Tonya E. Walls, PhD
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Writing Our Lives:  An Academic Sojourn to Ghana...

8/28/2018

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Back in July, I was afforded an opportunity to travel to Ghana as part of an academic sojourn of Black Women scholars participating in the Full Circle “Writing Our Lives” Retreat. Though I expected the experience to change me, never could I have imagined how transformative spending time reflecting, writing, and exploring a shared historical legacy with four amazing sisters in academia might be. Guided by our hosts, Black Woman scholar, Dr. Cynthia Dillard of the University of Georgia, and her life partner and native Ghanaian, Henry, we entered the “Door of Return” at the Cape Coast Slave Dungeon, once a door of “No Return” for our enslaved ancestors, and together we explored what it meant to be a child of Africa’s diasporic village. We visited the home of W.E.B. Dubois, now a museum, where we (re)discovered the ‘Brownies, a newsletter written to remind Black children of their value and worth. We (re)traced the footsteps of our enslaved ancestors by traversing the trails they were forced to walk after being captured by slave raiders, and poured libations to remember the legacy of resilience and resistance they left us. We washed our feet in the same river our ancestors were forced to bathe in before being branded, sold, and marched off to the dungeons and cried tears of simultaneous pain and joy as we set eyes on a village established near this same river, reminding us of the strength of its founder, a Ghanaian woman who escaped her jailors and ran for her life, refusing to live enslaved. We marveled in the beauty and Grace of Ghanaian women and girls as they carried the day’s load atop their heads and we waded in the authenticity of the love the Ghanaian people gave to each other and us – their smiles and welcoming spirits reminding us that we and they are one - brothers and sisters, cousins, aunties and uncles, family and friends, mothers and fathers, all children of the same village, one - how sweet it felt to (re)turn home. But mostly, we wrote. We wrote, and we wrote, and we wrote more! Putting pen to the page and fingers to the keyboard, we wrote of coming home, of finding and embracing a new way to be Black and Woman, of learning to love our people and the rich land upon which our first spirits were nurtured, of embracing the past and looking to the future, of becoming a sisterhood of mentorship teaching each other through the stories we shared, tears we cried, and laughter we dared laugh out loud, of breathing in every bit of the essence of Black love shared with us on a coast that felt like home but was so far away, and living this love given so willingly, loudly and proudly through the legacy we would come to create as Black Women scholars learning to BE, even as we also were (BE)coming! We wrote our lives because in Ghana, our lives wrote US!

I am so grateful to have had this time with my sisters in academia. We didn’t know each other when we arrived on Ghana’s shores, but through one shared experience, I, with each of these women by my side, fell in love with myself all over again. I fell in love with my womanhood, my Blackness, our people, our homeland, our historical legacy, writing, and what each of these things mean for the children who will take up the writing that I leave behind when my time on Earth is done. I am prayerful that I will use the Grace that has been afforded me in having this ‘Writing Our Lives’ experience to write my best life for our children, and I will start by paying it forward to the children of Ghana who taught me the most about what it means to write our lives on purpose- the children with whom I shared time and space during this journey, the children at the Cynthia B. Dillard School in Mpeasem, Ghana.

I was blessed to have my trip to Ghana include the children and teachers of this amazingly special place. They hosted us for a day at the school where we witnessed the most amazing spirits, heard them recite incredible poetry, and experienced firsthand the lessons and learning they experience each and every day. As you view the students' faces in the pictures, I'm sure you can imagine how much they impacted my heart and soul, mostly because they and the families in their village take nothing for granted, not even the opportunity to learn and "study" and to be educated in a school with the love and support of Dr. Dillard, Henry, their village, and the kind hearts who have committed their time and money to building and supporting the school in which they learn.

