“I Matter”: Analyzing Self-Care, Racial Performativity, and Podcasting*

The term “self-care” has recently entered pop culture through women’s magazines, feminist blogs, social media and other digital spaces. While the rhetoric has largely been about white, heterosexual, middle-to-upper class women, many Black feminists have politicized self-care and self-love as a form of resistance against a world that continuously negates their existence and humanity. The contemporary self-care movement has its roots in the Black feminist thought’s love-politics and scholar-activists Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and Kimberlé Crenshaw. Continuing in this Black feminist tradition, Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton create a digital auditory enclave with their podcast Another Round where they openly discuss their struggles with mental health issues and the importance of self-care for women of color in the face of a matrix of oppression. Through their celebration of all types of blackness, Heben and Tracy provide a community of black sociality, but more importantly, they do political work by the very nature of their commitment to survival