Black Women's Historical Wellness: Yoga, Tea, and Traditions of Collective Self-Care

Stephanie Evans, PhD
Professor of Black Women's Studies
Institute for Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Georgia State University

Abstract: In this presentation, Dr. Evans will discuss the study of Black women's narrative histories of health, healing, and wellness. Dr. Evans discusses what she calls #HistoricalWellness: Black women’s traditions of simultaneously practicing inner peace and working to resist oppression. Specifically, she will answer the question, "How have Black women elders managed stress?" By illuminating histories of yoga and tea, Evans shows a long, and complex history of what Angela Davis calls collective self-care.
   In more than 50 yoga memoirs, Black women discuss practices of reflection, exercise, movement, stretching, visualization, and chanting for self-care. Similarly, over 320 narratives create a historical tasting map of black tea, hibiscus, from the African Savannah to Savannah, Georgia and beyond. By unveiling the depth of a struggle for wellness, Dr. Evans explains how memoirs offer lessons for those who also are struggling today to heal from personal, cultural, and structural violence.

Department of Africana Studies Black Health and Wellness Speaker Series