—
This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist thoughts and commentary of me, Kristen Jeffers, internationally-known urban planner, designer, analyst, keynote speaker, media maven, and fiber artist. This week I’m going to begin what will be a summer series of highlighting why I’ve chosen certain books to be on my Bookshop bookshelves and what those books make me think of. This week, I’ve chosen Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism by Aja Barber as my book of note and I’m going to be reflecting here on what it’s meant to redefine my relationship with textiles— something that made my town a city and that in moderation brings me joy.
While raw goods being made into fabric may have made my hometown into a city, our relationships with labor, consumption, and manufacturing must change. We all deserve to come together, with the fruits of our labor, on equal standing, in villages and markets of our making. Or else, we may not have an Earth left to stand on.
Some of y’all might remember those cotton commercials that declared the fiber as the fabric of our lives. For me, that was literally the case.
I come from a city that was built by the mass processing of cotton, nylon, flannel, and other raw textile goods. It seemed to thrive as long as we had that ability and struggled as that ability was taken away. I say seemed, not as a pun, but as a reality because those in my city and state who worked in the textile industry were dealing with corporate oppression, especially if they lived in overbearing mill villages, the lack of ability to unionize (which we lost in 1947 at the state level), and if they were Black, they were probably in the most dangerous and dirty of the mill jobs. Oh and we were just the center of something that had been global for centuries, but we were made to feel extremely special for being at the center, then discarded and gaslighted when we complained about its loss.
It’s what makes me personally feel that without textiles (and furniture and tobacco), we wouldn’t be exporting “happy” things like world-renowned college basketball. People wouldn’t want to come to our state, first for “cheaper” living and labor, and second for its natural resources and seemingly less extreme laws despite being in the South. We wouldn’t have the money and the philanthropy that created the educational campuses that educated and employed my parents, so they could get together, have me in the health institutions that philanthropy provided and raise me around those educational institutions and their bounties. Institutions that set the foundation for both this platform as a product with the lens I have and me as a person behind those lenses.
Yet, I still grew up thinking I didn’t live in a real city. What I’ve since learned is that it’s often capitalists and imperialists (through years of colonialism) who have decided what cities are and where they are placed. And those same capitalists and imperialists that determine how we feel about ourselves as subjects and plebs and slaves of their schemes.
When Greensboro was founded in 1808, there was a chance that I could have been a free person of color. But I could have also been enslaved and rented out to one of the homes of the new families inhabiting the centrally-located county seat.
I do have ancestors and elders who have worked in tobacco fields and textile mills, both as summer jobs between semesters of college and as their main means of survival. Those family members managed to build churches, feed and clothe themselves despite being at the disposal of how well a crop yield went or what the global demand for the textile product they processed was at the time, and the violence wrought on them because of the shape, tone, and appearance of their bodies.
During this current time of decreased supply chains and shortages in the United States, I couldn’t help but revisit how this story has played out for people from (and brought to) my region for generations. And that by reclaiming fiber for myself, as a few other of my peers from this region have done, I could do what I talked about last week when looking back on the Parable series from Octavia Butler and both have a positive obsession, a go-bag and a plan for flexibility in the midst of divine change.
Expanding my knowledge globally, to my other BIPOC siblings, especially those who are forced to do all the work for our supposedly ready-to-wear clothing, I can go forth in abundance, providing mentorship around fiber to those of us who have a choice in where we work and how we consume, and awareness that much of our clothing is still handmade(by force) and isn’t completely industrialized and non-regenerative.
The more we know about our global supply chains, the more we can push back against white supremacist delusion, which unfortunately at the writing of this note, is really rearing its head in the United States. However, it does so every day all over the world and so many folks never get to step back for a moment and figure out how to get free. They just get to make our clothes and sadly so many of those clothes never even make it to a closet, they just go back to markets that are indebted from trying to resell our clothes or the ground and water around those markets when the finished goods are too damaged to wear or sell, but won’t biodegrade.
This is why this week’s featured book is Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism by Aja Barker. I added this book to all of my Bookshop shelves as what she’s saying will not just affect what we consume, but what we build in order to consume and if we even still have an Earth left to do things on. It also comes from the perspective of another African-American person who is perceived as a woman, and lifts up other BIPOC voices, while encouraging us to find and listen to those who once again, can’t look up from a loom or sewing machine to tell us the truth about their labor and what our consumption is doing.
Processing my legacy, stabilizing my present and growing my future in the face of all these changes is also why Kristpattern, my artisanal textile studio, exists. I want to make more of my personal textiles and teach more folks about how that can work for them no matter their skill level with a needle or hook or loom, so we of “privilege” along with our siblings that need revolution from these global factories and schemes can get back in touch with our Earth, liberating ourselves and living our ancestors’ dreams of that mass liberation from all forms of oppression.
But, I’m still sorting through what it means to be in a world so bent on borders and neighborhood boundaries. Next week, I and my book selections for you will delve into how I’m making sense and moving beyond borders.
By the Way
I wanted to start giving props to articles and other content that I really liked that I thought was relevant again, much like we have a section for shoutouts/classified ads. So, welcome to By the Way, and make sure you check out Before You Go too.
Here’s a more comprehensive, unbiased history of textiles in North Carolina up to about 2006 (so before Spoonflower, but after the mass outsourcing of many mills and corporate operations).
I love Abbott Elementary for all the same reasons as fellow Medium writer Robyn A. Henderson. Plus, I can tell that this is a love letter to her mom, also a public school teacher. Watch this interview with her and Charlamagne Tha God, who is also a child of a public school teacher.
I needed this encouragement directly from my big sibling in the chosen family of notable essayists from North Carolina Tressie McMillian Cottham, that it’s not the platform, but the people and the ideas. They can try to shut down your ideas and your voice, but it’s still yours. So, in that spirit, I might be on this platform you’re reading me on today, but not tomorrow. Butimma still be me. And I’m going to control the platforms I do have as much as I can.
Finally, reading and seeing what’s happening on the North Carolina coast is reminding me that being ready to flow is something that my people have had to reckon with for years. Being able to make camp and establish home for as long as its feasible, then taking home with me is something that I should make peace with, at least in the interim.
Before You Go
Check out some special announcements from me and friends of the platform.
Advertising in this section has helped people find jobs, and new opportunities. It also gets you and your newfound commitments to solidarity, justice, belonging and equity in front of those who are your backbone and base of those commitments. Learn more on how you can purchase ad space!
#
This is more of an announcement than something else to read, so I’m placing this here, as a favor — the deadline for the Desiree Cooper Awards has been extended to June 1. These scholarship awards are for Black women architectural designers looking to fund the exams needed to become official architects and in addition to the awards, they are looking for folks who want to donate to increase the amounts that they can give to Black women architectural students and architectural designers to help them swell the ranks of the just over 500 Black women architects licensed in the United States across all time.
If you just want to support me for any reason, but don’t need anything in return, you can donate to my capital campaign, or Venmo or Cash. App me.
#
My bookshelf over at Bookshop.org is very much alive and well, purchase your copies of the books I talked about above, plus more that I’ve designated part of the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist canon, the general urbanism canon, and other lists because you can never have too many books.
#
My very first official crochet pattern is for sale. It’s been tested and reviewed and you can join the club of folks making their own Kristfinity Scarves!
#
I’ll be live on Patreon, LinkedIn and YouTube talking about everything I mentioned above and then some for my Open Studio/Office Hours at 4 eastern. Don’t worry if you can’t watch live, it will be archived publicly on all spaces. Also, all of my prior video chats under the Public Lecture/Open Studio label are now available on Patreon and will be making their way to YouTube little by little over the next few weeks.
Until next time,