Naya Jones | University of California, Santa Cruz (original) (raw)

Journal Articles & Essays by Naya Jones

Research paper thumbnail of Guest Editor Introduction: We Were Dreamt - Reflections on Black Dreaming as a Liberatory Practice

The Arrow Journal, 2023

Dreaming emerges again and again in Black expressive culture and social movements. Dreams surface... more Dreaming emerges again and again in Black expressive culture and social movements. Dreams surface in the biographies and testimonies of Black artists, medicine-makers, and visionaries. Dreams circulate in affirmations: "I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams!" In this Guest Introduction to an issue of The Arrow Journal focused on Black dreaming and Black dream geographies, I trace dream lineages in scholarship and activism. I consider the liberatory possibilities of dreaming when we lean into an expansive understanding of dreams as visioning or aspirations as well as metaphysical and intangible ways of knowing. I offer the term "black dream geographies" and return to on earlier work inspired by the life and death of Breonna Taylor, who was killed in Louisville, Kentucky (USA) in March 2020. The Introduction further describes the peer reviewed articles and essays included in the issue, as well as the poetry and art.

Note: The full issue, including peer reviewed articles and essays, is available at "Undisciplined Archives: Dreaming Across Black Geographies" is available at https://arrow-journal.org/undisciplined-archives-dreaming-across-black-geographies/

Research paper thumbnail of Reimagining Freire: beyond human relations

Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2023

Note: This manuscript is a part of the special issue "Reflecting on Freire: A praxis of radical l... more Note: This manuscript is a part of the special issue "Reflecting on Freire: A praxis of radical love and critical hope for science education," guest edited by Betzabe Torres Olave, Sara Tolbert, and Alejandra Frausto-Aceves.

By bridging critical pedagogy and environmental praxis, the contributions in this forum build on Freire's legacy while stretching his work. As the authors attend to more-than-human life, they theorize and enact relational ways of knowing. Through participatory and multisensory pedagogies, they counter dichotomies between nonhuman and human nature, student and teacher. In this response, I consider how this (re)centering of more-than-human relations expands - and counters - Freire's thinking, including how he articulates humanization as a primary, liberatory aim of teaching and (un)learning. Along with insights from Black geographies and Black feminist ecologies, bell hooks guides my response. hooks critiqued and engaged with Freire's work with radical care, with space for complexity and accountability. This way of reading feels particularly suited to this forum, as the authors reimagine Freire's contributions to critical (environmental) pedagogy for the twenty-first century and beyond.

Research paper thumbnail of Incontestable: Imagining possibilities through intimate Black geographies

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2021

This editorial takes the form of a dialogue between the editors of this Themed Intervention on Bl... more This editorial takes the form of a dialogue between the editors of this Themed Intervention on Black intimate geographies. It frames the voices of the Black geographers from the USA and the UK assembled here as speaking to both the incontournability of anti-blackness as a political reality and to Black ways of knowing, imagining, and dreaming our presents and our futures against and beyond resistance to anti-blackness. The editorial celebrates the diasporic collaboration on which this Intervention is grounded and points to the possibilities of Black life and knowledge production. Note: this is the editorial for the Themed Intervention by the same name, which includes several articles:

Research paper thumbnail of Prologue: Black dream geographies

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2021

(Final Published Version): In this reflective piece, I consider what the discourse surrounding Br... more (Final Published Version): In this reflective piece, I consider what the discourse surrounding Breonna Taylor's highly publicised killing during a police raid underscores about Black epistemologies of sleep, death, and dying. By using the phrase black dream geographies, I situate this piece in conversation with scholarship on black interiority. At the same time, I extend this conversation by explicitly considering the meanings of dream or sleep in Black/African American epistemologies. Note: While grounded in Black aliveness, this piece does include details about Breonna Taylor‘s murder. Written as creative prose, every space between paragraphs is an invitation to pause as/if needed.

