In this issue, we share the third contribution in our special series on “Restorative and Reparative Conversations,” by Jenna Harb, Kirsty Anantharajah, Kanika Samuels-Wortley, and Nadia Qureshi. We are so delighted to share their conversation as it highlights the critical race praxis of counter-storytelling that feminist academics from marginalized communities use to navigate the harms that other feminists and institutions may inflict on us. They discuss their “Kitchen Table,” an alternative forum for cultivating rest, care, acknowledgment, and joy, and outline how they use themes and journaling to offer curative, healing experiences with other scholars.
We invite readers to use this piece as inspiration to create their own Kitchen Tables. Perhaps your Kitchen Table will be constructed via Zoom, as you cook together and talk about the scents and flavors of the food. Maybe you will meet in person around someone’s coffee table, surrounded by chairs of different sizes, with a potluck dinner. Perhaps it will be monthly picnics after which the participants walk, roll, or use mobility aids to explore their surroundings. Maybe you have traumatic memories of conversations around tables and need to build a different kind of table at which there are rules and boundaries, such as: only authentic selves show up, no kicking under the table, share food that all can eat and enjoy, allow children and pets, be kind so no one gets indigestion. Enjoy cooking together. Sit on the floor or on the stoop of your building. Whatever you decide, we are grateful to the authors for asking us to make “visible and legible” the ways in which we build community and safety when other feminists and institutions alike fail to fully see us.
The Conversations section is an innovative intervention by IFJP which aims to offer space and opportunity to make strong theoretical and practical contributions to feminist debates that do not necessarily take standard academic forms. It may include interviews with prominent or early-career scholars, practitioners, and activists; narratives and short stories; photo essays, artistic pieces, and poetry; film readings; conference reports; and other “non-traditional” modes of scholarly writing.
Interested authors should submit their articles via ScholarOne: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rfjp. Please also upload a biographical note and five keywords. Make sure to edit it thoroughly for language and clarity, format it to correspond to the Taylor & Francis guidelines, and identify it as a submission for the Conversations section.
For further information, please refer to the journal’s FAQ page at: https://www.ifjpglobal.org/submit-to-us/#anchor_conversations_shortcut.
Inquiries should be directed to both Conversations Editors.