I turn to books to process – to learn about relationship structures, dive into another’s experience, or explore a house influenced by mushrooms seeping through the walls. I allow the stories to wash over me, go into the tidepools of my own processing and churn up whatever might need to come to the surface. Can reading be a form of accompaniment?
I often make myself syllabi on particular topics to hold me as I explore my curiosity. I set a steady arc from which possibility can spark. I believe we learn from many sources – lived experiences, elders, and the living world all around us. The syllabi I make reflect this. My hope is that by holding all the different textures and angles these of accounts in relationship with one another that a more vibrant picture will emerge. I have yet to experience this not being true.
This disposition might come from my liberal arts background – shoutout to Mount Holyoke – or my tenacious sets of questions that often need many answers to satisfy. It likely came from both. I first started seeking answers from many sources (read: designing syllabi) for myself in college. My questions felt too big for one class or source. I wanted to understand how we got here, not in a cosmic sense (yet), but rather I saw injustice and fracture around me, and I wanted to know why so much harm and pain permeated. I turned to multidisciplinary subjects as focuses of study: Political Theory and Africana Studies.
Political Theory to answer: how are we in relationship and society together? What are the underlying assumptions or values embedded in how we are together?
Africana Studies to answer: what’re the power dynamics and social underpinnings of how we relate to each other and organize society? Race and its construction in the United States are the foundation of the systems of oppression we live in. so, I studied the ways people of African descent resisted (and continue to resist) white supremacy and domination as what we now know as the United States came into being – this needed to be at the center both as a counterweight and toppler of the histories I learned growing up.
The interplay between these focuses caused me to deconstruct what “theory” was. Theory is not only a thought experiment. Theory is an exercise in imagination and a reflection on how we know what we know. It is a way of charting a course between what is or has been and what could be – to build that path we need all tools available. We need to understand and make space for many ways of being in the world in order to make a creative liberated future.
The foundational political theorists I learned about were mostly European intellectual men often trying to construct reasons for capitalism, domination, and supremacy. These are the thinkers that heavily influenced ideas on how we now think about private property, what makes a society, and how to create social contracts.
Black feminist theory directly unraveled that posture, for me – enter the interplay between Political Theory and Africana Studies. The Combahee River Collective, a collective of Black feminists, was the first to explicitly write about drawing from personal experience, in addition to other sources, as core to making meaning.
The raw material needed to build what’s next comes from many sources, often all within us and around us. The Combahee River Collective used their own experiences as source text, noticing the interplay of being women and being Black at the same time. The Combahee River Collective Statement is a powerful articulation (read: theory) of all the world needed for Black women to be seen as fully human – please read the entire statement – and bore the fruit of frameworks such as the term “intersectionality,” referring to the distinct experiences that occur when multiple systems of oppression overlap, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw years later. The big questions we hold need to be answered by many sources in conversation with each other, especially the wisdom of lived experience.
When learning about something, there is rarely only one answer. White supremacy and capitalism try to trick us into thinking we can find an essentialized truth. When we attempt this, we end up with a flattened answer – something that might taste good, but still leaves us hungry. Multiple things are always true at once and learning in a dynamic way should reflect that. When learning African American history, I was often assigned to read novels next to primary documents next to music videos. The tune of each material in concert with the next rounded out different dimensions of the topic. We can never know everything about a subject or another person. The belief that we even could comes from domination-based frameworks.
It’s more generous with ourselves and others, not to mention realistic and a bit of a relief, to keep creating the collage of knowledge, slowly filling in pieces and fragments, knowing that the process of encounter is where the fulfillment comes.
I am years into exploring my own independent learning. I don’t have professors putting together source lists anymore, but I carry with me the ability to round out different angles to an idea and try to consume media that swap out who is behind the lens – a practice of paying attention. We decide who we center in our learning, and who we allow to shape our imagination. As an example, I exclusively read BIPOC, queer, trans, and/or femme authors. This is an exercise in broadening what “normal life” looked like – spoiler: there isn’t one – and allowing my imagination, creativity, and sense of wholeness to unfurl. This choice, I believe, is an act of mending the broken pieces within myself and my relationships that the systems of oppression we live in created. Mending fracture, we are taught, releases holy sparks into the universe.
So, I read piles of non-fiction: See No Stranger by Valarie Kaur, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
I read heaps of fiction, suspense, and mysteries: Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, When No One’s Watching by Alyssa Cole
I listen to podcasts: Code Switch, Today Explained, How to Survive the End of the World
These sources accompany me in showing up in the world in more aligned ways – and, quite frankly, as support my unlearning all the oppressive and domination-based narratives and wiring that I’ve been socialized into as a white person. The questions and curiosity remain consistent, and the answers keep unfolding. I want to feel that something I never dreamed of could be possible. Moving towards wholeness is hard, yes, but it also can come with a fantastic story, continuous learning, beautiful language, and room for imagination and possibility.
In Practice
Make your own syllabus to unlock possibility. Think about a topic or question that you return to often – this could be about why we are how we are or how to cultivate a garden in the context you inhabit. Once you land on a question, get creative with where you could learn about this.
Who around you is exploring this question?
What books might you turn to?
What podcasts or songs might illuminate an angle on this?
As you put your feelers out, compile the sources into a list. Try to curate the list down to about seven starting points. Then, I would encourage starting with a longer source to set the pace (ex: book) and layer in shorter sources (ex: podcast or movie) as you go.
As you move through the learning, keep bringing your question to mind. What is this source teaching me about this question?
What’s on my syllabus for this season? I am leaning toward cultivating wonder, releasing control, and building more attunement with myself and in my relationships.
The full syllabus is still in the works.
A question for you: would sharing curated syllabi on particular topics or questions be something you’d be interested in? Send me a note or comment below.
Holy Sparks
I recently finished Cole Arthur Riley’s This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us. This was a conjuring of all the postures that orient her to this moment, her relationships and family, and the divine. I particularly appreciated that she was deeply rooted in her spirituality at the core. The process of sitting with her words opened up worlds for me and I would encourage you to pick up a copy.
i am so impressed by how you are able to focus and reply to your own question. you are so smart.