Kalen Nicole

 

mar·gin /ˈmärjən/
noun
1.  the edge or border of something

A lot of my life has been lived in the margin; one the edge or border of something, on the brink or cusp, somewhat uncategorizable. 

I’ve read horoscopes, taken Myers-Briggs tests, Strength Finder Assessments, personality quizzes, aptitude tests,  leadership style surveys. And I’ve consumed the results of the these assessments in hope that somehow I would learn something about myself, my nature, my talents, my future, my flaws, my strengths.

I was hoping to obtain something quantifiable, to apply some kind of metric to the cosmos, spirit, charisma, curiosity, and stubbornness that shaped my interests and decisions.

In a further search for clarity, I’ve read self-help books. And, I’m a bit of a self-help junkie, but I’ve always been. I’m an only-child, who did extremely well in school and extra-curricular activities, and just being “good”. Ss I grew older, I began to conflate success and contentment with achievement.  Achievement warped from a consequence of doing something well, to becoming the motive to pursue a goal at all.  I created goals that aligned with a version of myself I felt I should be more than who I dreamed I could be. My desire to achieve is internally derived and externally sustained through the pervasiveness of colonization and hustle culture. I didn’t realize that I had a habit of making decisions based upon an imaginative notion of success until I made a decision to pursue a goal I was not really invested in. 

Every time I write these words, they become a taboo- graduate school.

I  created a life of arbitrary measures of personal acceptability in proximity of what I would surmise as perfection. I have experienced a lot of joy in my life, I’ve received many awards, I’ve been granted a lot of opportunities, and I’ve been favored by many in authority. I believed that my opportunities and success came as a reward for my efforts, my consistency, my continuous performance of feigned perfection- as a disciplined practice of distancing myself from the most base of notions of adolescence, of young adulthood, of fun. I repressed my emotions. I didn’t drink. I didn’t smoke. I always turned my assignments on time. I spoke up in class. I got a part time job. I acted unphased by lonesomeness. I endured, I strove, I set goals based on achievement. But by 22, I had achieved all that I had associated with worthiness and I felt so alone. I didn’t feel as if anything had been earned. My achievements were just additional markers of a successful performance. Kalen Russell had earned them, but Kalen Russell wasn’t a real person. She was a shell of expectations, of pretend, of constant longing to feel seen and whole.

If I told you that a flower bloomed in a dark room, would you trust it?

I grew up in a very White community in Oklahoma. In school and extra-curricular activities, I was socialized around White standards of acceptability regarding appearance, femininity, and group acceptance. My parents supported me and validated my capabilities, worthiness, and identity, but there were members of my family and my community whose comments could dismantle my parents’ affirmations within minutes: “Why do you talk White? You can’t dance? When are you going to fix your hair?” “Why is your hair greasy?”

Black women are socialized to distill their experiences, acquiescing to hegemonic discourse (Smith, 2008). As, I tried to separate my knowledge from my experience, the incongruence between my ideals and my perception of myself expanded. I became unfamiliar to myself and felt disconnected from others.  Growing up, I assimilated in a lot of ways in order to be minimally accepted. I can now reflect and understand the implications of my assimilation and the thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors I adopted to cope under the constant scrutiny and feelings of displacement.

With repeated performance I was able to assimilate, or successfully able to look like or perform like the dominant culture (Edwards, 2008). I came to only value and present parts of myself that I seemed to be rewarded for. I cultivated my identity through a developed awareness of what language, characteristics, and behaviors were considered admirable and rejected those that were not. I found self-worth and pride in in doing the right thing or the expected thing, even if it contradicted my personal inclinations. I sought to fulfill others’ expectations of me, without fully forming an expectation of myself. Living within a racist society leads to fragmentation within an individual, creating dissonance between one’s true self and the self that is presented (Smith, 2008).

I have since come to learn that some of my self-policing has been done in order to accommodate respectability politics. Thinking about my experiences through a Black Feminist lens allowed me to understand, process, and validate my experiences (hooks, 1994).

Breathe slow and you’ll find gold mines in these lines

Self-validation provided me with respite from feeling like an outsider. I felt congruence within my thoughts, attitudes, and perspective. In Black Feminism, Knowledge, and Power, Collins (1990) utilizes a quote from Audre Lorde, “My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am…without the restriction of externally imposed definition” (p.289). 

