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    Glimpses of Me and Mine: A Creative Biography
    Glimpses of Me and Mine: A Creative Biography
    Glimpses of Me and Mine: A Creative Biography
    Ebook130 pages1 hour

    Glimpses of Me and Mine: A Creative Biography

    By Nancy Lynne Westfield

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    About this ebook

    The problem is that there are more portrayals of the way other people see African American women than the ways we see ourselves. The narrative voice of African American women is largely disregarded, unfamiliar, and stifled. This collection of fiction and creative non-fiction as prayers, poems, short stories, rants, recollections, fantasies, aspirations, divulgences of secrets, accounts of omitted truths, and interpretations of witnessed miracles is meant to add Nancy Lynne Westfield's voice to the stories about African American women by African American women. She offers her stories, and the stories of her family, real and imagined, so African American women are better understood as being creative, multi-dimensional, whole, rounded, complicated, edgy, non-monolithic, and ordinary. These stories, written from three decades of womanist ethnographic research, are meant to persuade that Black women's experience matters to the flourishing of all humanity, and most especially matters to the persistence of African American women, and men and our children--all the kinds of families. These stories provide glimpses of Westfield's understanding of Blackness, anti-Blackness, womanhood, misogyny, and enfleshment. These stories expand what is known about the ways we build, love, suffer, teach, heal, enjoy our friends, make meaning out of our circumstances, and survive. They offer a glimpse of our collective wisdom.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherResource Publications
    Release dateMar 31, 2023
    ISBN9781666767476
    Glimpses of Me and Mine: A Creative Biography
    Author

    Nancy Lynne Westfield

    N. Lynne Westfield is Assistant Professor of Religious Education at Drew University Theological School.

    Read more from Nancy Lynne Westfield

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      Book preview

      Glimpses of Me and Mine - Nancy Lynne Westfield

      Prologue

      This collection of fiction and creative non-fiction as prayers, poems, short stories, rants, recollections, fantasies, aspirations, divulgences of secrets, accounts of omitted truths, and interpretations of witnessed miracles are meant to add my voice to the stories by African American women about African American women. The problem is that, across the western world, there are more portrayals of the way other people see us than the ways in which we see ourselves. Our complex perspectives are rarely the stuff of movies, literature, theatre, or song. The narrative voices of African American women are, largely, disregarded and stifled; our lived experiences commonly undocumented and misunderstood. Often, our portrayals in media are shallow and lacking nuanced dynamism, cultural sensibility, and depend upon stereotypes.

      I write to be better known, better understood, and to assert that our value matters.

      What is needed are fuller depictions of who we are, how we go about our lives, and the ways African American women shape reality for our own survival. We need new portrayals which point toward our capacity to be multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, whole, rounded, complicated, edgy, non-monolithic and ordinary. This book serves as a reminder that Black women’s experience is critical to the flourishing of all humanity.

      I write to thicken the insufficient archive—without our stories the human tapestry is incomplete.

      This multi-genre collection of stories about African American women, as told from the perspectives of an African American woman, is meant to expand what is known about the ordinary ways African American women think, create, build, love, suffer, teach, heal, and enjoy our friends, families, lovers, gods, and make meaning out of our circumstances. This collection provides glimpses of my understanding of Blackness, anti-Blackness, womanhood, misogyny, embodiment, and love through the lens of lived experience as an African American woman in the USA.

      As a womanist scholar, I have chosen to write in creative verse rather than scholarly speak. Scholarly speak is limiting, straight jacketing, and accessible by few readers beyond the academy. Describing, representing, interpreting, and translating the aesthetics, traditions, cultures, spiritualities, knowledges and know-hows of African American women requires a creative approach, an analytical imagination, and contemplation. Just as the voices of many instruments are necessary for certain music and just as the incorporation of many kinds of muds is necessary for certain sculptures, so the use of an array of creative verse is necessary for providing glimpses of me and mine.

      I write in an assorted fashion because the lived experiences of African American women necessitate the multiple.

      The politics of storytelling is this—whoever tells the story has the power. Like many teachers, I use my classroom to disrupt, contest and reinscribe the systemic hatreds of USA politics, church, and society. I wrote this book because when I looked for it in the library—the choices were scant. More stories about us by us are needed. I hope this text is utilized in classrooms from high school through graduate school. I hope it is read by church groups, book clubs, and sororities. Learning is more generative when the books assigned to students engage the questions of their curiosity, do not blithefully ignore the circumstances of inequity, and consider the multiple levels of meaning-making which too often go unattended. I wrote this book because the stories of African American women are needed in our troubled future.

      I hope you find surprises, resonances, humor, and insights. I hope African American women become more vivid to you, especially if you are an African American woman, or one who loves and admires us. I offer these stories of my life, and the stories of the lives of my kin, real and imagined, as a glimpse of our collective wisdom.

      Sunday Dinners

      Re-telling stories ancestors told us.

      Bringing the mysteries a little more within reach.

      God’s delight wafting with the delicious aromas.

      Loud family miracles abound.

      Made Real

      I did not have to rely upon

      white people to make me

      visible, real, or feel worthy or acceptable.

      I was/am/will be

      made real

      by my parents, my brother, my aunts, uncles, & cousins

      fictive kin, blood kin, family all

      I am whole we whole, together.

      I was/am/will be

      made real

      by my Black neighbors in our Black neighborhood

      safe

      until drugs & guns were pumped-in to destroy

      to maim to cripple to debilitate & to violate

      We are shattered scattered

      Barely scarcely hardly together.

      I was/am/will be

      made real

      by our Black United Methodist

      Jesus justice church

      even though stained-glass white Jesus is the window

      our prayers are heard & answered

      by God who loves our Blackness—for real.

      Our God

      roots for our victories

      comforts us in our defeats

      walks with us each & every day.

      Like when we mourned

      with Emmett Till’s mother Maime

      Who knew her 14-year-old beloved boy as being real

      Before they kidnapped & tortured her child

      Then dumped his mutilated body into the river.

      We championed

      Mother Maime’s very real

      decision for an open casket.

      Jet Magazine published the photograph evidence

      of the grotesque acts of torture, cruelty & murder

      The people said it was a sin before God & (wo)man. Real.

      Rev. Nichols said there is no decency

      when a Black child is murdered for folly.

      One hundred days after all-white men jury rendered

      the not guilty

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