Thanks for offering us these expansive questions, Tiya. My mind darted off in so many directions! It seems to have finally settled on Harriet Jacobs’ experience of hiding from her enslaver for seven long years. When I think of Harriet’s years of exile in her grandmother’s tiny attic, I imagine her as a kind of monk — someone who has disconnected from the world as they’ve known it and is imagining a new framework that doesn’t exist yet. Sometimes there’s strong spiritual power in this liminal state.
Her maternal grandmother and aunt make this refuge possible, supporting Harriet’s determination to maintain her identity as she choses and protect her children. While this isn’t freedom, it’s not slavery either. Even though it’s physically tough, she finds spiritual nourishment in her exile. Perhaps we can imagine Harriet’s hiding place as a sacred refuge?*
Harriet’s story presents us with essential questions. What physical comforts are we willing to give up to insure the survival of our true identity? (And those of our children?) How compelled are we to escape the human abuse of power in order to surrender to a life-affirming higher power?
I see this last question as connecting Harriet’s experiences back to the challenge of human-caused climate change. The same mental illness that propelled Harriet’s enslaver to stalk her so mercilessly for his own appetites is, at its root, the same mental illness that prays upon our society when we abuse our essential ecosystems. I wonder if the difference between Harriet’s experience and our own might be only a matter of scale?
*For more about this, see Francine L. Allen’s intriguing essay, “Examining the Theological Import of Hiding Places in Exodus and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”
These are really intriguing ideas, LC. Thank you for sharing them. The physical comforts question you raise is all too real (as I switch on a space heater because my home office/guest room is chilly in the wet, snowy weather we're having now). The Associate Dean for Diversity at Harvard Divinity School, Melissa Bartholomew, just taught a graduate course in which students slowly read Jacobs's Incidents as "scripture." I'm going to look for the Allen article you referenced (thanks!). I might also do a post on Harriet Jacobs soon . . .
Yes, Tiya, please write more about Harriet Jacobs!
Last week, I did a deep dive into the context in which she wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and began to contrast her writing with that of her employer, N. P. Willis. It's weird to realize that in 1857, they are both writing under the same roof at Idlewild on the Hudson — he in his opulent study, she (as usual) up in the “attic.” He’s composing what we might now call “nature writing” about his refuge in the country; she’s writing about (and therefore, reliving) the trauma of enslavement.
While Willis encourages his readers to leave the poisonous air of coal-powered New York City, Jacobs encourages us to leave the poisonous system of slavery. As a person of privilege, Willis thinks he can solve his problems by changing residences. Jacobs sees the flaw in this thinking. The slave-hunters can find her anywhere. She understands the source of America’s problems as systemic. A hundred and seventy-five years later, many of us are just starting to catch up to her. Maybe that’s why we’re still reading Harriet Jacobs today and not N. P. Willis?
Hi LC, I have had an image flash across my mind, too, of those two writing in the same house at the same time. However, I have never looked at Willis's writings to compare them. What you say about pollution and slavery is so interesting! You should know, as you share these ideas, that I am working my way toward a biography of Jacobs in a few years. I will always ask permission and give attribution for the source of unpublished ideas, but if you want to hold a thought close to your invest instead of posting here, you should!
Thanks for the disclosure, Tiya. Since I’m not working on Harriet Jacobs and I’m not in academia, I hope you’ll run with whatever of my ideas interest you. Your work has already helped me in so many ways that I’m happy to be able to “give back” however I can. For me, this is what Substack does really well!
I actually got the “poison” idea from Harriet’s brother, John, where he writes,
“If possible, let us make those whom we have left behind feel that the ground they till is cursed with slavery, the air they breathe poisoned with its venom breath, and that which made life dear to them lost and gone.”
(from “A True Tale of Slavery,” by John S. Jacobs, from The Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation, 1861.)
I think it’s amazing that we have these two siblings’ views of their experience being enslaved by the same people. It’s like having two narrative points of view in a novel — it makes the telling so powerful and illuminating. Maybe you can uncover more about John's life too?
