I have grown accustomed to being a vessel — holding what is not mine: thoughts, emotions, sensations, energy. It’s required me to feel bravely, to go into the depths of discomfort without knowing why or what I’ll find. My relational world is visceral. On any given day, I carry experiences that are known and unknownContinue reading “Empathic Parenting: A Black Technology of Survival”
Category Archives: Black Feminist Theory
Myth of the Black Woman Superhero
Popular culture would like us to believe that Black women are invincible. We don’t need help. We don’t need to be handled with tender love and care. Despite whatever trauma or abuse comes our way, we are indestructible. This is why the Welfare Queen stereotype is still so pervasive. Black women should bear the fullContinue reading “Myth of the Black Woman Superhero”
Meditations on Mad Love: Using Lessons from Polyamory as a Roadmap
I have been thinking a lot about love lately and the importance of unlearning certain cultural scripts about how love should be, including it being only between a man and a woman or monogamous. While we have witnessed great strides towards openness and equality in who and how we love, I am still challenged byContinue reading “Meditations on Mad Love: Using Lessons from Polyamory as a Roadmap”
My New Creative Endeavor: Producing an Autoethnographic Film
Living openly with bipolar disorder requires a continual “coming out” process in multiple aspects of my life. Lately, I have experienced this the most acutely in my work which is inseparable from my lived experience with mental health challenges. In addition to pursing a PhD in Anthropology, I am also a part of a nationally-recognizedContinue reading “My New Creative Endeavor: Producing an Autoethnographic Film”
Experiments in Ethnographic Poetry
The further I progress with my PhD, the more I realize ways I can bring my whole self to my work. As an undergraduate in the Mellon Mays program preparing me for graduate school as a minority in academia, I developed the false assumption that academics are supposed to present themselves in a particular way.Continue reading “Experiments in Ethnographic Poetry”
A Psychoanalytic Review of Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals
Abstract: Read through a psychoanalytic lens, The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the Self in conflict with societal pressures to be docile and conform. Lorde manages to reconcile her past self with her new reality by rejecting the guise provided by a False Self in order toContinue reading “A Psychoanalytic Review of Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals”
What is a Mental Health Doula?
During my training as a birth and postpartum doula, I received little education on perinatal mental health. When mental health was addressed in the postpartum doula training, the acronym PMADs was thrown around as a catch-all phrase for Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders. In a previous post titled Language Matters: Perinatal vs Postpartum, I articulateContinue reading “What is a Mental Health Doula?”
The Language of Madness
Since my diagnosis in 2012, I slowly became indoctrinated in the medical model of mental illness which emphasizes a biological basis for “abnormal” behavior. As a person living with bipolar disorder, I learned to categorize my lived experience within diagnostic terms, like manic or depressed, and looked to therapy, psychiatry, and psychopharmacology for a cure.Continue reading “The Language of Madness”
Thinking with Octavia Butler: Prophetic Parallels between Parable & COVID-19
Octavia Butler’s dystopian novel set, Parable of the Sower (1993) in the 2020s, uncannily parallels our current sociopolitical reality. Based in California, the narrative centers teenage Lauren Oya Olamina living a world devastated by the environmental, economic, and political consequences of neoliberalism. Water is costly and scarce, all public services are privatized, and racial tensionsContinue reading “Thinking with Octavia Butler: Prophetic Parallels between Parable & COVID-19”
Breastfeeding While Black (& Bipolar): A poem & reflections
In honor of our ancestors the enslaved wet nurses / their life-force liquified sentenced to sustain white supremacy’s offspring Now we celebrate our brown babies suckling / in our arms against our skin / on our bodies / at our breasts Liberated lactation is a revelation a revolution / nourishment only Black bodies can provideContinue reading “Breastfeeding While Black (& Bipolar): A poem & reflections”
Nadia Naomi Mbonde 