Tag: Academic Whispers
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Keep the gaze of hawks!
Two subtle visitors, red tail hawks, arrived at my home today. They were more than the gaze that held them tightly, more than every day birds that flew lightly. They moved as I moved, flying then perching next to each other on a tree. They looked content and stared only at the things that greeted their…
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Keep being green!
Dead trees don’t produce fruits, but some fruits on dead trees, stay green. My kids and I walked by branches from a tree dead. My daughter noted that dead trees often do not produce fruits, yet these branches were full of fruits still green. It got me wondering, how are we staying green in a…
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Keep all the ways you love, you hold, you let go…
These days we are doing three things: 1) loving what is human; a baby, a bird, this body resting plus any living creature that knows how to be free: 2) holding all the things we love against our bones knowing that this life depends on it: and finally 3) knowing for somethings, the time to…
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Keep each day!
Night ends and though this day won’t happen again, we know where we stand, and see the light that shines, and the way we opened and reopened our heart, the way we knew the call was his for his sake, the way these words flow like a lake, is the reason why a day should…
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Keep the delight of failures!
To my failures, those recent and those over a decade ago, those big and small, all of you bold yet with no hope, know that you are my delight, my highest degree of satisfaction, my pleasure, to all the ways you make me feel content, to all the struggles and joy you bring, to all…
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Keep grants for self-recovery!
bell hooks in Sisters of the yam, talked about the need for black women to engage in self-recovery. She was writing from the space of the continued devaluation of black womanhood, the extreme difficulties that make it hard for us to even develop a positive outlook of ourselves. Not only are we pitted against each…
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Keep being polemical with your words!
A single word can lead the mind to traces of contemplation. They are like silences that take over, holding you uncomfortable for so long. Like fault lines and shifting plates that require you to invade the part of your brain where words are like air, forcing you to breathe in, breathe out. A couple of…
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Keep the snow and the sighting of an American robin!
Snow as it falls, scatters and gains possession of the earth, and trees hang up their branches, as an American robin appears, suddenly hungry, the air drips of fallen snow, like ant filing out a wood, only this isn’t wood, and though we are not American robins, they know those who do not befriend snow…
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Keep this day of eliminating cervical cancer.
I have known something of the fight some speak off. I still remember what it’s like to be called Osodieme. I knew once we heard those words, this fight would be more than personal. That day is forever etched in my mind like something of the dark people speak off. It’s not that eyes can’t…
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Keep 4 youth by youth (4yby) and its approach to innovative youth-driven research!
Research for me these days begins from a place of experience and deep thought, innovation too. Almost six years ago, I embarked on a research experience that changed my life. I was coming off a streak of research proposals that failed tremendously as grants and losing sight of what my sheer purpose in life and…
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Keep this collective “we” if black, female and in academia!
These days I am seeing, not myself, not work, not my family, not my children and lord knows I love all four of them. I am seeing instead a collective we. With insights that help to re-vision a future we. When eyes finally see, it doesn’t float free pretending that “I” am alone in struggle.…
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Keep the depths of rain and Stars!
When rain falls, dreams go up. But memories still linger in all places. Dreams too, when you touch rain. We are closing out Cohort 1 of our STARS scholars program, closing out what can only be described as as a year full of hopes and impediments. Yet, we are here and perhaps this was the…
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Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor 