28 days --- 56 ways to be Young, Gifted and Black: Ree Belle

How do you spend your days?

No two days are ever the same. I’m currently on leave from my job so to dedicate the next few months to completing my thesis and graduating with my masters. Generally, the past 4 years have entailed the reality of being a full time seminarian and full time community organizer as well as continuing to nurture my creativity and craft of being a poet. What is guaranteed almost everyday to occur besides the basics of showering and brushing teeth, is listening to music of various genres, though most frequently hip-hop, then R&B; talking to my mom on the phone, and at least 2-3 other friends who I speak to daily. Besides that, anything is possible! I might spend a day reading and writing papers, convening meetings with groups and individuals as it pertains to the school to prison pipeline in our region, meeting with administrators, teachers, or other school based stakeholders, training community and congregational members on the principles of community organizing, or holding healing space for black folks engaged in this work of liberation.

What brings you joy?

Poetry- writing it, listening to it, studying it. Freestyling nonsensical off-beat raps when alone. Black babies!!! Any form of black love. Those rare moments of emotional honesty shared between friends. Black men who dress well. Music. Family! Friends. Basketball. Twerking. Witnessing people living into their fullness. Massages. Traveling.

What is liberation to you?

The freeness to live into our fullness- without constraint. To be truth, always, in whatever form it may take. Freedom from repression, suppression, and oppression. It’s the complete union of body and spirit within our being. For me: If it were to have a look, it would be the sun setting against the mountains and shore. If it were to have a smell, it would smell like sweet potato pie and peach cobbler. If it were to have a feel, it would be feel like the brush of loving lips against the cheek. If it were to have a sound, it would sound like 90’s R&B. If it were to have a taste, it would take like Junior’s Cheesecake, Peruvian Aji de Gallina, a fish taco from a street truck in Mexico, and Ghanaian pineapples.

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