This special edition of Reclaiming Our Stories, unlike our previous two volumes, is a theme-based collection focusing on the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the massive uprising across the United States against police brutality. Each voice in this volume is an invaluable contribution to the collective chorus of resistance. A chorus that requires many voices, and one that must be sustained and full-throated if we are ever to see a significant change in this country.
Our goal has been to capture these lived experiences while still fresh in the minds and hearts of these authors. We originally came together on six Zoom meetings, first as a group to tell our stories, and then to present them to our friends and family members, again on Zoom. We were not able to meet in person, but we bonded together as we listened to each other’s experiences.
Our storytellers frequently recounted organizing and participating in protests, suffering unwarranted police violence, managing family trauma, deaths and disease of loved ones, serving as health workers in the middle of the pandemic, and sometimes simply sharing their personal reflections of day-to-day coping and pain. With this project, our goal was not only to document the turbulence and heat of this unprecedented moment but also to capture the bravery exhibited by so many among us. Reader, it is not just our hope that you can find your way into these stories but that you can contribute one of your own when the time is right for you.