Frankie Condon implores her audience to imagine new ways of performing anti-racist activism and pedagogies throughout her book: I Hope I Join the Band: Narrative, Affiliation, and Antiracist Rhetoric. For Condon, building an antiracist epistemology involves an individual’s ability to weave together the affective and spiritual dimensions of knowing alongside of multiple stories, which highlight histories of oppression, exploitation, and privilege. She emphasizes the idea that antiracist work is incomplete, messy, disruptive, and uncomfortable. To that end, her project illustrates how the affective, spiritual, and rational form alternative ways of being and thinking within anti-racist activism. Throughout each of the chapters, Condon offers readers an account of herself. She reflects on her understandings of privilege and oppression and demonstrates how difficult it is to excavate our narratives of activism and critically evaluate the extent to which they produce change, despite our progressive intentions.
A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric