Reading Black While Sippin’ Tea

Good evening all! Welcome to Tea with Drey! I am so excited to be going on this journey and for y’all to join me. 

Why Evening 

Now before we begin, I know there is a question that’s burning in your heart. “Drey, it’s 9 am, why are you saying good evening?” 

It started out with a college friend saying that he feels the need to be proper to me (though I don’t know why) and would always say it whenever he was greeting me. Over the years, I have used “good evening” (usually said in the deepest voice I can muster) regardless of the time of day because 1) I truly am trying to claim that I’m a Bass and 2) it feels like a silly way to dignify those around me. It sits in between proper and annoying and so naturally, I’ve taken a liking to it. 

Anyways, this post is not just to explain my Audreyisms, that’s a different post. This blog post is to welcome you on my journey of reading Black and sippin’ tea. I wanted to give y’all a little history lesson of the life of Drey to truly understand why starting this blog is huge for me and hopefully for you. 

Backstory time

I was born in Nigeria; grew up in St. Maarten and moved to Florida at the age of eleven. If you were looking for the embodiment of the diaspora, here I am. However, even with such rich histories flowing through my narrative, I was strategically taught to hate everything Black. It wasn’t outright but it was the sneaky child who steals bites out of a cookie until it’s all gone. My family tried to instill in me great pride in my Igbo heritage however it was also accompanied by whitening cream and belief that English was superior. 

Reading as Escape

Moving to the States was a whole different ball game. In St. Maarten, I was the African girl, and of course, that came with its challenges; however, in the US I became Black and that came with a more troubled history. 

Though I eventually found my footing, things started out rough: 1) I had an accent that the kids felt necessary to tease, and 2) I was struggling in my Comprehension class. I had never really been a straight-A student in St. Maarten but I was above average. To be struggling with something that I technically used every single day shook me. And so I sought out help from my teacher and experienced my first microaggression as a Black girl. My teacher saw my C and said “You don’t need to feel bad. That’s normal for you all.” I didn’t even know who she was grouping me with but I knew that it wasn’t meant to calm my nerves. My competitive spirit followed and I had to prove her wrong. I fled to reading because it improved my reading comprehension and it helped me escape the world of middle school. And man did I thoroughly enjoy the lives of my fictional friends. I read everything I could get my hands in my school’s library. I take pride in saying that I read Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries before I watched the movies. 

Reading Leaves Me Shook

Y’all, I was winning all the reading prizes. And then high school came around and though I didn’t read as voraciously I still kept up the hobby. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I gave myself the challenge to read the top 100 books in the literary canon. It was this challenge that introduced me to my Beloved: Toni Morrison. My sophomore year English teacher knew of my intentions to read the canon. One day, she pulled me aside and said “ Audrey, you know what I wish we included in our high school reading list? Beloved by Toni Morrison. Though we won’t be reading it I think you should and if you have any questions don’t be afraid to ask me.” I wasn’t the teacher’s pet by any means (I was too shy) but they knew me. I was the Nigerian and Caribbean girl in their honors and AP classes. 

While I would love to say that Beloved is what opened my eyes to reading Black I would be lying. It was actually The Bluest Eye by Toni. And I remember exactly where I was and what song I had on repeat. 

The time: junior year of high school

The place: the neighborhood Barnes and Noble down the street from the Yogurt Land

The song: the 12 min version of “Spirit Break Out” by Kim Walker-Smith (who I call Kimmie)

The mood: heartbreak and realization. 

You see after years of internalizing anti-Black rhetoric, it had finally caught up to me while reading The Bluest Eye. I had wanted the bluest eye, the straight hair, the White-American accent, and even the alabaster skin. I craved my version of the bluest eye to the point that I lathered my skin and hair with carcinogens and gave up my melodic Caribbean accent. And here I was seeing the pain that it caused Pecola, only she didn’t register it as pain. I couldn’t go back to a life of oblivion and ignorance. 

