Brittney Cooper
Appearances
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
The person that lives across the hall from me is a grad student because it turns out the professor money doesn't go as far as you think it does when you don't come from generational wealth. And I'm waiting on a famous millionaire filmmaker to call my phone. And I also have an intense need to pee, but I'm afraid to make a run for it. So, right on time, the phone rings.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
Miss Cooper, this is Tyler Perry. Hi, Mr. Perry. Nope, call me Tyler. Okay, call me Brittany. Brittany, you wrote some things about me that I wanna talk about. Well, Tyler, let me begin by saying that I've seen all of your films and I really respect, nope. You said that I hate black women and I don't understand how you came to that conclusion. Deep breath. He really want to do this. All right.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
Let's begin with the haves and have nots. Why in the first three minutes of that show do we have a maid, a sex worker, and a rich black bitch? These are tropes of black womanhood. And he stops me. He says, tropes? Let me explain something to you. You're talking to a man with a 12th grade education. So I don't know anything about tropes.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
But when I was growing up, the person that lived next door to me was a maid and her daughter was a sex worker and they were like the nicest people ever. And so then I realized like, oh wow, yeah, he's Tyler Perry and he's rich and I'm not rich, but I have a PhD and he has a 12th grade education. And so all of a sudden, maybe the playing field is not so disparate as I thought,
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
And I also think to myself, like, my mother was a single mother with a 12th grade education. And my uncle, who Tyler Perry is starting to sound like on the phone, also had a 12th grade education. So I realized, like, these are the people that raised me and let me switch my tack up a little bit. So I say, Tyler, you know, you and I have a lot in common. We're both from Louisiana.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
We were both raised in the church, right? We both had pistol-toting grannies. We both had an abusive parent. And he said, oh wow, I didn't know that about you, but I just knew you were sharp. And now that I do know this about you, I don't understand why you don't understand what I'm trying to do in my movies. And so I say to him, okay, here's really my question.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
why are all the educated black girls in your movie such bitches to everybody? And he says, well, because there was a whole branch of my family growing up. They all went to college and they all treated everybody like trash. And I realized, damn, like, That's exactly the thing that I feared, that having all of this education might make me unrecognizable to the people that raised me.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
Because the thing that I loved about Tyler Perry's movies is that he rides hard for working class black girls, the girls that work behind the counter at Waffle House, the church ladies, right? The grannies that press $20 into your hand when you come home from school. Those are the kind of folks that raised me. And I wanted to be recognizable to them.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
So I'm thinking about all this and Tyler breaks in. Brittany, something urgent just came up. Can I call you back? I'll call you back in 20 minutes. And I'm like, okay. So we get off the phone, I run to Pete and then I'm sitting in my house going, damn, like he not gonna call me back because I was blowing this conversation and maybe being a little bit of a jerk.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
But like he said, 20 minutes later, the phone rings. Tyler, this is Brittany. Where were we? So with my 20 minutes of hindsight and hastily gained wisdom, I say, here's the thing I'm really trying to say, Tyler. Is it possible for you to uplift working class black girls in your films without throwing the educated sisters under the bus because educated girls love your movies too?