Thank you so much for this, Tiya. Like you and so many other people, my activism and art projects have revolved a lot around ecology the past few years. As I was thinking about this post, I thought about a group I came across in my research called Diving With A Purpose. This is their About Us:
“We are dedicated to the conservation and protection of submerged heritage resources by providing education, training, certification and field experience to adults and youth in the fields of maritime archaeology and ocean conservation. Our special focus is the protection, documentation and interpretation of African slave trade shipwrecks and the maritime history and culture of African Americans.”
They’ve done extremely important (and athletically impressive!) historical work on shipwrecks in the Middle Passage, and they also provide education and training to young people, who share their stories in blog posts about what they’ve learned and projects they’ve worked on. One project that especially inspired me was a workshop in which the kids constructed beautiful coral trees and then planted them strategically underwater to preserve and encourage biodiversity. I love the hybrid nature of this work: aspects of traditional academic study and writing are incorporated into a collective, intergenerational, and multispecies process of literal and imaginative world-building.
I came to this blog post thinking of a new project of mine that is an attempt to bring my politics and my poetry closer together. Despite being an activist, I sometimes find the language of politics to be crude and stultifying, I strongly dislike a lot of what passes for political art, and for some reason—this can’t just be me, can it?—I often feel the need to filter my political thinking among certain intellectual types because I am worried it will make me sound unrefined. This bias led me to write poetry that was fun but that I think was too subjective and obscure for others to enjoy. These days, I want to find out how to reconcile my love of good writing with my commitment to participating materially in the creation of new worlds and the protection of beautiful ones that already exist—and also to write something that people actually want to read!
I’ve been seeking out writers who can show me the way, and the one who stands out among the rest is the Canadian poet Dionne Brand. I knew about her through Christina Sharpe’s work but hadn’t read her until I listened to an interview with her on a podcast by a friend of mine called Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. Her reading of an excerpt of her recent long poem about COVID was both devastating and a massive relief, because she found out how to say something I didn't know I had needed someone to say for three years. Also, I found it touching and refreshing that someone of her stature was willing to identify as a communist with overt revolutionary commitments. It seems to me that even many radical intellectuals stay away from that kind of talk, sometimes out of (often justified) fear of repression, but also, I think, because concepts like revolution and communism haven’t recovered from the “end of history” declared in the 90s, even on the left, and it remains a mark of maturity, at least in some circles, to discard positive and systematic postcapitalist imaginaries and to limit oneself to critique and reform.
While Butler may not have been as much as a capital-A activist as Brand, I love her stories because they carry elements of expansionary imagination precisely at a historical moment (the 80s and 90s) when, around the world, hope for revolutionary alternatives to capitalism was being violently and decisively foreclosed. Good political organizing does this, but so does good art, as do the countless improvisations and experiments in the daily lives of oppressed people, whether or not anyone ever thinks to dignify them with the (I think unnecessary) label of activist. I’ve been devouring a new collection of Brand’s poetry from Duke UP, which carries submerged hopes and histories of revolution and revolutionary art without making any apologies for it, sometimes in an overtly political register, which I appreciate, but also in ways that honor the lush infinity of impressions and encounters that, in making and remaking our world, necessarily exceed the bounds of the political. Like the people you write about, it illuminates a path for me that I didn’t know existed, and it is absolutely precious.
Hi Joseph, thanks for sharing. I think art/poetry can be beautiful (broadly defined) and accessibly political at the same time, but that there may be trade-offs in finding some kind of balance. Oftentimes when I think of this question, I consider Morrison's Beloved and Butler's Kindred together -- both novels of slavery, both effective, both shaped out of vastly different artistic choices. Your post tells me that I need to read Dionne Brand again and more closely. I have one of her books here at home, but the fact that I can't find it (I searched after reading your post) tells me something. (And as I wrote that sentence, a picture popped into my mind of where the book is!) Thank you for the info about the divers. I love the notion of "submerged heritage resources."
