In which Ismatu Gwendolyn, new to the healing profession and rooting in revolutionary thought and action, provides structure for their studies in public.
As my Auntie Dequi says, “Struggle is protracted.”
What we are not about to do is sit up here and study five things for five seconds. And I’m guilty of this! I constantly fight the desire to be fresh and topical and marketable. I want to be widely received and widely appreciated. Of course I do. In the past, I have moved quickly though trending topics to provide bite-sized analysis good for a short video. That’s not nearly enough time to learn and learn well.
[Editor’s Note]: I will also be fr in saying, did I realize y’all were paying attention? Did I care about social media? I thought TikTok was a kids dancing app. I didn’t realize what I have the opportunity to do.
I have to be what I wish to see in this world. In studying in public, I both create a new standard for myself in terms of engagement with online community, create the means for online communities to study together, and create new lenses of possibility for anyone else with desires to learn, teach, and heal in ways that don’t require us to be extractive.
Revolutionary Healers: Studies in Sovereignty (ft. The Magic Expanding Syllabus)
Discord: https://discord.gg/SHXhzAKr
Objectives of Revolutionary Healers (Study): October 2023 through February(ish) 2024
* aids in establishing myself as a perpetual student/teacher: I am not an or the expert. I am not the authority. I have no desire to tell you what is a true, certain, fact and what is a bad, false, take. I want to study in public and show my work, in research, thought, and analysis. I want to read slowly enough for people to read alongside me and ask questions. I learn by way of learning in real public and in real time. I learn by answering questions and grappling with you all, whether I am “right” or “wrong.” I am unconcerned with universal truth, I am concerned with understanding the following: (1) what is possible? (2) what I conceive of as impossible? and (2a) who told me that I, or we, could not do that? Why?
* highlights my court and company: I want to study my teachers in public as a means of providing source material. I recognize this as one of the most valuable parts of my collegiate experience, where people that I had kinship with took their access to infrastructure (professors navigating an academic institution) and guided me along the study of their teachers.
* in studying in public, I also give us the means to talk about what we learn in community. I have created a discord for anyone that would like to talk about what I study in public. I will not be in this discord. I am not learning another social apparatus. I am creating this to fill a continually requested social need.
* sets up us well for continuing studies: what we learn today builds on what we learn tomorrow and yesterday. On my platforms, we have been studying mutual aid (via Mutual Aid by Dean Spade) and care infrastructure (via The Care Manifesto by The Care Collective). We now study these ideals in action, with present and previous day examples of revolutionary caretaking. We take these lessons into account within our daily lives so that our studies sharpen and hone our actions, which become restorative and expansive enough to create the need for more study. This, in effect, is the protracted process of world-making.
Preliminary Questions for Critical Analysis
(1) Who wrote it?
(2) For what audience?
(3) For what purpose?
(4) What’s missing?
I ask that you consider me critically.
My name is Ismatu Gwendolyn and I am committed to learning and feeling through the sticky nature of human connection— the study of love, or the lack thereof. In this world, love means liberation. I have scholastic dedication to African-American studies, global health, clinical social work and poetry, and I have academic histories and roots at Northwestern University and The University of Chicago in the United States of America (in and around Chicago, IL). I am a Sierra Leonean Black US-American personally and generationally from the mountains. I am an information anarchist and I act on that politic by learning, growing, and sharing what I learn, both on my TikTok and Instagram where I do personal + political education, and most especially here with you all, in the essays. All of this, along with my work as a mental health professional, is and will remain free of charge. As of writing this, I am 25 years old.
I write for the public, for anyone that considers themselves to be of the People and for the People that grieve the current state of the world, and what it does to us. I study and document my process so that we, as a whole, can act on our grief, re-understand what is possible, and find spaces of sovereignty which might give way to peace.
I conduct this series of analysis for the following reasons:
* to entice us into long-form, protracted study capable of fitting into long-form, protracted struggle
* to commit myself to working for my communities rather than extracting from them
* to recruit aid in providing my healing work for free, which places me in precarity
* this includes: monetary aid (one-time or recurring so I can pay for the expense of living), time and attention invested in study, discussion with people you are in community with (in physical person or online), action in one’s life (in physical person or online)
* to prepare myself well for the life I have signed up for, as a healer engaging in revolutionary sovereignty as consistent praxis
It is your job to consider what is missing from my analysis and what I choose to not share. This is how you imagine me complexly, as a human being on a stage rather than as a two-dimensional figure of entertainment that lives behind your screen.
I will update this syllabus as our study roots and blooms with the appropriate links, sources, and resources.
Our first essay to consider is Chapter One: MAD IS A PLACE, from How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind, brilliantly written by La Marr Jurelle Bruce. There is a forthcoming essay to ground our analysis within the mad work of revolution. As I write my analysis, I place them here.
Make sure to join the discord for aid accessing the text.
I hope the work of your day passes through your hands with ease.
Stiff resistance,
IG