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Contribute Your Voice to this Project!
[Deadline: February 2, 2006] Scroll down
for details |
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Welcome to the "Reflections of the
N-Word" website. This is a work in progress and will expand each week,
with more links as well as information to inform you of how the project is
progressing.
Purpose
of Project
My primary
research interests are: using multimedia technology, black feminist
epistemology and theory, the narrative therapies, critical race theory,
"White privilege", queer /sexuality theory, and gender, specifically
focusing on Black Females. This encompasses emotional, spiritual, physical and
mental health and well being. The first goal of the “N-Word” project is to
create a published anthology
book that comes with an interactive DVD of Black women and girls who have
chosen to share their experiences via photographs and short films. The DVD will
also connect people to an interactive website which will have blogs and online discussions of the anthology project.
BLOGS and Forums will give black girls and young women a safe space to speak
about their journeys through racism, classism, sexism and homophobia without
feeling “strange” about doing it in the classroom setting. This technology will
also help voice the trauma of racism, sexism and classism through narrative
therapies in a virtual community setting of support. My key questions for using
multimedia technology in human development and critical race theory that I hope
to explore beyond this "N-Word Project":
- 1. How do/can we use narrative therapies to
help give voices to a demographic that has been historically oppressed and
marginalized since Black slavery in
- 2. How can these multimedia technologies
and narratives help to educate high school and college teachers about the
needs to address “oppressive ideologies” that are institutionalized
everywhere- including the school systems itself.
- 3. How can critical race theory and
narrative research/narrative therapies creatively and effectively create a
community structure for Black girls and adolescents to begin to engage in
grassroots organizing and mobilizing to be an effective voice to be heard towards
those policy makers.
- 4. How can a virtual community of blogs and forums create more understanding and solidarity
between Black straight identified girls/ adolescents and Black queer girls/adolescents
who are both oppressed by racism and sexism and very often, classism? Black females often have solidarity
around issues of racism and sexism. However, homophobia is still a
silenced issue that the Black community still refuses to recognize.
Theoretical
Framework and Influences
bell hooks and James Baldwin are the
primary figure of influences for this project. I also draw from June Jordan,
Edward Said, Maya Angelou,
and Audre Lorde.
The major catalyst for this research project
came from the first time I remembered being called a
n*gger at the age of twelve. Though it took me more
than a decade to fully articulate my experience of that day, it had always
astounded me how much rage and fear that word had instilled in me. It wasn't
until fifteen years later that I began to understand how profoundly emotionally
traumatic this one
word has been to a majority of Black identified people who have been survivors
of it, including myself. It was through reading bell hooks, June Jordan, W.E.B.
DuBois, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin and other
"resisters of oppression" as well the expression of fiction book writing
that I was able to explore my emotions as well as my understanding of my social
status as a Black female in a country in which institutionalized sexism, heterosexim, classism and racism is embedded in the
institutions and policies of the status quo. It was in the pages of bell hooks
that I first ran across her critical consciousness paradigm. Through this
practice, I was able to understand my relationship with race, class, sexuality,
and gender status within the
"I have come to believe over and over again
that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even
at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood." - Audre
Lorde
Black identified women and girls, come forth
and share your experiences as survivors of the n-word; survivors of a culture
in which the usage of the n-word is a symptom of a larger societal disease
which continue to spread via the fusion of racism, nationalism, sexism,
imperialism, classism and homophobia. It may sound simple, but your voice will be the cure.
"We are what we've been waiting for."
- Sweet Honey in the Rock
Call for Contributions!! Submit Your Voice
Breeze Harper
617 877 2096 [harper2@fas.harvard.edu]
This is a call for narratives, poetry, short
film, and critical essays for a book project and DVD anthology about Black
identified females who want to :
- creatively convey their experience(s) of being called a n*gger (not to be confused with the other word, n*gga, that some Blacks use amongst themselves)
- share their experiences of the first time they were called the n-word
and/ or had heard/read the word for the first time even though it may not
have been directed toward them.
Who is invited to submit their voice :
All Black identified girls and women from
all sexual orientations, educational levels, nationalities, countries, ages,
etc.
Possible themes to explore:
- How did being called the n-word as a child shape your consciousness
as an adult?
- How you felt when you first
read the n-word in required school readings such as Huckleberry Finn
and Grapes of Wrath.
Please send to the mailing address listed
above or (preferably) send via email as a Word or Appleworks
attachment. Please also attach short bio, contact
info. Submissions should be double spaced, 1" margins and preferably no
longer than 15 pages. Short film should be no more than 10 minutes long. This
anthology will be published by end of 2007 as part of a Harvard University
Affiliated Research Project. An interactive DVD (with the short films and other
multimedia) will also be included in the book.
Feel free to email me or call with any
questions.