Published in 2020 by the Feminist Press
at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406
New York, NY 10016
First Feminist Press edition 2020
Copyright © 2020 by Trina Greene Brown
All rights reserved.
| This book is supported in part by a grant from the NoVo Foundation.This book was made possible thanks to a grant from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. |
No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First printing June 2020
Cover design and interior art by Amir Khadar
Photos throughout by Jayia Kim
Text design by Drew Stevens
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.
ISBN 978-1-936932-84-9
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
This book is dedicated to my daddy, Timothy Greene (9/20/1958–1/14/2020).
It‘s because of the love and power you instilled in me that I am the liberated parent I am.
Contents
Section One: (Re)connection to Self
Story 1: Breaking Apart as a Parent
Story 2: Shifting Away from Tough Love
Story 4: Finding a Village: How to Build a Black Community
Story 5: Watering Your Creativity
Section Two: (Re)connection to Our Children
Story 6: Family Practices: Open Communication and Family Agreements
Story 7: Shifting from Rules to Agreements
Story 8: Conversations about Sex(uality) and Consent
Story 9: Conversations about History and Oppression
Story 10: Underground Railroad Museum
Section Three: (Re)connection to Community
Story 13: Expansive Family Community
Story 14: Communities of Faith
Story 16: Exploring Liberated Educational Spaces
Story 17: Visioning Liberated Schools
Story 18: Imagining Liberated Futures
Story 19: Movement Communities
Story 20: Parenting Communities
Conclusion
Notes
Glossary
Hosting a #LiberatedParent Gathering
Resources for Further Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also Available from The Feminist Press
About The Feminist Press
Introduction
In 2014, when my son was five years old, it seemed like every time I watched the news, I saw another Black person being murdered or impacted by state violence. It wasn’t only adult men and women, but young Black children’s lives that were (and still are) being taken by those sworn to “protect and serve.” The recurring images of Black bodies left in the streets after being shot by police (such as Michael Brown, an eighteen-year-old gunned down in Ferguson, Missouri, in the summer of 2014 whose lifeless body lay in the street for four hours), coupled with the historical legacy of Black bodies hanging after lynchings, compounded my fears as a Black parent. Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and Tamir Rice—are contemporary Emmett Tills. I became worried that I would become a modern-day Mamie Till-Mobley, a mother-turned-activist after her fourteen-year-old son, Emmett Till, was murdered in the summer of 1955 in Mississippi when Carolyn Bryant Donham falsely accused him of whistling at her. Mamie is a foremother to the many modern-day “mothers of the movement,” all of whom are compelled by grief to share their children’s deaths publicly with the world; it is a “club” that many Black mothers are fearful that