Black Writers Matter

by Whitney French

  Are we wanted because our story is important? Will the appetite for diversity dwindle? What does it mean to be a Black writer while others question your work, your reasons for writing, and your colour even before you’ve begun to write? And who has the right to even ask?

  My writing runs constant circles around these questions: who gets accepted into the literary world, who is left out, and who decides? There is a fine line between tokenism and offering up a platform for marginalized voices.

  I want to be heard. But does that mean I need to scream louder than everyone else, or say something that no one else is saying, and defend it to death? While this is exhausting, through hard work, muscles form. Repeating a constant repetitive motion creates strength. It builds a confidence. And that confidence brings about trust. I’m learning we can’t always question why we are being included or why we are not. That being said, we do need our allies, and allies need to understand what they should be doing to create space and give us the tools we need to maintain such space. Simply placing a Black editor in a role where all her colleagues are white is not diversity; it’s tokenism.

  Ask her what she needs to be able to create more space and give her the tools to do it. Watch magic happen.

  I’ve only recently started to demand space in my life, especially outside of the literary community. My partner is a white, middle-class male. I start with him. I demand my time to speak and I don’t back down. I am fully engaged and just as participatory in conversations as he is. I do this in groups so that people can see and hear that I am there, I have opinions, stories, and value. There is indeed an audience for my words, because I demand it.

  Pushing and elbowing my way in is not as easy as I wish it could be. Demanding space doesn’t always work, and people won’t always be as willing to step aside or ask the right questions. There are times where I close the door to my room and just cry from exhaustion. I do not think I am exhausted from just the work itself, but from the emotional toll it takes on my body. Sometimes I find myself sitting at my desk, a permanent slump fixed on my back, my eyes glazed over, and thinking, “What’s the point?” The self-doubt doesn’t always last long, but those few minutes are enough to bring me to tears. So for now, I choose to elevate and promote the voices I think are important. We have to start somewhere. We have to do the work.

  Sometimes I picture myself in a ditch. I am beside my partner, but he is in a separate ditch. We cannot see each other, we can only hear each other. Our ditches are identical, except that he has a ladder that reaches to the top and I don’t. It’s going to be a lot harder for me to climb out. There will be dirt under my nails, scrapes on my knees, and I will definitely want to give up. I’ll need to get really creative. It’ll be tough as hell, but I’ll have quite the story to tell, right? There will be an audience for that. Privilege or no privilege, I will climb out of that ditch, dirty, exhausted, and thirsty—but it’ll be my resourcefulness that got me through.

  Resourcefulness. This may just be the key to obtaining and keeping the space we deserve. I can think outside the box all I want, but until we can all work together as a unit, nothing will stick. Peeling back these layers has taught me to ask the right questions and recognize when the answers just weren’t good enough. If I could go back to that initial reading knowing what I know now, I wonder what I would say? I can’t be sure. But I know what I would have done. Demand better. Demand space. Then take it.

  Black/

  Disabled/

  Artist

  — Brandon Wint —

  My name is Brandon Wint. I am Black. I am disabled. I am an artist. While I am aware that, socially, labels such as these often do as much to obscure the nuances of human identity as to clarify them, I am bound, in some inextricable way, to claim these three words for myself: Black, disabled, artist.

  I must claim these identities for myself because, if I do not, I know the world will weaponize these words against me or bludgeon me with the culturally loaded weight of them until I am small, or invisible, or powerless. I know this because I was born Black. I am the son of two people who immigrated from the Caribbean as children—my mother from Barbados and my father from Jamaica—in the early 1970s and found themselves in the sprawling, complicated expanse of a place, a mostly white place, called Toronto.

  They, like all of the Black Caribbean immigrants of their generation, found themselves navigating not only the obvious, common struggles of immigrant experience—differences in culture, accent, language, and climate—but also this thing that was, for each of them, long before they ever met or became my parents, a ubiquitous challenge: intense race consciousness.

