This month, WCRC launched a staff/board book club! To honor and nurture our multicultural community of clients, volunteers, staff, board and community partners, the Women’s Cancer Resource Center acknowledges that cultural awareness is an ongoing process of lifelong learning. Our readings will be focused on anti-racism and white supremacy culture, and we will discuss and share how this impacts us and those we serve in our communities

Our first cohort read and reflected on Tema Okun’s article on white supremacy culture. We discussed the ways in which white supremacy culture shows up in our organizations, and we imagined together how the antidotes shared could reshape our work together

For the next few months we will be reading My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, by Resmaa Menakem.

WE STAND ON THEIR SHOULDERS

Dr. Jane Cooke Wright (1919-2013) was a groundbreaking cancer researcher and doctor who made significant contributions to the field of chemotherapy. Born in New York City, she was the daughter of renowned surgeon Dr. Louis T. Wright. She attended Smith College and then New York Medical College, interning at Bellevue Hospital, and completing her surgical residency at Harlem Hospital.

Dr. Wright began her career as a surgeon, but she soon shifted her focus to cancer research, working with human tissue rather than conducting tests on animals. Her research also made great strides in combination therapy, exploring how adjusting dosages and timing could increase effectiveness and reduce side effects.

Dr. Wright also made important contributions to the study of sickle cell anemia and melanoma, and helped develop new techniques for surgery and radiation therapy. She was also a founding member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and was the first woman to serve as president of the New York Cancer Society. She was appointed to the National Cancer Advisory Board by President Lyndon Johnson, on which she served from 1966 to 1970.

Mrs. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who died of cervical cancer at the age of 31 in 1951. Her cancer cells, named HeLa cells, were taken during a biopsy. Most cancer cells died quickly, but Mrs. Lacks’ cells doubled every day, making them an incredibly rich resource in the study not only of cancer and cancer therapies, but in the human genome, the effects of radiation and poisons, and viruses – including polio and COVID-19. This use of her cells in research without her permission or consent, or the knowledge of her surviving family members, was common practice in the 1950s, but considered an ethical violation today.

Learn more about Mrs. Lacks in this video or by reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

Ms. Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was a Black, lesbian, feminist writer and activist who is best known for her work on issues of race, gender, and sexuality. Lorde was born in New York City and raised in Harlem. She attended Hunter College, where she studied English and library science, and then worked as a librarian

in New York. Ms. Lorde's writing career began in the 1960s with the publication of her first poem, "The Warning."

She went on to publish a number of books of poetry, essays, and memoirs, including Sister Outsider (1984) and The Cancer Journals, a first-person account of her experience with breast cancer, including a mastectomy and chemotherapy. Along the way, she reflects on the challenges and opportunities that cancer presented to her. The result is a moving and inspirational look at how one woman faced her cancer with courage and strength.

WCRC Launches BIPOC Clinicians'Networking Group

WCRC hosted a BIPOC clinicians' networking group at our center on February 11, 2023. Eleven therapists came together to discuss navigating white supremacy in the workplace and with clients, an exploration of sustainable self-care as BIPOC clinicians, and honoring our cultures, values, and desires to ensure that mental health is accessible to marginalized individuals in manners that are safe. 

"As a clinician of color, I recognize that we are minorities in the field, despite being numerical majorities throughout the state," shared CP, a participant. "I am grateful to come together in this enduring acknowledgment of the inequities of this yt supremacy myth, and to collaborate and coexist in BIPOC containers that support our joined movements. I look forward to future gatherings."

Another participant, Renee, described the experience as "a safe place, to support BIPOC therapists to express their experience in a healing way to challenge the colonizing thought process that has been ingrained in all of us. Thanks for challenging structural racism and creating a safe space. "

Attendees of this networking group shared the importance of having BIPOC-centered space and asked if WCRC would be willing to host these quarterly, and we are! We will host our next networking group in May and we hope that this new engagement and connection space will help us to support more BIPOC clinicians in their own practices, and clients in our communities.

For more information, please contact Dolores Moorehead at [email protected].

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging

If I’m being honest, I wasn’t thrilled to find out the Women’s Cancer Resource Center’s all-day, all-hands Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) workshop retreat would be taking place on Halloween. As a huge fan of the holiday and spooky season and as someone who previously attended mandatory, county-led, all-day DEIB trainings in my previous job, let’s just say it was not my number-one pick for how I wanted to spend Halloween. But I should have already known that things would be different at WCRC!

Separately, the staff and board had already come together for virtual meetings with our facilitator, Sandhya Rani Jha of Without Fear Consulting, but the Halloween workshop would be the first time all staff and board members would be coming together to discuss how WCRC could better advance equity at our center. In those initial, respective virtual meetings, we did exercises I was familiar with; we set some ground rules, defined terms like white supremacy and micro-aggression, and talked in small groups about our reactions and thoughts. Those meetings had a sort of intellectual approach to DEIB and anti-racism I was familiar with. That was not the case at the retreat.

