Exploring extraordinary literacies and empyreal logics through the t/terror narratives of three Black women in the academy: a roundtable transcript, study notes, and guiding questions

Participants

Jeanine Staples is a Professor of Literacy and Language, African-American Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. She focuses on dismantling supremacist patriarchies through narrative scholarship, teacher training, and coaching. She is the author of The Revelations of Asher, a groundbreaking, genre-bending monograph that forged the third wave in New Literacy Studies, in addition to a faceted collection of internationally published articles and chapters that advance new thought on the necessary evolution of pedagogies. She has been a Senior Fellow at Columbia University School of Law’s Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies and a Senior Visiting Scholar at the University of Rhode Island’s Harrington School of Communications. Her forthcoming books, Extraordinary Pedagogies (Teachers College Press) and Extraordinary Literacies (Palgrave McMillian) are eagerly anticipated by the fields of teacher education and critical Whiteness studies and Black Girlhood Studies, respectively.

Yolanda Sealey-Ruis is an Associate Professor of English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the founder and faculty sponsor of the Racial Literacy Roundtables Series and also co-founder of the Teachers College Civic Participation Project. Sealey-Ruiz appeared in Spike Lee’s 2 Fists Up: We Gon’ Be Alright, a documentary about the Black Lives Matter movement and the campus protests at Mizzou. She is co-author of Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education and two award-winning books of poetry: Love from the Vortex & Other Poems and The Peace Chronicles.

Autumn Griffin is a Postdoctoral Researcher specializing in language and literacy, culturally relevant pedagogy, humanizing research methodologies, and students from historically marginalized and underserved communities at the University of Maryland College Park. She’s currently a McDonnell Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work explores how people from historically oppressed communities use literacy—namely digital and multimodal literacy—as a vehicle for resistance to racialized, gendered, and curricular violence.

Detra Price-Dennis is a Professor of Teaching and Learning and the Director of Digital Education and Innovation in Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University’s College of Education and Human Ecology. Her award-winning scholarship draws on ethnographic and sociocultural lenses to examine the intersections of critical literacy education, technology, and equity-based curriculum development in K-8 classrooms. Dr. Price-Dennis is the co-author of Advancing Racial Literacies in Teachers Education, Editor of Racial Literacy: Implications for Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Policy, Volume 1, and Co-editor of Black Girls’ Literacies: Transforming Lives and Literacy Practices.

Jeanine Staples: Greetings, ladies. Thank you for saying yes to this invitation. I appreciate you so much. I love your work. I love your energy. I appreciate your genius and your brilliance. I’m happy to be here with all of you. This is a really special moment for me.

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz: We love you, Jeanine. I love all of you. I’m Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz. Hey, y’all. Happy New Year.

Jeanine Staples: Happy New Year.

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz: I pass the mic to Autumn.

Autumn Griffin: Hey, happy New Year. This is the highlight of my day. My name is Autumn Griffin, and I’m thrilled to be here with y’all. And I’ll pass it over to Detra.

Detra Price-Dennis: I cannot believe this is happening. I was so excited from all the emails we exchanged in the fall. I’m just like, yes, the universe made this thing happen. I am Detra Price-Dennis, and I’m also so, so happy to be here. It has been a hectic morning and I kept thinking “all you gotta do is make it to noon.”

Jeanine Staples: Why did you say yes to this invitation?

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz: I’ll start. Um, number one I said yes because of you, Jeanine.

And having worked with Autumn and Detra before and other sisters in the field, for me it’s about the allegiance through friendship, through sisterhood. So number one out the gate, who you are, the work that you do, the way that you live your life, lifting up other people.

Number two, Jeanine, I read the proposal [for the special issue] again last night, and I have so many questions that I wanna ask you. I can see your spiritual strength, and where you have gone and where you’re going is so appealing to me. And I think that I’ve been attracted to it through these years of meditation and some of the things that I’m learning around healing and the body.

Autumn Griffin: First I said yes because Yolie asked me and I trust Yolie with my life. Like, I will follow you until the ends of the earth, because I know that you always move from a place of love, and you’re never going to do me harm. And two, when I read the proposal I remember being like, “this is so cool and so important.” I debated whether or not to write my dissertation on Black girls and yoga because I am a yoga instructor and am coming to identify myself as a healer because of the way it shows up in my ancestry. I have always been someone who’s very spiritual and very connected to my spiritual practices, and I love Black girls and studying Black girlhood.

So this seemed like the perfect blend of everything that is important to me in this world. I was really excited and energized by the proposal and just really thankful to be able to participate in this conversation. Cuz I don’t think healing literacy practices are something we talk about often, especially in terms of schooling.

