Pray to Know Sistahood
Kristian, age 5, posing after graduation from The Little Dolphin Pre-School in Brooklyn, NY.
On April 18, 1983 Alice Walker became the first Black person to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for The Color Purple; 40 years later, I defended my dissertation and became a Doctor with distinction on that same day. I like to think, that rather than a coincidence, the universe planned such an alignment with much tenderness and magic ✨
I’ve spent every PhD anniversary since then with my girl Alice and celebrate this kindred milestone with good food, doggy kisses, and lots of laughter. This annual time together is a much needed pause (especially as of late) and adventure in love across time zones, borders, generations, and human made boundaries that work to desaturate my vibrancy.
How lucky am I, to never have doubted my own brilliance. How blessed am I, to have my favorite feminist writer kiss my cheek and call me sister. How grateful am I, to become my own possibility model.
Keynote address delivered at the New Jersey Women's and Gender Studies Consortium’s Undergraduate Colloquium at The College of New Jersey on March 27, 2026.
Free Palestine.
These last few days have left me with more questions than answers and deepened my commitment to thinking, living, and creating beyond binaries. What we are witnessing with the escalation of violence in historic Palestine moves beyond “conflict” and reductive colonial logics. This violence is rooted in 75+ years of an (illegal) Israeli military enforced occupied apartheid state and over 16 years of Palestine existing as an open-air prison. I have grappled with the right words, the right resources, and how I understand solidarity and accountability beyond identity politics.
I am sitting at the seat of empire as a documented citizen of the United States of America and live on unceded land shepherded by the Tigua Pueblo peoples – right on the border of the United States of America and Mexico. The dehumanization and criminalization of immigrants along this border feels echoed in the nonchalant admission from Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that Palestinians are “human animals”, and the normative framing of whose lives are grievable – who we deem innocent and the communities who are disposable. There are no clean equations for human rights and what one’s right to liberation looks like. There are no clean and neutral definitions that make “condemning violence” simple.
Today I became a doctor and I am SO proud of myself - all that I survived, created, achieved, and let go in a journey that took so much from me. Without my people, I would not have made it to my final graduation stage. To my people, I love you:
Explore this collection of resources meant to nurture our mental health and wellness needs. The university works to disappear and exploit Black women intellectuals and I want us to survive the journey in one piece and in peace.
*It's important to note that the design and intention of this thread, originally developed for the Our Sistren's Garden Discord, is not meant to operate in place of mental health professionals and/or services.
This thread on the Our Sistren's Garden serves as a place to share anything "audio" that you keep on repeat or listen to as a reminder of who you are in spite of American academia's commitment to keeping us at the figurative bottom. Maybe its Tina Turner's entire discography (a personal fave), a podcast you love, spoken word, or something in between - share your soundtrack to this season of our lives as emerging scholars!
Please enjoy our playlist, Soundtrack to the Season - a compilation of songs that got us, the sistren of the study, through the journey when we needed inspiration, a pick me up, or an invitation to dance it out.
The Our Sistren's Garden's #communityIRL thread acts as ahub to share/discuss community resources in real life and on the web - organizations and groups may offer services or a place for support as Black women navigating this chapter of life. The degree and the process are only one component of the full lives we're meant to lead - so grow your community!
A collection of funding opportunities that I've compiled over the course of my doctoral journey. This feels especially important considering how challenging it is when we don't receive full-funding and trying to be well can sometimes feel impossible when we are not paid living wages. Have suggestions? Holler at me here!
The Our Sistren's Gardens Discord server is our slice of the internet that heavily draws inspiration from the life & legacy of bell hooks and Alice Walker. I’m interested in curating spaces for us – educators, dancers, scientists, creatives, activists, dreamers, disruptors, and artists – to “talk back” as Black women, femmes, and non-binary folks.
The universe 🪐 threaded us together, tightlywoven like my favorite hand-me-down sweater. Our friendship holds me tighter though, with a softness that rivals the finest silks. Though ‘friendship’ feels incomplete, and the syllables of ‘sisterhood’ makes far more space for who and what we are to one another. One year has passed since we first linked up and I’m so very grateful that the magic of our ancestors and mentors stitched us together. With you, this patchwork quilt, my sistren, of kinship brought me much solace and laughter in one of the most challenging chapters of my life.
2022 was not always kind to me. I was overwhelmed & often lonely. I grew tired of one-sided friendships & carried shame in my posture. Writing became burdensome & I felt pushed out by academia. I did not take care of my body & it kept the score. I said goodbye to too many loved ones & got lost in grief. My doctor told me I ate too many uncrustables & I cried because, sometimes, it feels like no one understands me. I completed my dissertation research in five months (in a fugue state) & grew confident in my work. I started working with my favorite author & took hella naps.
2022 was not kind to me, yet in every climb up from what I thought was my worst low, there were hands reaching out for me, promising to never leave me behind or give up on me - even when I so desperately wanted to. As I welcome in 2023, I do so with an immeasurable gratitude for those who grabbed my hand & pulled me forward.
My mother is an enigma. She held secrets in the furrow of her brow and decades of unheard wishes in the soles of her feet. A cryptex wrapped in cinnamon skin, I always wondered what lay beneath her rigid backbone.
My mother knows obedience like the back of her smooth hands and holds tight to convention the way we cling to one another during every goodbye. In the years we felt like strangers, I wondered if I could ever decipher the riddles of her true nature.