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I grew up watching my grandmother journal. For my granny, thoughts were a dish never to be served cold and so every morning after breakfast, right at the table, she would whip out a notepad and take stock of her life. She scribbled down what she had eaten for breakfast, detailed reports about my absence from her three o’clock prayer and confessed heavy thoughts about life as a widow that weighed her pen down as she transcribed. I’ve always hoped to one day inherit her journals, perhaps I could catch a glimpse of the woman in my grandmother and begin to see her beyond an emblem of discipline and fortitude.
As the world kneels at the feet of two viruses, each day I stare closer at the face of my own mortality. In New York City, both police and ambulance sirens play on loop throughout the day, making it impossible to escape the ominous cloud of death that hovers over the city. With each wail, I meditate on the heaps of Black lives lost unexpectedly and wonder about the stories they leave behind. During times of upheaval such as this, there is a need for Black people to document their own personal stories and contribute to an evolving canon on Black life. Not news reports that detail upcoming elections or academic essays on societal issues like redlining, but entries on ordinary life.
Without a doubt, the year 2020 will be studied for generations to come and there will be power in owning first-hand accounts of these times. When we look back on this period, it is important that we find a full picture of Black life, one that goes beyond tragedy and one that comes from our own mouths. Find time to journal about the anxieties of caring for elderly parents amidst a pandemic and about the fulfillment of making your own deep conditioner.
Stories on Black life tend to oscillate between Black suffering and #BlackExcellence, but for most of us, the majority of our days live somewhere in the middle. While recordings of everyday life might not pack the same gravity as those of pain, or provide the same excitement as instances of triumph, they are equally as important when it comes to understanding a people. It is in this middle ground that we find humanity.
Samuel Ajayi Crowther was a Yoruba linguist who escaped slavery and became the first Anglican bishop in Nigeria. He journaled throughout an 1841 missionary expedition, intended to curb slave trade and spread Christianity. In the midst of writing about this grand undertaking, Crowther shared stories about adjusting to life at sea, witnessing a friendly rowing contest between the women and men of Benin and longing for his family. “I could not help but feel pain, and some anxiety for a time at the separation,” he recalls about watching his homeland from the coastline. One can learn more about the fears, relationships and mindset of a West African man in 1840 from Crowther’s journals than from any textbook covering the pre-colonial period. The same can be said about The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells. Set against the backdrop of Jim Crow segregation, Wells’ entries serve as a window into the desires and vulnerabilities of an African American woman coming of age in the late 19th century.
While European powers divvied up the continent of Africa, they also spent time observing and documenting the customs and practices of the people they colonized. Whether in photography or excerpts from missionary journals, the works that emerged from this period were usually voyeuristic portraits of life on the continent and served as an essential weapon of imperialism in Africa. Some of these documents would later be used to rewrite history and justify oppressive policies such as apartheid. For this reason, the very act of putting pen to paper in this way is radical. It is not enough to simply have everyday Black life recorded, we must be the authors of these accounts.
This is not to say that Black people haven’t always documented our own lives. One of the greatest untruths about Africa and its descendants across the diaspora is that we are a people without history. From gatherings down south where cousins sit on a front porch listening to tales of their ancestral land, to Yoruba celebrations where an oriki detailing family lineage is recited, Black people across the Atlantic are bastions of oral history. Through colonization and structural racism, these practices have been threatened by erasure and, even worse, presented as inferior to Western accounts of our own history.
At all levels of schooling, there are numerous cases of Black history being stripped of its nuance. This might include a curriculum that teaches slavery with no mention of the Igbo Landing or one that discusses colonization but not the Ethiopian empire. Too often, the stories of ours that are shared with the world are told as though they began when white people arrived. The quiet moments in Black life are somehow unworthy of attention.
This year has been one of turmoil across the world and will set in motion significant changes across various facets of society. The ways in which we work, play and even pray will not be the same in the next decade. It is important for generations that follow to have access to honest depictions of our daily lives during these times and to understand how we survived. The most valuable accounts will be ones that showcase the fullness of what it meant to be Black in 2020.
A remarkable quality of our people is the ability to find space not only for joy, but normalcy, in the midst of pain. Journaling is a simple way to capture these stories that often slip through the cracks but reveal so much about character. To truly appreciate Black humanity, the world must take a closer look at the moments when no one else is watching. Whether these journals end up published years from now, or simply serve as chatter among your grandkids, will be your decision to make.
