Toni Cade Bambara asked this question 40 years ago in The Salt Eaters. Right now, it is more relevant than ever for every / body. However, how do we get well when we have not named the things that have wounded and continue to wound us? What are the connections between being well and being free? How can Black Studies be a path that helps us acknowledge the struggle of birth AND untether us from the struggles that (will) kill us? Most importantly: When or if we get free, how do we stay free?
Dr. Abegunde is the founding director of The Graduate Mentoring Center and a Visiting Lecturer in African American and African Diaspora Studies and affiliate in Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research focuses on embodied memory of the Middle Passage--the ways in which unresolved ancestral emotions shape the lives of descendants. Also, the links between ancestral wounding, contemporary violence, and illness and disease.