After spending time with the children, my plan is to sponsor a Ghanaian girl whose dream is to become educated so she can return to her village prepared to gift back the gifts bestowed upon her by it, and I am reaching out to each of you to ask that you join me in paying it forward by giving whatever you can to help the village complete their vision of building and sustaining the school. It takes a mere $100 to cover a child’s education at the Cynthia B. Dillard School for one year. This includes costs for a uniform, books and materials, school fees, and meals during school hours. However, whatever you give will be put to good use, including towards cost to finish building the part of the school that houses the pre-kinder classrooms (for our babies ya’ll). Please join me in giving. Let’s gather our collective resources in the spirit of Ujima and Ujamaa and help our Ghanaian babies write their own lives. Give what you can. Every little bit counts. And by all means, pass this on so your friends and family can join you. The link to donate to the Cynthia B. Dillard School in Mpeasem, Ghana is included below. Thank you for not passing on this opportunity to love on the babies in our diasporic village. Thank you for giving. But most important of all, thank you for joining me in writing our best lives!


To obtain more information about the school, and make a donation, please visit the website http://givebuildshare.org/ where you will see photos, a video, and the smiling faces of the babies of the Cynthia B. Dillard School. If you made it this far, thanks for your time, consideration, and prayerfully your donation.


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Life through Living...Living through Life:  To Dr. Tonya Walls Written by Erica Kristina Reid

1/10/2018

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I am sharing a poem that was gifted to me in celebration of my recent graduation.  The poet is a beautiful spirit known as Erica Kristina Reid.  She is my femtee. Like her poem, she is also a gift to us all, one delivered by the universe, to change the lens through which we each view the world!   In the case of her poem, we are challenged to understand the power of the femtor-femtee relationship in higher education, especially for Black women.  Through poetic verse Erica illustrates why higher education must make good on its claim to recruit more faculty women of color.  If for no other reason because the bonds they share serve to sustain and retain the excellence they represent when the culture and climate of the institution is not enuf. I chose to post the poem Erica gifted to me because I need to share her gifts with the world.  Why?  Because even if the world doesn't know it yet, Ms. Erica Kristina Reid, soon to be Dr. Reid, will one day set the world as we currently experience it on fire! Here are my femtee's words on fire...may they speak life into you in the same way they do so for me...

I saw fire today reaching out and in between

She moved the ground we were standing on
Transformed the form of our being
 
I heard life screaming out to me
Challenging me to change the course of my journey
Leaning and swaying as she spoke her truthful story

While love washed over each seat and every wave

Something whispered deep down in our souls with each sway she made
 
I saw my mother in you,
her soul reaching out from deep waters stretching across the Egyptian sea
 
I felt fire breathing out of you
from the crevices of each part of your inner most being
It moved the way we thought about revolutionizing the spaces we see
 
We cannot change what we do not acknowledge
We need to see beyond our individual knowledges
 
It is in the stories we tell, the lives we speak that bear witness to the history
 
My sister of many mothers from Africa and beyond
Keep breathing life through the stories of the untold and the ones that have gone.

Mother earth from the fire you cast may our lands be transformed
Into the lives we once never had or the ones we once dreamed of. 

Today was an important day.  I wrote this poem not just because of the path you have taken to fulfill a promise to your Big Momma but also for the example you lived to get to that promise. I am sitting at my desk now and allowing myself to reflect on the experience of vicariously watching you for the past almost two years and I want to scream at the top of my lungs-THANK YOU. Not just to you, but to your beautiful mother who birthed you, and to her beautiful mother who birthed her, and to the villages along the way that sustained them and gave you the foundation that you stand on.

There is something about the beauty of the African soul that sits deep within me. Today I saw you becoming the greatness you were born to be as so many of our ancestors have already done. So, in my Caribbean tongue; I say Auntie Tonya- Respect! in the most humble and gracious way. Thank you for showing up and being you always. Thanks also for helping me through my journey of attempting to learn in spaces, and with suitcases that are not always welcoming to change.

 
I wish you many more spaces where you continue to set the world on fire.
 
