throughout Black stories month, we are opening sanctuary portals. these will be presented (mainly on instagram) as invitations to move through ancestral lineage, collective imagining, and mundane magic, food, ritual, land, and care practices that have sustained Black life when the world was organized against our survival.

Black stories shows us that sanctuary is a practical necessity for freedom.
it happens in kitchens, gardens, porches, praise houses, and fields.
it is built through land tended collectively, food shared deliberately,
and care organized as infrastructure.
we make sanctuary by hand, by farming as a strategy of refusal
of hunger, of displacement, and of futures designed without us (and even against us).

because when society is hostile,
we make our homeplace with each other.
this has always been true.
at SUSU, we name this practice sanctuary.
and we understand sanctuary as something we practice
our birthright, inherited, and made by hand

sanctuary is collective resistance.
sanctuary is presence with the land.
sanctuary is nourishment for ourselves and our descendents.
sanctuary is the quiet labor and joy of returning to each other.

during this month, we will be sharing:

ritual practices and recipes that are part of Black traditions of care
reflections on food as communal technology
stories of homeplace and farms as freedom-making spaces
lineages of Black womanist elders and thinkers who teach us sanctuary
partner farms and healing collaborators who are living this work now

these sanctuary holders have shaped us: bell hooks, June Jordan, Fannie Lou Hamer, Octavia Butler, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and many more. they remind us that freedom is a place, that homeplace is political, that liberation must be embodied and ecological, and that adaptation, mutual aid, and respect for the earth are spiritual practice.

we feel it strongly right now, how forcefully survival,
including the survival of our queer, Brown, and Indigenous kin,
is being thrown into question.
places like SUSU exist to re-make pathways and sanctuaries
for liberation, to re-teach what we know from our ancestors,
and to preserve knowledge for our descendants.

you are welcome to move with us through these portals with us during Black stories month.

and we’d love to hear from you along the way. follow along and comment on instagram.

tell us: