Layered Conversations: Taking Time to Listen, to Speak, to Deepen Experience

Born out of the interviewer’s interest in bringing into the light more about our multiple identities and human complexity through the perspective of the unique generative qualities and character of Annie Lee Jones’ and Alexandra Woods’ relationship as colleagues and close friends, this conversation with them with Paula Kliger, the interviewer, begins with the opportunity of a lifetime, although at the time, not one of the three people involved likely experienced it that way. Paula introduced the time together by offering a recap of the upcoming journal’s contents which would also house their conversation. What you will experience with this dialogue will be a series of enactments, unfolding into an ever-deepening awareness, reflections and emotional readiness for a journey toward greater authenticity and closeness among the three people, realized through relationship-bridging within and across racial lines. Beginning with an exploration of Black-on-Black racialized hurt opened the door to recognizing, owning and better understanding the range of human-made (racialized, gendered, intersectional) disturbances and their nuances that take place and get repeated in our human encounters.