Research Rabbit Holes

One of the hardest things about completing my PhD, especially once I got to the dissertation phase, was getting locked in enough on one thing to write my book length project about it. I find so many things investigation worthy, and always have. I managed to finish by tricking myself—my project was about a bunch of different types of speculative new media narratives, all centering Black girlhood and womanhood self-making. Each chapter was about a different form: young adult novels, comics, webseries, etc. It was different enough to keep me engaged, but similar enough that it created a cohesive project.

In honor of my mind that loves following a particularly intriguing rabbit hole, I figured I’d give you a taste of the subjects that are guaranteed to distract me, organized in levels by increasing intensity.

1. Ballerinas breaking in new pointe shoes

2. Biographical picture books

3. Raye, the singer, explaining her music.

4. Quilts

5. Fashion designer Ann Lowe not using patterns or a sewing machine for her extraordinarily intricate pieces.

6. The history of typewriters.

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1. Brandy Norwood’s version of 90’s Black multidisciplinary artistic girlhood

2. Reading every issue of the Milestone compendiums, start to finish from the beginning.1

3. My 50 albums, top to bottom, project of 2025. I finished the year having listened to 54 total albums straight through.

4. The Harlem Renaissance, generally.

5. Zines.

1. Black girls that fly. If she’s flying, I want to see it.3

2. Hanif Abdurraqib’s entire body of work, but especially his essays.

3. How our society handles Black women’s genius.

4. Black women’s notetaking/journaling practices.

5. Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler’s astrological birth charts.

6. Toni Morrison…just generally, but especially her nonfiction and her interviews. I’m interested in the facets of her work that we haven’t talked about as much. I’ve loved the work around her editing I’ve been reading, I liked the insight on her relationships from the perspective of a mentee-friend from A. J. Verdelle, and with Language as Liberation, we’re getting more on her teaching. I’d also be interested to read more about the children’s books she wrote with her son, Slade, before he passed.

7. Related to #4: the list I am compiling of Black writers who have strong Aquarius or 11th house placements (sun, Venus, Mercury)

8. Superhero girlfriends

   

Per #5 under “moderate fixations,” one of the reasons I’m interested in zines is because there’s been a lot of chatter about the publishing industry online these days. It’s a hard time to write and publish books. (I’ve mentioned there’s an active war going on, right? Even without all of the publishing industry specific things going on.) It’s getting harder and harder to get Black books through, and it’s not helping that the industry is shutting down imprints, and laying off editors who are actively trying to usher in diverse voices. The concern about book bans is absolutely founded, but blocking books from acquisitions and removing editors known to be champion of diverse stories is a type of soft banning where those books aren’t even getting to be in the world in the first place. This is a question about who gets to exist per publishing’s parameters, and in what ways is that existence acceptable or palatable?

As the industry works over time to determine which voices they will allow, Black writers and artists are not waiting to be let in. This determination to make ourselves known is a characteristic of Black art for centuries. The only thing different now is that we have more opportunities to get our words out, to share, and to build with information sharing infrastructures like social media.

I wrote about this very thing for Black Youth Project last week. I hope you’ll check it out.

About The Author

If you’re new here and you don’t want to do all that clicking to find out what I’m about: I’m Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield, a writer, editor, artist and former Peanut Fest Queen from Suffolk, Virginia. I am the author of two novels for young adults, Love in 280 Characters or Less (Feiwel & Friends, 2025) and Love Requires Chocolate (Joy Revolution, 2024). I am a product of Virginia public schools (Suffolk Public Schools) and universities (University of Virginia), all the way up to my PhD in American Studies from William & Mary. I’ve been published in a variety of venues for the last six years—book collections, magazines, scholarly journals—but most importantly, I’m a life long reader and a maker of beautiful things.

A note about paid subscriptions (tl;dr, I won’t be doing that):

I just can’t get behind putting my Substack behind a paywall, but I do respect that sometimes folks want leave a little something in the plate for a good post.

So I’m going to start leaving my Venmo, Paypal and Cashapp tags in my posts and if you feel moved to leave a dollar or something, thank you! But my personal blogs have been free for 10 years, I’m not interested in changing that now.

Venmo: @Ravynn-Stringfield

Cashapp: $ravynnkamia

Paypal: @ravynnkamia

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This is so important to me that my friends will go look for images I’m trying to find to add to my collection. When the Natasha Irons variant cover for Action Comics #1054 by Yasmin Flores Montanez came out, my friend, who does not do comics or comic books stores, went to the shop by her house to see if she could find it for me because I didn’t have a local shop where I was at the time. Last summer, there was this beautiful cover of Ebony of Black girl ballerinas flying to commemorate the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and I wasn’t able to find it in news stands near me and my friends went on the hunt until I got a copy.