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
And he says, you know what? That's profound. Can I uplift one group without demonizing another group? I'ma think about that. And so then I said to him, now, if you wanna keep talking about this, I'm a professional critic and I'm happy to offer these. Nope, he says, I'm never calling your ass again. And we both screamed because it was like the realest moment in this conversation.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
But he said, I always like to talk to my critics. I learn a lot from them. And I said, fair enough. And we hung up. And I was left thinking that The thing that connects Tyler Perry and me is that we're both working class Southern folks who in our respective fields have quote unquote made it. And we want to do the kind of work that always honors the places where we come from.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
And I realized that his work called up for me the fear that maybe I would be losing touch with the folks that meant the most to me. But what I also thought was that I'm used to men dismissing me. because I have loud opinions and I'm brash and unapologetic and I'm a feminist.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
But when this millionaire filmmaker read the little old blog of a not even thousandaire professor and heard me say that the way he represented girls like me in his movies essentially hurt my feelings, he didn't ignore me or act like he hadn't seen it or heard it.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
He picked up the phone and called me and then he listened and called back and listened again until he could find something useful to make his art better. I had been so swift and sure to proclaim that Tyler Perry hates black women and I was left to consider maybe listening is what love looks like after all. Thank you.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
So in the early 2000s, I became the first person in my family to graduate from college and to go on to pursue a PhD. Now when you go to med school, you become a doctor. And when you go to law school, you become a lawyer. But when you go to grad school in the humanities, you become a critic.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
Imagine studying for six years for the express privilege of telling everybody who's ever written or said anything what is wrong with what they have said. Imagine further explaining this to your family at Thanksgiving. So one of the ways that I would cope with this unfortunate turn of events is that I would go to the movies, typically a matinee on a Wednesday.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
And my favorite filmmaker at the time was Tyler Perry. When I went to see Diary of a Mad Black Woman, I thought to myself, here is a man who understands black women who have been done wrong. When Kimberly Elise's character slaps the shit out of the husband that has been abusing her, I'm in the theater hooting and hollering with all the ladies in there.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
But at the same time, I'm also becoming a feminist. And you know, I'm down for smashing the patriarchy and everything. But nobody tells you that the first casualty of a feminist analysis is movies. You hate them because you see the patriarchy absolutely everywhere. You become a feminist and suddenly you can't like anything anymore. You're a professional unliker of everything.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
Or as they say in the hood, I'm getting a PhD, playa hatin' degree. It occurs to me though, that I like these movies, so I'ma keep going, but I'm just not gonna tell my feminist friends how much I like the movies. Because every time I talk to them, they're using language like tropes and representations and how problematic the films are.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
But what I'm thinking to myself is, but in Daddy's Little Girls, Gabrielle Union's character snags fine-ass Idris Elba, and I don't know a straight black girl that don't want Idris. And I'm also thinking, this feels a little bit like home. You know, Tyler Perry built his career making these Madea stage plays. And there was like an underground economy of VHS dubs that you could get of these plays.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
So I remember watching one of these plays with my auntie and her laughing hysterically. And I'm sitting there going like, the play look a little low budget. But Madea is a gun-toting, a pistol-toting granny. And my granny was a pistol-toting granny. So it kind of worked for me.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
But I was also starting to see what my friends were saying, because I went to see The Family That Prays, and the female character in that movie is so villainized that by the time her husband knocks the shit out of her, the women in the theater are hooting and hollering again, but this time, I'm not hollering with them. Because you know, I'm a feminist now. and that's domestic violence.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
So I'm starting to think maybe me and Tyler might have to break up. Fast forward, I finished my PhD. I get a job as a professor at a big state school in the deep south. Tyler and I have broken up, but his star has continued to ascend. And I'm trying to figure out how to wear this big old title as both a PhD and a critic, even though I come from people that don't really have fancy titles.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
So I call up my girls, who are mostly first-generation PhDs themselves, and we form a crew and a blog called the Crunk Feminists Collective. So around this time, Tyler puts out a show called The Haves and The Have Nots. And like a good feminist, I tune in to hate watch the show. And as suspected, as expected, he gives me something to hate.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
So the next day, I go to the Crunk Feminist Collective blog and I pin a post called Tyler Perry Hates Black Women. Now let me say, that some high-profile feminists would be coming through and reading the blog, but I didn't really think any famous, famous people were reading the blog. So imagine my surprise the next day when I get an email subject line. Tyler Perry wants to talk to you.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