Detra Price-Dennis: It’s just so rare to have those opportunities in the academy and to do that with Black women also. You know, I think I can never say no to anything coming from someone with such beautiful, positive energy that also uplifts other Black women. It just feels like an automatic Yes.

Years ago I was talking with one of my doctoral students about the different ways that spirituality shows up in Black girls. The ways that you can talk about out loud, and then the ways that you keep to yourself.

Some of those are connected to the earth and some of those are connected to just other spiritual practices. And so where is the space for Black girls who might find their spiritual value and practices outside of the mainstream? I’m always interested in what that looks like.

How do you show up as your full self when, because of society, you may have to keep some of the things that ground you and center you a little bit quiet? Autumn, I thought about yoga immediately because I remember, oh my gosh, about twelve years ago when I really started doing yoga, people back home were very skeptical.

Like, I literally remember sitting at a lunch with the pastor of my mother’s church, my mother, another older auntie, and when I mentioned I was going to yoga, the pastor said, “so you’re not Christian?” Like literally, that was the question that was asked.

It was just interesting, that dynamic. And so it just makes me think–what are the practices that heal us, that sustain us, that don’t have space to show up in public conversations? Or how do we navigate that? So anyway, thank you.

Jeanine Staples: I’m so happy to see y’all. I had a rough morning today too and I said the same thing, like, just get to noon, Jeanine, just get to noon and be in this conversation with these sisters. I knew it would contribute to my healing. So yoga is one practice that can be called an extraordinary literacy. There are so many more.

And while we’re practicing our creative pursuits, while we’re crafting intellectual pursuits, and our teachers, administrators, counselors, peers, parents, and colleagues are activating a White supremacist ideology in and around us, through their language, through their policies, through the curriculum…we’re holding and managing a lot…we rely on these literacies to transgress these cycles. And despite all of these aggressions, which are very well documented, Black girls and women still thrive. We still kick ass. Like, we still craft movements. We still generate justice projects. We still help each other. We still serve the community. We still birth babies. We still train up youth. We still find love. We still, no matter what, keep thriving, not just surviving.

So my idea is that we crosswalk these literacies to create a spiritual prowess and a spiritual identity that can support us in anchoring into a faith system, into a peace practice, into a love paradigm that can circumvent and subvert White supremacy and the effects it has in our lives, in ourselves.

I mean, we do treatment and we do cure on the effects of White supremacy all the time, like constantly. And so what do we do? We do yoga, we pray, we meditate, we do breath work, we do walking meditations, we do journaling, we do mirror work. We do drumming. You know, there’s all kinds of ways that we do transgressions.

I think that what might be helpful is if all of us were to talk about some experiences that we’ve had, either as individuals or as practitioners or as scholars in this field–feeling attacked, abused, violated, neglected, erased, diminished in schools and society. And then what the effects of those experiences were on our soul and our soma.

So soul is a term that I’m using in the special issue that talks about our meaning making center. It’s really your brain. Your soma is your body, it’s your memory making center. It’s where you’re actually storing the trauma. So what did that feel like when you experienced those negating, depreciating episodes? And then what did you do that was extraordinary to not only move beyond it, but to actually heal the root of rage, shame, or despair that it created?

What sort of extraordinary literacies did you invoke to actually craft a cure to the effects of those injuries that took place in schools and society?

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz: Mine is so fresh. Um, maybe about four years ago, I overheard my colleagues talking about me. Might have been five. I was bringing Spike Lee to campus. I was making a really deep commitment to the racial literacy work on campus at Teachers College.

And I heard them saying that my work was shit. I heard a senior colleague say this. And she said that I should be bowing down and kissing her feet for everything that she’s done for me. They went on to talk about how I was not interested in growing the program. I was only interested in my ego and becoming famous and all of these things. And I have to tell you, I started crying. I started crying. And when I started shedding those tears, something happened that just affected me. And after that episode, I became different. I was angry at meetings. I can recall one of them saying, what are you so upset about? And I said because I heard you talking about me.

I entered therapy because the anger, the hurt, everything that was bubbling up in such a way that I didn’t know how to control it. I had become sad about it, depressed. I guess I was caught off guard with these people who are asking about my mother, asking about my daughter, smiling in my face, but also the same people that kept me from teaching doctoral classes for 10 years and telling students that they really don’t wanna study with me if they wanna get finished.

So I say all that to say entering this therapy specifically for a year and a half, which then led me quite naturally to Vipassana meditation–that was a pivotal point for having conversations with the dead, specifically being visited by my father. I came out of Vipassana with such amazing clarity that that led to the writing of Love From the Vortex and Other Poems, and I realized that I had been in two vortexes–the one in my professional life and the one in my personal life. I was experiencing self-loathing, and life-sucking romantic relationships. That spiritual experience, that meditative experience, which I call “the gift that keeps on giving,” turned me around. Therapy became different. I became different with those people [at the university].

