SUNY in Black Women's Wellness

“Erotic Testimonies” draws inspiration from Audre Lorde's "Uses of the Erotic" to explore how Black women access their interiority and use their feelings to engage in processes of self-actualization and make themselves free. Blending genres and resisting the confines of conventional scholarly analysis, Julia S. Jordan-Zachery undertakes what she characterizes as a performative embodied reading of testimonies by four "wild" women from her own life. Jordan-Zachery takes care not to define what constitutes a wild woman-that's been done enough to oppressive ends-but rather tends to these women's forms and means of self-articulation. Complex accounts of wildness, freedom, femininity, the erotic, and the divine emerge from her field notes. Erotic Testimonies attests to the experience of the individual as well as, and even more importantly, how the individual speaks to a broader collective that here includes Lorde, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, Janet Jackson, the author, her grandmother, and many more.

Snapping Beans offers a collective narrative of Southern queer lesbian women and gender-nonconforming persons. Throughout the text, the American South acts as both a region and a main character, one that can shame and condemn but also serve as a site of reconciliation. Blending autoethnography and oral histories, Jayme N. Canty explores how both geographic location and social spaces, such as the Church, intersect with categories such as race, gender, and sexuality to shape and mark identity. Just as the intergenerational practice of snapping beans provides an opportunity to slow down, Canty enables readers to make space and to hear a new Southern narrative. Filled with both hurt and healing, Snapping Beans chronicles a multivocal journey of coming out, ultimately revealing a South where Black queer lesbians not only live but also, more importantly, thrive.

Examines how Black women elders have managed stress, emphasizing how self-care practices have been present since at least the mid-nineteenth century, with roots in African traditions. How have Black women elders managed stress? In Black Women's Yoga History, Stephanie Y. Evans uses primary sources to answer that question and to show how meditation and yoga from eras of enslavement, segregation, and migration to the Civil Rights, Black Power, and New Age movements have been in existence all along. Life writings by Harriet Jacobs, Sadie and Bessie Delany, Eartha Kitt, Rosa Parks, Jan Willis, and Tina Turner are only a few examples of personal case studies that are included here, illustrating how these women managed traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression. In more than fifty yoga memoirs, Black women discuss practices of reflection, exercise, movement, stretching, visualization, and chanting for self-care. By unveiling the depth of a struggle for wellness, memoirs offer lessons for those who also struggle to heal from personal, cultural, and structural violence. This intellectual history expands conceptions of yoga and defines inner peace as mental health, healing, and wellness that is both compassionate and political.

This volume brings to the fore Black women's experiences of, and contributions to, political science, a field that never intended to view them as subjects worthy of study and certainly not as professors. Disrupting Political Science demonstrates how Black women blend creative resistance and self-care to overcome obstacles and navigate the discipline's hegemonic demands. Representing a range of career stages and types of institutions, the nineteen contributors share stories of trauma and triumph, as well as concrete guidance rooted in Black feminist literature and reports on the profession. A witty, searing, sometimes heart-wrenching catalyst to reimagine political science, “Disrupting Political Science” is essential reading for everyone in the discipline and for faculty and administrators across the university committed to recruiting and retaining Black women.

Autism is rising across the United States but disproportionately affects Black children and their families. While White middle-class families tend to be the focus of autism research and services, A Thousand Worries tells the stories of fifteen Black mothers of autistic sons, including the author's own story. Interweaving her personal experience and research findings, Jeannine E. Dingus-Eason examines the intersections of race, class, and gender and the complexities of parenting, care, and services for Black autism mothers, or BAMs. Dingus-Eason shows how BAMs leverage their faith, support networks, and knowledge of autism to advocate for their sons in cultural and sociopolitical contexts that consistently dehumanize, criminalize, and adultify Black boys. A Thousand Worries will give families, scholars, and practitioners in education, social work, human services, and health insight into not only BAMs' many concerns and challenges but also their strengths, strategies, and abiding love. At times moving, uplifting, funny, and raw, their testimonies illuminate the power dynamics between parents and providers, the value of supportive partnerships and mutual trust, and the need for culturally responsive services.

Black Women and Public Health creates an urgently needed interdisciplinary dialogue about issues of race, gender, and health. An enduring history of racism, sexism, and dehumanization of Black women's bodies has largely rendered the health needs of the Black community inaudible and invisible. Grounded in the lived experiences and expertise of Black women, this collection bridges gaps between researchers, practitioners, educators, and advocates. Black women's public health work is a regenerative practice--one that looks backward, inward, and forward to improve the quality of life for Black communities in the United States and beyond. The three dozen authors in this volume offer analysis, critique, and recommendations for overcoming longstanding and contemporary challenges to equity in public health practices.