Research paper thumbnail of At a Planetary Crossroads: Contemplative Wisdom of Black Geographies

Research paper thumbnail of Intervention: Corner Stores, Surveillance, and All Black Afterlives

Antipode Online, 2020

As I write, Black Lives Matter protests continue throughout the United States and around the worl... more As I write, Black Lives Matter protests continue throughout the United States and around the world. All Black Lives Matter and Black Trans Lives Matter protests are drawing thousands amid news of more violence against Black trans people. At least two incidents that incited protest – the murder of George Floyd and the assault on Iyanna Dior – have involved corner stores, and corner stores figure prominently in geographies of surveillance in the United States.[1] My reflection comes from this moment and from grappling, again, with how to write about Black death (Jones 2019a). Katherine McKittrick (2014: 20) writes that the “task is … to write blackness by ethically honoring but not repeating anti-black violences”, and that one way to do this is “through reading the mathematics of these violences as possibilities that are iterations of black life that cannot be contained by black death”. Below, I practice writing blackness ethically partly by embedding {Pauses}, invitations to stop, reflect, and give reverence.

Research paper thumbnail of A Review of Latino/Latinx Participants in Mindfulness-Based Intervention Research

Mindfulness, 2019

Mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) have become increasingly popular in the treatment of stress and... more Mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) have become increasingly popular in the treatment of stress and a variety of other health concerns. Recent research has considered the usefulness of MBPs for youth and adults from historically-underserved and -marginalized populations who experience race-related stress and health disparities; however, the use of MBPs for Latinx populations is not well understood. This review examined the feasibility and efficacy of MBPs in peer-reviewed studies wherein the majority of participants identified as either Latino or Hispanic. To practice inclusivity beyond male/female binaries, the term “Latinx” is used here. Methods A systematic literature search across 5 databases yielded 20 articles eligible for inclusion. Results Generally, the existing research suggests that MBPs are feasible and acceptable in Latinx populations, and may yield positive changes in a variety of psychosocial and health-related outcomes, including mental health symptomatology (e.g., depression, anxiety), health behaviors (e.g., HIV transmission–related behaviors), and physical health indicators (e.g., BMI), although the majority of studies did not include a control group thereby limiting causal inference. Effect sizes ranged from small to large with stronger effects typically seen for mental health–related outcomes. Conclusions Limitations of the existing research include small sample sizes, a lack of rigor in intervention design, and limited description of how interventions might be culturally or socially adapted. From an interdisciplinary perspective, recommendations for future research are described, including suggestions for culturally relevant adaptations to MBPs (e.g., congruent emotion regulation techniques, analogies) and anti-oppression practices for practitioners (e.g., understanding race-based trauma and deep listening).

Research paper thumbnail of Dying to Eat? Black Food Geographies of Slow Violence and Resilience

ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2019

[Open access article @ https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1683\] How are Black f... more [Open access article @ https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1683] How are Black food geographies, both geographies of emotional slow violence and resilience? Dominant directions in health-related food research emphasize how Black food choices cause (slow) death from diabetes, hypertension, and other medical conditions. Emphasis on individual behaviors can overlook how a felt sense of the food landscape matters (Hayes-Conroy and Hayes Conroy 2016). Through the frame of slow violence and racial trauma, I consider racial surveillance in the context of Black food geographies. Biomedical studies note the attritional effects of racial trauma on overall wellbeing, while other research and media continue to document racial profiling in food spaces. For this exploratory piece, I bear witness to testimonies of racial surveillance and food geographies using GIF-making, healing arts, and autoethnography. Testimonies drawn from interviews, media, and my personal experiences underscore how surveillance and its effects are very much visible and felt for African-American and Afro-Latinx testifiers as they navigate “food while Black.” Beyond countering the “invisibility” of slow violence (Nixon 2011), I explore affective and arts-based approaches to (re)presenting and feeling through Black food geographies. Building on Black geographies, I engage with Black life (not only death) by considering testifiers’ strategies for personal and collective resilience (White 2018).

Research paper thumbnail of Critical Reflexivity: Teaching About Race and Racism in the Advertising Classroom

Advertising and Society Quarterly, 2019

Race is sewn into the very fabric of advertising, yet it remains largely absent from the practice... more Race is sewn into the very fabric of advertising, yet it remains largely absent from the practice of advertising pedagogy and from scholarship on teaching advertising. Indeed, most students begin their professional career without earnestly considering the significance of race, particularly their own, in relation to how advertising is coordinated, implemented, and received. As consumer markets continue to become more racially diverse, the relationship between race and advertising is sure to evolve—increasing in complexity and nuance. In order for the next generation of advertising practitioners to be adequately prepared for the future that awaits, advertising educators need to deepen their commitment to purposefully exploring race/racism and advertising with students. In this article, we highlight how a focus on critical reflexivity supports meaningful and lasting learning around race, racism, and advertising. Based on co-teaching an advertising and food justice course together since 2012, we outline a critical paradigm and four practices we use to foster critical reflexivity: acknowledging shared inheritance of racism, critical storytelling, deep listening, and kitchen table talk. In closing, we highlight considerations and challenges that often accompany teaching about race and racism, as well as the importance of self-care and debriefing for instructors. Throughout, we offer tools for cultivating a reflexive classroom that engages deeply and directly with issues of race and racism.

Research paper thumbnail of “It tastes like heaven”: Critical and embodied food pedagogy with Black youth in the Anthropocene

Policy Futures in Education, 2019

Young people who navigate intersecting racial, ethnic, economic, and/or geographic oppressions ar... more Young people who navigate intersecting racial, ethnic, economic, and/or geographic oppressions are often the objects of food pedagogy. Citing childhood obesity and anthropogenic environmental change, food pedagogies in the United States especially target Black/African-American youth, among other youth of color. Meanwhile, teaching and learning about food is on the rise in myriad settings, often in ways that reproduce binaries between “healthy” and “unhealthy” and “good” and “bad” foods. Grounded in hegemonic nutrition and bolstered by healthism, predominant food pedagogies perpetuate racialized assumptions about food and health. In the context of the Anthropocene as discourse and epoch, food pedagogy is likely to intensify, while climate change holds concerning implications for Black Americans. Critical and embodied approaches to food pedagogy are necessary, I argue, to address power relations and to cultivate community-led resilience. Building on Black geographies, critical food studies, and food pedagogies, I explore the possibilities of a critical and embodied pedagogy with Black American youth. I reflect on a “Favorite Meals” workshop carried out as part of an urban farm youth program in Austin, Texas, USA. Both the practice of the workshop and youth responses counter food binaries while highlighting pleasure, play, and knowledge—all of which remain underconsidered in food-related studies and pedagogy with young people. Given concerns about childhood obesity and the global scope of the Anthropocene, this article is relevant to food pedagogy with historically marginalized youth across national contexts.

Artmaking, Exhibits & Performance by Naya Jones

Research paper thumbnail of Virtual Exhibit: Dying to Eat? Black Food Geographies of Slow Violence and Resilience

Virtual exhibit @ www.nayajones.com/slowviolence | How do Black food geographies feel? How do the... more Virtual exhibit @ www.nayajones.com/slowviolence | How do Black food geographies feel? How do these feelings matter? For Black healing? For food justice? Dying to Eat is a public geography project that explores Black food geographies of slow violence and resilience. Drawing on black geographies, healing arts, and Rob Nixon’s (2011) concept of slow violence, Dying to Eat uses arts-based methods like GIFmaking to engage / feel through / raise up African-American and Afro-Latinx testimohttps://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1683nies of “food while Black” in the United States, from navigating racial surveillance to (re)claiming space. Based on interviews, media stories, and personal experiences. Dying to Eat is made possible by partnerships with Black, people of color, and indigenous makers. This exhibit is a companion to a journal article: https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1683

Book Chapters by Naya Jones

Research paper thumbnail of Receta for Radical Wholeness / Recipe for Radical Wholeness

Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices , 2019

Research paper thumbnail of (Re)visiting the corner store: Black youth, gentrification, and food sovereignty

Race in the Marketplace: Crossing Critical Boundaries, 2019

Healthy food access continues to be a focus of research, policy, and activism on a global scale. ... more Healthy food access continues to be a focus of research, policy, and activism on a global scale. In the United States, corner store initiatives seek to improve food access and health outcomes with particular attention to urban, low-income neighborhoods where African-American and Latinx youth reside. But a focus on nutrition alone can deflect attention from context, including race and racism, gentrification, and place-making. In this chapter, I visit three corner stores with African-American and Afro-Latinx (Afro-Latino) youth in a gentrifying Austin, Texas neighborhood. Drawing on Black food geographies and the food sovereignty movement, I consider corner stores from a critical and relational perspective that addresses broader power dynamics while emphasizing the everyday relationships youth make through local convenience markets. Throughout, I highlight transformative marketplace initiatives taking place in Austin and beyond. I further explore possibilities for corner store research that supports not only food access but food sovereignty.