I actually have forgiven them and just became more vocal when I hear certain things said. I would stop the meeting and say, “no, we’re not doing this today.” I did this as a junior faculty. So I began using the courage that my ancestors gave to me, and I was not afraid from that moment on. I don’t know if I was ever afraid. But [after my healing] I did not hesitate to claim my space moving forward. They tried to destroy me. That is what they tried to do.

Jeanine Staples: Thank you, my sister. Thank you for sharing that. And thank you for closing with such a profound statement of truth, because one thing we’re not gonna do is act like they weren’t trying to destroy you. My father’s passed on as well, but one thing he taught me–which I didn’t accept when I was a little girl–was, and I’m gonna quote him verbatim: “You can’t trust White people.” And I would say, “Oh daddy, you’re so old fashioned. It’s not like that anymore.” This is when I was like 12. And then when I evolved as a woman, I started to understand what he meant. And one day when I was older, I went back and I said, “Why did you say that? Why did you say that, ‘you can’t trust White people?’ It seems so cynical and so pessimistic. And he said, “You can’t trust White people because they don’t know who they are.”

[Silence]

[Head nodding]

You can’t trust anybody who doesn’t know who they are. They don’t know their history. They don’t know the energetic roots of their fury. They don’t know the dynamics of their capabilities. They don’t know the complexities of their hatred and their fear. They have no idea what they’re capable of because they will ignore and avoid those truths till the grave. Beyond the grave. At all costs. Avoid. Deny. Look away…from themselves….no matter what.

It changed my life, that statement. So you ended that very powerful and painful story of triumph by stating clearly and emphatically what was actually intended. It was your shrinking, your devolution, it was your desecration. We need to understand that that’s a part of the intention so that’s a part of the impact.

I appreciate you for saying that [Yolie]. And I wanna know more about this meditation that you’ve named. It’s an extraordinary literacy because it supported you in doing treatment and cure around the effects, um, of those experiences with that White supremacist, patriarchal ideology, and whether it was performed 50 years ago or 5 min ago, it’s incredibly important to name.

Autumn Griffin: So I’ve been listening and appreciate hearing that and I’m also trying to figure out, which story do I tell? Cause as Black women, we have multiple. But I think the one that’s, like, standing out most to me right now…probably because it’s really resonant with my experiences at this moment…I remember being a grad student and there was so much happening.

We had these courses that were required for the program. They were taught by this woman who was overtly racist. She would comment on my hair and had us read things about how Black folks were barbarians and all sorts of things. And I would watch how the program functioned and the ways that they would give funding to White students, but not always to Black students or the ways that they would bring Black professors through for job interviews, but almost as like a pawn, never with the intention of hiring.

And I remember being so fed up, as a student and was like, I can’t do this, but I need to do this. Like, I need to finish this program, but I cannot do it in this frame of mind anymore. And I was sitting in the grad cubicle with two other doc students who were both Latinx and I was like, I really miss practicing yoga, but I don’t wanna go back to a yoga studio.

And they asked, “Well, why not?” And I told them because there are more White bodies there and I don’t wanna do that. I’m gonna have to try to fit myself in again. And one of the women was like, “Look for a Black-owned yoga studio.” And I don’t know why that never crossed my mind, but I looked and found the studio that saved my life and saved my doctoral journey.

It was a Black woman-owned yoga studio in Maryland and they took me in and that place was family. It was intergenerational. It was community-based. I remember also going to the owner and being like, “I love practicing yoga. I’m also a doc student and I’m broke, and so how can we make this work?”

And so she let me volunteer there 2 h a week and I got to take as many classes as I wanted. And so it was this practice of love. It helped me be a part of something that was bigger than me, something that was healthy and thriving in a space where I could tap into intergenerational knowledge, creativity, and love. A space where I could tap into my mind body connection.

People who were truly invested in me and my well-being. Going through my program, I had some professors (certainly not all) who very much only cared about me in the 3 h that I was in their class if that. And going to the yoga studio, that was not the case.

Folks wanted to know how I was doing and who my people were and who my community was and how I could bring them in. And they even got involved in my dissertation process. And there were moments where I could pray there or we could do drum circles. I was able to activate all of my spiritualities in that space. It was really healing for me and was one of the things that carried me over.

And Detra, when you spoke at the beginning about the reaction from the church–I grew up in the church and I very much remember when I first started going deeper into yoga, getting a lot of questions from some folks like, “why are you doing this?” And my yoga teacher said she did too. And she said, “Listen, I can choose to practice this faith, or I can choose to practice yoga. Which one have you noticed a difference in me since I’ve been practicing?” You know? And that’s not to say that faith practices and Christianity don’t have their place. Cuz they absolutely do. I am very much still a Christian. But we have to also acknowledge the culture of the places where we practice and what is feeding us, and in what ways.

