Self-care has become a trendy topic. On social media, users love sharing posts about meditation, yoga, and balancing chakras. Before the athletic superstars Simone Biles & Naomi OsakaSelf-care was preferred over working in their respective fields. Women fought for autonomy and reproductive rights, and fought for self-care. Self-care has become more mainstream. However, it should not be overlooked.
In her new book “Black Joy: Stories of Resistance, Resilience and Restoration” (Gallery Books, 288 pp., ★★★ out of four, out Tuesday), Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts delivers a collection of ebullient essays showing how self-care and joy play out in the day-to-day lives of Black people.
Lewis-Giggetts demonstrates how Black joy functions as a hidden tool within the practice of Black resistance. Black Power also promoted self-care as a key theme. In addition to its survival programs, which focused on nutrition, clothing and health care, party members and leaders Ericka Huggins and Angela Davis practiced yoga and meditation during their incarceration.
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Media outlets focused on footage and stories of protestors looting and fighting during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations of 2020. As Lewis-Giggetts shows in “Black Joy,” running parallel to the pain and desperation associated with police violence were acts of pleasure and love. Between marches, protestors danced and sang. Men proposed to their girlfriends, and some couples even had weddings in the middle of BLM protests. “The engagements and weddings that happened in the middle of marches were too often considered anecdotal for some but were actually intentional acts of defiance,” Lewis-Giggetts writes.
Blacks have been treated with dehumanization for many generations. By choosing joy and acts of love – such as engagements and marriages during protests – in the face of trauma and turbulent times, Blacks are exercising their humanity. When Biles and Osaka prioritize their mental health over entertaining America, they were biting back at perceived stereotypes of Black self-worth and giving flesh to all of the enslaved men, women and children who were forced to entertain slaveowners on Sundays and holidays. People will not feel joy if they are subject to police violence and inequity. Black joy will not change laws, but it is one of many ways to challenge authority.
In his supremely informative book “The Body Keeps the Score,”Bessel van der Kolk explains why traumatizing emotions can get trapped within the body and throw off the nervous systems. Meditation, breathing and movement are strategies that can release trauma and restore the nervous system back to its normal state.
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In “Black Joy,”Lewis-Giggetts portrays a wonderful picture of Blacks dancing passionately and lustily to the beats of shadowy hole in-wall clubs. She also writes of how Black grandmothers, mothers and aunties rock back and forth while moaning sweet nothings during Sunday church service. Lewis-Giggetts even shares a narrative of how, as a little girl, she would stand naked in front of the mirror mouthing her favorite Mary J. Blige songs, or mimicking the off-kilter flow of E-40. Lewis-Giggetts explains how her joyful, carefree performances made it feel like she was one with the universe.
This type of body movement, along with meditation, yoga and deep breathing, releases the trauma that is trapped inside the body, helping to return the nervous system back to its original state. “The way the mothers of the church would sway to a beat provided by the shoes and wooden canes, it’s like they knew,”Lewis-Giggetts “They didn’t have the fancy language, the academic jargon for it. They didn’t do any research on somatic experiencing and how moving the body in certain ways can help alter how trauma functions in the body or move it out entirely. They just had the song, and the meditation.”
Lewis-Giggetts’ new tome adds a square to the quilt of Black radical imagination, posing the question: What type of world do Blacks imagine? “Black Joy is a poetic and fun reminder that Blacks are obligated to be gentle to themselves. Lewis-Giggetts argues, like the social media posts about self care, that acknowledging joy in everyday life is an act to resist. You just have to look for it.