Book Reviews by Naya Jones

Research paper thumbnail of "Start with the visceral": Bryant Terry's Afro Vegan Praxis (A Review)

In cookbooks dedicated to vegan Black Diaspora cuisine, Chef Bryant Terry abides by a mantra: “st... more In cookbooks dedicated to vegan Black Diaspora cuisine, Chef Bryant Terry abides by a mantra: “start with the visceral, move to the cerebral, and end with the political.” This review explores Terry's recent cookbooks (Vegan Soul Kitchen, Inspired Vegan, and Afro-Vegan) with particular attention to how this mantra informs their writing, framing, and audience. In the long tradition of Black American chef-authors, Terry combines personal reflection with social and political analysis. This review situates Terry's work in historical and contemporary context. In closing, I offer potential directions for teaching with Terry's work and for research. | Journal Reference: Food and Foodways, 23:127–140, 2015

Conference + Symposium Talks by Naya Jones

Research paper thumbnail of Ceremonies for Ourselves: Re-Visioning Land Justice Through the Black and Brown Body

Presentation: American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (2018)

How might embodied inquiry - ceremony, meditation, breath work - with Black, Xicanx and other res... more How might embodied inquiry - ceremony, meditation, breath work - with Black, Xicanx and other resilient communities help re-vision liberatory relationships with land? How can embodied inquiry tap into concealed stories, healing mythologies, or visions that (may) counter dominant conceptualizations of land? And how might this inquiry sustain and inform action? Building on Gloria Anzaldúa’s attention to the “inner work” of social justice, in this paper I revisit moments from my work with fellow Black and Brown communities as a Blaxicana scholar-practitioner of geography and mind/body healing. Each of the moments - from meditative hiking with other Black women to vision circles with youth of the global majority (of color) - explores relationships with land through the body. I theorize how co-participants and I (re)construct present relationships with land while reimagining the past and the future; I consider how our inner work becomes a catalyst for further action around food and land justice. Grounded in black feminist geographies, indigenous feminisms, and in the genre-shifting works of Anzaldúa and Audre Lorde, this paper presentation combines creative ethnography with embodied praxis. Throughout, I embody the "inner" practices I describe (guided meditation, visioning, breath work) and invite session attendees to practice with me. This paper contributes to on-going conversations about liberatory land justice in theory and practice.

Research paper thumbnail of Guest Editor Introduction: We Were Dreamt - Reflections on Black Dreaming as a Liberatory Practice

The Arrow Journal, 2023

Dreaming emerges again and again in Black expressive culture and social movements. Dreams surface... more Dreaming emerges again and again in Black expressive culture and social movements. Dreams surface in the biographies and testimonies of Black artists, medicine-makers, and visionaries. Dreams circulate in affirmations: "I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams!" In this Guest Introduction to an issue of The Arrow Journal focused on Black dreaming and Black dream geographies, I trace dream lineages in scholarship and activism. I consider the liberatory possibilities of dreaming when we lean into an expansive understanding of dreams as visioning or aspirations as well as metaphysical and intangible ways of knowing. I offer the term "black dream geographies" and return to on earlier work inspired by the life and death of Breonna Taylor, who was killed in Louisville, Kentucky (USA) in March 2020. The Introduction further describes the peer reviewed articles and essays included in the issue, as well as the poetry and art.

Note: The full issue, including peer reviewed articles and essays, is available at "Undisciplined Archives: Dreaming Across Black Geographies" is available at https://arrow-journal.org/undisciplined-archives-dreaming-across-black-geographies/

Research paper thumbnail of Reimagining Freire: beyond human relations

Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2023

Note: This manuscript is a part of the special issue "Reflecting on Freire: A praxis of radical l... more Note: This manuscript is a part of the special issue "Reflecting on Freire: A praxis of radical love and critical hope for science education," guest edited by Betzabe Torres Olave, Sara Tolbert, and Alejandra Frausto-Aceves.

By bridging critical pedagogy and environmental praxis, the contributions in this forum build on Freire's legacy while stretching his work. As the authors attend to more-than-human life, they theorize and enact relational ways of knowing. Through participatory and multisensory pedagogies, they counter dichotomies between nonhuman and human nature, student and teacher. In this response, I consider how this (re)centering of more-than-human relations expands - and counters - Freire's thinking, including how he articulates humanization as a primary, liberatory aim of teaching and (un)learning. Along with insights from Black geographies and Black feminist ecologies, bell hooks guides my response. hooks critiqued and engaged with Freire's work with radical care, with space for complexity and accountability. This way of reading feels particularly suited to this forum, as the authors reimagine Freire's contributions to critical (environmental) pedagogy for the twenty-first century and beyond.

