Black Writers Matter

by Whitney French

  Many Black folks have internalized this messaging. There are countless Black comedians who tell jokes about why Black people don’t camp, swim, rock climb, or participate in outdoor activities. The punchlines oscillate between telling audiences that these activities are “white people things” or, less often but equally problematic, how evolutionary biology has taught Black people to fear these activities. In one joke about rock climbing, for example, a Black comedian riffs, “But why would Black people willingly participate in a sport where they have to put a rope around themselves?” The mostly Black audience quickly bursts into laughter.

  There’s a certain insidiousness to these narratives, a flexibility and dynamism to the process of othering that aches deep within my belly. On one hand, history shows us that Black folks have been labelled ‘savages’ and ‘primitive’ by colonizers to justify enslaving us and separating our bodies from the land. Our intense connection to the land formed the basis of a rationale justifying our oppression; it was a signpost of our ‘otherness.’ Now, in more recent years, Black folks have once again been severed from the land but, this time, it is because we supposedly do not possess the requisite knowledge for living on this particularly hostile and frigid land. According to this messaging, Black people simply do not belong in the so-called Great White North. This narrative has been reinforced time and time again in my life when, upon meeting someone for the first time, I am asked, “Where are you from?” followed by, “But where are you really from?” whenever the response “Scarborough” does not fit with their assumptions.

  It was only when I left Scarborough at the age of seventeen that I began to examine my relationship with nature. At Trent University, I encountered a largely white and rural student population that, shockingly, laid claim to nature in ways that I’d never considered possible. Spouting stories of backcountry camping and the joys of the great outdoors, these students mobilized an entire wilderness vernacular that revolved around Thoreau, the Group of Seven, campfires, and portaging. As you can imagine, they were genuinely shocked to hear that I’d only been in a canoe once before during a grade six trip and that I had no knowledge of the Canadian landscape painter Lawren Harris.

  In the shadow of their disbelief, I became intensely aware of the tremendous privilege and cultural capital often associated with accessing ‘nature.’ Despite all of the romantic musings about becoming one with nature, there is a material reality—the requisite equipment such as tents and sleeping bags—that is often prohibitive. It not only limits access to nature but, also, the much revered rest and relaxation that accompany outdoor recreation. How did you get to Rice Lake? How did you learn to paddle? Where did you get your skis or your winter ski pass? These conversations rarely occurred. Similarly, conversations about how camping and canoeing are often embedded within cultures can be unwelcoming, if not openly hostile, toward people of colour did not occur. As a young Black man from Scarborough studying history, the issue was not only that my family did not have a canoe or tent or ski poles or a cottage but, also, that we didn’t feel like we had any basis for laying claim to those spaces. Perhaps on some level we, too, believed that our biology had estranged us from the land, carefully steering us from canoes to cul-de-sacs.

  For these reasons and many others, I decided to make cycling across Canada a personal goal. At the time, I viewed a cross-Canada journey as a bold act of defiance, a way of legitimizing my relationship to a particular vision of nature, one with little room for the hydro fields, basketball courts, and shopping malls of my youth. Cycling across Canada epitomized ruggedness, adventure, and direct engagement with the elements. Secretly I hoped that perhaps, like Thoreau, I would experience great personal revelation during such a trip.

  Although I had the audacity to imagine the trip, I was not so naive to think that I could do it alone. Cycling across Canada would require levels of confidence and skill so far outside of my knowledge and experience that to embark on such a trip alone would be reckless. The trip would also require a lot of equipment well beyond the means of a cash-strapped humanities student.

  For years, whenever I met someone ‘outdoorsy,’ I dropped hints about my dream, secretly hoping that it would spark a curiosity in them as it had done for me. For nearly five years, everyone deemed the trip too expensive, too dangerous, or too difficult. With each passing year, the dream seemed increasingly unlikely. That was until Alex.

