Social Impact Authors: How & Why Author Wylin Wilson Of Duke Divinity School Is Helping To Change Our World
…Don’t be afraid to teach from a place of authenticity, even if it means going against the grain. Example: I aim for my teaching to be centered in healing and transformation so I use liberation and womanist strategies and I incorporate art and creative activities and discussions of difficult topics in my courses — things that are not as popular within the academy. When I first started teaching, I was so afraid of doing it from a place of authenticity because I felt that my colleagues would not take me seriously, but I now have enough courage to teach from who I am authentically…
We had the pleasure of interviewing Wylin D. Wilson. Wylin is Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School where she teaches Womanist Bioethics within the Theology Medicine and Culture program. She is author of Womanist Bioethics and Economic Ethics and the Black Church.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
My parents demonstrated what grace and care look like practically for me growing up. They taught me to love and see the value in people and to value connection to: the Divine Mystery, my community, and the environment. I was born in South Florida, only 10 years after the desegregation of hospitals in the U.S., so I grew up hearing stories from family members and Black folks in my community about the suffering of African Americans within the healthcare system — about feeling unseen, unheard and uncared for within institutions that prioritized cure but where care was lacking because of the convergence of race and health — which proved to be a deadly combination in the U.S.
What I remember vividly about my childhood and what has shaped me the most is my parents’ life of service to others. Dad was a deacon and Mom was a deaconess in our local church. I was able to accompany them on some of their visits to those suffering from illness, or who did not have enough food to eat or who had lost their job and had fallen on hard times. The one thing that struck me poignantly that my parents did while I was a young girl is that they taught Adult Education classes at our local church. I watched how they were sensitive to the dignity of the adults for whom illiteracy brought shame. One individual that they helped teach to read and to develop a business plan was able to start a viable business and support his family through entrepreneurship and who continues to thrive now some 40 years later.
The most life-giving thing about my childhood was being part of a large extended family of folks who contributed to me feeling surrounded by love — I enjoyed Sunday dinners at my Mama Julianne’s home where the house was full of cousins, Aunties, Uncles and community folk. Every Sunday dinner felt like a family reunion and I would play outside for hours with my young cousins. We picked blackberries, went on adventures through my Great Granddaddy’s farm and Sundays felt magical. Now over forty years later, I still feel like there’s something special about Sunday, even though I’ve moved far from all my extended family — the memories of feeling enveloped by love make the day continue to feel like there’s a bit of magic in the air.
When you were younger, was there a book that you read that inspired you to take action or changed your life? Can you share a story about that?
Within my community, the school curriculum during the 1970s and 80s did not reflect cultures outside of European/European America as the standard for greatness and great literature. In school, the faces of characters in great literature looking back at me were always European or European-American, and it was not until I read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart that I realized how deeply I would be impacted by characters with Black faces staring back at me in the text. Achebe’s African characters had depth and complexity that riveted my young mind and heart. His book inspired me to embrace my capability and worth as a Black girl who wanted to write books one day. Reading Achebe’s book was like looking into a mirror that showed me a face of greatness — I somehow saw that I also had the blood of such literary genius running through my veins. He took me deep into a journey of the lived experience and suffering of African people that left an indelible mark on my psyche. He stoked my moral imagination that longed to see the stories and experience of Black people whom I observed on the margins of history — powerfully centered.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
It was early in my career and I was finally making a salary that allowed me to hire my first professional editor. She had so much in common with my mother — no nonsense, blunt, truth-teller, so I warmed up to her immediately. However, early on, I had heard her advice but did not really listen and get the clarity that I needed to ensure that I was understanding her admonitions about my writing. I repeatedly wrote long, run-on sentences on top of other annoying writing foibles and she finally had it and I will never forget the seemingly unending comments within track changes that were ratcheting up in the tone of annoyance and the comment box in the document that clearly was screaming: “TOO MANY WORDS!” and then her editing stopped early in the document — I had exhausted her. I finally picked up on her cues that she was frustrated and I learned to have better and more open lines of communication with my editor so that I would not frustrate someone who already has to wade through “shitty first drafts”.
Can you describe how you aim to make a significant social impact with your book?
My book is a response to Black Women’s health crisis in the U.S. and it opens space for conversation and social action centering race, gender, health and spirituality as important considerations in health disparities. I am using the book as a platform for guiding bioethicists, clinicians, biomedical researchers, chaplains, and pastors in their work with underserved and marginalized individuals. I offer practical policy solutions that are proving useful currently in the U.S., provide innovative solutions for the clinical setting to address particular issues of health disparities, and do important truth-telling about religion as a social determinant of health and about religious communities who have a hand in the harm of underserved and marginalized populations. The book guides my research practice of accompaniment which focuses on not just “preaching” to researchers, academicians, clergy and clinicians, but walking with them on their path to doing and being better.
Can you share with us the most interesting story that you shared in your book?
“I have made my will” is how young Lizzie Cabot responded to the news of her becoming pregnant with her first child in the mid-nineteenth century. (Leavitt, 1986, 21) Within the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, pregnancy was indeed a walk through the valley of the shadow of death. At that time, women’s adult lives were consumed with the duties of motherhood. In fact, pregnancy, birth, postpartum recovery, and lactation occupied a great deal of women’s lives and largely delimited their identities, though enslaved women’s identities were primarily as breeders and laborers. (Leavitt, 1986) This identity complicated motherhood as their children were property that could be sold, or their own commodified bodies were put in service of nursing and mothering their enslaver’s children. At this time, “For women, birth and death, life and loss, were intimately entwined in their daily existence.” (Leavitt, 1986, 19) The historian Judith Leavitt argues that the dreadful companions — death and fear — were at the center of women’s view of birth experiences throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries.” (Leavitt, 1986, 21)
Parenthetical Note Source: Judith Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America: 1750–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 21.
