on seeing myself
The class that single-handedly changed my life was called “Women Of the African Diaspora.”
I was an avid reader since always, devouring books by authors like Kurt Vonnegut, Tennessee Williams, J.D. Salinger, and Ken Kesey. There was the occasional Toni Morrison and Alice Walker novel sprinkled in. I took “Women of the African Diaspora” the second semester of freshman year at college. This would be my first and only class, in all 16 years of schooling, that explicitly centered Black female writers. Joan Hepburn was the only Black female professor I had. You could spot her a mile away from her fashion sense alone. She walked across campus in winter donning a long fur coat and similarly matching hat. In class, she regaled us with tales of her New York upbringing and adventures from the years she spent living in Nigeria with a local chief. Joan’s class was an “easy A” but her curriculum blew my world open. Here I unearthed the solemnity of Edwidge Danticat, the rebellion of Ama Ata Aidoo, the honest dialogue of Paule Marshall, and the indignation of Buchi Emecheta. I saw myself and I saw the women who came before me.
I would see myself again when, a summer or two later, I read This Bridge Called My Back as PDF I downloaded from Tumblr. To know that there were other women writers who are daughters of immigrants, who are from Black, working class homes, who dream of unadulterated writing time as a luxury, was thirst-quenching. And to know that all of these women preceded me, that my own imposter syndrome was nothing knew, was affirming. When the book was re-released for its 25th anniversary I bought a copy and got it signed by Cherrie Moraga. I dog-eared and underlined a bunch of passages. One was a letter that Cherrie wrote to Barbara Smith, saying
"I felt that I had to start all over again. That I turned only to the perceptions of white middle class women to speak for me and all women.”
DAMN, me too, I scribbled in the margins.
My 20s have been a period of slow unraveling. Of decolonizing my life, piecemeal. Decolonization looks like questioning how I think, consume, desire, and value in a white supremacist context. I consider the ways I’ve subconsciously distanced myself from my heritage to move closer to whiteness. I’ve swapped out Vonnegut paperbacks for Kincaid ones. DuBois’ double-consciousness comes to mind as I learn to un-other myself. Learn to stop seeing my body and existence as foreign, as an asterisk.
I’ve been thumbing my way through the Black Futures anthology curated by Jenna Wortham and Kimberly Drew. It’s a love letter, a moodboard, an encyclopedia and a map all in one. In the same way that my “Women of the African Diaspora” class showed me my present and my past, Black Futures shows me the infinite possibilities of the creativity I’ve inherited, a creativity stemming from part necessity, part nature. It is my birthright. As much as my own name.