Grief (Work) Is Heart (Work): A Critical Race Feminista Epistolary Exchange as an Offering on Death, Grief, and Well-Being to Academia

Abstract

This article centers around my work as a critical race feminista; an academic experiencing consistent attacks on the scholarship I produce while also being a tía (aunt), an active griever, and a godmother to my eldest nephew, Solano Garcia. This is the first time that my nephew and I will have shared our most private papelitos guardados (intimate guarded papers). In this article, we respond to the paucity of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color-centered death, grief, and well-being in academia. Using a critical race feminist epistolary methodology, we document our epistolary exchanges that contain dehumanizing attempts on our bodymindspirit matrices as active grievers of color confronting the premature death of my brother, who died at the age of 37 in the summer of 2021. Unlike the ‘western’ psychotherapeutic tradition of overcoming death and grief, we stake a claim, sit with it, and affirm it as an ongoing process. We argue that recognizing and affirming death and grief is a life-making process that creates spaces for healing through our epistolary offerings. This article aims to offer BIPOC faculty, staff, students, and their families life-affirming strategies towards radical self-care, love, and intergenerational collective healing within a sociopolitical context that operates as a surveillance mechanism.

Keywords

• death
• grief
• critical race feminista epistolary methodology
• academia well-being