Zoom Chat
Mudiwa Pettus
Keywords: productivity; writing group; Black women; women of color
Categories: Bearing the Weight of Racism through Anti-Racist Work and (Cross-)Racial Solidarity; (De)Constructing Writing; Building Community in Isolating Times
My experience of living in Brooklyn in the spring of 2020 was a debilitating ordeal of terror and exhaustion. The lurking threat of infection broadcasted in the continuous wails of ambulances. The conversations with students enduring devastating losses. The stalking fear that one of my loved ones would fall ill. The disquiet induced by my ability to shelter in place while governmental neglect forced so many people to leave their homes regularly to maintain their livelihood.
When I was not attempting to guide my students through the semester as gently as possible, I spent my days obsessively consuming the news, carefully meal planning to limit my time in the narrow aisles of my local grocery store, and wondering when I would see my family again. In the end, I managed to survive the semester, but I reached the summer ragged and depleted. My exhaustive fear had transformed into a listlessness that evolved into a familiar depression. The virus’s efficacy in separating me from my sustaining communities was staggering.
Yet, even amid this devastation, I found myself haunted by academia’s troubling expectations regarding productivity. During what seemed to be the dawning of a viral-induced apocalypse and the decline of my mental health, I still could not shake the feeling that I should have been using my summer “break” to write as much as possible. But I did not possess the capacity to do so. My ability to focus and my belief that I could write anything worthwhile, words that would prove meaningful in the face of global catastrophe, had vanished. Writing, and even attempting to write, became another source of dread.
But, in early August of 2020, I was gifted with an opportunity for renewal. Indira, a brilliant Black woman neuroscientist I met in grad school, invited me to join a writing group exclusively composed of women of color. She and our friend, Dominiqua, a scholar of School Counseling, aspired to create a space of affirmation for women of color reconfiguring their writing lives in the age of COVID. Indubitably, their work has yielded incredible fruit.
Through technologies of the grapevine, these two Black women have managed to connect a bustling, transnational group of women of color—humanists, scientists, therapists, tech experts, business owners, assistant principals, and more. Each of us is navigating the challenges and slights of academia while juggling all the other spheres of our lives. Almost daily, I log onto Zoom and see the faces of the group’s members. We are each other’s writing partners, support system, and friends. Women who I did not know prior to joining the group have become such an integral part of my day that their extended absence on our shared Zoom space is palpable. I have also been able to tend to long-standing friendships. As soon as I received Indira’s invitation, I encouraged my best friend and former graduate school roommate to join the writing group. Consistently seeing the face of the woman who helped me complete my PhD program during some of the most challenging years of my life, and being able to cheer her on as she finished her own difficult journey through graduate school has been a balm.
To be clear, this essay is not a tale about how joining a writing group helped me reach the research and writing goals lauded regularly in contemporary academia. I have no triumphant narrative of teleological success to offer. In fact, I am behind on all my writing projects, and that will likely be the case for quite a while. Rather, this piece is intended to serve as a modest tribute, a shout out, an offering to the Black women and women of color who have helped me stay afloat during the pandemic. These women have reminded me continuously that there is no job, publication opportunity, service obligation, or any other task that warrants the sacrifice of my wellbeing, and that compulsory individualism does not have to be the compass by which we are guided through our professional and personal lives. Through their presence, words of affirmation, and friendship, I have been buoyed, and much of that support has been enabled through an unanticipated use of technology.
According to Zoom’s user guide, the chat feature is intended to streamline productivity. Yet the members of our writing group have repurposed it largely as a tool of mutual aid. While tending to our prose, we crowdfund for members who are in need. We set up grocery and food deliveries for members who are sick and otherwise overwhelmed. We counsel each other on how to strategically compose requests for accommodations and navigate institutional malfeasance. We hold “Press Send Parties” when members need a bit of borrowed courage to send out drafts to advisors and editors. We console each other through our grief and heartbreak. We crack jokes and wait eagerly to see the laughs that are generated by their discovery in the chat. We lovingly force each other to celebrate our wins, and we gently nudge each other to rest, to recharge, to preserve ourselves. At times, we have even migrated our energies and chat fingers to different Zoom locales. Notably, when the group attended one of our members’ virtual dissertation defenses, her Committee Chair noted that they had never seen a defense so packed.
Regardless of the circumstances, our interactions are non-transactional. All members are encouraged to use the group as they need without shame and expectation. While some of us spend several hours per week working in community on Zoom, other members join the group while they are in the throes of dissertating and drift away after they defend. There is no debt to be repaid or equity to be reinvested. “Come as you are, leave when you are ready, and return when you need” seems to be an unstated motto of the group.
Naturally, there are times when we cannot troubleshoot each other’s issues. Sometimes the act of witnessing is enough. Over the years, I have had the signs of my mental and physical exhaustion, my illnesses, and my anxiety, overlooked and/or trivialized. When a member notes that she sees that I am tired, sick, or otherwise agitated, even if she cannot resolve it, I am affirmed. Someone has seen my vulnerability. It has mattered to them, and they have not attempted to exploit it.
In the final analysis, my participation in the writing group is a part of a longer history of extra-institutional support that has made my continued existence in academia possible. For sure, it has not been the superficial diversity programs or the peers/colleagues who claim to be an “ally” or, more heinously, a “friend” but fail to turn those identities into actions that have motivated me to remain in the profession. It is the careful, deliberate, gentle, long-term community-building of people of color, particularly Black women and women of color, that has encouraged me to hang on a little longer. So much of this work goes unrecorded, unacknowledged, and undervalued.
So, to Indira, Dominiqua, ShaVonte’, Jazz, and all the other women who have helped me maintain during these difficult years (wow, it’s been that long!): I see you and thank you. You have helped create the conditions for my survival. See you on Zoom!
Bio
Mudiwa Pettus is an Assistant Professor of English Composition and Rhetoric at Medgar Evers College, CUNY. Her research interests are located at the intersections of rhetorical education, Black intellectual history, and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century African-American literature. She is completing her first book, Against Compromise: Black Rhetorical Education in the Age of Booker T. Washington, and her writing is published and forthcoming in Rhetoric Review, Writers: Craft & Context, and the Journal for the History of Rhetoric, among other venues.