beginnings

Shala Valley in Albania. 2006.

I used to have this giant yellow bag for international travel. Thinking back I don’t even know where we purchased it but I am sure my mother found it at some sporting goods store. I remember thinking when I first saw it, “Wow, I hope it fits everything I need,” whereas when Mike, my then undergraduate advisor first took a look at it, he said something along the lines of, “Where are you going with this giant-ass bag?” The bag eventually became notorious: it was actually lost on my very first trip to Albania in 2006, at a time when there was no luggage carousel at the airport. Passengers would just wait by this giant whole as people threw bags out and you hoped you caught yours. When we landed and my bag was not there, I feared that I may not see it again and I remember Mike describing it to the airport staff as a huge bag that won’t look like any other. “Don’t worry,” Mike said. “Bags get lost all the time but that bag won’t be lost long.” Sure enough when they found the bag a day or two later, the person who called us said, “Yeah this bag is really yellow and really big.” That bag went everywhere with me those first summers that I traveled abroad: Albania, Hungary, Tanzania, the Netherlands, Greece. It somehow felt as though it could keep expanding every time I packed it, such that the space inside felt at times seemed infinite. Sometimes it took two people to carry the bag and while multiple professors mocked the bag’s size, it contained nearly everything someone might need in an emergency, including a thoroughly packed medicine bag courtesy of my physician mother. And when a fellow student once got super sick during an Albanian field season, who was able to come to the rescue until he could get to a local hospital? The yellow bag!

My Cousin Linda first taught me how to properly pack the bag for longer trips. It was early June 2006 and I was preparing for my first visit to Albania, my first time to leave the U.S. Cousin Linda had driven up from Natchez for a visit and when she saw me stuffing clothes into the bag she calmly told me to take everything out because I was packing the wrong way. As we sat on the floor talking and carefully rolling my clothes, she asked me how I would be able to share things from the trip with everyone back home since I would not have a phone (this was before smart phones and wifi, my friends). I told her that I had plans to keep detailed journals and to use my digital camera every single day, and that way, I would be able to share everything when I got home. If you look closely at the photo above you can see my camera case carefully fastened to my khaki pants. I never left the guesthouse without it.

Sure enough when I returned stateside later that summer, I used those journals and pictures to make a slideshow on my laptop, complete with a tailored soundtrack featuring India Arie’s “Strength, Courage, and Wisdom.” I took that show on the road so-to-speak: I showed it to all of my friends in Jackson, took it to my aunt’s house in Dallas, and of course debuted it in Natchez. Cousin Linda came over to my grandmother’s house where we all watched it together. As I proudly beamed rewatching all of my pictures flash across the screen my cousin Linda asked aloud, “Where are the Albanians?” “Huh?” I responded, caught off-guard by her question. “Where are the Albanians? When is it going to get to the pictures with the Albanians?” “These are pictures with Albanians,” I said, pointing at the paused photo of me and Joel, one of the young boys at the guest house that summer. “Oh,” she said, looking perplexed. “So this is what Albanians look like?” “Yeah,” I said. “Hmmm,” she began…”that is not what I was expecting. So are they white?”

And with this question I begin this next chapter of my blogging life. I recently published my first book, Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife. The book is an ethnographic study of race and racialization based on nearly twenty years of research. For those that do not know, ethnographic books are written by scholars who have conducted long-term and in-depth, qualitative research on a given topic. In my case, that topic is race but not a book about who is racist. Instead I ask questions such as: what is race and what makes it different from ethnicity or nation? How does race operate or change meanings? How people define race, white, or black? And ultimately, what can Albania teach scholars about race (instead of what can American definitions of race tell us about Albania)? Now that I have published my first book, I am on to the second one, which will be non-fiction but much more creative non-fiction storytelling animated by the often-asked question: how did a Black girl from Mississippi wind up doing research in Albania? In answering this question I explore the ways that my family and loved ones have made since of my experiences (such as my cousin’s question), and what that can tell us about cultural encounters and human social relations, especially those that are humorous, those that are unexpected, and those that are confounding. This blog won’t only be about the book nor will it only be about Albania—I plan to use it as a space to think anthropologically about the world in a myriad of ways. But most of my posts will be informed about my scholarship, writing, and teaching.

I like to think of myself as an old school blogger. I began my first blog in 2008 when I moved to Albania for a year and wanted a way to keep in touch with my family and friends back home. Cousin Linda was one of my most avid readers. But I soon attracted other unexpected readers, particularly Albanians who had somehow found my blog online and began following it. I used to track my musings on Tumblr, which people of a certain age will remember. I later created an additional blog during grad school to think through cultural anthropological and race theory in the context of Southeast Europe. Now I am making a return. One thing that authors learn in the book-writing process is that there you need strategies that guide your writing practice. Though I began my first blog nearly 18 years ago, I think it helped set the stage for what later became my first book, and indeed many of those posts have set the stage for this next book in-progress. I hope this blog will allow me the chance to connect with an audience but also to reconnect with those early blogging practices that provided me my first springboard as a writer.

There was a bridge in the Shala Valley that we used to cross daily back in 2006, during my first archaeological field season in Albania. We could only cross one person at a time, and often we’d hum the Indiana Jones theme song as we made our way to the other side. I tried to play it cool on the outside but internally I panicked that the bridge would snap every single time I traversed it. Just crossing that bridge was enough adventure for the day for me. Starting a new blog feels similar, both in terms of an adventure as well as a bridge to the next phase of my writing life. So, welcome! Glad you have decided to follow along.

The Indiana Jones Bridge in the Shala Valley. 2006.