Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Notes from Sabbatical, part 1

I wish I had something profound to say about being on sabbatical, but sadly I don't. The only insights I've gleaned from my first three days is that I don't quite know what to do with unstructured time. My days stretch endlessly before me and that freaks me out a bit. Today was better than Monday (I did actual work today), but I can tell this will take some getting used to.

All that said, sabbatical does give me some time to indulge in distractions, like this:




Clearly everybody in American has already seen this video, but I'm just now seeing it from beginning to end. And while I find the politics of the song horribly bourgeois and kind of antifeminist, I can avert eyes. I love it.

I've also been thinking about this article from Bitch: Aint I a Mommy. One of the reasons I started this blog is because I was in constant search of moomy narratives that mirrored my experience. In all the talk about "mommy wars" you rest assured that the voices of women of color (not to mention single women or working class women or lesbian women) are few and far between. I wanted to hear from women like me: nerdy black women who loved their kids and their job and were happily, mostly, doing the mommy dance. I couldn't find those voices, so here we are. Now that I'm on sabbatical, I'll have some more time to reflect on the mommy dance.

2 comments:

Southern Diva said...

I am so happy to have found you and your blog. For years I thought my ex-husband and I were the only Afrogeeks (even though we didn't have a term for it). Great stuff.

Professor Tharps said...

FYI,

There's a new book/anthology coming out edited by Yvonne Bynoe on just this topic. It's called, "Who's Your Mama? Unsung voices from the world of Motherhood." or something like that. It's stories of motherhood from women who's voices always seem to be missing from the mommy wars. it's due out on soft skull press in April I believe with a forward by Rebecca Walker.