When you’re in the mood for empathy, there’s blood in my pen

I saw little value in my perspective, I felt I had nothing meaningful to contribute, and I did not know where I fit in. Black Feminist Thought disrupted my sentiments of inadequacy by endorsed the subjugation of my knowledge. Though my graduate research focused on the creation of counter-narratives, I saw little value in my story before learning about Black Feminist Thought and recognizing that no matter how nuanced, a Black woman’s narrative offers an adequate, complete, and transformative account of the world (Haraway, 1988), or as Kendrick says, 

“Everybody else basic. You live life on an everyday basis.”

I developed a more authentic perspective of my position in society. I became more self-aware; empathetically seeking to understand how I was viewed by others and acknowledging the strengths and limitations of my perspective. I began to understand who I was in the bigger picture, “Not in the outside looking in or inside looking out. I’m in the…center looking around” (Terrace, Lamar, Ab-Soul, 2011). Understanding my positionality added to the value I placed in my narrative, my experiences, and contributions as Black woman. Becoming vulnerable to my own potential, the influence of my past, my Blackness, my positionality and my desire for connection I was prompted to assess how I was ignoring my need for community and the importance of collective action in social justice work (Fine, 1984).

Love is not just a verb, it’s you looking in the mirror

Self-definition is birthed from self-reflection. (Moraga, 1981/83). Understanding my positionality has empowered me to be more authentically curious and open to others’ perspectives, and to feel more comfortable placing value in points of “difference, divergence and contradiction” in our experiences (Fine, 31, 1984).

During the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention, Sojourner Truth challenged the socially prescribed norms of womanhood, as she juxtaposed how White women were expected to be treated, with her own treatment by men, her work, and her capacity to perform the same labor as men (Collins, 1990). Society normalizes distancing of oneself from their experiences, to minimize the influence of emotion and subjugated knowledges (Collins, 1990). Truth rejected the essentialization of womanhood, and the erasure of the Black woman’s experience in White society, by replacing an objective/positivist notion of womanhood with experience.

I used to define myself based on others’ perceptions of me, my affiliation with different groups, my GPA, my titles, and awards. As I was exposed to new information and met new people, I realized that cultivating my identity on things outside of my control was counter-productive to my development and who I wanted to be.

My identity is in Christ. I have found that the more I lean into Christ, exercise my faith and embrace everything that I am- the more whole I feel.

It’s coherent, I can hear it, mmhm
That’s your heartbeat

 Suppose a person who knew nothing about salt. You give him a pinch to taste and he experiences a particular strong, sharp taste. You then tell him that in your country people use salt in all their cookery. Might he not reply “In that case I suppose all your dishes taste exactly the same: because the taste of that stuff you have just given me is so strong that it will kill the taste of everything else.” But you and I know that the real effect of salt is exactly the opposite. So far from killing the taste of the egg and the tripe and the cabbage, it actually brings it out. They do not show their real taste till you have added the salt.

It is something like that with Christ and us. The more we get what we now
call “ourselves” out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. –C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

 “Through (my) efforts to become and know (myself), (I’ve) achieved” (Collins, p. 36, 1990).

And I know just, know just, know just, know just, know just what you want
Poetic justice, put it in a song.

po·et·ic jus·tice

We all want to be appreciated, acknowledged, and valued for who we are; but that can’t happen in the margins. You deserve your own pages inside of your own book. The basis of my book is praxis, critical reflection and action, which has been demonstrated through the post. Writing helps me to think, and personally…

I could never right my wrongs
‘Less I write it down for real, P.S.

References

Collins, Patricia Hill. (1990). Black feminist thought, knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. 14-289.

Edwards, Denise Ruth. (2008). A Search for the formation of self: How do black women born and raised in the United States describe and understand how black girls become women? Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering. 105-123.

Haraway, Donna. (1988). Situated knowledges, the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. 581-583.

Hooks, bell. (1994). Teaching to Transgress. 61-75.

Lamar, Kendrick. (2012). Poetic Justice

Moraga, Cherríe. (1981/83). La Güera. 30-34.

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. (2008). Decolonizing Methodologies. 28.

Terrace, Martin., Lamar, Kendrick., Ab-Soul.  (2011). Ab soul’s outro. On Section .80. Top Dawg Entertainment.