Have you ever stepped into a kitchen with a handful of aunties preparing for a feast? They giggle and gossip all while passing plates and stirring pots at the same time. In such a cramped space, with so many bodies, it feels like a dance, always needing to make space, yet there always seems to be enough room for oneself. It’s as if hidden spaces are within the space, waiting to be squeezed out by… Continue Reading Kitchen-Table Talk
What follows is the transcript of a two-episode podcast series on caregiving that follows the author’s experiences as a caregiver to her elders to what she hopes caregiving can be now as a graduate student and future researcher. Episode I | In My Bones: Feeling Coercion Thank you to the Community of Scholars Program (COSP) at the University of Minnesota for making this podcast possible. And thank you to the folks at SPARK for working… Continue Reading Caring to the Bone: Healing From Coercive Care
The Black community is eager for revitalization, having long endured economic inequality with the slowest progress toward equity out of any racial group in the United States (Hamilton et al., 2015; DeNavas-Walt and Proctor, 2015). Rising above economic inequality is not unknown to the Black community. Before the tragic events of 1921, the Greenwood District in Tulsa, also known as Black Wall Street, was a thriving hub of economic prosperity within the African American community.… Continue Reading Black Economics: Reclaiming the Narrative for Economic Revitalization
I finished the first year of my doctoral program in counseling psychology in early May of 2020. About two weeks later, George Floyd was murdered. As a Black woman living in Minneapolis at the time of this unrest, I was processing both the all-too-familiar trauma of yet another police killing going viral and the new trauma of living in the epicenter of the largest racial reckoning within my lifetime. Despite my fear, anger, and sadness,… Continue Reading The Politics of Psychology
FOREWORD: How Tiffany Became Farmer Tiffany The summer before my senior year of undergrad my mom suffered a massive stroke. She had to learn how to walk, talk, chew, swallow, live life all over again. I thought that I could heal her with food. This begins the story of Tiffany becoming Farmer TIffany. I began traveling to not only learn how to grow food, but to do it responsibly and in a way that protected the soil, biodiversity, and climate. As I began to learn more, I discovered that I did not have access to healthy food or land to… Continue Reading Black Soilship
I first started beatboxing when I was about 12 years old, and it quickly became my favorite pastime. I’ve always appreciated the importance beatboxing has had in my life, both as an act of spontaneous creation and as a chance for connection with others. Continue Reading Cover Art Beats
Episode I: Transcript Waking up to the rain around the world is always going to be special for me. I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest in the United States, and the rain feels like home. When I learned part of my Ph.D. research would include fieldwork in a rainforest, I was thrilled. When I hear the rain, I get to take myself around the world with just a sound. All I have… Continue Reading Bare Your Teeth: How Watching Monkeys Eat Can Teach Us About Our Evolutionary Origins & Teach Us About Ourselves
This piece is for first-generation graduate students; for the first of anything. It’s for the grad students that may be questioning their position in higher education, as I often have, and continue to do so. It’s for the grad students with responsibilities beyond school. This is for the grad students that have failed a homework assignment, or exam, or class and went home to cry about it by themselves because they knew their family would… Continue Reading Kim’s Declassified POC Grad School Survival Guide
“Use at least 5 peer-reviewed sources,” the assignment guideline says. Quickly, I search within the library catalog and use the advanced search function to set the filter as “Scholarly/peer-reviewed.” Without a second thought I start to browse through the results and look for useful articles for the project. As graduate students, we probably have worked on assignments that require students to cite peer-reviewed articles when writing essays. Peer review refers to the process in which… Continue Reading On Whose Shoulders: Towards a Mindful Citational Practice
by Sylvia Klein Abstract I enter the lab and don my small black nitrile gloves and papery, disposable lab coat. I look around at the sterility of the lab as I begin to gather the things I need for the experiment I’m planning to do. As I grab items I need from shelves, the freezer and fridge I think about how everything I am holding is plastic and will be thrown away. I try to… Continue Reading The STING of Colonization