From the Farm to the Ph.D.: Grandmother's Mother Wit as Epistemology & Pedagogies of Dirt

• In Event: Beyond Mentoring: Muxerista, Feminista, and Black Feminist Approaches to Femtorship

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
How do we survive in a world where our experiences, knowledge, corporeal being, and spirit are not validated or accepted? Where are those safe spaces for life-affirming experiences, knowledge construction, validation, and the formulation of empowering memories and histories?

I discuss what it means to grow up with my paternal Grandmother in the 20th century, during the 80s and 90s, in a different type of cultural environment, a rural Jim Crow-relic society in the American South. The region is Oak Grove, Arkansas, a Black community shrouded in the context of white supremacy, patriarchy, sexism, and poverty.

I explore Grandmother's views on education through the practice of work with insightful anecdotes of my experiences on the farm as she prepared me for life. I describe Grandmother's mother wit as epistemology and the agrarian lifestyle as culturally-relevant pedagogy through her ways of knowing and practice. I discuss her understandings of nature, land ownership, leadership, work, work ethic, ancestral-connectedness, family, and community. These are the critical educational and transformative lessons learned from Grandmother on her farm. I analyze her femtorship legacy and its impact on my life and other Womxn in our family.

Perspectives/Theory
This work is grounded in Critical Race Theory’s “the voices and experiences of BIPOC matter in challenging systemic oppression in America.” Thus, the voice and experiences of my third-grade educated Grandmother dominate this discourse . . . her mother wit, anecdotes, songs, and Southern expressionism.

I incorporate the scholarship of Black feminists, Womxnists, and Womxn of Color, scholars, and writers in highlighting the experiences of being Black and Womxn in America. This includes: Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (1974), Moraga’s and Anzaldúa’s This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981), Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider (1984), Patricia Hill Collins and Black Feminist Thought (1990), bell hooks and Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994), and Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (2003).

Methods/Data
I employ a qualitative/ethnographic approach, along with content analysis. I learn from Grandmother’s epistemologies and pedagogies via reflections, letters, photos, videos, memories, testimonies, anecdotes, short stories, and parables. I share the data via dramatic spoken-word.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
I present information supporting the significance of Black Southern agrarian Womxn’s epistemologies and pedagogies. They are fundamental in maintaining family, community, identity, and one’s quality of life. I highlight Grandmother’s femtorship and the interconnectedness to other Womxn in America and the collective struggle against oppression.

Scholarly Significance
This work adds to the literature on femtorship, Black feminism, Womanism, CRT, and intersectionality. In building upon the framework of Kimberle Crenshaw’s intersectionality, we understand Black womxn in Southern agrarian environments and how they develop epistemologies and pedagogies within the context of white supremacy . . . and challenge white supremacy’s false belief that they are the sole purveyors of knowledge and intellectual authority and superiority.

Author

• Amina Humphrey, El Camino College