Jeanine Staples: Autumn, thank you so much for sharing that. What I hear from you is how important and powerful it was for you to actually be in your body, to create a space where you could be in your body and recognize your body as a temple, as a space that was safe, and beautiful. That was a conduit for energies. That orchestrates love and power and be affirmed in that and mirrored back in that while you were going through a really hard season. Being a doctoral student is hard. Writing a dissertation is hard, especially at a PWI. So that’s an extraordinary literacy, that’s an extraordinary literacy to engage with yourself from a power center. As a power center.

[Some participants crying]

Detra Price-Dennis: I am, I am overwhelmed and I’m so grateful at this moment. I tried so hard to just keep it together.

Jeanine Staples: You don’t have to keep anything together.

Detra Price-Dennis: Thank you. These tears are connected to what I want to share. I’m just getting an overwhelming sense of everything from these stories. An overwhelming sense of asking, “how do we move forward”?

I just wanna say two things. We never know all the things that people carry because they carry it well, or maybe they don’t. But God, just this moment to take a deep breath and say, oh, there’s a lot that we carry. And I just, I’m so grateful that I get this moment to say it out loud, um, because it feels real.

My experience was with a colleague that was really dangerous and I didn’t know how dangerous this person was. I couldn’t understand how I became a target. I decided not to let too much of who she was impact me because my humanity is the reason why I didn’t understand her.

But my story revealed a lot about me, and that’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. The story is, maybe a month after I started [my current job]. I was in my office and I needed to run a couple of errands, meaning I needed to go to the copier and I went to get a tea or a coffee or something. So I was gone for maybe 20 min. My secretary, or the secretary for our program, was at her desk which was right in front of my door. We were in the same suite, so you couldn’t get into the suite or to my office without walking past her desk because she would see anyone who walked in. So I asked her if she wanted anything from the cafe, told her I would be right back and I left my door open because I just like fresh air. While I was gone, my colleague comes into my office and steals my purse.

She takes my purse because I left my door open. I am not sure what she says to the secretary, because she’s a colleague. So if a colleague says, oh, I need to go into Detra’s office for whatever, I don’t think anyone would’ve ever thought this person went into my office to steal my purse.

She takes my purse and an hour or so goes by before I realize it. I begin to look for this purse. Like, where is my, I know I have my purse. I know I brought it to work. So I go out and ask the secretary, “Hey, did I leave my purse at your desk?” And then I went back to the copier. I knew I didn’t leave it there, but I still went to all the places.

Came back to the secretary. She said, “I’ll look in your office while you’re gone.” She couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find it. Finally…this [colleague] is watching all this happen. She’s watching this happen because she’s in the conference room. The secretary says, “You know what, Detra, let’s call security because we need to, we need to get some [video] footage [of the office]. We need to see what we can find out about this. And do you know any of the credit cards that are in there? Let me help you.” She’s like, “Let me help you call. Don’t worry. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.’” Cuz I think she could tell I was getting really upset, you know, and so she’s like, “It’s okay”. We can get you a new ID. “It’s gonna be fine. We’re gonna fix this.’” Then, about 10 min later, this woman, this colleague, she knocked on my door and said, “Here’s your purse. I thought I’d teach you a lesson. Stop leaving your door open.” At the moment, I was shocked. I didn’t know how to respond.

I didn’t know what to say. I started to shake, my hands started to shake because…because I was so angry. My heart was racing. I was angry. And then I became very scared. And I guess this is…this is this thing I’m trying to learn about myself.

I was so scared because at that moment I wanted to jack her up. Like I’m just being straight up honest. And it scared me to death because the anger came so quick. Even though my hands were shaking, I was angry because I didn’t wanna cry in front of her because I knew that’s what she wanted. She wanted me to feel powerless and hurt. I realized this horrible creature was really trying to mess with my head and get that anger, y’all, I didn’t know what to do with it. And I think the best thing I could do at that time for her sake, and mine was to get some distance.

And that’s what my plan was. Keep as much distance as possible, keep her away from me, never be alone with her in any space. Never meet with her alone in any space. Never allow her to have access to my life or anything about me personally. Um, it was the best I could do, but I never really processed this experience until now.

Actually, I think I told one person because I just needed someone to bear witness. And I remember saying to this person, I don’t want you to solve this for me. Because I know the person would have torn the rafters from the ceiling,

This experience revealed to me that when you’re facing someone with this type of brokenness and lack of kindness, or I don’t even know what to call it. This demented identity. I needed to figure out who I was.

