We knock on the door of Baltimorean writer and activist Ms. Fire Angelou’s house and meet her cat Luna. She seems as different from other cats (she has a pink tail), as Fire is different from other humans on the planet. I try to remember some details from her apartment, so I can later mention them in my article intro, but all I remember now is how space seemed to frame Ms. Fire Angelou perfectly, how she reigned over it softly and surely. She talks about moving into a predominantly Black neighborhood and how she meditates through dance, listening to the songs from all cultures of the world. When I talk about Feminism, she is less forgiving – so much of the movement has been blind to the struggles of Black women. So, I have to ask how we can all do better moving forward.
How do you think intersectionality could work? Is it just about acknowledging the differences in womanhoods, listening to each other’s stories? All these movements have been so “against,” but what about what we are truly “for”?
I’m for the equality of women. I’m also for the equality of black people. And I am for women having power. I am for black people having power. It’s an intersection of those two for me, because I’m black and I’m a woman, so my liberation struggles are tied to two different identities. I have to fight both causes simultaneously to liberate myself. I could feel, like, “Ok, we’ve moved far in women’s rights,” but as a black woman I still experience inequalities and discrimination because of my race. Maybe it’s not particularly about my gender anymore. I’m for building institutions that support womanhood and, specifically, black womanhood. I’m for institutions that support black people and that are run by black people, because what I’ve noticed in my experience is that you can put a black face on anything, but that doesn’t mean that’s who’s running it. A lot of times – ‘cus I worked in the non-profit sector for a while – I’ve seen white people who have money and who come into a black neighborhood and say, “I want to save you, because I know better. I know what you need.” That savior syndrome is really detrimental, because you’re already starting off thinking that people that you’re helping cannot help themselves. They can, but what we need is the education and also ultimately the resources to be able to do that. So, that’s what I’m for. And every day is a fight to figure out what I can do with my skills to help further that narrative. Because at the end of the day, I’m not gonna be everything. I’m not gonna be a civil rights lawyer and a banker and…There are so many avenues through which you can achieve freedom. You need a group of people who are working in that field who also think the way you think, because my pursuit is as a writer and as a businesswoman. That’s what I care about, so I’ll fight in that regard and work to put myself in a space where I have power. We need to have that to really change the system that we’re in. But we live in a capitalist society. We’re not human-centric. We’re profit-centric. Which is why you have slavery, which is why you can get food for a dollar that’s not good for you, but getting something healthy is gonna cost you a lot of money. If we were in a human-centric society, that wouldn’t be the way the healthcare system was set up, it wouldn’t be the way the education system is set up. There are so many things impacted by capitalism and it’s so many intersections, so it’s about learning how to change the values of a society and changing your values as a person, because you are impacted by the society. Are you people-centric? Are you thinking about profit? If you are still that person, then how can you expect to change the entire world, if you can’t change your own mind? If you can’t even change the block you live on, to change the people who surround you at least? Change starts with a few. You convince people to be where you are and then that spreads. I’m not really interested in changing the world in the sense that, like, “I’m gonna start an international organization.” We only have a certain time on this planet – hundred years, maybe, as human beings. If we lived four-five hundred years, then maybe I could pursue that goal of changing the world. I think what’s more realistic is that we have people around us, the organizations and networks, people we can connect to to build a better society. I’m learning that lesson all the time – to start at home, to start with the personal. Your personal is political. So, how you grew up is important to what you fight for. I fight the way I do because I have a personal connection to it based on my experience. I’ve seen people get brutalized by the police. I’ve seen the effects of the education system, ‘cus my brother didn’t know until he was 27 that black people had a history before slavery. So his entire life he was thinking that we haven’t been anything more. I care about these issues, because it’s not just something I read in a textbook. They are real alive human beings, who have these stories inside of them and all I do is just listen to them.
You mentioned history and its rediscovery. Can you tell me more?
