Black Joy: Stories of Resistance, Resilience, and Restoration
288Black Joy: Stories of Resistance, Resilience, and Restoration
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Overview
With deeply personal and uplifting essays in the vein of Black Girls Rock!, You Are Your Best Thing, and I Really Needed This Today, this is “a necessary testimony on the magic and beauty of our capacity to live and love fully and out loud” (Kerry Washington).
When Tracey M. Lewis-Giggetts wrote an essay on Black joy for The Washington Post, she had no idea just how deeply it would resonate. But the outpouring of positive responses affirmed her own lived experience: that Black joy is not just a weapon of resistance, it is a tool for resilience.
With this book, Tracey aims to gift her community with a collection of lyrical essays about the way joy has evolved, even in the midst of trauma, in her own life. Detailing these instances of joy in the context of Black culture allows us to recognize the power of Black joy as a resource to draw upon, and to challenge the one-note narratives of Black life as solely comprised of trauma and hardship.
“Lewis-Giggetts etches a stunning personal map that follows in her ancestors’ footsteps and highlights their ability to take control of situational heartbreak and tragedy and make something better out of it....A simultaneously gorgeous and heartbreaking read” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781982176563 |
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Publisher: | Gallery Books |
Publication date: | 11/22/2022 |
Pages: | 288 |
Sales rank: | 350,857 |
Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Introduction xv
… as resistance
1 Dancing in the Rain and the Power of Black Joy as Resistance 5
2 Breathe Again: A Manifesto 9
3 The Blacker the Love 15
4 Conjuring Angels 21
5 I've Got Dreams to Remember, Granny 25
6 Leaving Louisville 35
7 Smells like Blackness 45
8 We've Always Known 49
9 Joy in the Details 59
10 This Is Me 67
11 E-40 Taught Me 73
12 Tiny Revolutions 81
13 The Fourth 91
… as resilience
14 What Gets Burned Off 99
15 Inside Out 105
16 Laugh Loudly and Often: A Historical Conversation 113
17 I Don't Have to Know 119
18 Joy as Gap Filler 127
19 Because They Are Watching 135
20 Leaving Louisville: Part 2 141
21 The Right Kind of Chili 145
22 If You Come to the Cookout, Don't Stay 151
23 Cover Me 157
24 Black People Invented Time Travel 161
25 Accepting the Nonacceptance 167
… as restoration
26 You 179
27 Someday It Might Snow in April: The Healing Power of Prince 187
28 Born to Wash Cars 191
29 This Is My Story. This Is My Song. 195
30 Do You Love What You Feel? 205
31 To Be Seen 217
32 One Way Healing Comes 225
33 Joy with No Strings 233
34 The Privilege of Wonder 239
35 Time and Intention 245
36 What Freedom Looks Like on Her 251
Acknowledgments 257
About the Author 261
Reading Group Guide
BLACK JOY by Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts
This reading group guide for BLACK JOY includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
A timely collection of deeply personal, uplifting, and powerful essays that celebrate the redemptive strength of Black joy—in the vein of Black Girls Rock!, You Are Your Best Thing, and I Really Needed This Today.
BLACK JOY is a collection that will recharge you. It is the kind of book that is passed between friends and offers both challenge and comfort at the end of a long day. It is an answer for anyone who needs confirmation that they are not alone and a brave place to quiet their mind and heal their soul.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1. What role does self-compassion and empathy play in our ability to experience joy? Do you view it as a necessity, particularly for Black people in this time of collective grief?
2. Lewis-Giggetts discusses the power of the breath as both resistance and restoration. Consider what it means to wield one’s breath in the face of grief and sorrow.
3. In what ways have the nurturing relationships between Black women been missing from the public conversations on Black love and Black joy? What role does relationships with other Black women play in your own life?
4. What are some specific moments of Black joy that you can recall from your childhood? What impact does those memories have on you today?
5. Are you able to identify what joy feels like in your body? If so, describe it. If not, why do you think the feeling of joy is so difficult to access?
6. Lewis-Giggetts writes that sometimes “choosing joy might mean leaving a place or person that no longer serves you.” How has the pursuit of joy led to separation or distancing yourself from people, places, and things that once meant so much to you?
7. Black folks are often master storytellers. In what ways have you or maybe even your own elders reinvented the stories of your/their lives as a way to survive or thrive?
8. In an effort to fight for equity and equality, we sometimes can sacrifice the equally important necessities of cultivating rest and joy and love in our lives? How important do you think it is to balance the fight for policy change and equity with our very human need for peace, rest, joy, and love?
9. Many Black people experience racial microaggressions—sometimes even daily—whether on the job, at school, or elsewhere. How have those microaggressions impeded our ability to experience the fullness of joy in our lives and/or work?
10. Lewis-Giggetts believes that identifying, accessing, and amplifying our joy is a pathway to healing whether we are ever accepted by white or mainstream culture or not. What does freedom look like on you? What does a free and liberated version of yourself look like?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Encourage the group to keep a list of intentional ways one might allow more joy into their lives. Share with the group.
2. Have each person write a brief description of what joy feels like in their body. Then discuss their findings with the group to note similarities and difference.
3. Run a contest to see how many “moments of Black joy” a person can recognize and/or participate in within a week.