Constructive Resilience pt. 3 | Interview with JerriAnne Boggis
Here is the latest in Green Acre’s conversation series CO·HERE | Perspectives from the Pines. The name derives from the verb cohere: “Be united; form a whole.”
In this week’s conversation, we continue our three part series on the concept of constructive resilience with with JerriAnne Boggis, Executive Director of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, a writer, educator, and community activist.
“…these stories of survival shows that we [African Americans] have this deep rooted history of resilience, of creating, of surviving, of living, of doing ordinary—and extraordinary—things.”
“So we know that reconstructing, rebuilding, re-examining that history is constructing resilience… The stories were there. We don’t we don’t have to construct those stories, you know, we just have to flesh them out and bring them to our attention… and include them in our history.”
“…rebuilding these stories [of black history]… re-entering them into our consciousness, into our community’s consciousness, into our environment consciousness is a part of constructing resilience…”
“…stories of free blacks recently out of enslavement building homes, creating businesses, writing novels, being master musicians, being builders, all of these things are just like any other settlers were doing here in New Hampshire at the time, trying to be good citizens in their town where they were…”
The episode expands on the aspects of constructive resilience and also gives personal examples of these ideas can be practically applied.