We asked some of our lab members to contemplate the question: When you think of Black Geographies what do you experience sensorially? Below are their reflections, memories, and ruminations.
Theresa Hice Johnson: A memory comes to mind from the first time I visited Cuba with my research respondents: On our first night in Cuba we went to a restaurant on the outskirts of Havana. The restaurant was in a courtyard so that from the street you couldn’t really tell that a restaurant was there. There were string lights and long tables. There was a live band. While most of the customers (besides our group) and staff were white, the musicians were Black. One of the students stood up to watch the musicians and I walked over to him. He was staring wide-eyed at the band and the lady who was singing in Spanish. I realized that it was probably his first time hearing a Black person speak Spanish. I asked him if it was weird to hear a Black person speak Spanish and he replied, “No, I think it’s beautiful.”
Ki’Amber Thomas: When I think of Black Geographies I remember the first Black Geographies conference at UC Berkeley in 2016. I remember walking into a densely packed rooom of scholars from different places, disciplines, and backgrounds, together in the same space to think, talk, and write about blackness, space, and place. I think I was one of the few undergraduates at the conference and I had travelled from Claremont to Berkeley alone. I arrived late because I took the train in the wrong difrection after I landed at Oakland Airport, and I was working with maybe 4 or 5 hours of sleep from writing my thesis until the early hours of that same morning of my flight. Sitting in that packed room, I listened to the different speakers panel after panel and I remember feeling like I was exactly where I needed to be. I could tell that this gathering was something special, like the start of something, the emergence of something, the budding of flower, the structure of feeling.
Naya Jones: I think of reading Katherine McKittrick the first time – an incredible mix of understanding and not understanding, of knowing and not knowing. I knew demonic grounds in my bones, but it took me years (and it’s still on-going) to understand the depth of work by McKittrick, Woods, and others in the field. I also see oceans when I think of Black geographies – and I appreciate how different oceans are part of our works (Atlantic, Indian, otherwise).
Chris Lang: When I think of Black Geographies, I envision a bit of trans- or multi-dimensionality. I think of this book ‘Of Water and the Spirit’ and the ways past and future, here and there, are all woven through the focal point of present consciousness. This book was a gift given to me by my Native boss, who is Mascalero and Warm Springs Apache. The day I opened it, almost 200 crows circled above my mom’s house, and I was flooded with connection to my late aunt, Laura Hunter. I sometimes think about the nonlinearity of time and how everything happens for a reason. Also, how ancestors of others can connect us to our own ancestors for moments of healing. I think about a return to Indigeneity.
Elsa Calderon: When I think of Black Geographies, I think of exploring unknown territories. Black Geographies is a network of culture, language, art, history, soil, and indigenous knowledge that keeps the world alive. All of these concepts are distinctive and unique but are found all over the world. You can find this essence of Blackness all over the world because we have been pollinated and scattered in all of the Americas, Carribean territory, Australia, Asia, and Europe. Black Geographies exists for us to connect the dots to re-write our history.