Research paper thumbnail of Incontestable: Imagining possibilities through intimate Black geographies

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2021

This editorial takes the form of a dialogue between the editors of this Themed Intervention on Bl... more This editorial takes the form of a dialogue between the editors of this Themed Intervention on Black intimate geographies. It frames the voices of the Black geographers from the USA and the UK assembled here as speaking to both the incontournability of anti-blackness as a political reality and to Black ways of knowing, imagining, and dreaming our presents and our futures against and beyond resistance to anti-blackness. The editorial celebrates the diasporic collaboration on which this Intervention is grounded and points to the possibilities of Black life and knowledge production. Note: this is the editorial for the Themed Intervention by the same name, which includes several articles:

Research paper thumbnail of Prologue: Black dream geographies

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2021

(Final Published Version): In this reflective piece, I consider what the discourse surrounding Br... more (Final Published Version): In this reflective piece, I consider what the discourse surrounding Breonna Taylor's highly publicised killing during a police raid underscores about Black epistemologies of sleep, death, and dying. By using the phrase black dream geographies, I situate this piece in conversation with scholarship on black interiority. At the same time, I extend this conversation by explicitly considering the meanings of dream or sleep in Black/African American epistemologies. Note: While grounded in Black aliveness, this piece does include details about Breonna Taylor‘s murder. Written as creative prose, every space between paragraphs is an invitation to pause as/if needed.

Research paper thumbnail of At a Planetary Crossroads: Contemplative Wisdom of Black Geographies

Research paper thumbnail of Intervention: Corner Stores, Surveillance, and All Black Afterlives

Antipode Online, 2020

As I write, Black Lives Matter protests continue throughout the United States and around the worl... more As I write, Black Lives Matter protests continue throughout the United States and around the world. All Black Lives Matter and Black Trans Lives Matter protests are drawing thousands amid news of more violence against Black trans people. At least two incidents that incited protest – the murder of George Floyd and the assault on Iyanna Dior – have involved corner stores, and corner stores figure prominently in geographies of surveillance in the United States.[1] My reflection comes from this moment and from grappling, again, with how to write about Black death (Jones 2019a). Katherine McKittrick (2014: 20) writes that the “task is … to write blackness by ethically honoring but not repeating anti-black violences”, and that one way to do this is “through reading the mathematics of these violences as possibilities that are iterations of black life that cannot be contained by black death”. Below, I practice writing blackness ethically partly by embedding {Pauses}, invitations to stop, reflect, and give reverence.

Research paper thumbnail of A Review of Latino/Latinx Participants in Mindfulness-Based Intervention Research

Mindfulness, 2019

Mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) have become increasingly popular in the treatment of stress and... more Mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) have become increasingly popular in the treatment of stress and a variety of other health concerns. Recent research has considered the usefulness of MBPs for youth and adults from historically-underserved and -marginalized populations who experience race-related stress and health disparities; however, the use of MBPs for Latinx populations is not well understood. This review examined the feasibility and efficacy of MBPs in peer-reviewed studies wherein the majority of participants identified as either Latino or Hispanic. To practice inclusivity beyond male/female binaries, the term “Latinx” is used here. Methods A systematic literature search across 5 databases yielded 20 articles eligible for inclusion. Results Generally, the existing research suggests that MBPs are feasible and acceptable in Latinx populations, and may yield positive changes in a variety of psychosocial and health-related outcomes, including mental health symptomatology (e.g., depression, anxiety), health behaviors (e.g., HIV transmission–related behaviors), and physical health indicators (e.g., BMI), although the majority of studies did not include a control group thereby limiting causal inference. Effect sizes ranged from small to large with stronger effects typically seen for mental health–related outcomes. Conclusions Limitations of the existing research include small sample sizes, a lack of rigor in intervention design, and limited description of how interventions might be culturally or socially adapted. From an interdisciplinary perspective, recommendations for future research are described, including suggestions for culturally relevant adaptations to MBPs (e.g., congruent emotion regulation techniques, analogies) and anti-oppression practices for practitioners (e.g., understanding race-based trauma and deep listening).