Thanks for offering us these expansive questions, Tiya. My mind darted off in so many directions! It seems to have finally settled on Harriet Jacobs’ experience of hiding from her enslaver for seven long years. When I think of Harriet’s years of exile in her grandmother’s tiny attic, I imagine her as a kind of monk — someone who has disconnected from the world as they’ve known it and is imagining a new framework that doesn’t exist yet. Sometimes there’s strong spiritual power in this liminal state.
Her maternal grandmother and aunt make this refuge possible, supporting Harriet’s determination to maintain her identity as she choses and protect her children. While this isn’t freedom, it’s not slavery either. Even though it’s physically tough, she finds spiritual nourishment in her exile. Perhaps we can imagine Harriet’s hiding place as a sacred refuge?*
Harriet’s story presents us with essential questions. What physical comforts are we willing to give up to insure the survival of our true identity? (And those of our children?) How compelled are we to escape the human abuse of power in order to surrender to a life-affirming higher power?
I see this last question as connecting Harriet’s experiences back to the challenge of human-caused climate change. The same mental illness that propelled Harriet’s enslaver to stalk her so mercilessly for his own appetites is, at its root, the same mental illness that prays upon our society when we abuse our essential ecosystems. I wonder if the difference between Harriet’s experience and our own might be only a matter of scale?
*For more about this, see Francine L. Allen’s intriguing essay, “Examining the Theological Import of Hiding Places in Exodus and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”
These are really intriguing ideas, LC. Thank you for sharing them. The physical comforts question you raise is all too real (as I switch on a space heater because my home office/guest room is chilly in the wet, snowy weather we're having now). The Associate Dean for Diversity at Harvard Divinity School, Melissa Bartholomew, just taught a graduate course in which students slowly read Jacobs's Incidents as "scripture." I'm going to look for the Allen article you referenced (thanks!). I might also do a post on Harriet Jacobs soon . . .
Yes, Tiya, please write more about Harriet Jacobs!
Last week, I did a deep dive into the context in which she wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and began to contrast her writing with that of her employer, N. P. Willis. It's weird to realize that in 1857, they are both writing under the same roof at Idlewild on the Hudson — he in his opulent study, she (as usual) up in the “attic.” He’s composing what we might now call “nature writing” about his refuge in the country; she’s writing about (and therefore, reliving) the trauma of enslavement.
While Willis encourages his readers to leave the poisonous air of coal-powered New York City, Jacobs encourages us to leave the poisonous system of slavery. As a person of privilege, Willis thinks he can solve his problems by changing residences. Jacobs sees the flaw in this thinking. The slave-hunters can find her anywhere. She understands the source of America’s problems as systemic. A hundred and seventy-five years later, many of us are just starting to catch up to her. Maybe that’s why we’re still reading Harriet Jacobs today and not N. P. Willis?
Hi LC, I have had an image flash across my mind, too, of those two writing in the same house at the same time. However, I have never looked at Willis's writings to compare them. What you say about pollution and slavery is so interesting! You should know, as you share these ideas, that I am working my way toward a biography of Jacobs in a few years. I will always ask permission and give attribution for the source of unpublished ideas, but if you want to hold a thought close to your invest instead of posting here, you should!
Thanks for the disclosure, Tiya. Since I’m not working on Harriet Jacobs and I’m not in academia, I hope you’ll run with whatever of my ideas interest you. Your work has already helped me in so many ways that I’m happy to be able to “give back” however I can. For me, this is what Substack does really well!
I actually got the “poison” idea from Harriet’s brother, John, where he writes,
“If possible, let us make those whom we have left behind feel that the ground they till is cursed with slavery, the air they breathe poisoned with its venom breath, and that which made life dear to them lost and gone.”
(from “A True Tale of Slavery,” by John S. Jacobs, from The Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation, 1861.)
I think it’s amazing that we have these two siblings’ views of their experience being enslaved by the same people. It’s like having two narrative points of view in a novel — it makes the telling so powerful and illuminating. Maybe you can uncover more about John's life too?