I think it's a joke, right? But I open the email, I call the number back, and it's not a joke. His assistant gets on the phone and she says, oh. He wants to talk to you. So we set up a time to talk, like the next day. And the day in between, I spend my time calling all my homegirls going, what we gonna do? And the consensus among the feminist cabal is finishing.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: At The Movies
They're like, we have been waiting our whole careers for this and you have been chosen. So you gotta do that shit. And I'm like, but it's Tyler Perry though. So the next day, I've now moved to New Jersey. I'm a professor at a state school in New Jersey. I'm sitting in my one bedroom apartment with peeling paint.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
Yeah. You know, Rebecca and I were chit-chatting right before we went live today, and we were talking about this notion of like standing still or sitting still or just, you know, it's like when you're doing yoga and you have to breathe into the stretch, right? You have to get all the way into that. tension. And it reminds me of like, you know, I come from very Southern rural people.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And when we used to have thunderstorms down South, my grandmother would say, turn off all the lights and sit down. The Lord is at work. Right. And so we weren't allowed to move around the house when, when it was thundering and lightning, there was this kind of inherent reverence for like, we are not in charge right now. The earth is in charge. The cosmos is in charge. And our job is to
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
take a beat, right? And sit and hope for a better outcome. So it is not about retreating. I don't think it's about running away, but I do think that there's, so I think a couple of things. One is that we have to learn what it means when Black women and just old folks say, be still. And they would say it in the biblical sense, be still and know that I am God.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
However you understand God to be, however you understand the world to be organized in that way. But there's something about the stillness that brings clarity because there's all this energy, all this chaos, all of this whatever. And a lot of it is designed to make us not be able to hear ourselves think. Right.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And so I think that we can give ourselves, we already know, one, we've had a peek at the playbook. Two, we've had an empirical experience of the foolishness. So we already know that what they plan to do is maximum chaos and destruction, not unlike what Rebecca said about toddlers. And I actually had a similar vision of that this morning, Rebecca. I was writing
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And I was like, oh, no, they're like throwing a tantrum. And when they're throwing a tantrum, what they're doing is attention seeking. Right. And Trump in particular, though I'm loathe to say his name, the thing that is most true about him is that he is an attention seeker. He is a showman. The thing that he most wants is all eyes on him.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
So the refusal to grant him that, the ratings, I mean, this man has moved his inauguration indoors, not because of the cold, but because he knew he wasn't going to do the numbers. Right. One of my friends was like, let me see. A few days ago, one of my friends said, let me see if I can get a hotel room in D.C. this week. A hundred percent. Yeah.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And there was plenty of availability all throughout the city. And so he knew he wasn't going to have the numbers. And so he said he was protecting the people, right? So I think that there's a thing in this moment about just the choice to be still. And then from that position, the other thing I was thinking, which is... a thing that I'm working through.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
I was part of that generation of feminists who were like, we're throwing off our strong black woman capes. We're not doing this strong black woman shit anymore, you know, because we deserve to be vulnerable in the soft life and all of this stuff. And the thing that losing my mother has taught me is, and it is akin to the thing Rebecca said about the political work that I do,
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
is that one thing that I think we have not prepared our slightly younger forebears for is that there are some moments in American history where the soft life is not an option and where you either are strong or you die. And that is it. And that all of those Black women that today, Black feminists like myself and those younger than me, like to look at them and say, why are they so hard?
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
Why are they so unfeeling? Why are they so cold? Why are they impenetrable? Because that was the way that they survived. Now, do I think that that's emotionally healthy? No. Do I think that there are real consequences to that? Sure. But have I now confronted a set of circumstances in my life where my two options were
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
You leave your mother in this graveyard and you go forward with your life or you die here with her. There are no options in between there. There are not. And this is the place that we are. There is not fluffiness. I am not saying we can't have gentleness and kindness and care and compassion. I am saying...
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
that whatever this version of we all want to be vulnerable, feel all our feelings everywhere, and have a world where everyone is like... Look, I teach young people, and the level at which they want us all to put up foam buffers around their lives so that they don't ever have to hit a hard corner is weird. And I'm like, oh, we're done with that. And so...
