Loungin’

Loungin’: Black Women’s Joy as Freedom Technology is a project drawing on Black narrative traditions to explore Black women’s experiences of joy. Through story circles and photos, Loungin’ seeks to understand how Black women have experienced joy throughout time; how Black women’s joy is felt and experienced in their bodies; how joy is observed and passed down between generations as forms of knowledge, tradition, and practices for wellness and freedom.

The focus on examining joy from a somatic experience stems from the harm that racialized and gendered experiences cause Black women, resulting in disconnection from our bodies. Somatic experiencing is a therapeutic technique that remediates trauma through bodywork. If it is believed that trauma and anxiety can live in the body, is passed down generationally, and can be released, I believe that joy also can be experienced in the body, is passed down generationally, and can be released–and this process is a necessary requirement for Black women’s liberation from oppression.

Understanding Black women’s experiences of joy, how it manifests in our bodies, and gaining insight into how we pass joy onto our kin is a way to elevate our imaginations and freedom dreams, and our capacity to reclaim, reinvent and write past, present and future narratives.

Through a facilitated process of collecting stories by Black women, using story circles and photo elicitation, the project will document learning and reflections which set the foundation for a deeper understanding of Black women’s joy experiences as a part of the fight for freedom and equality. After the inital phase of research, I hope to develop an interactive storytelling/ story collection platform where Black women can participate in the same process virtually.

Loungin’ has been partially funded by a grant from the Peace and Justice Studies Association.