Thank you so much for this, Tiya. Like you and so many other people, my activism and art projects have revolved a lot around ecology the past few years. As I was thinking about this post, I thought about a group I came across in my research called Diving With A Purpose. This is their About Us:
“We are dedicated to the conservation and protection of submerged heritage resources by providing education, training, certification and field experience to adults and youth in the fields of maritime archaeology and ocean conservation. Our special focus is the protection, documentation and interpretation of African slave trade shipwrecks and the maritime history and culture of African Americans.”
They’ve done extremely important (and athletically impressive!) historical work on shipwrecks in the Middle Passage, and they also provide education and training to young people, who share their stories in blog posts about what they’ve learned and projects they’ve worked on. One project that especially inspired me was a workshop in which the kids constructed beautiful coral trees and then planted them strategically underwater to preserve and encourage biodiversity. I love the hybrid nature of this work: aspects of traditional academic study and writing are incorporated into a collective, intergenerational, and multispecies process of literal and imaginative world-building.
I came to this blog post thinking of a new project of mine that is an attempt to bring my politics and my poetry closer together. Despite being an activist, I sometimes find the language of politics to be crude and stultifying, I strongly dislike a lot of what passes for political art, and for some reason—this can’t just be me, can it?—I often feel the need to filter my political thinking among certain intellectual types because I am worried it will make me sound unrefined. This bias led me to write poetry that was fun but that I think was too subjective and obscure for others to enjoy. These days, I want to find out how to reconcile my love of good writing with my commitment to participating materially in the creation of new worlds and the protection of beautiful ones that already exist—and also to write something that people actually want to read!
I’ve been seeking out writers who can show me the way, and the one who stands out among the rest is the Canadian poet Dionne Brand. I knew about her through Christina Sharpe’s work but hadn’t read her until I listened to an interview with her on a podcast by a friend of mine called Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. Her reading of an excerpt of her recent long poem about COVID was both devastating and a massive relief, because she found out how to say something I didn't know I had needed someone to say for three years. Also, I found it touching and refreshing that someone of her stature was willing to identify as a communist with overt revolutionary commitments. It seems to me that even many radical intellectuals stay away from that kind of talk, sometimes out of (often justified) fear of repression, but also, I think, because concepts like revolution and communism haven’t recovered from the “end of history” declared in the 90s, even on the left, and it remains a mark of maturity, at least in some circles, to discard positive and systematic postcapitalist imaginaries and to limit oneself to critique and reform.
While Butler may not have been as much as a capital-A activist as Brand, I love her stories because they carry elements of expansionary imagination precisely at a historical moment (the 80s and 90s) when, around the world, hope for revolutionary alternatives to capitalism was being violently and decisively foreclosed. Good political organizing does this, but so does good art, as do the countless improvisations and experiments in the daily lives of oppressed people, whether or not anyone ever thinks to dignify them with the (I think unnecessary) label of activist. I’ve been devouring a new collection of Brand’s poetry from Duke UP, which carries submerged hopes and histories of revolution and revolutionary art without making any apologies for it, sometimes in an overtly political register, which I appreciate, but also in ways that honor the lush infinity of impressions and encounters that, in making and remaking our world, necessarily exceed the bounds of the political. Like the people you write about, it illuminates a path for me that I didn’t know existed, and it is absolutely precious.
Hi Joseph, thanks for sharing. I think art/poetry can be beautiful (broadly defined) and accessibly political at the same time, but that there may be trade-offs in finding some kind of balance. Oftentimes when I think of this question, I consider Morrison's Beloved and Butler's Kindred together -- both novels of slavery, both effective, both shaped out of vastly different artistic choices. Your post tells me that I need to read Dionne Brand again and more closely. I have one of her books here at home, but the fact that I can't find it (I searched after reading your post) tells me something. (And as I wrote that sentence, a picture popped into my mind of where the book is!) Thank you for the info about the divers. I love the notion of "submerged heritage resources."