how Black joy has operated as an integral part of this collective’s ability to support each other and reclaim the narratives around Blackness and Black futures.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
As a movement, Afrofuturism, "simultaneously calls attention to the persistent social inequity faced by the African diaspora while imagining a different reality and future for black people around the world” (Everett-Haynes, 2017). Tiffany Barber (2016) asserts that Afrofuturism is compelling as it “rearticulates ... and expands our understandings of blackness’s multi-dimensionality, the good and the bad, the respectable and the undesirable” (T. Barber, personal interview, 2016). The non-linear, reflexive nature of Afrofuturism lends itself to inquiry of Blackness as it has existed in the past, exists in present, and will exist in the future. In relation to theorizing Black joy as resistance, Afrofuturism provides a frame for reclaiming Black narratives, Black space, and joy through the practice tarrying with what is and imagining possibilities of what will or can come next. This practice is reflected through my experiences of how we collectively imagine Black futures and how our expressions of joy throughout that process of imagining operates as a seminal part of those futures.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
Pulling from Collaborative Autoethnography this paper will use two forms of data to examine how Black joy operates as resistance in our collective writing group. The two forms of data collected and analyzed in this paper are personal memory snapshots and self-reflective data. Chang, Hernandez and Ngunjiri (2012) describe personal memory snapshots as a source of data that embraces the subjectivity inherent in memory work while also serving as an interpretive analytical process. The other form of data collected, self-reflective data consists of reflections on group conversations, writing sessions, and collective mentorship. Where personal memory snapshots attempt to capture the factual aspects of what happened, self-reflective data aspires to capture, “changed impression[s] of the event over time and emotional responses to the event over time”(Chang et. al., 2012, p.79).

Significance
The significance of this paper is in how Black collective spaces provide settings for young Black scholars to embody Black joy as resistance through this practice of “seeking to interpret Black life” and “speak[ing] over Black futures” (Anderson, 2016) in ways authentic to their vision for themselves.

Author

• Natasha McClendon, Georgia State University