Going deeper
In your first course you placed one elder in their time. Now you go inside the family’s decisions. Every family makes choices that shape the next generation: to fight back, to heal, to build. Every family is also touched by others, by heroes and sheroes, by people who disappointed them, and by movements that changed what seemed possible.
Our people chose. Our family chose. Your parents and relatives chose. Those choices are why you are here.
On the Assata Shakur Journey, you gather at least three family choices and at least two touches. Note the year of each one. You will use them in your family timeline or tree at the Return.
How-To Study: Warrior, healer, builder
Open the video in GHL
Most important family choices fall into three kinds. Many choices are more than one.
Questions that open a choice
- What did our people choose? What did our family choose? What did you choose?
- What were their highest aspirations? What were they hoping for?
- What happened? What worked, and what didn’t?
- How, or why, did they keep going?
- What lessons come from what worked? What lessons come from what failed?
Touched by Blackness
Our families have been touched by Black people and events, famous or not. Ask your elders to name:
- Two or three Afrikan or Black people who inspired or touched them. How? Why? Did it affirm or change their thinking, their feelings, or what they did?
- An Afrikan or Black person who disappointed them. Why? What was the lesson? What were they inspired to do instead?
- Black social or cultural events that inspired them. A march, a concert, a speech, a sermon, a game, a book. How? Why? What did it inspire them to do?
Disappointment is part of the lore. Talking about a Black person who let us down is not tearing our people down. It is how a family sets its own standards. Listen without judging, and ask what lesson they took.
Check yourself
Answer each in your head, then open it to compare. Your graded quiz is in GHL.
Grandma started a savings club with five neighbors in 1971. What kind of choice is that?
A builder choice. If it also protected families from predatory lenders, it was a warrior choice too.
Why ask what failed, and not only what worked?
Because lessons from failed efforts are part of the family’s wisdom. A Djeli tells the whole story, so the next generation can do better.
Why note the year of each choice and touch?
So you can place them on your family timeline or tree for the Return.
An uncle says a famous leader disappointed him. What do you ask next?
Why, what lesson he took from it, and what it inspired him to do instead.
Family Research: Gather choices and touches
Interview at least two elders. Log each choice and each touch below as you go. Your logs save in this browser only.
Choice board
Touched by Blackness
Personal Reflection
Demonstration: A choice that mattered
First, respond to two tellings
Answer before you call. Respond to two tellings from classmates or from the Ancestor Shelf, using the four moves:
- Name itGive the story a temporary name.
- Take itSay one thing it taught you.
- Ask itAsk the teller one question.
- Link itConnect it to your own family or adopted line.
Then, post your telling
Record 2 to 3 minutes, or write about 300 words. Tell one family choice: who made it, what they hoped for, what happened, and what it teaches. Say whether it was a warrior, healer, or builder choice.
This week, listeners add a fifth move: say which kind of choice they heard, and whether it was more than one. Share only what you have permission to share, and post an answer back to close the circle.
Bring to your weekend session
Bring your choice board. The circle will build one large warrior, healer, builder wall from every family, and may welcome a guest who made one of those choices in our community.
For the family
This week your Djeli-in-Training is asking about the choices our family made when it mattered most, and the Black people and events that touched us.
“What was the hardest choice our family ever made? What were you hoping for? Who inspired you, and who disappointed you? You can skip any question.”
Help by sharing the choices behind the family you have today, and the years they happened.
Challenge IV checklist
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