The good news is how creative, fierce, loving, brave, bold, funny, beautiful we are as we navigate, resist, transgress, and dispute white supremacy culture. This page is dedicated to a few of the many ways we have found to express our commitment to survive and thrive and be - with and for each other and ourselves and spirit and earth and wind and rain and fire.
Feel free to send in your suggestions for this page.
Feel free to send in your suggestions for this page.
MUSIC JOY
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The Resistance Revival Chorus
sings This Joy That I Have |
Nina Simone
sings I Wish I Knew (How It Would Feel To Be Free) |
Melanie DeMore leads and sings Stomp and Sing Freedom Land.
PODCASTS
My friend and colleague Krista Robinson-Lyles has launched the fabulous Joy Anyhow Podcast born out of her struggles and ongoing determination to live joyfully, even when the world seems to be on fire.
My friend and colleague Michelle Johnson and I were guests on All the F!ck In Podcast on an episode called Deep and Fierce Love. Take a listen.
POETRY & WRITTEN WORD JOY
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If you have not already, please immerse yourself in the poetry of NC Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green, who has released The River Speaks of Thirst, an audio album of her poems for a listening experience of joy.
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Danielle Spratley suggests these marvelous pieces to read:
- Some Thoughts on Mercy by Ross Gay
- To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall by Kim Addonizio
- Dinosaurs in the Hood by Danez Smith
- Shea Butter Manifesto by Eve L. Ewing
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Anything written by Alexis Pauline Gumbs brings joy. One of her latest books is Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals. In this book, she draws lessons for us humans based on the subversive and transformative lessons of marine mammals. In her chapter Refuse, she salutes the mammals who have escaped human observation altogether, offering "all my love to you who preserve the mysteries. Whom the empire of binaries will never define. All of you who love with a depth beyond recognition, nurturing freedom over understandability, valuing life as so much more important than simple comprehension. Thank you. Thank you for loving me without even knowing what on Earth I am" (page 110). |
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A profound offering and call to action—collective stories, testimonials, and incantations for renewing political and spiritual liberation grounded in Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and Queer and Trans healing justice lineages
We reclaim the power, resilience, and innovation of our ancestors through this book. To embody their wisdom across centuries and generations is to continue their legacy of liberation and healing.
In this anthology, Black Queer Feminist editors Cara Page and Erica Woodland guide readers through the history, legacies, and liberatory practices of healing justice—a political strategy of collective care and safety that intervenes on generational trauma from systemic violence and oppression. They call forth the ancestral medicines and healing practices that have sustained communities who have survived genocide and oppression, while radically imagining what comes next.
A way to deepen our understanding of the relationship between social justice and the work of healing—healing as individuals, communities, and societies.
Susan Raffo offers the newest title in the Emergent Strategy Series, Liberated to the Bone, addresses the intersections between healing our physical bodies and healing our social relations which are shaped by violence. Bodyworker and cultural worker Susan Raffo addresses intergenerational trauma, social justice, organizing, and how all of these things are relevant to our bodies. The book illuminates three different approaches to healing: ending violence, the significance of being rooted in the present, and creating the conditions to address unfinished histories and generational trauma. By showing how these approaches are intricately connected—physically and emotionally—Raffo interrupts the traumatic binaries of the political and spiritual, the physical and intellectual, and healing and organizing.
Susan Raffo offers the newest title in the Emergent Strategy Series, Liberated to the Bone, addresses the intersections between healing our physical bodies and healing our social relations which are shaped by violence. Bodyworker and cultural worker Susan Raffo addresses intergenerational trauma, social justice, organizing, and how all of these things are relevant to our bodies. The book illuminates three different approaches to healing: ending violence, the significance of being rooted in the present, and creating the conditions to address unfinished histories and generational trauma. By showing how these approaches are intricately connected—physically and emotionally—Raffo interrupts the traumatic binaries of the political and spiritual, the physical and intellectual, and healing and organizing.