  I still remember the day: Alex and I were running through Bayfront Park in Hamilton, training for a half-marathon. As part of our usual small talk, I mentioned that I’d had a dream of biking across Canada but that I’d been unable to find someone to do it with me. Without hesitation, Alex said, “I’ll do it with you.” I stopped running, looked at him, and asked, “Are you serious?” He replied as earnestly this time as he had before, “Yeah, when do you want to do it? April? May?” It was mid-February.

  That weekend, Alex came to my apartment and began planning for a trip in May. Alex had done a few week-long trips. I, on the other hand, had never done any cycle touring. We generated an arm’s-length list of gear to be purchased and tasks to complete. Among my top priorities was to secure a touring bike for the trip and to do at least a couple of 100-kilometre practice rides before we left for our trip.

  As the trip approached, I began having intense visions of my own death, regularly tossing and turning in my sleep, routinely waking up in a sweat-soaked panic. After bumping into a friend who told me that he’d dreamt that I’d died on the trip, I became convinced that my nightmares were in fact premonitions.

  Perhaps I was embarrassed by the number of people I’d told about the trip, too proud to cancel plans several years in the making, but, despite my fears of death, I still committed to going on the trip. As family members and friends questioned my decision, repeatedly asking whether I’d lost my mind, I quietly wrote notes to loved ones and stowed them in my desk in case I died.

  After receiving a less than subtle nudge from Alex reminding me that I should do at least one practice ride before we departed in a week’s time, I biked forty kilometres outside of the city, stopped at a café for a croissant and espresso, then turned around and biked back home. I arrived back at the entrance to my apartment and I thought, “Well that wasn’t so bad,” before starting on more important tasks on my list.

  The first day of the trip, Vancouver to Whistler, consisted of nearly 120 kilometres of riding, most of it uphill, with a 700-metre elevation gain. I thought I was comfortable riding hills; I wasn’t. I thought I knew how to shift gears; I didn’t. I felt like a fool as my chain clickity-clacked its way up the incline, occasionally dismounting the chain-ring to avoid further torture. On several occasions, I stalled out on hills, losing all forward momentum before slowly rolling backward and then falling off my bike. On those first days, I seriously questioned my decision to go on this trip. In addition to being a weak rider, I carried with me a profound fear of all the unknown insects and animals lurking in the woods and mountains around me.

  Several times per day I thought, “What on earth am I doing here?”

  As time progressed, I became increasingly comfortable in the remote parts of this country. One hundred and thirty-five kilometres of cycling per day, six days per week, often in the absence of human contact, has that kind of effect on a person. Three weeks into the trip, I knew that something had seriously changed in me when I continued on my way, seemingly unfazed, after nearly stepping on a large snake as I walked through a wooded area.

  Alex and I arrived in St. John’s on July 5, 2012, 65 days and 7,706 kilometres after we began our journey. We spent the day receiving free drinks from locals who were eager to hear stories of our cross-country travel. After spending a few days in St. John’s relaxing, we flew back to Ontario. A week after my return, my family threw a party where I told a captive audience of friends and family a well-rehearsed anecdote about my run-in with a bull moose while cycling in New Brunswick. Mesmerized and amazed b
y my tales, the guests spent the evening filling themselves with burgers and corn on the cob and congratulating me on my accomplishment. There was a kindness and generosity of spirit present in all of the guests that evening that I will never forget. For several months, maybe even years after I returned, my mother’s neighbour would greet me with, “Man! I still can’t believe you cycled across the entire country,” whenever I returned home for a visit.

  I am, truth be told, uninterested in recounting at length specifics of the trip. I’ve shared these stories dozens of times, each time making mental notes about where more flourish or a subtle pause will help pique interest. These well-rehearsed stories often rushed out of my mouth at parties and other gatherings, vaulting over tongue and teeth at the mention of the words “Canada,” “bicycle,” or “adventure.”

  In one sense, the trip couldn’t have been more successful. Alex and I had achieved our lofty goal of cycling across the second-largest country in the world, and we each returned from the trip with a bursting catalogue of tales. I saw many landscapes and all number of flora and fauna; my connection with nature now went unchallenged by everyone around me.

