Nancy Lynne Westfield 
Glimpses of Me and Mine [EPUB ebook] 
A Creative Biography

The problem is that there are more portrayals of the way other people see African American women than the ways we see ourselves. The narrative voice of African American women is largely disregarded, unfamiliar, and stifled. This collection of fiction and creative non-fiction as prayers, poems, short stories, rants, recollections, fantasies, aspirations, divulgences of secrets, accounts of omitted truths, and interpretations of witnessed miracles is meant to add Nancy Lynne Westfield’s voice to the stories about African American women by African American women. She offers her stories, and the stories of her family, real and imagined, so African American women are better understood as being creative, multi-dimensional, whole, rounded, complicated, edgy, non-monolithic, and ordinary. These stories, written from three decades of womanist ethnographic research, are meant to persuade that Black women’s experience matters to the flourishing of all humanity, and most especially matters to the persistence of African American women, and men and our children–all the kinds of families. These stories provide glimpses of Westfield’s understanding of Blackness, anti-Blackness, womanhood, misogyny, and enfleshment. These stories expand what is known about the ways we build, love, suffer, teach, heal, enjoy our friends, make meaning out of our circumstances, and survive. They offer a glimpse of our collective wisdom.

Sobre o autor

Nancy Lynne Westfield, Ph.D. is author of Glimpses of Me and Mine: A Creative Biography (Wipf and Stock, 2023). In addition, she is author of , i>Dear Sisters: A Womanist Practice of Hospitality (Pilgrim Press, 2001); co-author of Black Church Studies: An Introduction (Abingdon, 2007) and editor of Being Black, Teaching Black: Politics and Pedagogy in Religious Studies (Abingdon, 2008). Westfield is Director of the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, Crawfordsville, Indiana (2019 to present). As part of the Wabash Center programming, Lynne’s blog entitled Teaching on the Pulse explores the day-to-day challenges and joys of teaching in higher education and theological education. She hosts a podcast entitled Dialogue on Teaching focused upon conversations with thought leaders in higher education and theological education. She serves as Editor-and-Chief of the Journal on Teaching (ATLA). For a full description of the Wabash Center see: https://wabash.center/. Lynne grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as part of a multi-generational household who believed that education was a way of life. Her family was tightknit. Her father was a school psychologist for the Philadelphia public schools. Her mother was a stay-at-home mom who, as a volunteer in the public schools, mobilized parents to create an unprecedented partnership with school administrators resulting in both a significant increase in funding from the state of Pennsylvania and drastic improvements to the quality of services for poor children. Lynne spent her early career serving as Minister of Christian Education on the staff of The Riverside Church in NYC. After earning a doctorate, she joined the faculty of Drew University Theological School as Professor of Religious Education. Throughout her career as a womanist scholar, Lynne is known for her creativity, innovation, humor, and decisive leadership marked by collaboration, mutuality, and deep commitment to communal values of solidarity and care.