And I couldn’t let that person take me out of who I was. But, I was so scared about the anger. I felt so much anger that I couldn’t cry, and I should have been able to but it would’ve given her more power. I felt anger that I wanted to smack the crap out of her. And angry that I didn’t even know what to do because the two things I felt I wanted to do, I couldn’t do.

I had to try to really sit with that. And, and make sense of it. This story is crazy because the experience is so ridiculous. It doesn’t make any sense. Um, and I can laugh about it now, honestly, I don’t feel that anger towards her, because I understand brokenness is gonna show up. Right? But good Lord, back then, I really didn’t know how to make sense of it.

Jeanine Staples: That’s violent, that experience, that’s violence. What you’ve just described is a mind bending, twisted evidence of a really seedy soul. And it’s categorized as a microaggression. But what we also know is that the cumulative effects of the vast array of microaggressions that we experience as Black girls and women over the course of our lifetime, uh, in schools and society…in our personal and professional lives has a very, very, very deep and profound impact on us, overall.

If we don’t do treatment and cure, if we don’t do interruption, if we don’t understand how to notice and name, uh, those experiences and those effects, they’ll kill us.

Detra, you wept as a part of a release that was in some way connected to or attached to that experience. And probably many other experiences that were abusive, that were violating, that were gaslighting in real time.

Um, and something else I learned from my research that I wanna put out there. As I’ve listened to you talk about the rage that you felt, as soon as you describe that rage, I was so happy for you.

And I’m gonna tell you why. Cause what I’ve learned from my work is that a woman who is not in touch with her rage cannot tell the truth.

She can’t. She cannot. That’s her most primal and base power. That is a strength. It is a will, it is material. It’s sensual, it’s provocative. It’s fire in her skin. If she’ll deny that, she’ll deny any number of things. She’ll definitely lie to you cuz she’s lying to herself.

I’m so glad you named that rage, Detra. I’m so glad you let yourself feel it. I’m so glad that you stood in that fire of yourself because that will support you in being a truth teller. From now on over and over and over again, you won’t be an avoidant. You won’t be emotionally abandoning yourself. You won’t be erasing yourself, denying yourself because you’re ashamed of your anger or rage or so afraid of your rage and anger that you attempt to quench that rage and anger.

You just let yourself burn and see at that moment, and that’s one of the best things you could do for yourself. That’s an extraordinary literacy right there. Literally being present is extraordinary. And I’ll tell you why it turns into an extraordinary literacy. Because when you can be present in the heat of that kind of violation and offense and not choke someone to death or knock them out with a blunt object, that’s extraordinary.

That’s extraordinary. White girls and women would have done any number of things in hysterics and in reactionary energies because of their lack of power, of personal power in the face of egregious offenses. So understand that’s what, that’s what you did. You possessed yourself in the heat of the fire.

Detra Price-Dennis: Thank you.

This story is so much bigger than me and hearing your wisdom about what it means will help others who may have similar experiences. Black women never get to share how we process the violence we experience. It always looks like we just grin and bear it.

Jeanine Staples: Exactly. This is especially true for high achieving Black girls and women, those who are succeeding in schools and society. The extraordinary literacy I generated is called the Supreme Love Healing methodology. It’s a socio spiritual literacy practice that actually names the fragmented, disowned, orphaned, wounded parts of our consciousness as very significant and important aspects of who we are. Those parts of our identity were crafted back when we were bullied, back when we were harassed, back when we were molested, back when we were raped, back when we were verbally abused in school by a teacher or a coach, spiritually terrified in the church, emotionally neglected by a parent, or socially judged or ostracized by an auntie or an elder.

Those parts of us were doing meaning-making in the soul and memory-making in the soma. The triggered, fragmented, disowned, orphaned, wounded parts of ourselves formed low logics to orient us, to draw conclusions, to create origin stories about our identity, about what’s possible in life, in love, with men, friends, sisterhood, or in romantic life. There were all kinds of stories, just a library, a tapestry of stories being generated. All of which are spawned from a White supremacist patriarchal ideology.

I call the Supreme Love Healing Methodology a quantum level freedom technique. It’s an incredible tantric meditative space of somatic movement, of breath work, of prayer, of meditation, all in one. I received it by divination. It changed the game for me and for thousands of other Black and Brown women who were girls, socialized to hate and hurt ourselves. The methodology is extraordinary because it illuminates a path to dissolve attachments to the trauma bonds that have been lodged in our skin for years and have corrupted our souls for years.

So that’s my contribution. Um, I won’t say more about it cuz we’re running outta time. I offered an overview of an SLHM to exemplify what extraordinary literacies are, how extraordinary literacies work, and why we need them so much. And here’s the last thing I wanna end on cuz I know we only have 2 min and I know that y’all are very busy ladies.

