Kitchens, Laughter, and Survival: Black Technologies of Resistance
January often arrives with new year, new me energy. We set resolutions—many of them already fraying by the second week. We make plans. We dream big. We promise ourselves reinvention.
But January also asks something quieter and deeper of us: to remember. Not only who we come from, but how we have survived.
I was recently recording a podcast episode for Black Modern Mystic with Dr. Tamice Spencer-Helms when they asked me, “What does the phrase resurrection technology mean to you?” The question lingered. Resurrection implies that something has died. And yet, despite the best efforts of empire and whiteness, Black people have never been dead.
Yes, our bodies have been beaten and broken. Yes, unarmed Black people have been shot and killed. Yes, there are endless attempts to kill our spirits, our joy, our imagination. And still—we remain. We have endured because we learned how to make a way out of no way, using what we had at hand. We survived through our technologies of resistance.
Black people have always had technologies of resistance—not machines or apps, but ways of living, knowing, and caring that made endurance possible under conditions designed to crush us. These technologies were forged in kitchens and sanctuaries, on porches and picket lines, in laughter that cut through despair and stories that carried truth when silence felt safer.
Black women have been among the most faithful engineers of these technologies.
Long before “innovation” became a buzzword, Black women were building systems of care that refused erasure. When institutions failed to protect us, we protected one another. When power demanded our exhaustion, we learned to rest in community. When the world insisted on despair, we practiced joy anyway. These were not accidents. They were strategies.
Communal care has always been one of our most enduring technologies of resistance. Care was never just kindness; it was infrastructure. It looked like women pooling money to bury the dead with dignity. Like aunties watching each other’s children so someone could attend a meeting, catch a shift, or lie down for an hour. Like prayer circles and healing circles that required no credentials, only presence. Care functioned as a counter-system, refusing the lie that survival is an individual project.
Food, too, has always been a technology. Not just nourishment, but memory and medicine. Black women turned meals into rituals of survival: feeding families when cupboards were bare, feeding movements when spirits ran low. The potluck was political. The repast was theological. To gather around food was to insist that our bodies mattered, even when the world treated them as disposable.
Storytelling has been another sacred tool. When official histories erased us, Black women told stories anyway. Stories carried warnings, laughter, grief, and instruction. Folklore, testimony, gossip, sermons, and songs became vessels of wisdom. To tell a story was to claim authority over meaning—to say, we know who we are, even if the record refuses to say it right.
And then there is humor.
Black laughter has always been more than entertainment. It is pressure release. It is critique. It is survival. Humor allows us to name the absurdity of oppression without being consumed by it. It lets us breathe. It reminds us that we are still human, still creative, still capable of delight—even in the face of violence and loss. A joke, a side-eye, a laugh shared at the right moment can say: They haven’t taken everything.
These technologies: care, food, story, and laughter were never neutral. They were acts of resistance precisely because they affirmed life where death was expected. They protected the soul when the body was under constant threat. They made room for joy without denying pain.
Remembering these tools matters now.
In a moment when so many are searching for new strategies, new models, new solutions, remembrance reminds us that we are not empty-handed. We inherit a lineage of resistance that is relational, embodied, and deeply creative. The question is not whether we have tools—it is whether we will honor them.
To remember Black technologies of resistance is to remember that innovation does not always look like disruption. Sometimes it looks like preservation. Sometimes it looks like laughter. Sometimes it looks like feeding each other and telling the truth until morning comes.
Want to continue this conversation? Join Faith Matters Network’s next Womanism Around the Table: Black Rituals of Love and Resistance on Thursday, February 12. Register here.
Self-Love Ritual: “I Am Black and Beautiful”
Purpose: To claim dignity, beauty, and embodied worth.
Steps:
Read Song of Songs 1:5
I am black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon.
Get comfortable. Place one hand on your chest, belly, or any place where your skin is visible.
Take a slow breath in and whisper: “Black.”
Breathe out and whisper: “Beautiful.”
Repeat this for 3–5 breaths.
Then, begin to add your own truths:
“I am Black and beautiful.”
“I am disabled and beautiful.”
