AGL Glossary
“Definitions belong to the definers—not the defined.”
—Toni Morrison
Hello gentle-people,
I love playing with words. I enjoy adding dictionary definitions to my newsletters from time to time. I used to read this big old Oxford English dictionary for fun in middle school, trying out new words in the stories I’d write. I remember I tried to revive archaic definitions of words wherever I saw fit.
Dictionary definitions are political and can so often have an air of neutrality to them that is deceptive. They can sound like they are the true north if you forget or don’t know how slippery language really is and how oppression works.
Defining and redefining are acts of self-determination and practices of world-building. I am deeply inspired by Alice Walker, who coined the term “womanist” to define her Black feminism. By writing about womanism in the dictionary entry format, she defies the institutional powers—namely, colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, etc—that decide whose language is correct.
Lucille Clifton said “what did i see to be except myself? i made it up.” Like Alice Walker, so many Black women have made up words in order to give language to our reality and illuminate for others what was once a journey through the dark.
A womanist praxis of self-definition runs through the pulse of A Gentle Landing. As a child, despite my “womanish” ways, I quickly realized it takes more than one person to shift the use of a word. Language work is communal work—what I write here is an invitation for you to help me carry these definitions forward. So I hope it is work that could be held in this community of care, at least for those of you catching my drift on archival devotion.
Anyways, this is a labor of love, shaped by my love of words and my commitment to exploring words and definitions that invite softness and roundness. This also serves as a place where I can go, “this is what I mean when I say __.” I am building this at my leisure, so please bare with me.
Contribute: Is there a word or phrase I have used often that you want a definition for? Reach out and let me know.
Index
A
“at your leisure”
B
C
Clifton, Lucille
P
“pace of flourishing”
R
“rest as vocation”
S
W
archival devotion
Definition:
A practice of sustained attention to past expressions of self, community, and culture—especially those marginalized or silenced—as a way of nourishing present and future flourishing. Often enacted through writing, reflection, and storytelling that preserves, honors, and reinterprets memory.
A “soul-keeping” act that resists erasure by treating memory, ancestral wisdom, and overlooked truths as sacred texts to be tended, not merely referenced. This devotion is not about nostalgia but about a radical commitment to care, witness, and presence.
Usage Notes:
Coined and embodied by
Examples from Rose’s work:
“Much like Lucille Clifton, I find writing to be like a practice of internal archival devotion, to this soul that I now know was/is never missing.”
“The words we write have been places for keeping—keeping each other, keeping ourselves, and preserving truths the world denies too quickly.”
“I want to shape this into a space where you could… devotedly explore what I have cultivated here for you… at your leisure.”
Related Terms:
soul-keeping, care work, Black aliveness
See also:
Clifton, Lucille; Quashie, Kevin; hooks, bell; rest as vocation.
Ayisyen
pronounced: i-yees-YEN
This is one of the Kreyol spellings for “Haitian,” used to describe someone or something from Ayïti (Haiti). Also spelled Haïtienne in French.
Black aliveness
Definition:
A living, breathing insistence on Black interior life—beyond spectacle, beyond suffering, beyond the gaze. Black aliveness affirms the quiet, the intimate, the daily ways Black people exist in fullness: not simply surviving, but becoming, belonging, and being.
In Kevin Quashie’s terms, “Black aliveness” is a rejection of Black life lived only in resistance. He invites us into a “poetics of being”—where the interior life of Black people is central, not peripheral. Where Blackness is not only shaped by anti-Black violence but also by the beauty, pleasure, contradiction, tenderness, and the stillness that live within us. Our Black aliveness is not performative—it’s protective inheritance. It’s a practice of becoming more human in a world that forgets we are.
“Black aliveness is the recognition that though anti-Blackness is total in the world, it is not total in the Black world.”
—Kevin Quashie, Black Aliveness, or a Poetics of Being
In my adaptation of Black aliveness is theological. Black aliveness is explored in AGL through
the poetics of call and response (through Landing Tracks)
the concept of “rest as vocation,” not reward or resistance
and writing that tends the soul, not the algorithm
the practice of archival devotion, via reflection on previous work and the work of Black authors
“Back from the lie that Blackness, abjection, and nothingness are one in the same… I still have a hard time with Natasha Marin’s prompt to ‘close your eyes / make the white gaze disappear.’ But in a world where I am safe, valued and loved, I have stolen my life back.”
Related terms:
soul-keeping, archival devotion, rest as vocation
See also:
Clifton, Lucille
soul-keeping
noun
Definition:
A contemplative and embodied practice of tending to one’s inner life with care, attention, and reverence—especially in a world that demands disconnection from the self. Involves the gentle gathering of scattered parts of the self through writing, rest, ritual, and remembering.
A refusal to abandon the inner voice amid systems of grind, grief, and dispossession. Soul-keeping acknowledges that the soul is not lost but often buried beneath layers of survival, and must be lovingly uncovered and re-centered.
Usage Notes:
In the work of
Examples from Rose’s work:
“I still write to search, but the searching is more for soul-keeping since my soul was never really lost.”
“I endeavor to love this voice a little more each time that happens and somehow…I am here—in this place where I recognize the power of these words…”
“I have stopped asking ‘who cares?’ because I can at least count on two hands some people who do. The ways they have shown up for me are the metrics that truly count.”
Related Terms:
archival devotion, rest as vocation, Black aliveness
See also:
Clifton, Lucille
Womanist
From Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens:
1. From womanish. (Opp. of “girlish,” i.e., frivolous, irresponsible, not serious.) A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mothers to female children, “you acting womanish,” i.e., like a woman. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered “good” for one. Interested in grown up doings. Acting grown up. Being grown up. Interchangeable with another black folk expression: “You trying to be grown.” Responsible. In charge. Serious.
2. Also: A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally a universalist, as in: “Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige and black?” Ans. “Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented.” Traditionally capable, as in: “Mama, I’m walking to Canada and I’m taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me.” Reply: “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.
4. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.