Research paper thumbnail of Dying to Eat? Black Food Geographies of Slow Violence and Resilience

ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2019

[Open access article @ https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1683\] How are Black f... more [Open access article @ https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1683] How are Black food geographies, both geographies of emotional slow violence and resilience? Dominant directions in health-related food research emphasize how Black food choices cause (slow) death from diabetes, hypertension, and other medical conditions. Emphasis on individual behaviors can overlook how a felt sense of the food landscape matters (Hayes-Conroy and Hayes Conroy 2016). Through the frame of slow violence and racial trauma, I consider racial surveillance in the context of Black food geographies. Biomedical studies note the attritional effects of racial trauma on overall wellbeing, while other research and media continue to document racial profiling in food spaces. For this exploratory piece, I bear witness to testimonies of racial surveillance and food geographies using GIF-making, healing arts, and autoethnography. Testimonies drawn from interviews, media, and my personal experiences underscore how surveillance and its effects are very much visible and felt for African-American and Afro-Latinx testifiers as they navigate “food while Black.” Beyond countering the “invisibility” of slow violence (Nixon 2011), I explore affective and arts-based approaches to (re)presenting and feeling through Black food geographies. Building on Black geographies, I engage with Black life (not only death) by considering testifiers’ strategies for personal and collective resilience (White 2018).

Research paper thumbnail of Critical Reflexivity: Teaching About Race and Racism in the Advertising Classroom

Advertising and Society Quarterly, 2019

Race is sewn into the very fabric of advertising, yet it remains largely absent from the practice... more Race is sewn into the very fabric of advertising, yet it remains largely absent from the practice of advertising pedagogy and from scholarship on teaching advertising. Indeed, most students begin their professional career without earnestly considering the significance of race, particularly their own, in relation to how advertising is coordinated, implemented, and received. As consumer markets continue to become more racially diverse, the relationship between race and advertising is sure to evolve—increasing in complexity and nuance. In order for the next generation of advertising practitioners to be adequately prepared for the future that awaits, advertising educators need to deepen their commitment to purposefully exploring race/racism and advertising with students. In this article, we highlight how a focus on critical reflexivity supports meaningful and lasting learning around race, racism, and advertising. Based on co-teaching an advertising and food justice course together since 2012, we outline a critical paradigm and four practices we use to foster critical reflexivity: acknowledging shared inheritance of racism, critical storytelling, deep listening, and kitchen table talk. In closing, we highlight considerations and challenges that often accompany teaching about race and racism, as well as the importance of self-care and debriefing for instructors. Throughout, we offer tools for cultivating a reflexive classroom that engages deeply and directly with issues of race and racism.

Research paper thumbnail of “It tastes like heaven”: Critical and embodied food pedagogy with Black youth in the Anthropocene

Policy Futures in Education, 2019

Young people who navigate intersecting racial, ethnic, economic, and/or geographic oppressions ar... more Young people who navigate intersecting racial, ethnic, economic, and/or geographic oppressions are often the objects of food pedagogy. Citing childhood obesity and anthropogenic environmental change, food pedagogies in the United States especially target Black/African-American youth, among other youth of color. Meanwhile, teaching and learning about food is on the rise in myriad settings, often in ways that reproduce binaries between “healthy” and “unhealthy” and “good” and “bad” foods. Grounded in hegemonic nutrition and bolstered by healthism, predominant food pedagogies perpetuate racialized assumptions about food and health. In the context of the Anthropocene as discourse and epoch, food pedagogy is likely to intensify, while climate change holds concerning implications for Black Americans. Critical and embodied approaches to food pedagogy are necessary, I argue, to address power relations and to cultivate community-led resilience. Building on Black geographies, critical food studies, and food pedagogies, I explore the possibilities of a critical and embodied pedagogy with Black American youth. I reflect on a “Favorite Meals” workshop carried out as part of an urban farm youth program in Austin, Texas, USA. Both the practice of the workshop and youth responses counter food binaries while highlighting pleasure, play, and knowledge—all of which remain underconsidered in food-related studies and pedagogy with young people. Given concerns about childhood obesity and the global scope of the Anthropocene, this article is relevant to food pedagogy with historically marginalized youth across national contexts.

