From Barrels of Laughter to Laughing Out Loud: How Black Joy Honors Our Ancestors

Whitney Alese
5 min readMar 2, 2022

Black joy has always been a tool of both resistance and healing. Unlike the common shared human experience of joy, Black Joy is unique to Black people in that Black joy is interwoven within the Black experience.

“When joy is Black, it is a radical demonstration of our humanity,” Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts says in her book…

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Whitney Alese

Whitney Alese is an award winning writer & creator featured in WIRED Magazine, I-D Magazine, NBC, & Chalkboard Magazine.