I think it’s the lack of history that is a really big part of my life. It’s not about knowing history, it’s being aware that I don’t know. Being aware that as a person from the diaspora, I can go back in my family timeline only as far back as 1770. It’s hard to find documents of your ancestors from before that point, because they weren’t even considered human beings. You were given a dot on the census. You didn’t even have a name. If you did have a name, it was given to you by a slave master. So, it’s only that far that I can go, outside of a biological test with my blood and DNA. I can’t get that information from my family, because they can only go that far back. There’s a level of pain I feel, because as a Black American I may never know who I truly am. That fluctuating feeling keeps me on my feet. It’s that unsurety of not having a way to know. “Black American” is a political identity, but not everywhere in the world people consider themselves “Black,” even if they’re dark-skinned and look like me. People have different identities depending on where they went on a slave trade and how they were involved within that trade. There’s a different connection I have to the “Black American” identity, because it specifically speaks to a group of people who were brought here by force and reassembling their identity. We have no tribe or country to call our own. Black is almost omnipotent, yet notwhere. What does it even mean to be black? It that a nationality? What is that word? I’m confused by the term itself, because I believe in a fight for blackness, but at the same time you have to think deeper about what it means to be a black person. Because if you were from West Africa, being “black” wasn’t a thing. You were defined by your family, your country. In this society it is also a state of being and a cast system, which people use for discrimination. History is going back and learning about my great-grandmothers and as far back as I can go. History always informs my writing, because the more I learn the more I’m putting it into my work. The more I can call the name Oshun or Obatala. I’ll call different names of deities or places. The more I know, the more I’ll express it. But you are still holding on to fragments or parts that you try to put together into something that looks pretty. Though at the end of the day you can only be whole by recognizing that you’re not.
There’s such an important difference between names we are given and names we give ourselves. I know your name is Nakia, but you changed it to Fire Angelou? How did that come about?
Fire Angelou is Nakia without the fear. As a young child I was very very shy. I was the nerd girl at the back of the class, who always wrote. The person, who couldn’t find anyone to sit with, so I just sat at the principal’s office or the counselor’s office because I didn’t wanna look, like “Ah, no one wants to sit with me!” I was always very shy, though I always felt something very powerful inside of me. I always felt like I was different from the other people in my class. Always felt like I had a level of awareness of myself. “Fire Angelou” was a name given to me. A good friend of mine, Black Chakra, one night we were hanging out talking about me and Slangston’s relationship and he just yelled out: “If Slangston Hughes is your father, then you’re basically Fire Angelou.” Just took a twist off of his name. Then I was, like, that’s very interesting name. From that space I took on that name, but Fire Angelou 2-3 years ago meant something different from what she means now. She’s evolved and I’ve let her, because even your alter egos can go through identity crises. They just don’t know what they wanna be in life and you have to redefine a different part of you. So, Fire Angelou used to just be a person into Spoken Word and Slam Poetry, but since then I felt like just to make her that is unfair, because she’s not just that. Fire Angelou is the part of me that has always been denied, the part that I should have let speak up a long time ago, but I was too afraid to. So, I find her saying the things I’ve always wanted to say and from that Nakia becomes inspired to be who she is. At the end of the day what happens is that Fire Angleou is Nakia and that’s what the goal is: that she is just Nakia, not Nakia without fear. She is Nakia, because Nakia is already without fear. I want to get to a point where I don’t even need to use Fire Angelou as a way to get there anymore. That’s what I always talk about: being fearless, being honest, being truthful about who you are, where you come from and what you want to do to help the world. To help your mama, your sister, the lady at the barbershop, whoever it is you wanna help. But sticking to it and being true to that.
How has the role of communities and belonging been important to you?
My communities have changed over time, depending on what my life has been. Communities are important, because essentially you give people access to your brain. You give them access to your neuro-networks to change them, alter them, because whoever you keep in your circle will talk to you a certain way, will have certain things they do that you’ll pick up on. Yeah, you’re an adult, I get it, but also you’re still a baby in various ways, you’re still influenced by people whether you want to believe it or not. My roommate, who is also a very good friend of mine, is from Dominican Republic and speaks Spanish, so just by us being around each other I’m learning about Spanish culture. And I’m learning how to speak Spanish. Now it’s a part of who I am. I’ve always known how to dance bachata, I don’t need her for that, but whenever I have a new interest or something I care about, I always find community to support that because every community is different. So, the community that I had when I started out with Poetry Slams would be at dinner talking, like “Did you see that such-and-such got 8.8 at that poem? I just can’t believe it!” Then they’d spent the entire night deciphering why the 8.8 should had been a 9.2 and I’m just, like, who really cares? But that’s the community and it built me in various ways, because I was able to have these conversations. Where I’m working in blogging and business, I’m having different conversations. Maybe if I’m going to a networking event with friends, who are into business, their conversations will be, like, “Well, it’s very important to have a simple logo for your company, but it doesn’t need to be…” They’ll just sit there and talk about the effectiveness of a brand logo for hours. So, if you spend time around people who talk about 8.8s and 9.2s, you will be thinking about that and if you hang around people who think about brand logos, you might find yourself looking at a brand, thinking, “Hm, I wonder if the shape of that circle could had been…different.” To me whatever you’re feeling inside – whether that’s dance, school, art, whatever your interests are, hiking, writing, cats, anything. Having a community builds that and I don’t think I’d be anywhere without a community of people who were there for me, starting from the very intimate moments, where I’m crying on the floor to people who come with me to a conference. Community has different meanings, depending on the depth, but each one is important and serves a different purpose. But I still don’t think people should talk about 8.8s and 9.2s all day.