When Sandhya (they/them) explained that we would be using the same thought-interrupting strategies used in treatments of depression and how they found a lot of joy through anti-racism work, I realized that WCRC’s retreat was unlike any previous training I’d been a part of. Up until that moment, I had understood anti-racism as a practice of thinking critically about preconceived notions of race, researching the role of white supremacy in the United States, and reflecting on my position within these structures.

Suddenly, I realized I had been thinking racism was something that I could teach myself out of, and to a certain extent I was successful. But I wasn’t doing the emotional work. As we talked through how thought patterns like “all-or-nothing reasoning” or “minimizing and maximizing” can perpetuate both depressive or racist perspectives, I couldn’t help but feel I was resistant to confronting racism with the same deep introspection that I have done for the negative, amorphous emotions I find difficult to name and harder to talk about.

As a white person, I had become complacent by treating racism as an intellectual problem that could be taught out of. But that attitude is not an accurate reflection of reality, nor an option for people of color. Racism’s origins, legacies, and consequences are obviously deeply emotional. WCRC’s DEIB workshop reminded me that I need to be brave enough to engage with feelings of injustice and harm that my position as white allows me to ignore.

So in a way, there couldn’t have been a better day than Halloween, a day that I see as celebrating fearlessness and fun in the face of things that go bump in the night, to hold our DEIB workshop. Over the course of the day, we came up with lots of ideas and changes to implement at WCRC that could make our center more inclusive. But the lesson I took away is this: Don’t be afraid to examine the emotional impacts of racism because they are difficult. Be brave!

- Anne Browne

S.O.U.L. FOOD!

Soul Food! This delicious and comforting style of cooking has been around for generations and has its roots deeply planted in African American culture.

Soul food has become more and more popular, which has led to the rise of soul food restaurants and cafes, providing a taste of home to many African Americans.

Despite its popularity and cultural significance, soul food has faced some criticism over the years due to its high levels of unhealthy ingredients

My business, S.O.U.L. Food (Seasonal/Sustainable, Organic, Unprocessed, and Local) was created to educate and evolve comfort foods, adding in more plant-based foods and making healthier modifications to recipes that nourish and energize one’s mind, body, and soul.

Food has the power to impact us on every level: physically, emotionally, and socially. What we eat can reconnect us to precious memories like childhood, dates, holidays, our grandmother’s cooking, or our country of ancestry.

Our bodies also remember foods from the past on a cellular level. Eating S.O.U.L. Food not only connects us to our roots, but it has ‘youth’ening and nurturing effects that go far beyond the food’s biochemical make-up.

We want people to enjoy all the healing and nourishment that S.O.U.L. Food brings. When we are intentional with our food, we give ourselves and our communities the chance to heal, remember, connect, and nourish.

In honor of Mardi Gras and Black History Month, I created a S.O.U.L. Food Bowl. This bowl includes Cajun ‘Vegetarian’ Dirty Rice, Tofu and Mushroom Étouffée, Pickled Red Onions and Hush Puppies. For my bowl, I will add black-eyed peas, roasted sweet potatoes and roasted whole fresh okra with a bottle of hot sauce on the table!

Recipes are HERE. Enjoy!

-Chef Chandra Collins

Chef Chandra is the instructor for WCRC's monthly Cooking Club. Learn more on our website, www.wcrc.org.

In the JanRae Community Art Gallery

Showing Now

The Art of the African Diaspora

February 2 - March 31, 2023

Reception with the Artists | March 10, 5:30 - 7:30 pm

Artists: Donna Mekeda, Fredrick Franklin, Irene Bee Kain, Jazmyne, Jimi Evans, Kelvin Curry, Saida Adias, Stephanie Johnson, and Yolanda Patton

WCRC is proud to serve as a satellite location for The Art of the African Diaspora, the longest-running event of its kind in the Bay Area. It originated from a salon for African American artists known as Colors of Black that was organized in 1989 by artist and professor Marie Johnson Calloway.

In 1996 artists Jan Hart-Schuyers and Rae Louise Hayward, after whom WCRC's art gallery was named, established the exhibition The Art of Living Black at Richmond Art Center (RAC). Many of the artists from Colors of Black participated in the inaugural exhibition, which presented the work of emerging and established African American artists. The artists gained introductions to new audiences, and access to build a creative community of artists and art lovers.

Over the next twenty-five years, the exhibition ensured the increased visibility for African American artists in the Bay Area that Hart-Schuyers and Hayward conceptualized. After the loss of both founders, their organizing efforts were carried on for many years by artists, family members, and RAC. In 2019, the Committee became aware of the necessity to incorporate a broader vision of the African Diaspora and consequently renamed the organization Art Of The African Diaspora.

For more information, please contact Denise Jenkins at [email protected].