Permission to Unpack
An Essay-Poem-Visual Response to Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood
By Jennifer Price
This article has recorded audio. Click ‘play’ to hear Jennifer read it out loud.
Encountering the Prolific
When I was a twenty-three year old artist participating in a painting residency at the Vermont Studio Center, I gleaned for the first time (from the mere mention of her work by a fellow resident) the evocative power of bell hooks’ prolific expression. I had ejected to Vermont from a brief yet dense stay in Texas that reunited me with my estranged father.
The year was 1999, the month was January. Johnson, Vermont in January numbed my hands when I took contemplative walks on the hamlet’s rolling, snow encrusted paths, sometimes alone. I learned that I could outwit the cold during those walks by raising my hands over my head and pumping my fists to maintain circulation.
I could not, however, best the longing and loss I carried. Alzheimer’s Disease had consumed my father by then and would, of course, protract not only his absence from my life, but also the elusiveness of a genealogy—my genealogy—that I desperately presumed could illuminate what I feared, at the time, to be an inherent inner darkness.
Ekphrasis: Reclaiming the Gaze
I release the above (heretofore suppressed) details in part because of the permissiveness of bell hooks’ multisensory rendering of self-reclamation in Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood. Bone Black disarms but challenges me to write, as hooks did, against the white gaze that has contributed to the muting of the Black narratives I myself carry.
In the immediate years after the residency in Vermont, I began to experiment with the art of collage as a method for constructing/reconstructing family narrative. In homage to Bone Black, I have combined one of my collage constructions, entitled “Convex”, with a poem by the same title. This combination piece employs ekphrasis [1]—a poetic mode that elevates a work of art—which allows me to cull the sensory details that memorialize the legacy of my late mother, whose visage dominates the focal point of the composition. Within this ekphrasis, my poem takes the form of a haibun [2], opening with a prose [3] recollection and concluding with a haiku [4] revelation.
Drawing upon bell hooks, whom I regard, foremost, as a poet whose work troubles the oppressor’s notion of familial love in the Black community, I see “Convex” as a space I devised to both praise and question my family’s rich and tumultuous narrative.
“Bone Black disarms but challenges me to write, as hooks did, against the white gaze...”
A mixed media collage with muted colors, a black and white cut-out of the author’s parents laughing on the right side of the picture plane, and text and flower cut-outs surrounding them; a typed poem is beneath the collage.
On Community
After a twenty year pause—not a pause, really, but a parallel, complete with motherhood and a library career—I have resumed beating a path toward reconciling with what the late bell hooks eruditely describes in Bone Black as “a life committed to intellectual pursuits” (1996, p.xiv). We Here’s launch of a Community Study of bell hooks allowed me to consider lived experience as a form of knowledge whose critical weight equals that of any expertise gained through scholarship.
As a librarian, this is certainly meaningful to me. As a poet and visual artist, an approach for collecting and applying my lived experiences feels nascent, but appropriately so, because any “intellectual pursuit” also exposes the muted channels of creative expression that deserve attention. To survive the last two years of the pandemic’s reckoning is to acknowledge one’s right to unpack both trauma and joy in order to examine (from every angle) our lived narratives, and, hopefully, to thrive as a result.
Endnotes
Ekphrasis is a Greek word; in poetry it refers to a lyrically written response to an artform. For a detailed, technical definition of ekphrasis, please visit https://poets.org/glossary/ekphrasis
Haibun is a Japanese poetry form that combines prose and haiku. Please visit https://poets.org/text/more-birds-bees-and-trees-closer-look-writing-haibun for a detailed, technical definition.
For the purpose of this feature, the definition of prose is noted because of its contrast with the verse language often considered germain to poetry. For a contextual definition of prose, please visit https://poets.org/glossary/prose-poem.
Haiku is a Japanese poetry form that typically constrains its content to three lines, with each line containing a specific word count. For a detailed, technical definition of haiku, please visit https://poets.org/glossary/haiku.
Acknowledgements
The personal narratives featured in this piece occurred on the native lands of the Peoria, Bodwéwadmi (Potawatomi), Myaamia, Kaskaskia, and Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo) people of Chicago, Illinois; the Muscogee and Hitchiti people of Macon, Georgia; and the Wabanaki (Dawnland Confederacy) and N’dakina (Abenaki/Abénaquis) people of Johnson, Vermont (Native Land Digital, 2021). I acknowledge the wholeness of these communities and the historical traumas levied against them.
For this writer, the unpacking of life’s narrative began (in earnest) with the pursuit of community. In this pursuit I not only discovered the bell hooks Community Study, but I also joined the BIPOC In Bloom: Rooted series’ deep dive into ancestral voice and the Scribrarians Collective’s call for librarians who write creatively. I am deeply grateful to the following leaders/curators/stewards of these generative BIPOC spaces.
The WeHere Community Study organizers (nicholae cline, Sofia Leung, and Jorge López-McKnight) and fellow study participants; the BIPOC In Bloom: Rooted series visionaries (Palesa Koitsioe, Nisha Mody, Channdika, and Daniela Guerrero-Rodriguez); and the Scribrarians Collective writing group founders (Jina Duvernay and Kellee Forkenbrock)
Their care and investment have been stepping stones for my return trip to poetry and art and have afforded me space to rethink how I “show up” as a librarian.
References
Academy of American Poets. (n.d.). Glossary of Poetic Terms: Ekphrasis, Haiku, Haibun, Prose. Academy of American Poets. https://poets.org/glossary
hooks, b. (1996). Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood. Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Native Land Digital. (2021). Territory Acknowledgement. Native Land Digital. https://native-land.ca/resources/territory-acknowledgement/