Lavender Fields: Black Women Experiencing Fear, Agency, and Hope in the Time of COVID-19 made Ms. Magazine’s January Reads for the Rest of Us. Edited by Julia A. Jordan-Zachery, Lavender Fields uses autoethnography to explore how Black girls and women are living with and through COVID-19. It centers their pain, joys, and imaginations for a more just future as we confront all the inequalities that COVID-19 exposes.
Writes Karla J. Strand, “Black women have been among the hardest hit by COVID-19 and this collection illustrates the devastating ramifications with candor, compassion, heart and hope. By centering the voices, experiences and stories of Black women, Jordan-Zachery ensures they don’t go unheard.”
About the Book
Black women and girls in the United States are among the hardest hit by the pandemic in terms of illnesses, deaths, evictions, and increasing economic inequality. Riffing off Alice Walker’s telling of her search for Zora Neal Hurston, the authors of these essays and reflections offer raw tellings of Black girls’ and women’s experiences written in real time, as some of the contributors battled COVID-19 themselves.