  In another sense, however, the constant retelling of these stories reveals a deep insecurity around my relationship to nature that has followed me from the pool to the mountains and back to Scarborough again. Every year, the fabled bull moose from New Brunswick has gotten closer and closer; the distance from here to “that lamp” shifting from twenty feet to ten and then five. For five years, I’ve remained stuck: stuck telling stories about bears, and snakes, and moose, stuck describing desert roads that lead to snow-capped mountains, stuck trying to fit those sixty-five days of cycling into a grand narrative about exploration and adventure where the chubby Scarborough boy in the bathing suit and goggles becomes a shark and finally belongs somewhere.

  Perhaps this is simply the internal struggle for many Black children born in diaspora. Here, in this place we call home, the ways that our families engage with nature are rarely cherished or understood. My grandmother owns a farm and a popular restaurant in Jamaica. I’ve seen her slaughter a goat. Once, when I was about eight or nine years old visiting family in Jamaica, my grandfather trapped fireflies in a jar so that I could navigate a late-night walk. I was mesmerized by this tall silhouette of a man holding a jar of luminescence as we traversed the moonlight. My mother, who immigrated to Canada almost fifty years ago, can tell within a second whether a yellow yam is worth buying. There’s a certain hue that my eyes have not yet learned to discern. For years, their experiences and knowledge were outside of my appreciation and understanding. Their ways of being did not fit my ideas of what it meant to engage nature.

  It is only now, with the benefit of time and nearly 8,000 kilometres’ worth of attempts to belong, that I am beginning to see the problems behind Canada’s nature myth and the depth of humanity, experience, and richness it excludes. As time passes, the trip evolves and changes in my mind and the images of mountain passes, lakes, and fields are becoming increasingly hazy. Meanwhile, new insights are becoming ever clearer. My trip across the country was, at its core, a search for home, an ongoing quest for belonging in a country that is as much hostile and dangerous as it is rewarding. It was the sad effort of a chubby Black boy from Scarborough to become a mountain, a forest, an adventurer, and a grand narrative after failing to become a shark. It did not answer my deepest existential dilemmas but instead created endless questions. What is nature and what is wilderness? Why is our relationship with these concepts so fraught? How do we reconcile narratives of Black alienation from nature with the long history of Black settlement on this land dating back to the Black Loyalists? Why is nature so often depicted as either masculine or feminine, pristine or spoiled, white or Black?

  Increasingly, I also wrestle with what it means to use storytelling as a way of laying claim to land that was stolen from the First Peoples. I see the futility of trying to assert belonging in a place so deeply invested in othering, a place where many thirst for ownership of land that never has been—and will never be—theirs to own.

  With each passing year, I wonder how many more times I will tell friends and colleagues stories from my trip across Canada. How many more times will I feel these stories fighting to escape my mouth? Perhaps as many times as I continue to be asked, “But where are you really from?” whenever I say that I was born in Scarborough. Perhaps until the day when I learn to swim or finally recognize that unique yellow hue. Better yet, maybe this will be the last time.

  Heavy Scarves

  — Fatuma Adar —

  I’m in the stall, on the toilet seat, lifting my legs up against the door so no one recognizes my shoes. Girls from class enter the bathroom, clicking their kitty heels and laughing. I hold my breath, but they’re too giddy and gabby to even notice I’m here. Giggles. Clicks. Swoosh. Silence.

  They’re gone.

  I was terrified that my friends would come looking for me. I didn’t have a language to explain what I was doing in there.

  I press the pin from my scarf against my finger, but the stings aren’t distracting me. I shift around nervously on the seat and fabric starts sliding off my head. My reflexes put it back in its place, starting at my hairline and wrapping it securely, but I’m still holding the pin in my hand.

  In grade six I didn’t know how to feel about my hijab. Sometimes it wrapped around me, cozy like a blanket, and other times it felt constraining, like a tight collar you had to stretch loose in order to breathe.

