What happens when you recognize spiritual lessons in Black feminist theory?

* And pardon my voice, I am losing it this week*

This week on Grounded, we're back to a 1:1 conversation, and I'm thinking about what Black feminist theorists have taught me about spirituality, how we see the world, and what it means to be human.

But before we get there, I'm also thinking through something a little more personal: why, as someone who studies religion and spirituality, I sometimes hesitate to speak about my own spiritual life without grounding myself in scholarship. What does it mean to move between being a scholar of spirituality and someone who is actively trying to live a spiritual life? And why am I so worried about sounding like a guru? 😭

Inspired by Jenn M. Jackson's Black Women Taught Us, I'm sharing two lessons from Black feminist thinkers whose work has fundamentally changed how I understand and inhabit a spiritual life. We get into Christina Sharpe's In the Wake and what it means to see the unseen, not just in a metaphysical sense, but in the histories, structures, and forces that shape our everyday lives. Then we turn to Sylvia Wynter, whose work challenges us to rethink what it means to be human and imagine ways of living beyond the values that have historically dehumanized Black people.

This is the first of what I'm hoping will be more conversations about what Black women have taught me about living a spiritual life.

Chapters

00:00 — Teaser: Is Black Feminist Theory Spiritual?

00:49 — Welcome to Grounded + Finding Grounding in Burnout

07:01 — Why I Worry About Sounding Like a Guru

17:11 — Lesson 1: Seeing the Unseen | Christina Sharpe

26:13 — Lesson 2: Imagining New Ways of Being Human | Sylvia Wynter

References mentioned

Carter, J. Kameron. The Anarchy of Black Religion: A Mystic Song. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023.

Jackson, Jenn M. Black Women Taught Us: An Intimate History of Black Feminism. New York: Random House, 2024.

Pollan, Michael. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness. New York: Penguin Press, 2026.

Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.

Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument.” CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003): 257–337.