Accountability Reason #556884
Apologies for overlooking the many many writers who help(ed) me along the way!
I mentioned writing in spurts in my last piece. And that’s just what that last post was — a spurt. An undrafted, briefly edited stream-of-consciousness meant to exorcise the the noise in my head around jealousy and shame; and an exercise in accountability and acknowledgement.
But it was not complete. The previous post begs for context behind the shame spirals that still run beneath my work. How could it be complete when it fails to wholly acknowledge so many of the folks who help(ed) me navigate and overcome that shame?
It wasn’t complete— but it was published. I didn’t expect the thoughtful and compassionate responses. I certainly wasn’t expecting any parts to resonate with fellow grad school vets. But once something is published it’s a thing of its own, and people react to it without your input or context. That worked out this time, other times it hasn’t. This next spurt of writing connects the dots between my apprehension at publishing, how writing in spurts can go horribly wrong, and communities form around writers wrestling with their shame…and their guilt.
I left out a number of other writers and creatives that have supported and mentored me as a writer and are just good human beings in this world. There’s Stephanie Gilmore, editor, advocate and just an absolute cheerleader for Black women writers. Also, she knows everyone..like everyone. There’s Jami Attenberg, author of
. My current projects would not even exist without her #1000wordsofsummer project. Same goes for Rae Gouirand, creator of Scribe Lab. I’ve done SL three times and am always the better for it — as a person and as a writer. Barring MFA programs I can’t think of any other space where you will get six months of devotion to the craft and pages and pages of feedback on your work. There’s Kera Bolonik, editor-in-chief of DAME magazine, who published many essays of mine beginning in 2014. I met Kera though Rebecca Carroll, another passionate writer and author of award-winning titles and was one of the very first editors to give me a platform.Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, theoretical physicist, feminist theorist and the author of
, not only treated my 2016 piece for The Offing (2016) with sincerity and a deep advocacy but, she did so following an ugly chapter in my public life. I’d written a piece on Black women and disability but I did so in bad faith and the response was…not good.(These are just what I could pull quickly from Elon Musk’s Twitter)
![Twitter avatar for @all_just_words](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/all_just_words.jpg)
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/video/upload/e_loop,vs_40/mxpdqrbyrkffp0azmeue.gif)
![Twitter avatar for @KNicholeMusic](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/KNicholeMusic.jpg)
Even England had questions. Much of the critical response was valid and fair but, anything with nuance tends to get buried under more reactionary content in our social media era. Mostly, I was called an Op and told to kill myself (to which I’d silently say, “Jokes on you, been there, tried that!”).
From the morning of January 13, 2016:
“Hey Bestie, isn’t your article out today?”
“Yeah, uhh, it is….”
“What’s wrong?”
“Umm..just Google me.”
“Wow, big head, it can’t be that bad.”
“Just fucking Google me.”
“Okay, I’m Googling but I think you’re making a big—….oh…OH, OHHHHH, Hooooly Sshhiii-”
While shame is the major player I suspect that some of my paralyzing fear of submission comes from this upsetting experience, too. It’s true what they say — that the pain is the worst when it’s from your own people. In my piece for Elle I wrote about my immediate bristling and ire at the #BlackGirlMagic trend. I hated it. I hated how it made me — a very unmagical Black woman — feel about myself. In 2016 I was gainfully employed in a thriving city I adored with a prestigious graduate degree and doing what I loved to do everyday — reading books and convincing students about the importance of literature in our daily lives. But the power of shame meant that I felt like a failure every day.1
I refused to relish my moment. Loved ones would express how proud they were and I’d cringe inside. They just didn’t understand. They saw the H-bomb and the PhD and that’s all it took. But I knew better and because I knew better I knew there was little to be proud of. That’s the mindset I held as #BlackGirlMagic trended.
But that is only a piece of it.
Three months into my first term at Harvard I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. I was 24 years old. That was in 2006 and by 2014 I’d had two relapses requiring more aggressive treatment. I could no longer wear heels above an inch and a half without falling. I could no longer run or skip due to a lack of coordination. I had to touch a wall or grip a railing when descending any stairs because my depth perception was off. If I walked more than half a mile I would start to limp (I had a painful limp for days following President Barack Obama’s first inauguration…worth it). Hot showers, humidity and summers became my own personal hell leaving my left side almost entirely immobile. Some of what I’m describing may sound silly, superficial even — I ask you to think back to when you were in your twenties and what was on your mind on a daily basis. I felt robbed of the carefree nature I felt entitled to (yes, Black people get to feel carefree, too). I was so anxious when teaching because I’d developed a tremor in my left hand and was so scared the students would think something was wrong with me.
There was so much I didn’t know when I started graduate school and even less about what to do if I were unwell. I didn’t know what a leave of absence was or what it entailed but I did know that my only access to healthcare came from my being a full-time student. The professors I worked with and learned under went out of their way to tell me they didn’t know how I did it — they didn’t know what they would do if they were me. One professor told me not to mention I had MS in my conversations with professors. Another — my advisor — told me not to mention it in any of my cover letters to jobs or fellowships. In my seven years of study I can count on one hand the number of meetings I had that were devoted to advising. I would need multiple hands to count the number of calls, emails, written appeals and doctors visits I’d make just that first year of diagnosis.
That’s the person, the body, who received the #BlackGirlMagic message on a constant basis.
I was so wrapped up in my own anger and resentment at my body and career I failed to do the most important thing — I failed to listen. I didn’t listen to the whole conversation. I didn’t bother to keep clicking and reading to learn the origins of the trend. I didn’t bother to learn who CaShawn Thompson was.2 I didn’t bother to find out her coining of the phrase (originally “Black Girls Are Magic”) was partially in response to the same problematic sugar-coating of Black success. When discussing Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Real-Life Tales of Black Girl Magic (for which Thompson wrote the foreword) editor and journalist Lilly Workneh said:
“It was important that we define Black girl magic as something that all Black women and girls just are,” says Workneh. “It's not something that you have to achieve or have or acquire or have to reach a certain level or status to exemplify.”
If I’d done my homework properly I would have still said what I said but I would have engaged with HER original intent, too.
It’s been a strange journey over the last 9 years. There are numerous articles, essays, scholarly journals (oh, the painful irony!), books and dissertations (again, the goddamn irony), and syllabi for courses in Black Studies and invitations to the occasional podcast all addressing that essay and its aftermath. I have met people who, upon learning I authored that piece, say that they can’t be friends with me. I am still blocked on social media by some folks I greatly admire and with whom I have enough mutual acquaintances that when said mutuals share a tweet or post I can’t see it.
“To Black Girls Everywhere” was my first publication following Elle. I was very much in the space of sheer humiliation and I’m already an awkward person on my best day so Chanda had a lot to work with when editing my piece. Her kindness remains a treasure to this day.
By now, I’ve Forrest Gump’d as much as possible on that whole #BlackGirlMagic moment. This isn’t my first share on what happened in 2014 but this will be the last.
If you want to know more…just Google me.
“NTT” means “Non Tenure-Track” and "professor of instruction” (sometimes called “clinical professor”) means the same thing — that one is a professor but is not on the tenure track and one that’s meant to not work primarily in research but in teaching. These are things I did not know upon my starting graduate school. Hell, I didn’t even know what tenure was when I started. I knew that word as the literal definition — a segment of time.
And Thompson’s a 3rd generation DC-native so I have nothing but mortification and embarrassment for the respect I did not put on her name.