Ancestors

Hey y'all! I'm here in Great Barrington, working on the details of the next installment of TGBP, which will be in Reading, Pennsylvania June 13-15. I'm partnering with the Reading NAACP and Goggleworks Center for the Arts. The idea was always that TGBP would take on new forms in every location, and that will be the case for this one. Reading is a slightly "liberal" small city surrounded by much more conservative towns. It’s also one of the poorest small cities in the country. In my outreaches for stories of Black people, the responses haven't been what I thought they would. Many of them have been from White people asking why I need to do this project since everybody is “the same”, or why they should be held responsible for injustices done centuries ago. Then there are the ones that center themselves, telling me a story of how they don't see race. just people. There are lots of those.

This all brings to mind the HuffPost article I wrote in 2023 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/teacher-black-student-book-racism_n_617feafde4b09314321ac0e3. My editor warned me before it was published to be ready for the comments. Anything about race or bias or Blackness, it brought out a viciousness in people. It was one of the most commented posts of the year, though I don't know what most of them said - I stopped after about 20 of the more than 500. It was worse than I imagined. I got it from everyone and every side, and some were cruel. My friends told me not to read any more of them for my own mental health. About 50 of them were deleted by HuffPost because of the vitriol.

One of the highlights of last year's event was the reading of the stories submitted to me. I have decided to also have these other stories read, alternating between the stories of Black voices and White voices, to show the disparity in how even the very simple question, one asked of Black people, is interpreted. The question itself, not even the answer was a catalyst for anger and indignation. I'm also not going to have anyone with me for this event, very much different from a community of friends and family, familiarity, and reference points. A good friend was initially going to come with me but now has to work. I'm not afraid of going solo, though I did have a bit of a freak-out at first. Then I remembered I won't be alone.

I have been thinking a lot about my ancestors over the last year, my actual ancestors but also the Black people not related but without whose lives and bodies, I would not be here in the ways that I am now able to be here. Reading the book, the Prophets was the beginning of that for me. The book by Robert Jones, Jr. is magical and beautiful and infuriating and sad and so much more. Black queer love amongst two Black enslaved men. Those characters started to appear in my dreams and meditations. I also worked on a Black oral history project in Great Barrington and interviewed both my aunt Virginia and my mom, the Rev. Mattie Conaway, minister of the last Black Baptist Church in this area. I heard their stories of growing up in racist segregated Alabama and understood more of what it was like for my grandparents and the ones before them and before them. I didn't know because maybe - probably - I didn't want to know. It's hard but their lives were hard, though their lives were also about Black joy. Ancestors, and conversations about ancestors, keep popping up randomly and right when I have needed them. I have felt them holding me up and walking alongside me.

Last month I received an invitation from a former college advisor. She was going to a small private literary salon where Robert Jones, Jr would be reading a bit of his work. I had recommended The Prophets to her so she invited me. The day of the reading was a long one. I started off the morning in Great Barrington, where I helped facilitate a discussion about race, culture, and recovery. Then I got on a train back to NYC, and pretty much immediately headed over to the reading. Getting off the train near Atlantic Terminal, my body was dragging, and I was questioning my place at an event like this, full of mostly wealthy, mostly white, people who belonged to this world. I looked up while thinking this and a Black woman passed by me and I glanced at her T-shirt which said " Busy making my ancestors proud." My body became alert and I walked straighter. and I thought, " No, I am exactly where I am meant to be, and I am showing up how I was meant to show up."

Meeting him was everything. I talked to him about how to protect mental health when working on art about trauma and injustice and uncomfortable conversations. I'm still trying to figure that one out. He is also one of those authors who is invested in encouraging and supporting upcoming writers, and it was what I needed. I learned so much that day. including how much I have changed. I navigated that party with confidence, knowing I was not alone and I had earned my right to call myself a writer and an artist. I am now the ancestor to my childhood self who couldn't look anyone in the eye and hid in closets out of social anxiety. I didn't mean to write all of this in this update, but I guess it's all my way of explaining that I will be okay next week, even if someone watching me would think I am alone, I won't be. I am anxious. of course. We now live in a country where physical and vocal violence is now tolerated and even encouraged. I have a big sign asking people" How Do You See A Black Person? My mother thinks I should cancel this. I'm not going to. Maybe I'm foolish or stubborn. Probably both. But I have faith they will be with me. An idea came to me today of reading all those HuffPost comments while on video and projecting that silently behind me on the stage during the event. These are the voices that lie beneath the surface - the ones that come forth under the cloak of anonymity. Am I ready to read those words, now?

Ancestors.