Bracelets and #blackjoy
Prof. Tara Bynum's study of black pleasure
I met Tara Bynum in my first year of college, and her glasses were amazing: red or maybe blue? Definitely enormous. She was a year older and had a quiet confidence. We both worked in the College Activities office, and I loved sharing a shift. College Activities was FUN HQ on campus. We organized socials and events, and sold tickets at steep discounts—lots and lots of tickets: Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, you get it.
We inhabited different spaces on campus, but we shared many long conversations about the things we were learning and the experiences we were having. After Tara graduated, we lost touch, and it was then that I realized I didn’t know many details about her. Despite her warm and open personality, she had never divulged much personal information. That being said, I was sure about two things: she loves studying literature, and she is a proud daughter of Baltimore.
We caught up maybe a decade later. She had gotten her PhD at Johns Hopkins University, but had eventually left her native Maryland. She decided to focus on pre-1800s Black American literature. After teaching around the country, she is now an Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Iowa.
When I asked her about her favorite piece of jewelry, she quickly pointed to her bracelets, explaining that they were one way she collected memories: the good, the bad, the travel, and the closer to home. She remembered buying one of the first bangles on a 2002 trip to South Africa with her mom. Much more than that wasn't easy to unfurl.
However, it was her book, Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America, that told me much more. In it, Tara profiles four different writers: Phillis Wheatley, John Marrant, James Albert/Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, and David Walker, but not in the way we are used to. Often noted for their groundbreaking books of poetry and narratives about slavery and systemic oppression, Tara was reading for clues about something else in their lives: happiness.
In 2023, she discussed this approach with Melissa Harris-Perry on the now-cancelled news magazine The Takeaway (RIP).
You don't know about them, of course, simply by knowing that they're enslaved…..[this] is the story that they bring themselves to the table. That's largely what got me into this research was realizing as a graduate student that I had missed so much of their stories looking for what I needed, looking for the resistance that felt familiar to me.
Most of us who have studied or are familiar with these writers may know them primarily for the lives they endured. Tara wanted to know about the lives they lived.
Here is one quick example. After a cursory search, I learned that Phillis Wheatley was born in West Africa, kidnapped around age 7, and enslaved in Boston. John and Susanna Wheatley purchased her as a servant and, at some point, provided her with an education, which was highly unusual at the time. Wheatley later became the third woman and first enslaved person to publish a book of poetry. A year after "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published, the Wheatley Family emancipated Phillis. She later married John Peters and had three children, none of whom survived. She worked as a maid in a boarding house and continued to write poetry. At age 31, she died of pneumonia, impoverished. Her infant daughter died later that day.
What Tara learned: In letters to fellow slave Obour Tanner, a deeply complex Phillis Wheatley found beauty and hope in her Christian faith and strong sense of community. In a letter dated July 19, 1772, Wheatley included this passage in a letter to Tanner:
While my outward man languishes under weakness and pa[in], may the inward be refresh’d and Strengthened more abundantly by him who declar’d from heaven that his strength was made perfect in weakness!
In her introduction, Tara writes: “this is not a book about suffering,” but she is also quick to acknowledge that it’s challenging to explore themes and evidence of “happiness” in an era of oppression. Readers and academics alike have been conditioned to reading what we think we know. It’s what we cannot imagine that keeps Tara engaged.
This way of thinking is personal. In a conversation on The History of Literature podcast, Tara explains that she could have told a version of her grandmother’s life—a woman born in 1918—that focused on the Great Depression and the Jim Crow South, essentially the difficulties of her life. “But that’s not necessarily the woman I knew, the grandmother I remember. The grandmother I knew made a fantastic corn pudding for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The grandmother I knew had pet names for all of her grandchildren.”
She goes even deeper with Melissa Harris-Perry:
… I don't necessarily think tragedy is the defining feature that then allows folks to create and produce generations. I don't know that that's how I would talk about my grandparents' life, even though we can have a conversation about all of the isms, the realities of the difficulties of living in the US or even just growing older. I think that there's something else that helps to account for my literal presence. That's what I was looking for as I read the letters and poems, the narratives, and the appeals as well.
Tara’s work is an act of hope in and of itself. When she isn’t talking about her research or teaching, Tara is more reserved, even shy. I found it challenging to extract a lot of personal information about her early life and her experiences with these bracelets. I even put off writing this for SIX MONTHS because I didn’t have the material I’m used to working with. However, after listening to more interviews about her work and reflecting on all of this, I realized that Tara was indeed sharing a great deal with me. Her academic research is a means by which she understands and narrates her own life.
In my opinion, it’s a good muscle to develop. Sometimes the details we are looking for are right there, in the places we least expect.
Many thanks to Tara for her endless patience and her generosity. I loved her book, and I recommend that you check it out. Support this talented scholar HERE.
Take care of your hearts.
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Beautiful piece, as always. Loved learning about Tara. Personally, I find importance in being able to hold space for both the joy/happiness and challenges faced by my ancestors. I find the tendency is to lean to either extreme instead of embracing both.