My Culture, My Color, My Self: Heritage, Resilience, and Community in the Lives of Young Adults

204 Pages·2013·1.57 MB·English

by  Toby S. Jenkins

My Culture, My Color,
My Self

Toby S. Jenkins
My Culture,
My Color, My Self
Heritage, Resilience, and Community
in the Lives of Young Adults
temple university press
philadelphia
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
www.temple.edu/tempress
Copyright © 2013 by Temple University
All rights reserved
Published 2013
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jenkins, Toby S. (Toby Susann), 1975–
My culture, my color, my self : heritage, resilience, and community in
the lives of young adults / Toby S. Jenkins.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4399-0829-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4399-0830-3
(pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4399-0831-0 (e-book) 1. African
American youth—History. 2. African Americans—History. I. Title.
E185.86.J46 2013
305.896'0730842—dc23
2012025883
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992
Printed in the United States of America
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
To my mother and father
for building a beautiful and rich cultural world for us

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue: My Culture, My Color, My Self 1
Introduction: Cultural Leadership: The Audacity in the Ordinary 11
1 There’s No Place like Home: An Ethic of Cultural Love 18
2 A Half-Full Glass of Family Bonds 33
3 A Politic of Survival 58
4 Education, Culture, and Freedom 76
5 Art, Land, and Spirit 102
6 Cultural Heritage Still Matters 133
7 The House That Struggle Built: A Portrait of Culture 150
Epilogue 161
Appendix: Research Methods 163
Notes 171
References 177
Index 185

Acknowledgments
W
hat is most special about my professional journey and appreciation of
culture is that both were motivated by the imaginative talents of my
ancestors—storytellers whose creativity saw neither pen nor paper
and whose wonderful cultural talents never entered the doors of a bookstore
or the halls of the academy. Instead, they fed generations of young children in
our family. My grandpa Joe was a wonderful storyteller and poet. He traveled to
churches around the state of South Carolina speaking to congregations through
story. His daughter, my mother, inherited this literary creativity, writing poems
and telling her children and grandchildren the most imaginative stories. My
mother has always desired to write and to publish. For this reason my profes-
sional work embodies the spirit of Alice Walker’s great insight in her legendary
text “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens.” Walker discusses how the immense
artistic and literary talents of many black women were repressed through the
years by relegating the women to domestic labor and support roles. According
to Walker, many of these women chose as their canvas the only mediums they
had available to them—gardens, quilts, dinner tables, and clothes. My mother
is an incredible gardener and sewer. My grandma Sue was a chef in her own
right—we preferred her food to that of any fancy restaurant. I am my great-
grandmother Suzanna’s namesake. I will always write my name with my mid-
dle initial in memory of her spirit. She was an amazing baker. These women
made magic and beauty out of dirt, cloth, and grains. But deep inside they were
all artists—painters, writers, and singers. This book, and everything that I have
done in my work as an educator, is more than research and professional pro-
duction. I have found all of my mothers’ gardens. My family was a modest one,
unable to leave a significant financial inheritance. But what my ancestors have