Do Not Grow Weary: Wholehearted Dimensions of Unforgetting

• In Event: Critical and Embodied Literacies: Narrations of Unforgetting by Intergenerational Women of Color

Abstract

“What does that word mean?” Every instance I asked this question (and there were many), the response was an echo. The man I loved as my dad would speedily tell me, “Look it up.” So, at the dining room desk, my hands would touch pages of the seemingly now defunct printed dictionary. Other moments, in our dust stuffed attic, I would forget about passing time while befriending dated encyclopedias. Years later, I am now a dissertation-phase doctoral student posturing my heart for glocal–simultaneously global and local–research with Black girls. The stickiness of my Black girl upbringing, inclusive of complicated daughterhood, seasons my emergent scholarship. Paired with my urgent hunger for wisdom is the instilled assignment to ‘look it up.’ In the style of a definition, I have, thus, been called to direct my gaze (look) onto a thing (it, e.g., question, word, concept, story, theory) for the purpose of developing and activating understanding. My regard of and wrestling with the subject at hand can uproot and uplift it as worthy of knowing and beholding in light’s view. Beholding, driven by knowledge and love, be interdependent with unforgetting.
Admittedly, protecting the orientation of ‘looking it up’ can feel wearisome. The world’s noise is piercing. Inwardly, questions and vulnerabilities mount my thought life, especially as my dissertation unfolds. When self-doubt arises, what practices must I revisit and rehearse to ‘unforget’ that my breath, footsteps, wholeness, and scholarly contributions beautifully matter? As an arts-based education researcher centering Black girlhood, how can my creativity guide and preserve citational practices that honor knowers inside and beyond the academy? Moreover, how can I enact discernment and openness to invite safe people to detangle longings, pursue revelations, and testify alongside me? As an education scholar, it is impossible for me to unforget histories without (re)membering that I am a divinely situated, necessary vessel. Non-linear, embodied, grace-rich, and community-supported self-reflexivity then must be non-negotiable.

Author

• Jessica Reed, Michigan State University