With love
Erica Kristina Reid- Your Femtee


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Spirit Moves in Fourth Space: Reclaiming My Blackness

12/28/2017

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Spirit moves through space and time
Trying to find home again
That place where border crossing is not necessary
Because borders don't exist
Boundaries are blurred
Self is collective
And collective is self
The universe is perfect
Nature is complete
And the body is gifted the Grace universe provides

Spirit moves through space and time
Trying to find home again
That place where omega meets alpha and light no longer shades darkness
Where air, and water, and earth meet
And person and personhood become one
Where breathe equals life
And life meets spirit
Where spirit is complete
And the soul is gifted the Grace universe provides

Spirit moves through space and time
Stepping out of first space first
No more hiding within the walls of the only earthly home self and spirit has ever known
Where love is unapologetic 
And personhood is nurtured 
But spirit, living in self, must hide

Spirit moves through space and time
Stepping out of second space too
No more switching codes and wearing masks
Silencing tongues and 
hiding behind respectability and identity politics
No more!

Spirit moves through space and time
Stepping through and over third space
Where yearning for understanding within public places become normative
And sharing ways of being becomes the roots of my talents growing in someone else's garden
No more consuming my culture 
And leaving me starving for myself
This fruit I bear, belongs to me!
And watching me! It!  fade to white! ness! in third space
No more!

Spirit moves through space and time
Unapologetically reclaiming fourth space
Not first space, or second space, or even third space
"FOURTH SPACE"
space void of reconstructions of uncritical multicultural co-constructions 
Not built in the waste of Europe's colonial project
A space without remnants of self retold as half-truths 
Half-truths narrated in the tongue of the oppressor's performance
A space resistant to disrupting everything in me and dismantling nothing!
A space blind to calls for transformation wrapped in sweet drippings of progressive liberalism, 
A space that refuses to give in to language appeasement, patience, and time as enough!
A space I reclaim as my own! OURS!

Spirit moves through space and time
Standing here in fourth space
Looking back no more
Unapologetic and unafraid
Walking in indigenous ways of being and knowing
Speaking in mother's tongue
Reclaiming cultural truths
Engaging spirit and uninhibited personhood
Being
And becoming
No longer seeking
Home Again

Spirit moves through space and time
Trying to find home again
That place where border crossing is not necessary
Because borders don't exist
Boundaries are blurred
Self is collective
And collective is self
The universe is perfect
Nature is complete
And the body is gifted the Grace universe provides

Spirit no longer moves through space and time
Because she has arrived
Out of the light that became Whiteness and restoratively reclaiming the darkness that is my Blackness!
Liberated and liberating
In Fourth Space! Home Space! My Space! Our Space!
In this Space, Spirit Moves!

MY POETIC REFLECTIONS ON MY POETRY
I hear folks speak about "creating space" in the academic worlds I inhabit.   It seems everybody is in the practice of creating or needing space.  It's almost laughable!  Almost!  Until it's not! 

When I consider the discourse of “creating space" within the context of the colonial project it is no longer laughable.  In this context, space becomes something that whiteness hoards for itself while those living outside of it grovel to be let in.  Whiteness owns this space we speak of; explicitly and implicitly, in ways that endow it and those living within it with the right and privilege to share it, give it back to us, make us ask for it, so they can create it for us again, as if space is not something we already collectively inhabit, have inhabited in the past, and will inhabit in the future!  And because whiteness claims space was its own, a "thing" that others must ask for, and/or be granted to inhabit and use, we do just that, we ask for it, and it is granted, or not, and in this way, this phenomena of creating space, and the discourses that live within, becomes yet another tool, used by the oppressor, to advance the colonial project!  


When I consider the discourse of space in this way, it lends voice to the early musings of Julia Anna Cooper whose works breathe life into my own multi conscious musings, giving birth to my questions: How does one gift another, space, time, and place?  Are these things not something already gifted to us by the universe simply because we ARE?  I might conjecture the answer to the latter is an emphatic Yes!  They are!  I guess that's why when I hear folks, including self, talking about creating and needing space, my initial reaction is an inner eye roll, causing me to engage some pretty clever self-talk to remind myself that space as a property right to be gifted to others is part of the lie called whiteness that the colonial project created!  

