Tea Talk in the African Diaspora
Creative research about Black women's self-care traditions.
black women's tea history | digital humanities
Tea Narratives in the African Diaspora
MAP OF BLACK WOMEN'S TEA HISTORY
This project maps 300 Black women’s memoirs to study holistic health history. Professor Stephanie Y. Evans examines how Black women in the African diaspora have used tea for personal and communal health, emphasizing how self-care practices have been preserved through life writing.
From hibiscus in Egypt and Jamaica to black tea in Kenya, sassafras or orange pekoe iced tea in the U.S. South, and aromatic herbal teas of California, Black women’s wellness is steeped in tea history.
Life writing by Mary Seacole (Jamaica), Maya Angelou (California), Jan Willis (India), Edna Lewis (Virginia), Wangari Maathai (Kenya), and Mary Church Terrell (Washington, D.C.) are only a few examples of memoirs that illustrate how Black women expand the global view of tea as both medicinal and as a cornerstone of social and political life.
Africana Tea unveils the roots of Black women’s international tea culture, including biblical notions like “my cup runneth over" (a painting by Annie Lee and a cover song by Aretha Franklin), “spilling the tea,” (a term coined by The Lady Chablis of Savannah), and the need to “take no tea for the fever,” (Black women’s refusals to tolerate foolishness).
This interactive map is open access, like the map for Dr. Evans's book, Black Passports: Travel Memoirs as a Tool for Youth Empowerment.
RESEARCH & WRITING
Retreat: 2024 Fall Writing Retreat
Details coming in Spring 2024
Retreat: 2022 GSU Humanities Center Maymester Writing Fellowship
Dr. Evans has been awarded a Georgia State University HRC Maymester Writing Fellowship. From May 9 - June 3, 2022, she will join the virtual writing program and share research updates with the Faculty Workshops. The annual seminar is hosted by the GSU Humanities Center. For more information, visit https://humanities.gsu.edu/support-for-faculty/hrc-faculty-fellows/.
Research Seminar: 2022 Callie House Center’s Annual Works-in-Progress Seminar
In July 2022, Dr. Evans will join the Callie House Works-in-Progress Seminar in Providence, Rhode Island. The annual seminar is hosted by the Vanderbilt University Callie House Research Center for the Study of Global Black Cultures and Politics. For more information, visit https://as.vanderbilt.edu/aads/calliehousecenter/.
BLACK WOMEN'S TEA socials | talks & WORKSHOPS
Kathryn Epps Faculty Wellness Conference: Sustaining Our Sisters (Private)
Friday, May 6, 2022. The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and its Faculty Success. Third Kathryn Epps Faculty Wellness Conference. 9:30am - 4:00pm. Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans Keynote Speaker and Full-Day Workshop Facilitator. https://facultydevelopment.kennesaw.edu/eppsconference/keynote.php
No More Martyrs, Mental Health Awareness Month (Public)
May 31, 2022 - Online. Research discussion about Black women's tea history. Details HERE
Network Partners Meet & Greet (Private)
August 26, 2022 - Online.
African Tea: Graphic Novel / Tea Table Book Discussion (Public)
Spring 2023 - Online. Details forthcoming. Open to the Public.
Mary Seacole Global Tea Social - Presentations by Africana Tea Network Partners (Public)
November 2023 - Celebrating Mary Seacole's Birthday. Online. Details forthcoming. Presentations by researchers, tea professionals, and artists about tea and Black women's health history.
related research
Black Women's Yoga History: Memoirs of Inner Peace
Examines how Black women elders have managed stress, emphasizing how self-care practices have been present since at least the mid-nineteenth century, with roots in African traditions.
Artwork: "My Cup Runneth Over" by Annie Lee. Book info, SUNY Press https://sunypress.edu/Books/B/Black-Women-s-Yoga-History
How have Black women elders managed stress? In Black Women's Yoga History, Stephanie Y. Evans uses primary sources to answer that question and to show how meditation and yoga from eras of enslavement, segregation, and migration to the Civil Rights, Black Power, and New Age movements have been in existence all along. Life writings by Harriet Jacobs, Sadie and Bessie Delany, Eartha Kitt, Rosa Parks, Jan Willis, and Tina Turner are only a few examples of personal case studies that are included here, illustrating how these women managed traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression. In more than fifty yoga memoirs, Black women discuss practices of reflection, exercise, movement, stretching, visualization, and chanting for self-care. By unveiling the depth of a struggle for wellness, memoirs offer lessons for those who also struggle to heal from personal, cultural, and structural violence. This intellectual history expands conceptions of yoga and defines inner peace as mental health, healing, and wellness that is both compassionate and political.
PEDAGOGY
Fall 2022 - WGSS Course at Georgia State University
BLACK WOMEN & HEALTH WGSS/AAS 4110-6110 | #Historical Wellness | Fall 2022 @GSU
Goal: To identify historical and cultural strategies for sustainable well-being
THEME FOR THE SEMESTER: “AFRICANA TEA”
This course will explore mental health and holistic health history in terms of race, gender, and stress management. Materials will show how history can inform today’s practices for mind, body, and spirit maintenance. For example, memoirs by Black women reveal tea as an effective wellness strategy. In this class, graduate and undergraduate students will study human rights abuses in U.S. history from enslavement to the present and explore feminist-womanist resistance in the form of struggle for optimal health. Definitions of health will be studied from six dimensions: physical, mental, spiritual, social, economic, and political.
Student researchers will combine historical analysis with psychology and public health frameworks to address one question: How have Black women elders managed stress? Answers will involve studying health challenges (morbidity) and sustainable health (longevity). Course reading includes reports from Center for Disease Control, American Public Health Association, Boston University’s Black Women’s Health Study, Black Women’s Health Imperative, Center for Black Women’s Wellness, American Psychological Association, Dr. Kanika Bell’s survey of 50 Black women mental health professionals, and other relevant sources.
THIS WILL BE A RESEARCH-FOCUSED COURSE FOR ADVANCED UPPER DIVISION UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE STUDENTS.
resources
Lady Rose Specialty Teas
30 Black-Owned Tea Businesses to Support
30 Black-Owned Tea Businesses to Support
Herbal herbal infusions and tea products.
30 Black-Owned Tea Businesses to Support
30 Black-Owned Tea Businesses to Support
30 Black-Owned Tea Businesses to Support
50 for 50: Black-Owned Tea Brands
30 Black-Owned Tea Businesses to Support
47 Black Owned Coffee and Tea Businesses That are Great Alternatives to Starbucks
47 Black Owned Coffee and Tea Businesses That are Great Alternatives to Starbucks
47 Black Owned Coffee and Tea Businesses That are Great Alternatives to Starbucks
47 Black Owned Coffee and Tea Businesses That are Great Alternatives to Starbucks
16 Black-Owned Organic Loose Leaf Tea Brands
47 Black Owned Coffee and Tea Businesses That are Great Alternatives to Starbucks
16 Black-Owned Organic Loose Leaf Tea Brands