Africana Tea: A Global History of Tea and Black Women's Health

By Stephanie Y. Evans

Africana Tea is an illustrated tea table book that catalogs 320 narratives about Black women’s diverse experiences with tea as a tool for health, healing, and wellness. Based on research by Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans and her work on historical wellness, Africana Tea unveils the roots of Black women’s international tea culture. From hibiscus in Egypt and Jamaica to black tea in Kenya, sassafras or orange pekoe iced tea in the US South, and aromatic herbal teas of California, Black women’s wellness is steeped in tea history. This tea table book traces the historical, geographic, health, and educational traditions of collective care and offers a tea tasting journal for self-care.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Dec 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798765245354

Stephanie Y. Evans

Dr. Evans is a Professor of Black Women's Studies in the Institute for Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and affiliate faculty of Africana Studies (AAS) at Georgia State University. She served twelve consecutive years as department chair at Georgia State University, Clark Atlanta University, and University of Florida. Dr. Evans has sustained a research interest in Black women's intellectual history for over two decades. Her research is rooted in educational history but has evolved to include mental health and wellness as a way to address systemic stressors of being department chair. She began studying Black women’s wellness in 2013 and expanded her research on memoirs from investigating “the life of the mind” to practicing the life of the mind, body, and spirit. In her writing, teaching, and speaking, she works to share how Black women elders—especially educators—have navigated the relentless demands of academe. Dr. Evans is editor of the Black Women's Wellness book series at SUNY Press and has published four single-authored books: · Black Feminist Writing: A Practical Guide to Publishing Academic Books (SUNY, 2024) · Black Women’s Yoga History: Memoirs of Inner Peace (SUNY, 2021) · Black Passports: Travel Memoirs as a Tool for Youth Empowerment (SUNY, 2014) · Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History (UF, 2007) She is also lead co-editor of five books: · Dear Department Chair: Letters from Black Women Leaders to the Next Generation (Wayne State, 2023) · Black Women and Public Health: Strategies to Name, Locate, and Change Systems of Power (2022) · Black Women and Social Justice Education: Legacies and Lessons (SUNY, 2019) · Black Women's Mental Health: Balancing Strength and Vulnerability (SUNY Press, 2017) · African Americans and Community Engagement in Higher Education (SUNY, 2009). View the full portfolio for Dr. Evans at https://professorevans.net/.

Book preview

STEPHANIE Y. EVANS

A GLOBAL HISTORY OF TEA AND BLACK WOMEN’S HEALTH

AFRICANA TEA

Copyright © 2023 Stephanie Y. Evans.

Dania Wright (art),

Nishaun Battle (tea descriptions), and

Nadia Richardson (foreword).

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Disclaimer: This book discusses tea for informational and educational purposes only. This book does not offer physical, mental, or spiritual health advice.

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

844-682-1282

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Interior Image Credit: Dania Wright

ISBN: 979-8-7652-4534-7 (sc)

979-8-7652-4533-0 (hc)

979-8-7652-4535-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023917279

Balboa Press rev. date: 02/12/2024

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And if we don’t start practicing collective self-care now, there’s no way to imagine, much less reach, a time of freedom.

—Angela Davis, Radical Self-Care, Afro-Punk (2018)

CONTENTS

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DEDICATION   MY CUP RUNNETH OVER

Homage: To Artist Annie Lee

Foreword: Dr. Nadia Richardson, Black Women’s Mental Health Institute

INTRODUCTION   SPILL THE TEA: TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT #HISTORICALWELLNESS

Welcome to the Africana Tea Table!:

An Invitation to Learn, Create, and Teach Self-Care

PART I     THE PAST: LEARN SELF-CARE

Tea Traditions in the Diaspora: Mapping Global Health

PART II     THE PRESENT: CREATE SELF-CARE

Six Wellness Strategies: Pursuing Holistic Health

PART III     THE FUTURE: TEACH SELF-CARE

Sharing a Cup of Mental Health

PART IV     THE TEA TASTING JOURNAL

Africana Tea— From A To Z

CONCLUSION   TAKE NO TEA FOR THE FEVER: THE PRACTICE OF COLLECTIVE SELF-CARE

Final Word: Mental Health, Wellness, and the Practice of Collective Self-Care as an Act of Resistance