What is whiteness anyway?  No, not white people, though  many live within its trenches.  Whiteness is a lie that forces us to believe in white supremacist ideologies, even when we don't know we harbor them.  Whiteness creates the socially constructed lies that inform our sensibilities about people, places, and things-sensibilities that would have us believe that all things white are right.  Whiteness also forces us to view blackness as its diametrical opposite.  It is not!  Blackness is not dependent upon whiteness to exist, just as my Black body is not dependent upon whiteness to gift me the space to be.  Blackness existed before whiteness was created!  This I know because the existence of diametrical extremes, bifurcated positionalities, and opposite sides of the same coin is also an alternative fact that whiteness has created and requires us to believe to survive and thrive.  The truth?  There is no either or.  There only IS!    And the truth?  Blackness is that thing we call alpha and omega.  It is truth before we created a white lie.  It is grace and faith without knowing the lie whiteness created because in blackness we could not see the lie.  We just were!  Blackness is taking up space the universe gifted and reclaiming it as our own without waiting for whiteness to gift it to us, create it for us, make it with us, because like Blackness, space too, just IS!  And within it, my spirit moves freely, allowing me to BE even as I am BECOMING!

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A Call to Action for Black Girls Pushed Out!

10/20/2016

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I recently attended a community meeting for the local chapter of President Obama’s initiative ‘My Brother’s Keeper’.  I was the only female in the room.  As far as I could tell, these monthly meetings provide local education and service organizations with a forum to share resources in support of Black and Latino male students at-risk of being pushed out of PK-12 schools and into the school-to-prison pipeline.  The school-to-prison pipeline is the name used to describe the very real phenomena of students of color, primarily Black and Latino students, being targeted for excessive disciplinary actions and subsequently suspended and/or expelled from schools.  These suspensions and expulsions make them disproportionately at risk for dropping-out of school, and entering the prison industrial complex as a result.  Currently, black girls were suspended six times more than white girls, while black boys were suspended three times as often as white boys, making the relative risk for disciplinary action higher for Black girls when compared to White girls than it is for Black boys when compared to white boys.  Now while I applaud the brotha's for stepping up to take care of our baby boys, and absolutely understand the need for such a forum for Black boys at-risk of being pushed out,  I can't help but lament the gendered approach we as an educational community have taken to the school push out and school-to-prison pipeline phenomena.  As  I sat in that 'My Brother's Keeper' meeting, the only female in the room, I was also reminded of national scholar Kimberle Crenshaw's  urgent call to action for Black Girls.  Crenshaw reminds,  “As public concern mounts for the needs of men and boys of color through initiatives like the White House’s My Brother’s Keeper, we must challenge the assumption that the lives of girls and women - who are often left out of the national conversation – are not also at risk.”  I agree with Kimberle, and it's why I decided to post this week's poem, written after a classroom visit in which a Black male teacher, who taught in a school run by a Black male principal and a Black female assistant principal, in a Black community, just couldn't see the #BlackGirlMagic ways of expressing herself that a beautifully bouncy little girl named Anaya chose to express her Black Girl  'magichood'!  I left the room that day asking myself what happens when we no longer recognize our own ways of expressing ourselves.  Do we then too become the perpetrators of the PUSH OUT?  As I often do, I went home and poured my thoughts into my journal.  This poem, though simple, are those thoughts.  I wrote this poem for Anaya, in her voice, and for all of the other little Black girl Anaya's out there, who are fighting for their rightful space, and place, and time to just BE who they are, in all of their beautiful Black Girl 'Magichood'!  This is for you little Black Girls!  We are fighting so that one day you, like us, can express yourself authentically, and be seen, and loved, and cared for, and nurtured, and understood, and TAUGHT...without being PUSHED OUT!

