I’ve been particularly exhausted, as is so often the case at the end of each school year. I often feel that the further I get into spring semester, the more I become tired, grumpy, and on edge. It’s as though my brain becomes over-worked, my body under-utilized, and my balance thrown totally off. This year I’ve also been experiencing exhaustion as more than regular semester stress, and I feel certain it’s due to the routinization of daily assaults on personhood. It’s ... Read more ...
Higher Education
These posts consider matters of teaching and learning, career discernment, and equity in education. As a former professor, I share my experiences in school and my decision to leave academia to pursue public writing and community education.
Answering the Call for Artistic Activism: Yes, I’m an Artist!
“Do you consider yourself a writer?” I’ve been teaching for almost two decades, and throughout this time, I’ve routinely asked this question on the first and last days of the semester (and often in-between). I’ve found my own strong YES to the question, asserting: “I don’t just study writing. I write. I am a writer.” And I hope that students, colleagues, friends, and family will similarly see themselves as writers, as people who write (who do the embodied act of ... Read more ...
Today Resistance Looks Like …
How do we work to align feelings, thoughts, and actions (heart, head, hands) with the world we’d like to see? How do we go about our everyday lives for the “ought to be,” for justice? I’m thankful for Jardana Peacock (of the Liberatory Leadership Project) for modeling a contemplative writing practice that I’ve been using to think through these questions. At the end of each day, I’ve been filling in the answer to her prompt: “Today resistance looks like …” I ... Read more ...
Re-Reading Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
In preparation for a course I’m teaching this spring (“Writing for Social Justice”), I’m lucky to be re-reading Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. In this powerful YA novel, Alexie describes growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and navigating interactions in the rural, white high school. Alexie’s narrative reveals much about systemic inequities, colonization, marginalization, and disenfranchisement. I hope students will relate to ... Read more ...
Heart, Head, and Hands: Explaining the Blog’s Name
For months, I kept a list of keywords and imagined titles for this blog. For months, I ran possible names by friends and family, who responded with “nope,” “eugh,” and “huh?” Then, casually and unsurprisingly, my friend and frequent co-author Rasha Diab said, “Beth, your blog is heart-head-hands. That’s your thing.” I guess this exercise—this linking of feeling with thinking with acting—is “my thing.” Often in classes and workshops, I use the contemplative writing ... Read more ...
![#Repost @thebodyisnotanapology with @make_repost
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✨Happy Birthday, Angela Davis✨Posted @withregram • @culturestrike Happy 77th birthday to Dr. Angela Y. Davis, one of the most consequential revolutionaries and communists of our time. Davis’ legacy as an abolitionist, Black feminist, philosopher, academic and author has been critical in shaping our conversations around racism, class, and, perhaps most notably, the prison system in the United States.
Today we offer you a quote to meditate on when thinking of Davis’ legacy: “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”
Art by @emilys_list
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[image description: the above quote by Angela Davis is written in black on the left-hand side of the image against a yellow-orange background. On the right-hand side is a digital illustration of Angela Davis. She has brown skin and a dark brown Afro hairstyle and is wearing peach lipstick, bold gold hoops, and a green top. She is pictured mid-speech, her mouth open as she speaks truth to power.]
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#TheBodyIsNotAnApology #TBINAA #RadicalSelfLove #AngelaDavis](https://heart-head-hands.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)