Even though I’m coordinating this effort and curating this special issue, I’m not actually sure that I want to advocate for education around extraordinary literacies. I know that sounds ironic. It’s just that, even though these literacies are life changing and game changing, most of the teachers in the U.S. are still White women. And I don’t know, I don’t know if, I don’t know if they can be trusted with these practices or, um, trained in these practices. Not the practices in general because anyone can do yoga, or drum, or chant, or pray, or come up with a meditative praxis. I’m talking about the practices infused with the wisdom of a Black woman’s soul and soma…with our blood, sweat, and tears, our indigeneity and artifacts.

Um, and I think we’re still working out the sanctity of the practices, naming the collection of the practices, and understanding the reverberations of the practices. And, so I don’t know if there’s going to be a call for action in this special issue. It might just be a call for noticing and honoring that these extraordinary literacies exist.

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz: A call for noticing is powerful and I feel it goes back to your father. All of this circles back to that statement that he said to you at 12 and what I was sharing with Detra. It’s what I’ve said before. Just echoing what you said [Jeanine]. The person who perpetrated that violent act upon Detra….that wasn’t the only act she perpetrated. Until that person comes to number one, know themselves and number two, ask forgiveness of all of the hundreds of people that they’ve hurt, and number three, forgive themselves, I don’t know that there’s help for that person. They can’t do this work. This is especially true of the White women who work with our Black and brown children. So many have such a cloud of superiority. So much so that they cannot even see their racism. They lack humility when it comes to us. And the one thing you need to do mirror work and breathwork and so many other literacies is humility to be able to enter that space of revelation. To make them extraordinary. That comes from the Spirit. So if they aren’t available for that, it won’t work. The literacies won’t come. If they try, they won’t work.

Detra Price-Dennis: That self-work has to be done before they can even take up the idea of extraordinary literacies. Way before they could ever be able to practice extraordinary literacies with our children.

Jeanine Staples: I agree. I agree one hundred percent. Detra, what else were you gonna say?

Detra Price-Dennis: I was just gonna say, um, I agree with you about that hesitation [Jeanine]. And the one thing that I’m starting to see because it’s been a while since I’ve been around pre-service teachers, is that people are still trying on this identity as teachers.

So it’s almost cosplay and, when you don’t know yourself and you’re trying to be this person called a teacher and you’re doing this work to support justice, you’re using all of these words that you don’t yet embody, you don’t embrace, and you don’t live. They’re not verbs. They literally are just words, you know?

And then to do that with our kids, to try to come into a space where you don’t even know who you are, you make no effort to understand yourself because you’re cosplaying. How in the world are you gonna take up this type of work that requires you to have a deep interest, right?

Jeanine Staples: Right. That’s exactly it. Autumn, what are your thoughts?

Autumn Griffin: I keep going back to what we were saying before. There was a moment where you said something about them [White women educators] not knowing themselves and almost how they’re moving through the world, and one of the things that came to mind was like, how so much of teaching, or learning about teaching becomes this zombie-like state.

And it immediately made me think of Zora Neal Hurston and her work on zombies and what it means for someone to move through the world unaware of who they are, disconnected from other people and communities, right? And so if you don’t understand that like we’re all human and all divinely connected, then it’s nothing to perpetuate those kinds of violences on someone else, right?

Because you don’t value yourself in the way that you would value other people. Or the other way around? You don’t value other people the way you value yourself. Um, and so for the woman to take Detra’s purse or for the colleagues to be talking behind Jolie’s back, or for my scholar-educator training to be so devoid of compassion and care, makes sense because they don’t know who they are, right? Um, and I think it’s also an extraordinary literacy for us to be able to forgive and heal and move past those things, right? Like for us to, to yes, have rage and also be talking about these things from a place of love. That’s extraordinary in and of itself.

Jeanine Staples: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah. I think we all agree Black women educators and Black women teacher educators can do the work. We can come together and curate the spaces to do extraordinary work with these extraordinary literacies. We can generate an inventory. We can catalog and name them. We can construct an understanding of how each one or multiple ones actually do work in the world of deep healing from, uh, the race and gender injuries brought about by these experiences with White supremacist patriarchal ideology.

Detra Price-Dennis: Jeanine, thank you. I just wanna let you all know this has been so beautiful. Thank you so much for the moment to just be in your presence. I could never have imagined that. Just thank you. I love you all. I’m sending you light and love. Just peace for all of us. So I love you so much. Take care.

Jeanine Staples: Love you too, Detra! Have a wonderful, wonderful day and semester. Thank you so much for being here.

