How does fear – deep, ongoing, systemic fear – impact on Black lives?

Through reflections on her own life, anthropologist Dr Linda Jean Hall PhD draws on traditions of African storytelling to explore the question of how systemic fear affects the twentieth- and twenty-first-century Afro American experience. By using the framing of pandemic waves – a concept all too familiar in the wake of COVID-19 – Hall employs a personal lens to parse out the implications of different “waves of fear" through impactful stages of her life, allowing readers to examine the shifting relationships that define Blackness and survival.

Gifting resilience: A pandemic study of Black female resistance is ideal reading for students of Black studies, African American studies, and related courses, as well as for students of feminist and womanist studies, gender studies, cultural studies, history, sociology and anthropology. Unflinchingly honest, this book gives a human face to viewpoints and ideas that originate deep within the complex and diverse African Diasporic lived experience.

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• v 
• viviiPreface
• viiiixA note on language
• xxiContents
• xivxvIntroduction
• xxixLearning objectives
• xxx1PART I The germinal moment—speaking from uncertainty
• 1 Writing incentives and logic
• 2 A marriage and escape
• 3 Walking in the shadows
• 2021PART II Knoxville’s HBCU
• 4 An unwelcoming precursor
• 5 Afro American?
• 6 White supremacy and Black power
  • The seat of Knoxville College’s loneliness experience and educational assimilation
  • Shades of Black identity
• 7 American dreams and nightmares
• 8 Familial ties and male companions
• 9 Social climbing to the bottom
• 10 Marginalization in Knoxville
• 11 Employment success and love’s reality
• 12 The secrets of Vietnam
• 103PART III Low man on the totem pole
• 13 1970s underemployment opportunities
• 14 Marijuana and the social welfare system
• 15 Speaking truth to power
• 129PART IV Alone
• 16 A hollow marriage
• 17 Tennis and the Jehovah’s Witnesses
• 145PART V The Big Blue nightmare
• 18 Precariousness and professional dreams
• 153PART VI Failure and being “the best”
• 19 Gender, race, and bullying
• 20 Dismissal and retribution
• 21 Parental demands and divorced Black womanhood
• 22 Guilt, marriage, and success
• 23 Avoiding hate while failing miserably
• 24 Golden State ambitions and insecurities
• 201PART VII California here I come
• 25 Compassion and friendship networks
• 26 Opportunities requiring closure
• 27 Inevitable mortality and project completion
• 224225PART VIII Death and degrees
• 28 Academic achievement from a historically marginalized perspective
• 236237PART IX Master’s nightmares and doctoral dreams
• 29 Parental heartache overshadows success
• 30 Conclusion
• 254255Suggested discussion topics
• 256257References
• 258259Further reading
• Index

Linda Jean Hall PhD is an author, anthropologist, and teacher. She lectures at the University of California, Riverside, in the Department of Global Studies & Ethnic Studies.

Linda Jean Hall: Gifting Resilience: A Pandemic Study of Black Female Resistance
Reviewed by Ashley-Devon Williamston

"Academics and everyday people alike have long discussed Black Americans’ resilience in the face of oppression and hatred. However, what is rarely discussed is the cost of Black excellence and what happens behind the scenes in the lives of Black individuals who manage to achieve the modern American ideal of success. Linda Jean Hall’s autoethnographic memoir, Gifting Resilience: A Pandemic Study of Black Female Resistance, offers valuable insights on this matter."

"Gifting Resilience demonstrates the value of autoethnography for both social scientists and ordinary readers from marginalized backgrounds."

"Through her work, Linda Jean Hall adds positivity to the narrative of Black resilience by assuring that it is normal to be rocked by the rough waves of life. Finally, this book reveals the peace of mind that comes from knowing that genuine compassion and community support are often the rewards of vulnerability."

Complete review can be found here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/730085