Black Teachers!  Why Don’t You See Me Anymore?
A Poetic Counter Narrative from a Black Girl Pushed Out
What happens when my teacher, the dark chocolate man with skin like my own doesn’t see me anymore!
What happens?
What happens when my black female body has been rendered invisible by the one person designed to notice it!
What happens?
What happens when my teacher, the dark chocolate woman with skin like my own doesn’t see me anymore!
What happens?
What happens when my skin, wrapped in the same rich soil as hers becomes unrecognizable! 
What happens?
What happens when my teachers, bodies dipped in the same dark chocolate skin like mine don’t see me anymore!
What happens?
What happens, when my skin becomes the problem in this Black Space, managed by these Black bodies who don’t see me anymore because they have surrendered to Whiteness in search of a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist but that they have found in my body whose skin is wrapped in the rich soils of our African heritage!
What happens?
Does Whiteness force Blackness’ surrender?   Has it convinced my Black male and female teachers and school leaders, with bodies whose skin has been dipped in the same dark chocolate as my own but who don’t see me anymore, that I am no longer worth seeing?
Is that what happens?
Does my Black body, wrapped in a blackness as rich as the soils of my African heritage suddenly become...
Too loud!
Too Boistrous!
Too Unapproachable!
Too Angry!
Too Defiant!
Too Aggressive!
Too Naughty!
Too much of a distraction!
The problem! In need of being surveilled!
Is that what happens?
YES!
That’s what happens!
That is what happens when my teachers, and school leaders,
the dark chocolate men and women, with skin like my own, can no longer see me anymore!
On that day, when my teachers, and school leaders, the dark chocolate men and women, with skin like my own, who no longer

saw me anymore, my beautiful Black female body wrapped in skin as rich as the soils of my African heritage was…
Margenalized!
My Voice Silenced!
That’s what happened! 
It happened at school! 
Slowly at first! 
So slow that nobody but me saw it happen! 
That’s what happened!
It happened in a Black space, managed by Black bodies whose skin was wrapped in a blackness just as Black as my own Blackness, the one as rich as the soils of my African heritage, and adorning the beautiful bold bodies of my Black male teacher, my Black male Principal, and my Black female Assistant principal…all of them, dark chocolate, with skin like my own, but who didn’t see me anymore!
So my Blackness faded!  I gave up!  I tried to tell them that it was happening!  But they couldn’t see me!  Nor could they hear me!  Whiteness had reared its evil head and rendered me invisible
And so too had the people designed to see me…
So now,
I am just
another Black Girl, skin wrapped in a blackness as rich as the soils of my African heritage,
body marginalized, voice silenced…
just another Black girl! Pushed Out!
By my teachers!  And school leaders!
The dark chocolate men and women with skin like my own, and designed to see me, but who don’t see me anymore!
That’s what happens!
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A Reflective Poem for My People!

10/16/2016

16 Comments

 
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There are times when I wonder if we will ever defeat this European experiment called colonialism.  I also wonder if we will ever return to those pre-colonial days when our people were nurtured and their humanity embraced.  I wonder these things for our children, especially as I serve in schools where their humanity is stripped away and their bodies subjected to colonial violence wrapped in the psychological and emotional underpinnings of low expectations, poor instruction, racist pedagogies, and deficit thinking.  During these times of my wondering I ponder education and schooling, and as I ponder, I also imagine education before the colonial experiment.  My spirit yearns for those days, those days I see in my imagination, even as I know that they are not imagined at all.  I write this poem in the midst of such ponderings, from the depth of my spirit, and as an anti-colonial call for restoration back to the days when education nurtured the very spirit of "My People"!  This is for the people, a poem of reflection, in honor of the children:  My People!

My people, OUR PEOPLE,  
wore skin as rich as the soils upon which their feet walked, 
shades of black and brown, imbued with hues of yellow, shaded in tones of red, 
 a richly diverse people,  
speaking a plethora of languages across many diverse lands practicing varied 
religions, traditions, and modes of knowing.  
Diverse! Yet one! 
 