  In the countries they had come from, Blackness was accepted, commonplace, and understood. In Canada, however, their Blackness, in addition to their accents and particularities of culture, marked them as ‘other,’ as outsider, as alien, and as threat. Perhaps, at the same time, being new to this place, they did not fully understand this strange, thinly veiled scrutiny. Perhaps, as only young children (my mother aged nine and my father twelve), they could not fully comprehend the intensity of the new gaze they found themselves under while walking the hallways at school or trying to connect with their classmates. But they felt it, just as I felt it in my own adolescence, and as I still sometimes feel it now.

  This, I know, is Canada’s dna imposing itself on the racialized body, the alienated subject of its whims. Canada is, after all, a place that still sees itself as a white, settler colony, a strapping young disciple of colonial Europe’s good breeding. It is no wonder, then, that my parents found themselves cold, shivering, and confounded not only by Canada’s harsh December winds, but by the equally chilly, equally pervasive coolness of Canadian affections and attitudes.

  I was born in this country, in the late summer of 1988, and raised in a place, Thornhill, Ontario, of palpable, though apparently well-meaning, Whiteness. Though the Thornhill of my youth was not full of explicit, unmitigated racial vitriol, I nonetheless felt the particular, invisible tension of moving my young, Black body through spaces—playgrounds, classrooms, malls, grocery stores, relationships—that expressed, in their subtle ways, the cultural dominance of Whiteness. I felt it in the way that the girls in my classes would gather around me and rub my head, calling me ‘fuzzy wuzzy,’ marvelling, collectively, at my tightly curled strands of hair that, when touched, produced a texture they had never felt before. I felt it in the way that such marvelling and objectification was always easier than genuine connection; always more convenient, somehow, than understanding my Blackness as part of an expression of a full, deep and beautiful humanity. So often, though, the gaze and expression of Whiteness does not accord Blackness the room to embody a full range of humanity. Instead, Blackness, by which I really mean beautiful, intelligent, complex, and resilient African-descendant people, is broken down into consumable parts. For centuries, on this continent and others, our bodies, our cultures, our artistic expressions have been ogled and appraised by Whiteness. Only rarely, however, has the Black body emerged from these appraisals without being psychically, emotionally, or physically dismembered. As a child I wondered, as I still wonder now, at the possibility of being Black and whole in the presence of a Whiteness that does not know how to keep its hands to itself.

  If my Black body cannot help but feel the gaze of Whiteness calling it ‘other,’ then this body, for being both Black and disabled, is absolutely riddled with the wounds of other people’s glances and judgments. Perhaps even more than Black skin, the visible expression of physical disability is met with shock, scorn, fear, and derision. As someone who was born with cerebral palsy, the question “Why do you walk like that?” has been posed to me more often than any other single question. The question, which might seem mostly benign at first, is not usually one of mild or innocent curiosity. It asks: What happened? What’s wrong? and, Why are you here?

  The first question can be answered rather simply. My cerebral palsy, as best as I
can guess, exists as an outcome of my complicated situation at birth. I was born nearly two months prematurely; neither doctors, nurses, nor my own parents were fully prepared for when I arrived on September 13, 1988. Maybe something happened. I can’t really say. The question of what’s wrong with me is even simpler. The answer is: absolutely nothing.

  It is the third question that I feel the impact of most strongly. When able-bodied people encounter my unique, swaying gait, or note the way my right foot tends to drag rather than lift when I walk, some of them want to know why I am in their presence. They want to know this because the world is understood to be an able-bodied world. Largely, cities, schools, sidewalks, and institutions of all sorts are built with only the ‘able’ body in mind. Ours is a world constructed to privilege able-bodied people almost to the point of the complete erasure of disabled ways of being and knowing. This is why, when some people (particularly children, who have, by nature, experienced less of the world) see me in public, they begin to wonder, in very literal ways, how it is I came to occupy the same space as them. They wonder this because, of all bodies, the disabled body is perhaps the least thought of, the least accounted for. It is the body that, among all others, is the most directly and literally marginalized.