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz: Thank you for everything. Everything.

Jeanine Staples: It was so much fun.

Autumn Griffin: Congratulations, Jeanine and thank you.

Conclusion: study notes and guiding questions for you to consider

An extensive discussion of race and gender injuries like the ones shared here (i.e. effects of experiences with White Supremacist Patriarchal Ideology) is presented in “How Black Girls Hurt,” included in this special issue. That article also includes an overview of the extraordinary literacies and empyreal logics required to heal those injuries. To use this transcribed conversation as a teaching/learning tool for your exploration of extraordinary literacies and empyreal logics, consider the following notes and questions.

NOTE: Extraordinary literacies are not merely self-care because of their interconnectedness with empyreal logics. Extraordinary literacies are anchored and actualized by supernatural faiths, astral projections, and cosmologies of the ancients; they are fueled by energetic embodiments of superhuman sense in the face of earthly impossibilities; they create quantum leaps and collapse materialities; they alchemize low logics and diffuse them, creating space for otherworldly wisdoms and always-already-there triumphs to come into being.

NOTE: Because of their foundation in empyreal logics, extraordinary literacies can be called up and practiced, deepened, and shared to transgress dehumanization and colonization. They empower transformative orchestrations of iterative selves, thus generating coherence and integrity to an internalized matrix of oppression that enmeshes the souls and soma of the oppressed. Empyreal logics make it possible for extraordinary literacies to form treatment and cure in relation to interior life disease, disorder, and dismemberment. Empyreal logics make corresponding literacies, live through t/Terrorized individuals who are minoritized and isolated by the low logics of White Supremacist Patriarchal Ideology.

Exploring Dr. Griffin’s contributions to the conversation on extraordinary literacies

• What were the race and gender injuries (i.e. effects of experiences with White Supremacist Patriarchal Ideology) evidenced in this case?:

  • isolation, loneliness, sense of inadequacy, and imposter syndrome

• What tenet of the WSP is active in this case?

  • Tenet #1: The White supremacist patriarchy is deeply systemic [re: its function in institutions] (Staples-Dixon, in review)

• What were the consequences of these injuries/effects and interactions with this tenet?

  • self-doubt, anxiety, depression

• What extraordinary literacies were invoked or developed to treat those injuries/effects?

  • yoga, drumming community sharings, mindfulness, stretching, beingness and strength through slowing down, softness, and stillness

• What socioemotional, soulful, and somatic healings were produced as a result of engagements with/evolutions of these extraordinary literacies?

  • contributions to personal liberation (i.e. soulful and somatic health, order, and wholeness); retention of self-worth and value; replenishing of embodied confidence and familial community/kinship; completion of degree program

• What empyreal logics anchor these extraordinary literacies?

  • A list of empyreal logics focused on the unit of “one” is included below. These are socio spiritual principles expressed in multiple sacred texts used by various global religions.¹ The logic(s) activated in this case is highlighted.

    • One person is a majority (e.g. Isaiah 42:1; 1 Corinthians 8:6).

    • One breath is a material (e.g. Genesis 2:7).

    • One voice is a multitude (e.g. Psalm 18:6; 1 Corinthians 14:10; Revelation 21:3–4).

    • One adversary is a legion (e.g. Mark 5:6–9).

    • One touch is an absolution (e.g. Isaiah 6:7; Matthew 9:20; Matthew 14:36; Mark 1:40–41; Mark 8:22).

    • One word is a salvation (Matthew 8:4–13; Ephesians 2:8–9).

    • One death is an evolution (Isaiah 25:8; John 11:25–26; 1 Corinthians 15:26, 54–57; Philippians 1:20–21; Philippians 3:20–21).

Exploring Dr. Sealey-Ruiz’s contributions to the conversation on extraordinary literacies

• What were the race and gender injuries (i.e. effects of experiences with White Supremacist Patriarchal Ideology) evidenced in this case?

  • defamation, degradation, humiliation, rejection, shock, betrayal

• What tenet of the WSP is active in this case?

  • Tenet #1: The White supremacist patriarchy is deeply systemic [re: its function in institutions] and

  • Tenet #5: The White supremacist patriarchy is intergenerationally oppressive [re. its perpetuity in families and communities] (Staples-Dixon, in review)

• What were the consequences of these injuries/effects and interactions with this tenet?

  • anger, rage, self-imposed isolation, defensive, resistant posturing that further inflamed spaces and justified more isolation; spiraling ruminations

• What extraordinary literacies were invoked or developed to treat those injuries/effects?

  • breathwork, Vipassana meditation, tantric stillness, poetry, spoken word, intergenerational praxis, extension techniques [through the ages, through progeny, with intention for actualization and salvation from the inside/out literally and figuratively]

• What socioemotional, soulful, and somatic healings were produced as a result of engagements with/evolutions of these extraordinary literacies?

