Transformative Radical Self-care by Women in African and Pan-African Spiritual Traditions: Divine Power of Joy, Lemonade Self-care, Self-love Holiday

Abstract

ABSTRACT Exploring radical self-care practices as liberatory political resistance exposes the paradox that freedom from suffering is not free or an entitlement, instead it is a daily practice. This is a particularly important political claim for the three radical self-care practices surveyed in this article: Queen Mother Maasht Amm Amen’s The Divine Power of Joy events live-streamed and held in-person in the United States; Nalokai, Omisade, and Julia’s The Lemonade Series: Self-Care and Renewal Retreat in Treasure Beach, Jamaica; and Oyabunmi’s The Self Love Holiday Retreat in Dominicale, Costa Rica. Each practice was envisioned, organized, and led by Black women linked to African or Pan-African spiritual traditions between 2018 and 2020. Drawing on participant observation, interviews, and digital print media, what emerged from these events are theories and practices influenced by a worldview reflective of a collective spiritual and political response to the afterlives of punitive public policies including Johnson’s “War on Poverty’’ and Nixon’s “War on Drugs’’ which have contributed to the othering and subjugation of Black bodies, Black experiences, and Black politics enforced through violent punishment. The execution of these punitive public policies consequently provides an enduring context for alternative forms of radical and liberatory political resistance. Intersectionality, as a liberatory practice for Black women, proved to be a useful methodology for analyzing and making sense of how the COVID-19 crisis exposed racial, health, and economic disparities, the global mass resistance to anti-Black racism, criminalization resulting in police murders of unarmed Black and Brown people, and the rise of radical self-care events. The three radical self-care practices created by Black women are examples of new legacies being forged through ongoing and evolving strategic activities and techniques that produce what I call transformative radical self-determination.