AUTHOR & CONTRIBUTOR BIOS

About the Author

About the Artist

About the Tea Specialist

About the Mental Health Professional

Acknowledgements

DEDICATION: MY CUP RUNNETH OVER

BWYH-Cover.jpg

Africana Tea celebrates artist Annie Lee. Her painting, titled My Cup Runneth Over, reflects the heartbeat of Black women’s collective self-care—that is, to love oneself, even as we love others. Aretha Franklin’s song of the same name (inspired by the Psalm 91 Bible verse), inspires us to love more and live in gratitude.

I envisioned this illustrated project to honor artists, as well as writers like Maya Angelou. As a memoirist, Angelou taught her intellectual daughters to take no tea for the fever, meaning not to put up with foolishness.

This book expands on a research agenda that I call #HistoricalWellness. I chose Annie Lee’s artwork My Cup Runneth Over as the cover for my last book, Black Women’s Yoga History: Memoirs of Inner Peace (2021). As seen in that painting, tea is a wellness tradition deeply rooted in Black women’s history.

I pray the wisdom traditions in this book nourish your soul so your cup runneth over with love. I hope this tea table book fosters inner peace so readers can learn to put up with less foolishness and create spaces for individuals and communities to savor life.

This book is a creative manifestation of the past three decades of my work in higher education. Though I use the first person, I voice throughout the text of this book, know that my voice is an amplification of others—especially my collaborators on this project—who inspire me to keep reading, writing, and speaking in ways that foster Black women’s wellness.

~Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans

July 15, 2023

Atlanta, GA

HOMAGE

AnnieLeeTeaParty-Original.jpg

Artist Dania Wright created the cover for Africana Tea in homage to Annie Lee’s artwork.

This book is a love letter to Black mental health workers around the world who practice both self-care and collective care.

Thank you to those who have come to the table to share knowledge about Black women’s tea traditions.

Cheers!

THE TEA PARTY

Annie Lee

© Annie F. Lee Foundation

Reprinted by permission

FOREWORD

DR. NADIA RICHARDSON,

BLACK WOMEN’S MENTAL HEALTH INSTITUTE

As a founder of Black Women’s Mental Health Institute, I utilize a justice framework that incorporates social justice, disruptive justice, and healing justice. Social justice, as defined by the Connecticut State University’s John Lewis Institute for Social Justice, is a communal effort dedicated to creating and sustaining a fair and equal society in which each person and all groups are valued and affirmed. It centers equality and strives for fairness.

Disruptive justice, a term I coined, focuses on the creation of an equitable society that protects human rights and human dignity by dismantling the systems of inequity that threaten them. It centers equity and strives for liberation.

Healing justice is a term coined by the movement-building organization Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective. It is a political strategy to intervene and respond on generational trauma and systemic oppression and build community/survivor-led responses rooted in Southern traditions of resilience to sustain our emotional/physical/spiritual/psychic and environmental well being. It centers collective resilience and honors ancestral wisdom.

The combination of these three forms of justice, and particularly the focus on ancestral traditions, is why the Black Women’s Mental Health Institute is proud to be a part of this important exploration of Black women’s history of tea. For centuries, Black women have utilized tea and herbal traditions to foster wellness, fight infirmities, and create space for collective sisterhood and community. We have sustained ourselves with tea in a way that medical models of health are just beginning to acknowledge. By capturing the history of Black women’s relationships with tea, this book is an invitation to celebrate the wisdom of our ancestors, while encouraging us to revisit, reacquaint ourselves, and incorporate these traditions, which we have been educated away from, back into our current health