Hi friends! I’m coming at you in the third quarter of my first year on the tenure track. After emerging from the teaching bubble about a month ago now, I hit the road for conference season to share work and catch up with friends.
I presented an academic paper version of the Building and Brokering report; chaired a roundtable on my friend Jenn’s book Black Women Taught Us; did a roundtable on the forthcoming “Flowers for Founders” PGI issue, where we celebrate the founders of the Black politics discipline.
I spoke about my colleague Claire Kim’s fantastic new book Asian Americans in an Antiblack World. I also presented a working chapter from my book project on the Chicago Black Lives Matter movement. I ended the conference circuit at a celebration of Michael Dawson’s storied career.
It’s been a whirlwind! But it’s also been a joy to be a part of so many wonderful conversations about race and politics.
The grind continues but now it’s time to enter a more writerly mode. I see the next few months as me sitting with my ideas, reading books, and shaping blank pages. A friend of mine recently said, “You’ve got *that* work ethic, Jordie.” And I never thought of it that way.
Yes, graduate school disciplines you into a perpetual cycle of working that you think nothing of putting in 6 or 7 days a week of work (even if quantity/ quality varies from day to day, I’ll admit). I’d look around at my colleagues in grad school sometimes and think, *wow,* they are obsessed by their work. I didn’t feel the same way.
Maybe now I’m driven by a bigger passion, a clearer direction, and a better idea of what I’m doing. I think that’s true. Maybe I’m just like any other academic and am so over-identified with work sometimes that I don’t know where I end and work begins. That could also be true. There’s that 2017 Toni Morrison essay I love, where her father reminds her that there is an important difference between *the work you do* and *the person you are*.
What reminds us of the people we are? How do we get back to ourselves when it seems we’ve been on some sort of autopilot of production?
I suppose it’s the people we love.
Moments of self-care and self-love.
Slowing down. Taking it all in.
One thing I really appreciate about southern California is the evening light. Before I moved here, I watched this video where Lawrence Weschler, a California to East Coast transplant, talks about how much he missed the light after he moved away.
I’ve seen beautiful sunsets of course, but the thing about southern California is that the sky is very often a brilliant blue canvas, undisturbed by clouds. In the evenings at golden hour, that brilliant blue (plus, I imagine, some level of unseen pollution) meets the setting sun and turns out this beautiful purple-pink sky.
It’s not a sometimes thing— it’s an always, dazzling thing that floods through my apartment windows and sends me off to the night.
still not over
Tracy Chapman played her song “Fast Car” with Luke Combs at the Grammys and I am obsessed. Her version, this version— this song is so poignant, vulnerable, and elegant. It’s gentle and vulnerable, offering a strong contrast from bravado in music today.
Until next time!