  More girls come into the bathroom. Music from the hall comes flooding in and the sound tingles in my throat. I don’t get to listen to music much. Although, I borrowed Harpreet’s soundtrack to The Lizzie McGuire Movie and never gave it back. The dj is playing Atomic Kitten and I’m surprised that it isn’t enough to move me out of my seat.

  My mom used to listen to music. She used to dance around with a gigantic shiny scarf, her garbasaar, in her hands and move her hips so quickly it made her laugh. She would wrap it around my waist, tell me to move like she did, but it was useless. “Dabo malaas,” she’d laugh. “No ass.” She seems happier now, but I catch her listening to old folk songs from time to time. A man would sing a cappella about narrowly escaping the wars that had passed, but my mother said it wasn’t music, it was better termed as poetry. I quickly learned that it didn’t count as sinful if it’s part of your culture.

  Giggles. Clicks. Swoosh. Silence. I think that I made the wrong choice. Students have the option of doing something else on ‘Play Days’—the dance, movies, or study hall.

  Muslim kids watched movies. But I refuse to sit through another screening of Big Fat Liar. I’ve got to go to the dance. My stomach lurches and I search my backpack for some snacks, sure that by the time I build up the courage to leave the stall there will only be pepperoni pizza left.

  In a school filled with a bunch of Hindus and Muslims, cheese pizzas never stood a chance. I coerced my mother into giving me money for lunch that morning. I rarely asked, so she gave me five dollars for a poutine and gave my brother my tuna sandwich. It cost three dollars to go to the dance. This was also how I eventually paid Harpreet back for taking her cd.

  I bring my feet down to the floor but they continue to shake. I manage to change out of my skirt and into a pair of jeans along with a silvery top my mom bought me for Eid. The silk felt electric on my skin.

  There was always a rule. If I wore jeans, the shirt needed to be very baggy. Having the inconvenient occurrence of developing too quickly makes a mother throw boy’s sweaters at you. The clothes did their job at concealing and were fantastic hand-me-downs for my five little brothers. If I wore a skirt, the shirt could be fitted. Positive reinforcement, I guess, to get me to stop wearing the baggy sweater and jeans option.

  Most of the dance is over and I’m still in the bathroom stall, playing with the pin and readjusting my hijab. I start to think that the smell of the bathroom has alre
ady stained my clothes and if I leave now maybe I can catch the end of the movie.

  I swore to myself for weeks that I wasn’t going to wear it that day. I planned to slip it back on right before my dad picked me up in his cab, no one the wiser. A couple moments of bareheaded freedom, that was all I wanted.

  My breathing becomes shallower and I roll my fingers into fists. Nerving myself up, I rip off the scarf dramatically, like a villain revealing their true form. But I don’t cackle in triumph, instead I hold it crumpled in my hand and am immediately uncomfortable with the breeze blowing against my bare neck.

  I’d worn the hijab since I was six, and as a kid I was occasionally teased. Nothing really creative, but most commonly I was asked if I was bald under my scarf. I was not. But in that moment I felt as bald as a mannequin, a sad plastic attempt to look human.

  When I take my scarf off at home, it’s safe, a relief. In the privacy of the stall no one sees my hair, but I feel naked. Even all alone it feels like someone is watching. I’m not sure what’s left of me.

  I’d released all my secrets. They floated out of my mind, through my hair and into space. I stared at the object in my hand with new eyes and saw it as something other than what people told me it was. Not as something that made me different from others and not as something that united me to some bigger picture. I looked at the delicate piece of cloth as it sat heavy in my hands and asked myself what it meant to me.

  What are you?

  I didn’t want to be a crusader. I didn’t want to be a victim. I just wanted to go to my grade six dance, without guilt, without the weight.

  No one has phantom limb syndrome with a scarf, I tell myself. I’m just being a typical preteen, melodramatic about fitting in. Cry it out and move on. I fail at mustering up any tears, causing my face to twist.

  My parents are both immigrants, who at my age had ‘actual problems.’ If I spoke to them, they’d make an attempt to understand, but they couldn’t. If I spoke to friends, they would be so distracted by the ‘barbaric’ nature of our customs that they couldn’t bring themselves to relate.