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
I don't know how to deal politically with the fact that I have a set of feminist principles that are all about care and softness and our right for vulnerability and our right to process our trauma. And I am like, these motherfuckers are coming for us. And when I look... at the Black women in the 19th century who grew up in Reconstruction thinking, look, we're on the dawn of a new era.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And then by the time they're 30, Jim Crow has set in. And they're lynching Black people by the thousands. And they are hunting folks with dogs. And they are snatching women off the streets and raping them. And that's their literal reality. I'm not being hyperbolic. That's literally what happened. in a world where they had been granted rights, where the trains had been desegregated.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
All of that shit happened in this country in the 1860s. And then by the 1890s, it's all gone. And those women, what they did was they like straightened their backs and they said, all right then, We see you. And so we don't have time for all our feelings and our musings and our whatever. We have to build a civil society that is going to take care of the most vulnerable.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
We have to continue to say that this is not the way we want the world to work. But we have to do that while we are building hospitals. hospitals and schools, a healthcare system, a protection system, and a mode of being with each other that is going to help us to outlast this thing that seeks to destroy us. And in order to do that, first, you got to work on feeling all your feelings.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And then you got to recognize that there are sometimes only two options. And I hate it. I'm not saying I don't resent it. I'm not saying I don't want a different reality, but I am telling you from the depths of my
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
own grief and journey around having to rebuild my life again that sometimes there are only two options and those options are be strong or die that is it and I think that a bunch of badass women together will just figure out how to fucking be strong
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
Let's sit and look at what this victory looks like. Can I jump in and say, one of the ways that I think that people can accept this better is to do what I did on my birthday, which is that I went to a rage room. And in that rage room, there was a picture of Trump's face on the wall. And I was given a
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
crate of glass objects that I could throw at said wall and a container of metal bats and about 20 minutes and a soundtrack of my choosing. And so I just wailed for 20 minutes. I broke shit. I threw it at the walls. I had my own contained temper tantrum.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And I know that's not what y'all expected me to say, but listen, because this is rage inducing and then you roll around and you carry it in your body and you don't have any way to get it out. And I think the thing is that we have been provoked, mistreated, and we're gonna be mistreated even more. So if there's the like, how do I not complain? What do I do with all of my frustration and my anger?
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
It is like, find a healthy way to actually go and take it out in a more contained space. Because what we are living through is a world where white people are, not the lovely white folks here, not that I need to say that, but the white folk in the aggregate who voted for this, are like, you know, I think, let me say it in an even more specific framework.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
We still didn't manage in this election to like win white women over. Now the college educated white girls actually did better. And I want to acknowledge that because I think that's significant. And I'm like, okay, y'all got it. Y'all just need to organize your people a little bit more. So there's that.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
But I was like, why would white women keep voting for this while they're also like bleeding out in parking lots? Like, why would they keep doing it? But I realized that some of it is because
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
Their whole view of their identity and value in a system where they don't have money or power, but they have proximity to those things, is they've got to be able to pass on a world to their sons that was like the world of their fathers and their husbands. White women have been told that to be a success as a white woman is to pass on a world where your white sons can be rich forever.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
can be powerful, can be at the top of the heap, and that your daughters will have these kind of men to marry. Like, it's very heteronormative. I mean, I ain't even thinking about queer folks at all. But it is literally to secure property, money, and power for white boys and teach them how to rule the world so that then they can just continue to reproduce themselves.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
That's their emotional investment in it. Then, so when this masculinity, this violent masculinity that Rebecca's talking about, I love Jesus, right, and I hate D.E.I.,
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
What that converges in for white women is, and in order for you not to be a failure to the race and not to be a failure as a woman, your job is to secure a set of conditions for your sons to be ascendant and for your daughters to just reproduce that ascendancy over and over again from generation to generation, right?
