(Re)claiming Self: Sisterhood as a Tool of Survivance in Higher Education

• In Event: Let the Circle Be Unbroken: A Black Women's Literature Circle as Liberatory Space

Abstract

Objectives:
In the United States, only 26% of faculty in higher education are people of color (NCES, 2022) and within that number, only 4% are Black women. This can result in feelings of isolation and marginalization, leading to the attrition of Black women from the academy (Griffin, 2020). This paper explores the role of community as a tool of resilience and survivance (Sabzalian, 2019) in higher education. In this work, I interrogate the ways in which my race, gender, and motherhood influence the content and context of my work and how a series of candid conversations with found sisters shaped my personal and professional growth within hostile racialized spaces.
Theoretical Perspectives /Mode of Inquiry:
My culture, which is central to my existence, shapes my worldview and creates space to find and share my voice (Dillard, 2006). The concepts of spirituality, community, and praxis are central to endarkened and indigenous ways of knowing (Dillard & Dixson, 2006; Dillard, 2008; Tuhiwai Smith, 2012), which "can reside in bodies and cultural memories notwithstanding global migrations, globalization, and the emergence of Diasporic communities" (Sefa Dei, 2011, p.26). Through the use of autoethnographic methods, and grounded in Evans-Winters' (2019, 2020) writing, this paper revisits the collective consciousness of my community and the performances of daughtering as a coping mechanism during times of struggle and conflict. Through the lens of my Trinbagonian ancestral and extempo traditions, each section represents a blossoming understanding as I explore my challenges and survivance (Sabzalian, 2019), navigating the academic realm during this twin pandemic of White supremacy and Covid-19 with the help of these found sisters. This framing represents a way of knowing, a search for completeness, and resistance to the colonial (Sefa Dei, 2011).
Data Sources:
Data were collected through discussion and reflective journaling during our group sessions as we related our experiences and perspectives to the writings of Black women authors who were exploring some of these themes in their works of fiction and non-fiction. Journaling and analysis were also part of the process after our sessions as reflection on both the discussions and the readings.
Results:
Embracing Evans-Winters' (2019) conceptualization of daughtering as a coping mechanism during times of struggle and conflict, and as a spiritual and cultural process contextualized by experiential knowledge, shifts the way that we think about our work in the academy and creates opportunities for new possibility as we connect these culturally-situated frameworks to the work we do in spaces of whiteness.

Significance:
Through reading, reflection, and dialogue, this sister circle created space through which I could re-conceptualize resistance to the oppressive nature of academia in ways that affirm and extend my ways of knowing and being. As a Black woman-mother-scholar, these conversations became central to my mental health, the affirmation of my mental wealth, and my vision of persistence and survivance. This work invites scholars to create similar spaces of community as tools of resistance and as models to those who come after us as we work towards dismantling pervasive and persistent societal injustices.

Author

• Dyanis Conrad, Randolph-Macon College