And the children? 
They learned… 
learned what they lived and lived their experience! 
Values and knowledge, shared through tongue,  
tales woven through story,  
characters built, spirits developed, accomplishments honored,  
ways of being reinforced. 
Listening gave way to life, 
life gave birth to the people –the people gave birth to humanity
humanity? – it nurtured, preserved, extended  
UNTIL
 
THEY CAME!
They came dressed in sheep’s skin, speaking in forked tongues
pulling wool over eyes
turning truths into lies
humanity disrupted
tongues silenced
bodies broken
lands stolen
tribes torn apart
stories transformed, the people's ways?  forever changed!
Characters seized, spirits crushed, accomplishments hidden away
ways of being pushed to the margins!  Silenced!  Rendered invisible!
 
And the children?
They learned…
learned what they lived and lived their experience!
white privilege, patriarchy,  and colonial oppression shared through schooling
tales woven through institutions reminding them of their worth
or lack thereof
teachers telling tales, tall on whiteness, short on cultural relativity
spirits crushed, souls destroyed, minds enslaved, life taken away, 
the people no more - emotional and psychological violence!
Violence birthing ethnic genocide
and ethnic genocide birthing 
this thing we call race - RACE
nurtured, preserved, extended, and
the people no more - dehumanized - marginalized – silenced – racialized!
BUT WAIT
the people?  We are here!  We ARE HERE and we fight back!
the people, WE, the people
wearing skin as rich as the soils upon which our feet walk
shades of black and brown, imbued with hues of yellow, shaded in tones of red, 
 a richly diverse people,  
speaking a plethora of languages across many diverse lands practicing varied 
religions and traditions, presenting in diverse sexualities, uniquely abilitied, embracing gendered modes of knowing.  
Diverse, yet one! 
 
And the children? 
They will learn!
Learn from WE the people!  The people are US!  Teachers! 
We the people will teach and our children?  They will learn…
learn what they live and live their experience! 
Values and knowledge, we will share through our tongues,  
tales we will weave through story,  
their characters we'll build, their spirits we will develop, their accomplishments we will honor,  
ways of being we will reinforce. 
drawing on our rich histories we will remember our legacies
invoking the land we will nurture our connection to spirit
by telling our stories we will honor our elders and pay tribute to the ancestors
proudly and together, we will walk to the center, moving across borders 
and refusing to stay on the margins!  Not silenced or rendered invisible
We will stand proud and tall, raising our voices and fists in revolution
we will break the chains of mental slavery, rejecting this thing called race
right here, right now, in this space
we will de-center whiteness and re-center US
fear will not stop us, white shame will not cause us to retreat
we will not allow our efforts to be appropriated or coopted
control, white privilege will not take
colorblindness? we will shade with the same rainbow
 flag that we wave with pride when heteronormativity shows its ugly head
and its sister hegemony? we will stamp out each and every time 
whiteness forgets that it  must, and can only be allies, not saviors!
this will not become their story...no peace corp antics will reside here
here in this space, at this time, on this day, for our children, in our communities
we will take back our schools
we will not stay silent, we will raise our voices loudly
We the people – US
We are teachers kissed by the sun and WE WILL TEACH!
 
and the children?
they will listen.
they will listen and they will learn
learn to listen
Listening will give way to life, 
life will give birth to the people –the people will give birth to humanity
humanity will give birth to a reclamation of us
we will become one people again, 
nurtured, preserved, extended 
for as long as we remember to raise our voice, fight our fight, teach our children, tell our stories 
woven and shared through the lives and experiences
 Of OUR PEOPLE! 
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    TonyaTalks EquityMatterz

    Welcome to TonyaTalks Equity! This blog space will soon be full of radical poetic ramblings meant to capture my lived experiences as an early scholar activist committed to equity and racial justice. Watch this space ya'll.  I am busy working it out, and the poetic ramblings that appear here will no doubt cause a rumble!

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"One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world!" ~ Malala Y.


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