Black Joy as Resistance
Categories: Excerpt New Release
The following excerpt has been shortened and adapted from Kindred Creation: Parables and Paradigms for Freedom by Aida Mariam Davis.
Resistance is the secret of joy.
—ALICE WALKER, novelist, poet, and activist; in Possessing the Secret of Joy
Joy is the unequivocal certainty of one’s own humanity and celebration of it—and this is an act of resistance. A sense of self that can’t be commodified or colonized. In her poem “won’t you celebrate with me,” lucille clifton reminds Black women of their humanity when she invites the reader to celebrate with her because she is still alive despite the daily attempts by the world to kill her. The project of self-determination, freedom, and ultimately, worldbuilding, is one Black people around the world have historically led and currently lead. Griot and writer Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts talks of the ever-present and often-hidden experience of Black joy, living and loving loud in the face of oppression. She asserts that joy definitely can have a race, and that Black joy is uniquely rooted in our ancestral expressions of Blackness across the diaspora. This experience is especially important for Black women as we continue to carry the burden of invisibility and hyper-exploitation. From the way we style our hair, to the distinct way we dance, dress, sing, joke, and express our sexuality—even our body-unique physical features—all are dehumanized and strangely duplicated by non-Black people.
The radicality and hard-fought nature of Black joy is precisely what excludes non-Black people from appropriating it. Cultural appropriation and, even in some cases, appreciation attempt to access this mysterious expression of joy. To be clear, (Black) joy and happiness are not the same. The difference is, as my elders say, that “joy can’t nobody take from you” and happiness is a feeling of being pleased that is momentary or temporary. Our efforts to design a better world should generate joy, learning, and pleasure. Pleasure and danger, together, can transform ideas and people and, in that process, we can invent ourselves and our world.
Resistance should facilitate a restful return to ourselves, our true selves. Selves that are whole and healed, that are free from trauma, hardship, and despair, and in some cases, selves we have not yet experienced.
Kindred Creation is a call and response to dream and design better worlds rooted in African lifeways: a path to Black freedom, a love letter to Black futures, and a blueprint to intergenerational Black joy and dignity—all (and always) on Black terms.
About the Author
North Atlantic Books
North Atlantic Books (NAB) is an independent nonprofit publisher committed to a bold exploration of the relationships between mind, body, spirit, culture, and nature. Founded in Vermont in 1974 and operating in Berkeley since 1977, NAB has been at the forefront of publishing a diverse range of original books in bodywork and somatics, ecology and sustainability, health and healing, Indigenous cultures and anthropology, psychology and personal growth, social justice and engaged activism, and spirituality and liminality. NAB’s Blue Snake Books imprint is one of the largest sources of internal and historical martial-arts books in the world.
