Welcome to piecemeal, a space created through writing where little by little I can come to understanding what it means to be sovereign. I am choosing to share this journey in a newsletter in hopes that what I learn, struggle with, and explore can ignite desires and revelations in you, too. This is an experiment in radical honesty and risky play. On this journey, my main collaborator and thought partner will be the Land - its soil, the plants that reside within it, the waters that make life possible, the air that moves us, and the fire that sustains us.
This newsletter is inspired by two passions in my life that are becoming endless fountains of creativity: land stewardship and art practice. My land stewardship is housed in Grounds for Gratitude, a micro farm nurturing joyful kinship with land for Black gender expansive & queer people through cultivating flowers, herbs, and designing perennial greenscapes. Grounds for Gratitude exists in service to reproductive justice, my political home. My art practice spans across many forms - all of them rooted in homemaking (food, crafts, gardening, fabric, caretaking). All of my art is labor to make refuge, repair, rest, and release possible for Black people. What I create are experiments in sensuality inspired by Black queer feminisms across time/space and sparked, brilliantly, in the legacy of Harriet Jacobs’ dimension creating magic dubbed the “loophole of retreat”.1 Honestly, the land work and the art work are inextricable from one another. That is to say, they are actually one and the same achieved through differing means.
I’m imagining piecemeal will be the landing site for the revelations, curiosities, questions, and challenges that are birthed from these passions. In dreaming up this space, I wrote the following to give myself permission to be so vulnerable, so bold, and so honest to an unknowable public. It also acts as a rudimentary map of what may happen in the posts to come. I don’t know if anyone will read this or who will visit my small corner of the internet to gawk at the inside of my mind and heart. If you’re here: welcome. Please know that I am grateful for your attention and I pray that what comes from this space bears fruit for our collective liberation.
the birthing words:
“I will write a newsletter that builds and grows upon the values, curiosities, and labor that is Grounds for Gratitude. I will approach the practice of land stewardship from the first Earth, my body, and expand out. The purpose of this newsletter will be to explore how to craft sovereign spaces for oneself, our communities, and to do so with the Land as partner, comrade, and wisdom keeper. I need not have any answers in the explorations. It will be a space to explore the questions and give them the spacious considerations they deserve. I may interview. I may study. I may reference. It will be a place for me to cultivate my voice. Here, I will practice radical honesty through contemplative experimentation. I dare to be wrong and disagreed with. I dare to be firm in what feels true for me and allow the powers, people, resources, and blessings that are aligned with me to arrive. I will let it flow. It can be infrequent, it does not need a schedule. It can begin privately. I want to hone my perspectives. I want to sharpen my gaze and discernment while I soften my heart and stretch my capacities for risk and possibility.”
It is an honor to share with you. Thank you for being here.
~ d
“loophole of retreat” is the name Harriet Jacobs gives the crawlspace in her autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl published originally in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent. In the middle of the book is a chapter titled Loophole of Retreat, where she writes in depth about the physiological and psychological impact of this space where she hides for 7 years in her escape to freedom. This space is so small she cannot even stand — just 9 feet long, 7 feet wide and, at its tallest, 3 feet in height. The testimony she gives on fugitivity, resistance, mothering, and the risks necessary for freedom are recipes still useful to us today - a radical testament to the importance of Black (women’s) agency and imagination. This phrasing and her descriptions in the chapter have sparked an incredibly generative and vast site of study/experimentation in Black feminism, art, and culture. At some point in this newsletter, I’ll address the wonder that is Simone Yvette Leigh’s 2018 exhibition, 2023 conference, and body of work bearing the same name. (sidenote: Seeing this work in person in 2018 CHANGED. MY. LIFE. I’d already held Ms. Jacobs words close to heart for years but this manifestation of the concept floored me. Black women, thank you for generously sharing your genius with us all!) For now, check out the youtube channel for the conference. It’s just — *chef’s kiss* [end longest footnote ever]