When Leadership Falls Short: The Crisis of Care in Library Work
Posted on in Blog Posts
In Search of Subversive and Sustainable Survival Strategies
Because We’ve Been Here Before
Posted on July 29, 2025 in Blog Posts
Authors:
Shari Lynn Robinson
Recently, while I was shopping at a local grocery store, an elder Black woman asked me how I was doing. (N.b., I am choosing specifically not to refer to her as an “old” person or an “older adult,” given how “Black elders are royalty in the Black community,” as Dr. Allison Wiltz writes in a 2023 piece for Momentum.) With a deep sigh, I responded that I was “hanging in there.” While exchanging knowing looks, she reached for my arm and shared the following, “You know, we [Black people] don’t hang anymore. We do more than just hang in there and out there. We’ve been here before. Try holding onto that little sister. Try holding onto your people.” With that, she gave my arm a gentle squeeze and smiled at me before moving on.
Her words of advice got me thinking about the search for subversive and sustainable survival strategies. In line with my previous blog posts for Toward Inclusive Excellence on “being sick and tired of being sick and tired” and my ongoing search for rest and resistance, this month, I am choosing to share my reflections on survival strategies in the hope that they will support others in need, particularly other Black women.
There is so much knowing and hope in saying, “We’ve been here before.” If there are Black elders in your life, I recommend talking with them. It is a privilege to be able to share their wisdom, and it is an important way to remember and cultivate the subversive and sustainable survival strategies that our communities have developed over time, since we have been here before.
Another important strategy is reading. Lately, I have been reading about revolutionary acts of refusal, resistance, and rebellion summoned by Black people since time immemorial. I read to keep my memory vessel full for when I need to be reminded of the strength of those who came before me. Because I am always seeking books written by other Black women, two of my favorites are Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity (2016) and Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (2020), both by Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
Remembering and reading can provide us with historical examples of how we not only dream about freedom, but also how we enact survival. Doing so will remind us how those who were here before us “made it through,” “making a way out of no way.” It occurs to me that our elders know that it is best to keep these efforts at the margins of our professional lives. Thankfully, reading and remembering are two techniques that can easily be accomplished at the margins.
Surviving, especially subversively, requires daily patience, strength, and grace. I am still learning, (re)learning, and (un)learning how to survive in these times. Let us all keep going by remembering that “we’ve been here before.”
Resources for further learning:
- Born Subversive: A Memoir of Survival (2008) by Nadejda Marques
- Living While Black: Portraits of Everyday Resistance (2022) by Ajuan Mance
- “Subversion and Survival: A Study of Humour as an Integral Value in African American Folklore” (2024) by Prachi Behrani and Shubhanku Kochar. Appears in Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, 31, no. 2 (2024): 244–256.
- “Subversive Survival: Reconsidering Trauma in Literary Representations of the Holocaust, Apartheid, and the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda” (2019) by Ayala Sarah Maurer (PhD dissertation, University College London)
- Thriving While Black: The Act of Surviving and Thriving in the Same Space (2020) by Cori Jamal Williams
About the author:
Shari Lynn Robinson (she/her) is the sole proprietor for The Traveling Diversity Professor which, for nearly three decades, has developed and provided strategic and equity-based knowledge and skill-building educational opportunities for institutions and nonprofit organizations across the United States. With educational training in social work and anthropology, she also has decades of experience in higher education, which includes full-time and adjunct faculty roles developing and teaching social work and anthropology-focused courses on anti-oppressive clinical practices, TBLGQIA+, and older adults. Additionally, she has held positions in faculty development, curriculum design, critical community service-learning, diversity, equity and inclusion, and inclusive excellence at universities and colleges across Michigan, Massachusetts, and Minnesota where she now resides. In her spare but rare time, Shari enjoys cooking and eating spicy dishes followed by ice cream, though she often enjoys dessert first. She also enjoys growing plants and vegetables, watching British detective mysteries, reading, traveling, and consuming all things Star Trek and Afrofuturism. She can be reached at diversityprof@gmail.com.
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Header image is a detail of This is Harlem by Jacob Lawrence. Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. © 2021 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. For more information, click here.