…they want me to remember

              their memories

     and I keep on remembering mine.

             —Lucille Clifton1

My essay is composed of five memories and a reflection. These memories illustrate my experience of the second shift, and echoes those of many other Black women in Communication Studies (see #BlackInTheIvory and #CommunicationSoWhite2): the misogynoir working twice as hard to earn half as much.3 My essay is in the form of memories, told as stories, because my own healing from overexposure to anti-Blackness in Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) has been through story sharing.

1

One of the first papers I wrote as a graduate student that I was proud of was composed in the form of a letter. I was inspired by the lyrical, experimental writing of bell hooks, Patricia Williams, and other Black feminist thinkers. It was the 1990s. Intersectionality and interdisciplinarity were buzzing in the intellectual air of...

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