  • contributions to personal liberation (i.e. soulful and somatic health, order, and wholeness); career retention, exponential critical and creative explosions, cutting edge community building; more focused, intentional, and inspired productivity

  • What empyreal logics anchor these extraordinary literacies?

    • A list of empyreal logics focused on the unit of “one” is included below. These are socio spiritual principles expressed in multiple sacred texts used by various global religions. The logic activated in this case is highlighted.

      • One person is a majority (e.g. Isaiah 42:1; 1 Corinthians 8:6).

      • One breath is a material (e.g. Genesis 2:7).

      • One voice is a multitude (e.g. Psalm 18:6; 1 Corinthians 14:10; Revelation 21:3–4).

      • One adversary is a legion (e.g. Mark 5:6–9).

      • One touch is an absolution (e.g. Isaiah 6:7; Matthew 9:20; Matthew 14:36; Mark 1:40–41; Mark 8:22).

      • One word is a salvation (Matthew 8:4–13; Ephesians 2:8–9).

      • One death is an evolution (Isaiah 25:8; John 11:25–26; 1 Corinthians 15:26, 54–57; Philippians 1:20–21; Philippians 3:20–21).

Regarding Dr. Price-Dennis’s contributions to the conversation on extraordinary literacies

• What were the race and gender injuries (i.e. effects of experiences with White Supremacist Patriarchal Ideology [i.e. WSP]) evidenced in this case?

  • gaslighting, patronizing, shaming, taunting, toying, condescension

• What tenet of the WSP is active in this case?

  • Tenet #2: The White supremacist patriarchy is particularly masterful [re. its socialization of individuals]. (Staples-Dixon, in review) and

  • Tenet #7: The White supremacist patriarchy is tricky and illusory [re. its psychological terrors]. (Staples-Dixon, in review)

• What were the consequences of these injuries/effects and interactions with this tenet?

  • confusion, anxiety, stress, embarrassment, humiliation, rage, fury, sadness, vexation

• What extraordinary literacies were invoked or developed to treat those injuries/effects?

  • sitting, stillness, feeling into the Big Strong Deep, developing capacity, holding, creating distance, distance, distance, naming, and doing inquiry to self-define [instead of victimizing, feigning audience, manipulating onlookers, or using experience for personal or professional gain]

• What socioemotional, soulful, and somatic healings were produced as a result of engagements with/evolutions of these extraordinary literacies?

  • contributions to personal liberation (i.e. soulful and somatic health, order, and wholeness); career retention, exponential critical and creative explosions, cutting edge community building; more focused, intentional, and inspired productivity

• What empyreal logics anchor these extraordinary literacies?

  • A list of empyreal logics focused on the unit of “one” is included below. These are socio spiritual principles expressed in multiple sacred texts used by various global religions. The logic activated in this case is highlighted.

    • One person is a majority (e.g. Isaiah 42:1; 1 Corinthians 8:6).

    • One breath is a material (e.g. Genesis 2:7).

    • One voice is a multitude (e.g. Psalm 18:6; 1 Corinthians 14:10; Revelation 21:3–4).

    • One adversary is a legion (e.g. Mark 5:6–9).

    • One touch is an absolution (e.g. Isaiah 6:7; Matthew 9:20; Matthew 14:36; Mark 1:40–41; Mark 8:22).

    • One word is a salvation (Matthew 8:4–13; Ephesians 2:8–9).

    • One death is an evolution (Isaiah 25:8; John 11:25–26; 1 Corinthians 15:26, 54–57; Philippians 1:20–21; Philippians 3:20–21).

What questions do you have to contribute reflections on this conversation and extensions of its reach? Write them in the space below and share them with colleagues and students in your qualitative studies in education, new literacy studies, African-American studies, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, Black girlhood studies, Whiteness studies courses, and beyond. My hope is that these kinds of questions and concepts inspire scholarly inquiries into the literate lives of Black girls and women in schools and society for their honor and the benefit of all humankind.

^[1] I define “soul” as one’s mind or cognition; the soul is one’s meaning making center, in the space of personhood (Staples, 2016).

^[2] I define “soma” as one’s matter or body; the soma is one’s memory making center, in the space of personhood (Staples, 2016).

Notes

1 Because empyreal logics are found in various global religions and spiritualities, they are not bound by any one faith system. I refer to biblical invocations of empyreal logics here as a result of my alignment with a Judeo-Christian faith. Do not feel limited by these references. I encourage you, if you are inclined, to search for empyreal logics in the spiritual practice of your choice. You will find them. They can contribute greatly to your Personal Liberation Project.