Say, Listen: Writing as Care

Book excerpt: In Say, Listen: Writing as Care, scholars working within Blackness and Indigeneity model an innovative method for thinking, writing, and practicing care together. The Black | Indigenous 100s Collective emerged before the COVID-19 pandemic as a means to grapple with the sometimes-frustrating limits of life in the academy and the urgency for conversation between Black and Indigenous thinkers. Building on the 100-word writing experiment that originated with Emily Bernard at the University of Vermont in 2009, each entry is precisely 100 words and draws inspiration from the one that came before. Not linear or strictly analytical, the book articulates lives that are often illegible, suppressed, or misunderstood. Offering readers a glimpse into an ongoing, written conversation, the 100s foreground the relationship between writing and the body, conceptions of sharing space and living together in the midst of ongoing global pandemic, anti-Blackness, and Indigenous erasure. Unlike traditional academic modes of writing, these pieces create, imagine, and transgress, enacting and sustaining unique forms of kinship, relationality, and care.