Hello! My name is A.Y.
I write - mostly academic articles, but also opinion essays and short fiction- about the Black futures that have come to pass, the role our identities play in freeing us all, and the magic of queer intergalactic time travel.
My pronouns are both she and they, and you can use them interchangeably along with my name.
Image description: A smiling person wearing glasses, a knit hat, a scarf, and a sweater. Their hand is on their face and behind them is a large span of outdoor open space and blue sky.
Also, I kitted the hat I’m wearing in this picture! A friend’s mom crocheted my scarf, and a different friend’s mom knitted me the grey sweater. I know, I’m very lucky!
More details about me:
I’m a PhD student at Michigan State University in the philosophy department. I aim to do leadership, facilitation, and management work throughout my career, whether that is as a project manager that operationalises feminist theory in innovative ways into an industry role, or as a research professor in a humanities department that supports interdisciplinary community-engaged research and service.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
My research addresses anti-colonial, queer, and women of colour feminist theory. Against a litany of scorn and skepticism at the level of cultural common sense, I argue that“Identity Politics” must be reclaimed as the radical queer Black feminist political practice it was meant to be when originally articulated by the Combahee River Collective for the purpose of socio-political liberation. Read more about my research here.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
On my infrequently updated blog, I share strategies that I’ve found useful for navigating a knowledge work/artist’s career while remaining deeply engaged in anti-capitalist, pro-liberation community organizing efforts. Often, for those of us who want to be in a workplace without being of that workplace, there’s very little guidance and mentorship available for how to navigate those priorities well. I plan to also share my own syllabi and annotated bibliographies on subjects I research. I hope to contribute back to the internet economy of annotated bibs that I have benefited tremendously from as a young scholar.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
On the resources pages, I’m building a public list of Black/women of colour and other minority owned/built software tools that I either actively use or have heard good things about from people that seem trustworthy. If you are a woman of colour or a person of colour and have built some software that I can hype up to everyone I talk to, please email me about it so I can add it to the list.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
I can also bake and cook really well, though I haven’t worked in a restaurant kitchen in years. My brownies in particular are out of this world- they’re more fudgy than cakey, and I usually mix up my own brown sugar, so the molasses content is juuuuust right to make them really chewy but not sickly sweet. I also knit, crochet, and collect fountain pens.