13: Embodied Litanies of Survival, Hush Harbors, and Kitchen Table Talks

This chapter is grounded in a womanist framework based on the relational concept of the kitchen table with a focus on reparative, restorative, and transformative justice. It delves into life writing that roots embodiment relationally to ancestors, bodies of knowledge(s), and bodies of wisdom system(s). Underscoring the embodied educational experiences of Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color (BIWOC), particularly Black women across social locations, from school to home to community, this multigenre work braids together such genres as docupoetry, visionary fiction, biomythography, songs, dreams, postcards, and creative nonfiction. The theme of body politics is addressed in intersectional and interrelated ways that explore how the diverse bodies of BIWOC are often tyrannized through surveillance, disciplining, and pathologizing. Simultaneously, the resiliency, tenacity, and perseverance of BIWOC is underlined while emphasizing the ways educational spaces can be (re)imagined as hush harbors and places to freedom dream. This chapter invites simultaneously mending and transforming broken relationships that have caused harm to BIWOC bodies in educational experiences and spaces.