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
So that is the world that they're trying to get back to is a world where white ascendancy was guaranteed and their fight over the 50s and 60s is a fight about that. And so the thing that I also then came to around this is that does devastate me. And I think this is the best way to say it.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
I wrote this essay this morning at the Substack I run with my feminist collective, with the Crunk Feminist Collective. And I said, oh, the 20th century project is dead. That's what these in their desire to resuscitate the 50s and 60s. These folks are saying we want to resuscitate the great American century.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
But what they have actually done is killed the things that were solidly good about the 20th century. Right. All of the civil rights legislation that we get in these people literally with the swipe of a pen and a rogue Supreme Court, they have literally killed it. Their plan is. was to kill the project of the 20th century in this quarter century into the 21st century.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And for young people listening, you know how y'all are always like, you know, because the 1900s, right, which takes me out every time they say it, right? Young people talk about the 1900s like we talk about the 1800s, right? That's right. And so these people are like the 1900s, you know, when y'all used to do all this kind of stuff, these folks have come along to kill the 1900s. Right.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And to say that all of the things that actually made America that won the American century, it wasn't just that we were a world superpower and a military superpower after World War II. It was also that when we then had the upheavals of civil rights and black power,
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
to a certain extent, we were able to assimilate some of the lessons and make space for the emergence of a Black political class, a Black professional class, some measure of integration. Now, a lot of that stuff gets pushed back even before we leave the 20th century, but you can see an appreciable difference
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
in the second half of the 20th century that you'd seen in any other time of the nation's history. And what this essentially did yesterday was to say that that project is dead.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And one of the things that's gonna be really hard for those of us who are over the age of 25 is that we have lived in a world where that project, and particularly the more progressive parts of it, have shaped our idea of the possible. And now all of it is gone away. And so we have to have some new idea of the possible. And we don't have a 21st century version of the possible beyond Barack Obama.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And I would say that, quite frankly, he's really just evidence of the long 20th century. I don't even know if his story fully belongs to the 21st century. And I know I'm being super wonky and academic or whatever, but I'm really just trying to say that these folks have killed effectively the parts of the 20th century that those of us who were progressive minded are proud of.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
Like that when we're confronted as a country with the bad parts of ourselves, we're willing to try to use our systems to make them better. These guys have said, we don't want to do that anymore.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
Yeah. How did you experience yesterday, Tracer? Cause I don't know how I experienced it.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
Yeah, it feels directional. And it's not just like, white women also have a history of having to be stalwart. Those first wave white ladies, those suffragists, Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Listen, I'm not saying they didn't have some problematic, you know, racial politics or whatever.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
But the part of me that's still like a Gilmore Girls girl is like, okay, but I still recognize badass boss bitches in any century. I do. And you get to claim these people and disagree with the parts that didn't work. So it took them 75 years, basically, from 1848 Seneca Falls to 1920.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
Like we're talking about a history that happens in 75 year cycles, which means that we're kind of right on schedule.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
The thing I want to tell people is this is the time to build good, solid, local relationships. This is the time to join orgs. I have, you know, taken up crocheting. I was never an arts and crafts girl. It's very weird even to myself. But I have been delighted by all this stuff that I'm doing with yarn. And so I've just gone ahead and leaned into it.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
So I have been finding local crafting spaces and circles and conferences and all kinds of things to go to, mostly because it's a low stakes way to be in community. So whether it's, you know, starting a book club or going to learn archery or taking up axe throwing or whatever, I'm partly saying get a hobby because there's got to be something that your hands are doing that are not doom scrolling.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
But also, the way that we're going to be able to figure out what is true in a world where the media has abandoned us and the government has abandoned us is that we've got to be in community with people so that we can build real deep and solid relationships so that there are people to come to our rescue, people to bounce ideas off of, people to be a resource well for us so that we can connect with each other.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And so even though I know we're in the era of the hyper digital and A.I., We're also in this era where going back into local space, even recognizing that some of the running that you might want to do in government is for the school board, is for the city council, is for the planning or zoning board, right? Go be part of the volunteer firefighters, any number of local orgs.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