  They mean this question another way, too. In the case of someone like me, who embodies an unmistakable passion, curiosity, love, and enduring will to live, the question can take on a voice which says, implicitly: what audacity is it that makes you dare to dream, love, desire, and live in a world that says disabled people are less entitled to virtue than other people? I answer this question with every authentic expression of my being, and I respond to it most resoundingly in my poetry.

  Ever since entering the national spoken word community in 2009, it has been important for me to understand how my life-long experiences as a disabled person have shaped the lens through which I understand the world, myself, and my capacities as an artist. The interrogation of the relationship between my disability and my artistry is so nuanced, so interwoven with the deepest parts of me, that it will probably be a perpetual source of intrigue, insight, and re-evaluation. Nonetheless, a few answers have revealed themselves to me in the process.

  I believe that my disability, in combination with my race and the social context in which I was raised, made me the subject of an intense and persistent gaze. As a child, I was always aware of being seen. I was always aware of being reckoned with and (mis)understood according to the complexities of my physicality. Poetry writing developed in me, I think, as a way of looking back at the world and meeting its many gazes with my own robust subjectivity.

  Poetry, therefore, has been as much a tool of resistance in my life as it has been one of introspection. As a now nearly-thirty-year-old man, the acts of writing and speaking are still the primary modes by which I assert my capacity for intellect, joy, sagacity, and self-awareness.

  My career as a spoken word artist feels at once like a sublime gift and a worthy inheritance. It is a gift because a full-fledged career in poetry is always at least a little bit perilous, uncertain, or full of rigour. To have a livelihood in an art form as obscure as spoken word poetry is a distinct and uncommon blessing. Yet, in another very real sense, my artistic trajectory feels like an inevitable outcome of the unique identities I inherited at birth. If one is to live a dignified, passionate, fulfilling life as a Black man in a discreetly white supremacist society, one must be at least a little bit audacious. Likewise, if one is to prosper as a full-time disabled artist in a place where ableism is quotidian, one must have the sort of self-belief that naturally resists the often-limited societal understanding of disabled life. Being a Black disabled artist means that I assert, as a way of life, at least two layers of righteous audacity and temerity. While it is impossible to know for sure, it feels reasonable for me to say that, without the realities of my Blackness and my disability to propel me towards it, the path of an artist, poet, and public speaker might never have occurred to me. As it is, the life of a spoken word poet, in the way that it combines writing, speaking, and an unambiguous form of embodied self-presentation, is the necessary culmination of the resilience I’ve expressed in my lifetime as a Black, disabled person. It is through spoken word poetry that I claim and reclaim the possibility of being, at once, Black, disabled, and fully embodied. This is absolutely essential to the fruition of my full, glorious humanity. I cannot be fully, authentically alive unless there is space for me to claim all three. My life is devoted, subtly and explicitly, to carving out this space and existing brilliantly within it.

  About the Authors

  Fatuma Adar is a Somali-Canadian from Toronto who is passionate about sharing stories that centre the African diaspora. She won a Creative Writing Scholarship at the University of Saskatchewan, was long-listed in 2016’s cbc Creative Nonfiction prize, and has been profiled in cbc’s “Up Close: Young Black Women Making Canada Better.” In 2017, she was in New York as a part of the The Bars Workshop at The Public Theatre, is a member of Obsidian Theatre’s Playwrights Unit and is a Musical Stage Company’s rbc Apprentice.

  Shammy Belmore is a mixed-race artist from Alberta. They identify with both Indigenous and Somalian backgrounds and has a lot to say about their experiences being a racial minority in Canada.

  Simone Blais is a young mixed-race woman who is based out of Toronto, Ontario, and Victoria, British Columbia. She is a dancer, poet, and student at the University of Victoria. Simone is also a full-spectrum doula and sex educator. Her work focuses on providing care for racialized and Indigenous folks and decolonizing popular ideas about sex and reproductive health.