Research paper thumbnail of Virtual Exhibit: Dying to Eat? Black Food Geographies of Slow Violence and Resilience

Virtual exhibit @ www.nayajones.com/slowviolence | How do Black food geographies feel? How do the... more Virtual exhibit @ www.nayajones.com/slowviolence | How do Black food geographies feel? How do these feelings matter? For Black healing? For food justice? Dying to Eat is a public geography project that explores Black food geographies of slow violence and resilience. Drawing on black geographies, healing arts, and Rob Nixon’s (2011) concept of slow violence, Dying to Eat uses arts-based methods like GIFmaking to engage / feel through / raise up African-American and Afro-Latinx testimohttps://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1683nies of “food while Black” in the United States, from navigating racial surveillance to (re)claiming space. Based on interviews, media stories, and personal experiences. Dying to Eat is made possible by partnerships with Black, people of color, and indigenous makers. This exhibit is a companion to a journal article: https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1683

Research paper thumbnail of Receta for Radical Wholeness / Recipe for Radical Wholeness

Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices , 2019

Research paper thumbnail of (Re)visiting the corner store: Black youth, gentrification, and food sovereignty

Race in the Marketplace: Crossing Critical Boundaries, 2019

Healthy food access continues to be a focus of research, policy, and activism on a global scale. ... more Healthy food access continues to be a focus of research, policy, and activism on a global scale. In the United States, corner store initiatives seek to improve food access and health outcomes with particular attention to urban, low-income neighborhoods where African-American and Latinx youth reside. But a focus on nutrition alone can deflect attention from context, including race and racism, gentrification, and place-making. In this chapter, I visit three corner stores with African-American and Afro-Latinx (Afro-Latino) youth in a gentrifying Austin, Texas neighborhood. Drawing on Black food geographies and the food sovereignty movement, I consider corner stores from a critical and relational perspective that addresses broader power dynamics while emphasizing the everyday relationships youth make through local convenience markets. Throughout, I highlight transformative marketplace initiatives taking place in Austin and beyond. I further explore possibilities for corner store research that supports not only food access but food sovereignty.

Research paper thumbnail of "Start with the visceral": Bryant Terry's Afro Vegan Praxis (A Review)

In cookbooks dedicated to vegan Black Diaspora cuisine, Chef Bryant Terry abides by a mantra: “st... more In cookbooks dedicated to vegan Black Diaspora cuisine, Chef Bryant Terry abides by a mantra: “start with the visceral, move to the cerebral, and end with the political.” This review explores Terry's recent cookbooks (Vegan Soul Kitchen, Inspired Vegan, and Afro-Vegan) with particular attention to how this mantra informs their writing, framing, and audience. In the long tradition of Black American chef-authors, Terry combines personal reflection with social and political analysis. This review situates Terry's work in historical and contemporary context. In closing, I offer potential directions for teaching with Terry's work and for research. | Journal Reference: Food and Foodways, 23:127–140, 2015

Research paper thumbnail of Ceremonies for Ourselves: Re-Visioning Land Justice Through the Black and Brown Body

Presentation: American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (2018)

How might embodied inquiry - ceremony, meditation, breath work - with Black, Xicanx and other res... more How might embodied inquiry - ceremony, meditation, breath work - with Black, Xicanx and other resilient communities help re-vision liberatory relationships with land? How can embodied inquiry tap into concealed stories, healing mythologies, or visions that (may) counter dominant conceptualizations of land? And how might this inquiry sustain and inform action? Building on Gloria Anzaldúa’s attention to the “inner work” of social justice, in this paper I revisit moments from my work with fellow Black and Brown communities as a Blaxicana scholar-practitioner of geography and mind/body healing. Each of the moments - from meditative hiking with other Black women to vision circles with youth of the global majority (of color) - explores relationships with land through the body. I theorize how co-participants and I (re)construct present relationships with land while reimagining the past and the future; I consider how our inner work becomes a catalyst for further action around food and land justice. Grounded in black feminist geographies, indigenous feminisms, and in the genre-shifting works of Anzaldúa and Audre Lorde, this paper presentation combines creative ethnography with embodied praxis. Throughout, I embody the "inner" practices I describe (guided meditation, visioning, breath work) and invite session attendees to practice with me. This paper contributes to on-going conversations about liberatory land justice in theory and practice.