For the past three Wednesdays I have eagerly anticipated the blog posts of my colleagues as they share the media that has made an impact on them. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading their words and recommendations. I have big shoes to fill today.
Since this series has begun, I have been thinking about the titles I could share. A lot of lists with titles have been shared lately, and along with the titles are think pieces about these lists. One essay that continues to roll through my brain is
Nic Stone’s essay in Cosmopolitan, "
Don’t Just Read About Racism -- Read Stories About Black People Living." As her essay argues, when the only Black stories shared are those where Black people are “fighting their way out of abusive relationships or killing their children to keep them out of the bonds of slavery” then readers build an impression that Black stories aren’t important “if they don’t have to do with slavery, racism, oppression, or hardship.” Stone argues that this too is a disservice and continues to place Black people in a position of “other.” She asks, “how different the world would look if we’d all grown up seeing Black people do the stuff White people did in books.” She demands that we not only read books about racism, but also “read books about Black people--especially Black children--just... living.” So today my list, while not for children, will focus on the living.
So today my list, while not for children, will focus on the living.
In Marie Howe’s poem,
“What the Living Do,” she celebrates the mundane and the privilege it is to experience it, which she recognizes after the loss of her brother to AIDS. Even if you don’t know the personal story behind it, “the everyday/ we spoke of” is certainly cracked with the “cherishing so deep” of her own reflection in a shop glass. “Privilege” Morgan Parker writes in her latest book of poetry,
Magical Negro, “is asking other people/ to look at you.” I doubt Parker’s poetry is a direct response to Howe, but Parker’s line makes me consider who gets seen and who expects to be seen. In her poem “Nancy Meyers and My Dream of Whiteness,” Parker amplifies Nic Stone’s observation: when do we show the Black people just living? Parker’s book of poetry is raw and lyric and honest. It pushes against the categories systemic racism have placed on Black people in America. Her poems consider what it would be to move beyond the archetype, trope, or icon. In another poem she asks questions that humanize historically important Black figures: “Who did Harriet Tubman kiss?” and “Did Frederick Douglass’s mother/ brush his hair in the morning?” Parker makes me want to know the answers to these questions, and she makes me want to do better.
So far, there have been two seasons of the FX show,
Pose, and in June I binged the second season when it finally arrived to Netflix. Set in New York City during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, the drama focuses on the the city's underground drag ballroom culture--an LGBTQ community that created supportive families for LGBTQ people of color rejected by their birth families. With the strong group of transgender actors, writers, and directors involved, the stories represented are mature, nuanced, and honest. The show demands its audience look at these characters not as caricatures, but as living, breathing humans. In the shadow of the growing AIDS crisis, these characters dream and fight and play and dance. As members of a marginalized community within marginalized communities, these characters often face adversity, and the show can be a lot to take in. But in a society that has already dismissed these characters as “other” the show does everything it can to push back against this dismissal. As the opening credits of this show proclaim, one must “Live, Work, Pose!”
What propelled me to finally watch Pose was hearing Tressie McMillan Cottom and Roxane Gay interview Angelica Ross on their podcast “Hear to Slay.” Two powerhouse thinkers and writers in their own right, Cottom and Gay co-host this podcast with a Black feminist perspective on the pay service Luminary. While one does have to subscribe to listen, they explain that this allows them to pay the producers and technicians who work on the show. Each week, they talk with creators, influencers, entrepreneurs. Often these are Black women. Often their guests are working to dismantle systems and uplift silenced voices. You can hear a few of their episodes for free, including this one about Toni Morrison that was presented soon after her death. I witness Black lives living, but they are not living for me. They are just letting me visit.
On more than one occasion when Cottom or Gay ask a guest, “what can we do to support you,” the guest stumbles through an answer as if this type of question is rarely asked of them. As a White person who wants to act up against injustice, listening to and supporting those already doing the work can be a type of action. When I listen to this podcast, I find new authors to read, new organizations to support, and new shows to binge. I hear Black lives living, but they are not living for me. They are just letting me visit.
And perhaps that is Stone's real point in asking White people like me to read about Black people living. In all of these texts, Whiteness is not at the center of the experience for these characters or creators. They center on Black lives in the way that few media (if any) by Whites are able to do-- without sentiment or apology. These works are in no way in service to White people or the White gaze, not even as reaction to it. A White person like me is offered a window into a vibrant, funny, and heartfelt world, but one that is not centered in a place of Whiteness. I am the outsider forced to acknowledge the humanity of another's lived experience within their own frame. Stone, Parker, Cottom, Gay, and the characters on Pose, are simply asking to be seen. It's not about me. Observing these Black lives is one piece in the work I must to do to decenter my worldview. It isn't always comfortable, but it is necessary.
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This is the final post in this series while we take a summer break, but we hope to return to this series with more thoughts and recommendations in the fall.
