{"title":"Exodus Home","authors":"Jay Simple","doi":"10.47106/12566932","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47106/12566932","url":null,"abstract":"Through this project, Exodus Home, Jay Simple uses self-portraiture, archival images, sculptural installations and collage to explore the issues of migration and home. Photographs of domestic and agricultural spaces in Virginia, specifically Prince Edward County, display spaces which were occupied and or abandoned during the period of the Great Migration, which occurred between 1916-1970, when six million people escaped violent persecution in the south and arrived in northern, midwestern, and western cities across the United States. \u0000\u0000An exodus of Black people poured out of the south and into the metropolitans which are now marred by brutality upon these migrant’s descendants. Moving has become a cycle, a frontier for the possibility of home, and the boundaries of that imagination are as endless as its oppositions. These hopeful ideas rest in the hallowed wood of old barns, in the memory ingrained into a body, in the things we create to mark our existence, and the late nights spent pondering, staring into the ocean of stars on a muggy night, somewhere not good, and imagining if only for a second you could leave it all behind.\u0000\u0000This project was inspired by W.E.B Dubois who, during his research for The Philadelphia Negro, heard of Farmville, Virginia and created a ethnographic and sociological study of a place gripping with the social, economic, and political moment at the end of the 19th century, the precursor to the Great Migration. He titled this work, \"The Negroes of Farmville, Virginia: a social study\". This body of work is a testament to these ancestors who fled the South for hopes of a safe haven, and it is for their descendants who continue that struggle today.","PeriodicalId":340170,"journal":{"name":"Root Work Journal","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125855684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"If The People Could Fly","authors":"D. Diaz","doi":"10.47106/12555023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47106/12555023","url":null,"abstract":"This is a holistic idea of what could happen if Black people could take flight.","PeriodicalId":340170,"journal":{"name":"Root Work Journal","volume":" 18","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114051101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spells for Zero Capture","authors":"Glenis Redmond","doi":"10.47106/12501187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47106/12501187","url":null,"abstract":"These poems of Harriet Tubman speaks to her ability to shape shift. She stands mythical because of her escape of slavery and rescue of so many others.","PeriodicalId":340170,"journal":{"name":"Root Work Journal","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116820765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"how to disinherit loneliness in another country: a second attempt","authors":"hn. lyonga","doi":"10.47106/12570108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47106/12570108","url":null,"abstract":"With this note, I am sending you a poem. It is titled “how to disinherit loneliness in another country”. It is about a 'home going'. It interrogates the difficulties of returning home to the ancestral lands, once the body is colonised. In this piece, I am coming to terms with my own issues of returning home to nothing but death and graves. I am writing that fear away. I am making amends. I am reaching out to the ancestors and telling them my reasons for not visiting. I am seeking answers.","PeriodicalId":340170,"journal":{"name":"Root Work Journal","volume":"167 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122232270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Introduction to Birth Sovereignty: Children, Initiates, and Infrastructure","authors":"Tyrell Blacquemoss","doi":"10.47106/12513281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47106/12513281","url":null,"abstract":"This intention statement describes the ethnographic and experimental practice of modern applications of African and Black Indigenous traditional dream practices. Specifically, the focus is on birth sovereignty as it applies to the birthing and growing of children, initiates, and the infrastructure necessary for liberation. Birth sovereignty focuses our dreams and connects the groundwork of elders with the visions of the young.","PeriodicalId":340170,"journal":{"name":"Root Work Journal","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126673290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book of Instructions","authors":"Ariana Francesca","doi":"10.47106/12578311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47106/12578311","url":null,"abstract":"Through the poem, I seek to evoke the ancestral spirit calling us to freedom and guiding us to use the tools we've been given to construct our wings. Considering the prompt: what does it mean to fly from the proverbial and/or the literal plantation?","PeriodicalId":340170,"journal":{"name":"Root Work Journal","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122659249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Book of Sojourners","authors":"Blessing Oshun Ra","doi":"10.47106/12576336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47106/12576336","url":null,"abstract":"How have Black folks/art utilized flight as an act of refusal? Set in the Bronx, NY, and rooted in a poetics drawn from the heartfelt oratures of the spirituals, work songs, field hollers, the Blues, this opening chapter of The Book of Sojourners immerses us in a world strained by various ecological, health, and other crises, where we meet Safiya, a Black teenage girl, who yearns to escape her Aunt's strict religious household so she can find community members with whom she can freely be trans, and her brother Malcolm, who looks to conspiracy theories and stories about people who could fly rather than his Aunt's Christian beliefs to understand the day's vicissitudes, setting the stage for an epic journey into a struggle for self-elevation.","PeriodicalId":340170,"journal":{"name":"Root Work Journal","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116875827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Two Wings","authors":"J. Young","doi":"10.47106/12567747","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47106/12567747","url":null,"abstract":"The following poem is one of mothers and sons, of grief, of loneliness.","PeriodicalId":340170,"journal":{"name":"Root Work Journal","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114516211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Due North","authors":"Nyrie Benton","doi":"10.47106/12576195","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47106/12576195","url":null,"abstract":"When I think of flight I think of my grandmother. She spent much of her life moving from violence and battery, but found ways to love through it all.","PeriodicalId":340170,"journal":{"name":"Root Work Journal","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114683298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Reason (After Julian Randall’s ‘Icarus’)","authors":"Shirmina Geneva","doi":"10.47106/12578578","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47106/12578578","url":null,"abstract":"My mother taught me how to fly before she got her wings. Black women know the sun too well.","PeriodicalId":340170,"journal":{"name":"Root Work Journal","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131842451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}