WElcome, Fam!

Thank you for finding your way to Toogood Stories. I am so glad that you are here.

Toogood was inspired by a photo of my grandmother that I found among my most prized possessions, conveniently stashed in a green plastic IKEA bin buried deep in my closet.

The undated photo (which I think was taken sometime in the early 1970s) was intriguing for many reasons. My grandmother was on a bike, looking incredibly young and carefree, during a vacation in Ogunquit, Maine. I have never known my grandmother to ride bikes nor have I truly seen her at rest, as she has spent most of my life cooking, cleaning, working, and worrying about someone or something. The photo evoked many sensations in my body (my shoulders dropped, my jaw loosened and my breathing slowed) and I started to wonder about all the ways my grandmother, elders and ancestors, and Black women in general, experience joy and leisure. What does joy feel like in our bodies? What does it mean for us to see images of Black women at play (riding bikes, in gardens, in nature)? How do Black women pass on their experiences of joy to one another? And, most importantly, what can those experiences of joy and leisure teach us about our own freedom and liberation?

Since then, I have been trying to interview my grandmother to help me answer some of these questions. It has been difficult to get clarity, although she did say she remembers the photo (her exact words were “I look stunning!”) and that she and my late grandfather used to ride bikes everywhere they could. Between my grandmother’s photo and photos of Black women I discovered on social media (check out the images from Chicken Bone Beach in Atlantic City from the 1950s and 1960s), I began to think about a space for dreaming, exploring, and documenting the vibrant stories of our ancestors, elders, and those of us who are youngish/young-at-heart.

Toogood is that space. It is emergent and ever evolving. My hope is that our work continues to utilize different mediums (oral histories, photos, poetry/prose, visual art, performances and installations) and becomes one of many digital libraries and repositories for archiving the magic, wisdom, and narratives of Black women—past, present, and future.