Reading as Resistance

For the first time, I realized that the supposed canon for the melting pot that is US American high schools did not include many non-European authors. The only books by Black authors I read in high school were Things Fall Apart (this book was also my undoing) and Their Eyes Were Watching God. I vowed that even if we weren’t reading books by Black authors, I would read Black, meaning that I would bring my Black perspective to the assigned books. Heart of Darkness was no longer this great work by Joseph Conrad that showed the horror of Europeans exploiting the natural habitat of the Ivory Coast, it became a paper on how all of them were complicit in the detrimental effects of colonialism including Joseph Conrad himself. Othello, not just the Moor who killed his wife but the (internalized) racism of (himself and) his companions AND Shakespeare himself. Brave New World, not only about a futuristic dystopia but a dystopia where white folks’ racism was allowed to continue running rampant and Aldous Huxley got away with calling human beings savages. And boy did this shy girl call everybody out in her essays.

College came around and the process of unlearning not only continued but it intensified. I was among other top-ranking Black students and they reveled in their various and nuanced identities and they gave me the courage to relish in my narrative. I began to delight in my unique identity and perspective. Not only was I Nigerian, but I had also had the opportunity to see the world from both the Caribbean and American perspectives. No more perm and no more whitening creams and most importantly I began to exclusively read black books, which was easier because your girl joined the STEM life and wasn’t being assigned much reading (at least not in English because of my minor). 

Tea’s Entrance

During college is when I also developed a love for tea. Everyone and their mother’s grandmother’s lover’s cousin tried to convince me that I would need coffee to survive the late nights and all-nighters. However, I have a combative spirit so, naturally, my response was “Challenge accepted.” Firstly, they didn’t know that I couldn’t properly pull an all-nighter and secondly, I found tea. Tea was a beautiful find because it contained caffeine but had a much better aftertaste that didn’t require me to add a sweetener. Also, tea allowed me to come to my goal of living a pseudo-bougie life. I was learning and trying everything. I walked into the tea stores with my nose and palette ready and left with my bank account depleted. My hobby time became a time for me to sip tea while I consumed the tea. Your girl was living the life (outside of being dragged by STEM classes)!

Reading While on Mission

After college, I joined an organization that sends missionaries to college campuses was sent to Mount St Marys in Emmitsburg. While this ultimately ended up being very good for me, I found myself in rural MD working for a predominately white organization. God and I will definitely be having very intense conversations about this time. As opposed to the liberal jungle that was Boston, I was an exit and half from the Mason Dixon line and woke up to the Confederate flags. And so I found myself fleeing to the stories of fictional friends again. However, I had lived more life and unlearned some things since the age of eleven. This time, my fictional characters looked more like me. And the non-fiction books that drew me in dived into the intersections of race, equity, spirituality, and gender. I began to interact with every book I read from a Black and spiritual lens. The more I leaned into my identities in my reading, the more I got out of the book. I began to notice the difference in the way I read books versus the way others talked about books. Many will give a basic book review or have discussions about what the red door could possibly mean. However, I’ve learned to allow the books I read to poke something deeper within and expose wounds, beliefs, and journeys. It’s the reason that even though books about the state of the world may evoke anger within, I leave with a greater understanding of my narrative and a new dream. I have left many a book with the dream of leaving medicine for law. I eventually come back to my senses; however, the process of imagining a world in which I solve a problem keeps my critical-thinking wheel greased and ready for the time that I will be called to fix my little corner of the world.  

The Journey Continues

My friends! I have grown more enamored with the process of reading Black while sippin’ tea because it has connected me to humanity while encouraging me to dream. I am excited for y’all to be here and hope that you will join me on this heartbreaking yet utterly satisfying journey. 

Stay Blessed & Stay Sippin’

Drey

Disclaimer: Though influenced by the institutions that formed me, the views expressed here are those of my own at a specific snapshot in time. I make no promises that said ideas will remain constant as I age.