“I am queer and beautiful.”
“I have stretch marks and I’m beautiful.”
Close by saying: “I am Black and beautiful.”
Closing words:
Your melanin is memory. Your body is inheritance. Your beauty has survived ships, chains, laws, and lies.
Pleasure Ritual: “Blessed Are the Fleshy”
Purpose: To remember the body as sacred and pleasure as wisdom.
Steps:
Sit with feet on the floor if possible. Place one hand on your chest, one on your belly.
Take three slow breaths together.
Read the Pleasure Beatitudes by Ristina Gooden slowly.
Blessed are the moisturized, for they know the tenderness of their own touch
Blessed are the deep-belly laughers, for they know freedom.
Blessed are the first-bite savorers, for they know to enjoy the journey, even when the end is near
Blessed are the seekers of the highest realm, for they know we are not the gatekeepers of wisdom
Blessed are the candle burners, for they know the cleansing power of fire
Blessed are the body movers, for they know sensuality has its own beat
Blessed are the creators, for they know that remnants unlock new possibilities
Blessed are the silence keepers, for they know the comfort of their own breath
Blessed are the climaxers, for they know heaven
Blessed are the fleshy beings, for they are divine
Blessed are you, pleasure embracer, may it remind you of your aliveness, even as the world ends.
Rejoice, and be glad, as these joys will carry you to the next one.
Take 10 seconds to do one gentle act: roll your shoulders, take a deeper breath, or place a hand somewhere comforting.
Take one slow, intentional breath in—and release it like you’re making room for yourself.
Closing words:
You are not a problem to solve. You are a body to listen to. Let pleasure remind you that you are still here.
Grief Ritual: “Loving the Unseen”
Purpose: To honor grief as sacred, to name love that remains, and to remember that sorrow is not weakness—it is evidence of how deeply we have loved.
Leader (or Reader):
This is about love.
And I believe a grief ritual of loving the unseen is necessary for us.
All of us are carrying someone.
Some memory.
Some future that did not arrive.
Some presence we no longer get to hold in the same way.
If tears come, let them come.
If your body needs to shift, stretch, or step away for a moment, that is welcome here.
This is a gentle space to grieve.
And to remember: our sorrow is sacred. Our grief is sacred.
You do not have to explain your grief.
You only have to arrive with it.
Centering the Body
Place one hand over your heart.
Place one hand over your belly.
Begin to make slow, circular motions
first in one direction,
then gently reverse.
Pause. Keep your hands where they are.
Take a deep breath in.
And release.
Again.
Breathe in…
And release.
Now, breathe in strength.
Hold it for a moment.
And breathe out what feels heavy today.
Again, breathe in love
the love of those who came before you,
the love of those who have loved you well.
Hold it.
Someone has loved you.
Now breathe out
the pressure of always trying to be strong.
One more time:
Breathe in love.
Hold it.
And breathe out the ache
the ache of missing,
the ache of absence,
the ache of not having them here in the way you wish you could.
Leader:
Grief teaches us how much we can love.
We do not know the depth of our love until we have lost.
And still, love remains.
Settling Into the Body
Keep one hand on your heart and one on your belly.
Sit quietly with the body that has loved.
The body that was loved.
Now, if it feels right,
let your hands move to your shoulders, your arms, or anywhere that holds tension.
Gently rub or hold that place.
Let this be a moment where you notice
where grief lives in your body
and where love still lives, too.
Leader:
You are not doing this wrong.
You are not behind.
You are not broken.
You are grieving because you have loved.
Closing Words:
Our sorrow is sacred.
Our love does not disappear.
We carry the unseen with tenderness.
And we are still here.
Radical Hospitality Ritual: “Opening the Door”
Purpose: To practice courage, care, and communal protection.
Steps:
Close your eyes and imagine someone frightened at your door.
Notice what you feel in your body.
Ask yourself: What would it take for me to make room?
Reflect silently or share: Where have I seen this kind of courage before? Where might I be called to practice it now?
Place a hand on your heart and say: “May I be brave enough to make room.”
Closing words:
Our people have always survived by opening doors. May we remember how.
