On Keepin’ It Hushed and the Power of Black Mentorship

Abstract

In a wave of serendipity, Vorris Nunley’s Keepin’ It Hushed: The Barbershop and African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric ushered me into the world of rhetorical studies. I read the book for the first time in my junior year at Claflin University while enrolled in a special topics course taught by Dr. Melissa Pearson.In Keepin’ It Hushed, Nunley historicizes how Black language has been circumscribed in the aftermath of the Middle Passage and in the shadow of White supremacy. Miraculously, Black rhetors have managed to cultivate spaces for the exchange of frank Black language beyond the “disciplining gaze of whiteness,” Nunley illuminates (3). He codifies this tradition of covert Black expressive culture as “African American hush harbor rhetoric” and traces the genealogy of its performance from enslavement onward, prioritizing an investigation of the Black barbershop.Unquestionably, reading Keepin’ It Hushed was a revelatory experience. I had never witnessed Black language and Black knowledge production treated with such brilliance and care. Noticing my interest in the book, Dr. Pearson informed me that Dr. Nunley would serve as a codirector of the newly created Lindon Barrett Scholars Mentoring Program at the University of California, Riverside. Created to recruit graduates from historically Black colleges and universities to pursue doctoral work in African American literature and culture, the program was set to run the summer after our class ended. With Dr. Pearson’s encouragement and recommendation, I was accepted into the program’s inaugural cohort.After arriving on campus, each Lindon Barrett scholar was assigned a research mentor from UC Riverside’s faculty. To my great luck, I became Dr. Nunley’s mentee, and, for several weeks, I conceptualized my honors thesis on the writings of Ida B. Wells-Barnett under his advisement. At the end of the program, sensing that I possessed questions whose answers would take longer than my final year at Claflin to explore, Dr. Nunley gifted me a list of graduate programs where he thought my research interests could be incubated. Acknowledging that his alma mater was one of the schools listed and nudging me to trust my own instincts on the matter, he offered earnestly, “I went to Penn State, but you don’t have to go there.”Ultimately, I did attend Pennsylvania State University, where I earned a PhD in English and African American and African Diaspora Studies. During my first semester, I met Dr. Keith Gilyard, who would become my doctoral advisor and mentor. On the first day of his Ethnic Rhetorics seminar, Dr. Gilyard asked students to introduce themselves. After I said my name and delivered the usual introductory monologue, Dr. Gilyard looked intently at me and responded playfully, “Yeah, someone told me about you already.”In the final analysis, I don’t think it is hyperbolic to posit that reading Keepin’ It Hushed created a domino effect that is the reason I became a rhetorician. If I had not read the book my junior year, I would not have applied to the Lindon Barrett Scholars Mentoring Program. I would not have met Dr. Nunley, and I would not have received his encouragement to pursue my doctoral training in the field of rhetoric-composition. I am eternally grateful that all these events, enabled by the power of Black mentorship, have passed.