Anti-Racism and Mothering

As I began to read Felicia Rose Chavez’s The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, I feel humbled as a white person, but as a human being I feel that Chavez speaks a certain peace over her readers. I am struggling to articulate all of what I want to say so I’m going to dialogue with the text a little bit.

The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop “empowers participants to do it ‘wrong’ before they do it ‘right.’ It honors participants’ influences, imaginations, and intellectual curiosities. And it affirms that every single one of them arrives at the classroom as experts in their own right, complete with a unique storytelling tradition” (Chavez 43).

I’m dreaming about how I will implement this into our argumentative writing unit and our narrative writing unit. I dream of the stories I will encounter and embrace and encourage to be shared ten times over. I know how I welcome students in and make them feel will determine how their stories and truths unfold in our classroom. I commit to what Felicia is talking about here: honor and humility. This commitment makes me feel like a medieval knight, but anti-racist and wearing lighter clothing.

And what I call feeling like a medieval knight, Felicia would call “mothering.” What a beautiful and powerful thing to call it. She defines this mothering as “will power, fortitude, grit. It is the transcendent power to multiply oneself, succeeded by the supreme humility to serve that second self. Listening is an extension of that humility, a tribute to the fact that none of us are alone. We are multitudes, mothered again and again in rhythm with time” (Chavez 49). What I find so beautiful about this definition, and truly all of what Felicia is writing about, is that in her work she is capturing truths that extend far past the workshop walls.

Oh to be the reason a child feels less alone, to help them discover a deeper and more crucial reason to write and reason to exist. I found that Chavez could so eloquently articulate the love I want to bring into the classroom. Prior to this text, I would never have used the word “mothering” because of its intimate nature; but that is why she uses it. Felicia shows that sensitivity is both a virtue and superpower. That this mothering is a natural instinct for many. With conscious awareness, we can nurture our students in a way that they can take a moment to simply exhale. Some days those simple exhales feel like the first breath ever taken.