Motivation:

This writing and learning institution is motivated by both the theoretical and practical tenets of Toni Morrison’s writing, reading, and editing praxes. Motivated by her book The Source of Self-Regard (and specifically the final essay for which this institute is named), this institute offers courses which emphasize a decolonial and intersectional approach to the written, spoken, and embodied word.

Framed through the lens of Black Feminism (always), this institution understands that how we archive ourselves, how we remember one another, and how we read the world are all ways that we root ourselves more deeply in Black life and living. This work is not about ego. It is communal. And, as Alexis Pauline Gumbs suggests, it is spiritual practice. 

While Morrison is at the heart, root, and center of this work, we also honor, regard, and sit in community with the lives, lessons, and words of Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Ida B. Wells, Zora Neale Hurston, Sylvia Wynter, Angela Y. Davis, Hortense Spillers, Octavia Butler, June Jordan, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Cade Bambara, The Combahee River Collective, and so many others. 

Objectives:

• Reading and writing Blackly and intersectionally
• Learning the art of Black Feminist Curiosity
• Rejecting the “panoply of certainties” attached to identities and identification
• Participating in the craft of communal study
• Embodying and engaging with the roles of specificity and of rigor in our words

Philosophy:

Our pedagogical approach is rooted in veneration of Black elders and ancestors. To be clear, veneration is neither praise nor worship. Veneration is wisdom and respect. As such, this work is centered on how we can write, read, and be in community with one another in ways that pay deep homage to those who made the way for us.

Questions? Email us at invisibleinkcourses at coloredconvos dot com.