  Wenzdae Brewster is an eighteen-year-old university student, activist, and two-time business owner living in Toronto, Ontario. Wenzdae is a member of the Georgian Bay Métis Nation of Ontario and is Arawak/Bajan from the island of Barbados.

  Whitehorse, Yukon, has been Christina Brobby’s home for many years. Her essays have appeared in print and online publications. She is currently at work on a memoir. When she’s not writing, Christina works at telling stories through the medium of photography.

  Simone Makeba Dalton lives and writes in Toronto, where she’s pursuing a creative writing mfa at the University of Guelph. Her work appears in The Unpublished City (BookThug), a mini anthology featuring eighteen of Toronto’s emerging voices curated by Dionne Brand for International Festival Of Authors and its Toronto Lit Up series. Simone was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago.

  Méshama Rose Eyob-Austin is not your typical teenager, she’s the epitome of #BlackGirlMagic! As an aspiring singer-midwife, her intention is to use her voice to make people feel. She has been featured on cbc’s award-winning series “Real Talk on Race,” she had her poem published by Community Contact, and she has won a public speaking prize for her take on #BlackLivesMatter vs. #AllLivesMatter. As an honour student with a number of awards under her belt, she isn’t afraid to use her voice to speak up on important issues such as gendered violence. She starred in, co-produced, and co-directed a film for the Third Eye Collective using Ntozake Shange’s powerful poem “With No Immediate Cause.” Like the women before her who’ve inspired her (Nina Simone, Erykah Badu, her mother), it’s the love that she has for Black women and future generations that motivates her to end unnecessary suffering.

  Kyla Farmer is a transdisciplinary artist, intersectional economist, and arts professional based out of Toronto, Ontario. She is founder/owner of Oxum Creative and of Bredren Creative—artist and business solutions firms. In all that she does, Kyla combines social and environmental justice with her profound interest in the stories of her own ancestries and of those around her, fostering a community driven by a collective understanding of one another. She tells stories in community with literature—essays, poetry and prose. Kyla is also an award-winning filmmaker, producer, and curator.

  Scott Fraser is a Toronto-based acquisitions editor at Dundurn Press. The first major influence on his thoughts as a Bl
ack person was Steve Biko, and he’s been subsequently inspired by the work of C.L.R. James, Cornel West, and James Baldwin. When he’s not working, he enjoys being involved with softball as a player, manager, and umpire, and writing occasionally. His work has also appeared in Blood & Bourbon.

  Whitney French is a writer, storyteller, and multi-disciplinary artist. She’s been published in a couple of places, but she takes more pride in the community she builds than in the things she produces. Whitney is also the founder and co-editor of the nation-wide publication, From the Root Zine, as well as the founder of the workshop series Writing While Black, an initiative to develop a community of Black writers. She is currently going through the painful process of writing her first science fiction novel. She is also the editor of this anthology.

  Kaya Joan is an interdisciplinary artist who believes strongly in the power of creation to transcend. She draws inspiration from her surroundings and her ancestors. Kaya is working towards a Bachelor of Fine Art at OCAD University.

  Chelene Knight is a Vancouver-born-and-raised graduate of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University. In addition to being a workshop facilitator for teens, she is also a literary event organizer, host, and seasoned panellist. She has been published in various Canadian and American literary magazines, and her work is widely anthologized.

  Chelene is currently the managing editor at Room magazine and the 2018 Programming Director for the Growing Room Festival. Braided Skin, her first book (Mother Tongue Publishing, March 2015), has given birth to numerous writing projects, including her second book, a memoir, Dear Current Occupant (BookThug, 2018). Chelene Knight is working on her third book, a novel about a friendship between two Black women who grew up in Vancouver (Hogan’s Alley) in the 1930s and ’40s.