What was the “aha moment” or series of events that made you decide to bring your message to the greater world? Can you share a story about that?
The events were: First, hearing the stories of rural African Americans suffering health disparities in my community where I grew up in Florida, and later as an adult, my work in the deep South, in the rural Alabama Black Belt where I was working with African American faith communities who were carrying on the legacy of care for underserved and vulnerable populations within their congregations and broader community. This legacy of care started during enslavement, continued throughout segregation when Black folk were locked out of mainstream medical and public health services and facilities. These churches were combatting health disparities by helping minoritized community members get access to health insurance and these faith communities were serving as sites of public health interventions — focusing on preventative care measures and community support for those struggling with chronic disease and struggling with health insurance access. During my work with faith communities, I heard so many stories that are not told in bioethics textbooks, public policy classes, seminaries, nor that are discussed in medical school, so it led me on a journey of working to uncover and recover these stories so that they can help us see ourselves — see what we are doing and leaving undone with respect to justice in health, science, medicine, religion, and the environment.
Without sharing specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
From my research project on Black Maternal Health and the Black Church, a pastor who stated that he had not known about the Black maternal health crisis until introduced to it through my research project, wanted to do something about it once he learned of the needs of the maternal health crisis. Thus, he opened his church building to a local non-profit organization that combats maternal mortality. So now, the local non-profit organization has much needed office space and space where mothers can get the pre-natal care needed. This church is demonstrating the continuation of the historical legacy of care one finds within Black faith communities.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
Yes, communities can help promote awareness of the Maternal Health Hotline: 1–833-TLC-MAMA, which connects pregnant persons and new mothers with counseling, local support groups, and refers them to health care professionals if more care is needed.
Communities can also use ballot initiatives in an attempt to directly affect laws that support survival and thriving of mothers and infants in their states. (Ballot initiatives are policies proposed by citizens to put questions on the ballot for voters).
Politicians can help by ensuring that doulas, midwives and tribal midwives can be reimbursed by Medicaid (for example: the Mamas First Act amends the Social Security Act to allow such reimbursement).
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
Leadership is: centered in service to others; preoccupied with reducing human suffering; prioritizes and facilitates human connection and empathy; and uses influence to build-up and empower others. An example is my former advisor in graduate school, who always had his finger on the pulse of his graduate student’s well-being in a way that was not intrusive. He operated from a place of compassion — he made sure to check-in with students (beyond what was expected from his job description), made sure that he gave us credit for our work instead of taking credit for our work — which was a common practice. He was concerned about providing opportunities for us to grow professionally, and was always looking for opportunities for us to build our professional networks and publish so that we could build up a solid foundation that would help propel us as academics/professionals. This advisor demonstrated the power of leadership that is grounded in humility.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.
- Take Breaks while working and work in a way that is healthy. Example: I have suffered from chronic pain for over 10-years — to the extent that it had started distracting me from my work — and I finally found relief when I started taking breaks to do breathing and relaxation exercises and by moving my body (ex: take short walk or doing tai chi).
- Learn how to manage stress and put things in perspective. For example: I used to work at a more frenetic pace and get stressed out by small things, but I’m learning to relax and realize that I’m not working in the ER or ICU, so what I’m doing within a day is not life or death — I’m learning that I need to be realistic about work and not let myself stress out about small things.
- Fear can make a mouse look like a lion. Example: I did not realize, until getting older, how much I constantly have lived in fear — fear of failure, fear of being the victim of racialized or gender violence, fear of failing as a parent and as a wife, and the list continues. Now that I am more mindful of what goes on in my body and mind, I can catch myself when I start to spiral and fall down the rabbit whole of fear. I stop, breathe, relax and remind myself that the ferocious lion that seems ready to attack me that I see when afraid, is actually a tiny mouse afraid of me.
- Don’t be afraid to teach from a place of authenticity, even if it means going against the grain. Example: I aim for my teaching to be centered in healing and transformation so I use liberation and womanist strategies and I incorporate art and creative activities and discussions of difficult topics in my courses — things that are not as popular within the academy. When I first started teaching, I was so afraid of doing it from a place of authenticity because I felt that my colleagues would not take me seriously, but I now have enough courage to teach from who I am authentically.
- Have Walking Meetings! Walking meetings are a game changer for me. Many folks have sedentary work lives and when I started giving my colleagues and students the option of having a walking meeting versus a traditional meeting — it was just life-changing. When I have walking meetings I feel more energized and joyful.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My mother used to always say to me: “Leave a place better than how you found it.” I now find myself saying the same to my daughter. This quote puts me in the mindset of always being aware of how I can make the context that I find myself in better through my communication, attitude, and behavior. It helps me to try to think before I speak and to try to be slow to take offense. This quote really puts me in a mindset of service to others.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Oprah Winfrey. I’ve always admired Oprah because she has consistently modeled what it means to cultivate the life of the mind and Spirit for the good of humanity. Watching someone with the level of compassion that she has inspires hope. She has consistently used her resources and influence for human flourishing. She models a womanist ethic of care.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
wylindwilson.com
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work
Social Impact Authors: How & Why Author Wylin Wilson Of Duke Divinity School Is Helping To Change… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.