Memoir
I direct an outdoor program at a small college in Southwest Virginia, and if you work at a small, private college, a significant part of your job is recruiting, selling the value of the institution to prospective students. For a college in Southwest Virginia, it’s also been about selling the value of place. I tell »
Dear Reader: These excerpts—from a welcome by Michelle Lanier and Johnica Rivers and lyrical essay, “Written by Herself,” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs—first appeared in A Sojourn for Harriet Jacobs, a chapbook created by The Harriet Jacobs Project to commemorate their inaugural journeys. * * * We called you in her name. You answered. We rang the »
Poetry
DO you remember flirting at the fish counter on Thursdays? At the Buford Highway Farmers Market—dark corners, concrete floors, & flags winking in an industrial breeze.
Back Porch
“Sojourning is a daring act of freedom-making and . . . an acknowledgment of reclamation of spaces where Black women and femme folks were historically excluded.” I’m in Edenton, North Carolina. I’m here to do some sacred work. I slowly turn the bowl of white rose petals in my hands. They are moist from freshly »
Memoir
“The longing for home never ceased, and the sojourn Down South would develop into a summer tradition.” For most of my young life I was denied the truth about my southern Black heritage, and the urbanized Americanized culture around me was teaching me to be ashamed. Of course, this dark skin, these pronounced and molded »
Art
“There are so many different ways that people constructed home in places that one would not desire for home.” On my most recent outing with the Black feminist abolitionist revolutionary artist (and dear mentor of mine) kai lumumba barrow, we went looking for Spanish moss for one of her world-unmaking installations. When she pulled up »
“The photographs and items my mother brought back with her from Texas tell her migration story, connecting me to the people, places, and events that shaped her life and echo in mine.” In the summer of 2015, my parents rented an RV and traveled from the Bay Area to Fort Worth, Texas, just south of »
Photo Essay
“In the most core-shaking moments of my life, I learned to return to these places to move beyond this physical form and ground my spiritual self.” Self-portraiture is the way I navigate myself back to my body. For years, my body did not feel like it belonged to me until I started photographing myself in »
“For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.” —1 Chronicles 29:15 The Hebrew word translated as “sojourner” in the King James Bible has no exact equivalent in English. While for us the concept of a sojourn »
“Habitual return highlights the importance of maintaining cultural practices and history between generations to anchor one’s identity and sense of self.” Helen canned peaches, sewed and patched quilts, and prepped her children for a cross-country trek. Her husband, J. L., had set out months ago with her brothers, joining the steady flow of people leaving »
“Freedom of mobility, accessibility of housing for one night or many, and a safe and secure environment for the many ways young Black women needed to spend their days—that was the point.” One late August night in 1943, Robbie Shields traveled up from Woodlawn in the South Side to Chicago’s northern suburb of Evanston for »
Sometimes you can prepare for a sojourn. Plan your route. Gather resources. Train your breathing. Maybe you will visualize your success. Chant the names you will need to remember. Pray for strength. Some of us write a list of days. Notify our loved ones. Give away our excess. But what you cannot know at the »