These are the places where we're going to be able to have impact. These are the places where we're going to be able to be in community. These are the places where we're going to be able to be in power. And I say that as a person who is largely an introvert, you know, I'm a social extrovert in terms of like my work and all of that. But I'm not necessarily like a make a lot of new friends person.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
I have my kind of trusted circle. But being connected in community is the way that this is going to feel less apocalyptic. And so allow yourself the benefit of that new energy. Allow yourself to imagine that there might be some interests that you haven't imagined that you can take up. And the thing is, we're all very busy people. So as you can imagine, I too am busy.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
So I know you're wondering, well, where do you get all these time for hobbies? I schedule it in the same way that I schedule in work meetings and every other thing. And so then I just be like, look, it's already on the schedule. I got to do it. I paid for this class, this whatever. So that is my like non-political, political way of like sustaining yourself is build community with people.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And it is really hard for adults to make friends. It's hard to make adult friends. But maybe you won't make a bunch of new deep friends, but maybe you'll make a bunch of like social acquaintances in your community. And that really matters.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
Awesome. You know, I just detached fully. I watched Netflix. I had planned for it to be a rest day, by which I mean that I'm procrastinating from writing projects. And then some friends were like, we're going to write. And I was like, sure, I will write today. Any other day when I need to write, I won't do it. But I was like, yes, today I will, you know, I will work on this book.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
Anything to just... not be tempted to like engage the media ecosystem in any way. It just felt like it would be assaultive. And so, you know, I have taken up crafting over the last year. And so at some point I was working on like a complicated crochet project that had me engrossed for a while.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And I just let the like New York times notifications come through to tell me like, okay, we've officially left one regime and entered another, but that was about all that I could take. And, You know, I'm a person who, because I struggle with anxiety, don't always see myself as being cool under pressure. But I think I actually am fairly cool under pressure. So I don't freak out in the moment.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And then I woke up this morning and I was like, what in the fuck? Okay. And it really wasn't actually that boisterous. I woke up in tears, which is a really hard thing to admit now. As a certain kind of Black woman in the world, because there is still the belief that we're supposed to be strong all the time.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And that if you feel sad or have emotions about this, it is because you were naive, like, in thinking that it could be different or that the country was different. And why are you shocked and surprised? And it's like, but my tears weren't tears of shock or surprise. They were just...
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
deep, terrified grief over both the sadness of all that we lost and the terror of, the triggering terror of these months of anticipating a bad thing coming. And then living through that bad thing. And then you tried to prevent it. You fought with everything you could to prevent it. And then the bad thing ended up on your doorstep anyway. And now you have to contend with it in a real way.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And I just feel... devastated by that. And that devastation is compounded by the fact that today is a two-year anniversary of my coming back home to my place in New Jersey after burying my mother. And I remember, so my world tilted on its axis two years ago, January. And I remember the feeling of defeat because again, it's that same thing where you
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
You know, my mother had an unexpected set of complications from a surgery that just went badly. And the thing about being, all us like hyper-achieving women, you know, people call us to do shit because we solve problems for a living, right? We can see around corners, right? Tracer's like one of these writers that can see around corners. She can see things coming.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
You know, this is like one of the things that makes you a type A personality. you anticipate and you make a plan and then you rally the troops and you get them all together. And I watched black women do that for 107 days. And I was like, okay, I don't believe in anything, but a bunch of black and army of sisters being like, we're going, we're going to be okay.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
And then when you show up and it's not okay, the level of like, The devastation and the sense of failure and like, how did I miss this? How did I not see it coming? It's like I woke up and the weight of all of that stuff that I had managed to sort of push at a distance yesterday just showed up this morning. And I rarely struggle to get out of bed.
We Can Do Hard Things
Post-Inauguration Family Meeting: How We Will Get Through with Brittney Cooper & Rebecca Traister
Staying in the bed all day is not really my thing. But today I was like, I could just stay here under these sheets and in this cocoon and maybe things will be OK. And maybe I could just have like a cozy float through the next regime. So that's that's where I am.