Your brain seems like such a nice place.
It’s very disturbing sometimes. I try to meditate to keep my brain from going everywhere. My brain is really scattered, has lots of stuff happening all the time. So I try to write to organize what I’m thinking. It’s a beautiful place, but that’s only after the storm. Basically, I’m a big raging storm and I have a bucket where I put it to concentrate all the water in one little space. That’s what people usually see – the water, the water bucket – but really I had to go through a whole storm to get that bucket of water that people can drink and it nourishes them. But trust me, it’s a thunder and cows and cats are flying everywhere.
Is there value in going through storms for that bucket of water?
Of course. How many tears did you have to cry and how many stories to hear to write that poem. There’s value in the poem, because you don’t know what had to happen for it come into existence. I have poems about stuff I had been thinking for a long time or particular experience that was very beautiful or even very damning that I wrote about. So, I think poetry essentially wants to tap into the human space and empathy in a very short amount of time. And it’s for me a very economical form of writing, because you don’t spend a month writing a poem, though you could. Fiction takes more time and requires more resources to just sit at home and write a novel or a memoir. But poetry is accessible to people of all class and it’s also trying to read someone. That’s why I like it and why I think it’s valuable. Especially as a Spoken Word artist, I’m not writing to stayon the page; it’s not something I’m sending to a literary journal for someone to read thirty miles away. Spoken Word is like the here and now. You can see me, the sweat on my skin, you can see my mouth moving. My heart’s racing. I’m present with you. To me that’s value, because it’s life value: I’m not just writing this, but I’m also speaking this into you. I’m using the vibration of my own body to give something to you. If people don’t value that, then it’s ridiculous to me, because Spoken Word takes time. It’s not something you just write and edit. Every poem performs, whether it’s on page or on stage, but Spoken Word has a different performance because most of the time you’ll have to memorize your work and then learn how to edit it on stage. You have to know where your hand goes, how you wanna say a certain word to invoke a certain feeling. It could take weeks to get that 3-5 minute poem in front of you, but to you it’s, like, “Oh, that was nice.” It took how many hours of work to get it to that space.
Any recent poems you could read?
There is…[looks in her journal]…this poem I wrote about Greenmount Avenue.
How do you think intersectionality could work? Is it just about acknowledging the differences in womanhoods, listening to each other’s stories? All these movements have been so “against,” but what about what we are truly “for”?
I’m for the equality of women. I’m also for the equality of black people. And I am for women having power. I am for black people having power. It’s an intersection of those two for me, because I’m black and I’m a woman, so my liberation struggles are tied to two different identities. I have to fight both causes simultaneously to liberate myself. I could feel, like, “Ok, we’ve moved far in women’s rights,” but as a black woman I still experience inequalities and discrimination because of my race. Maybe it’s not particularly about my gender anymore. I’m for building institutions that support womanhood and, specifically, black womanhood. I’m for institutions that support black people and that are run by black people, because what I’ve noticed in my experience is that you can put a black face on anything, but that doesn’t mean that’s who’s running it. A lot of times – ‘cus I worked in the non-profit sector for a while – I’ve seen white people who have money and who come into a black neighborhood and say, “I want to save you, because I know better. I know what you need.” That savior syndrome is really detrimental, because you’re already starting off thinking that people that you’re helping cannot help themselves. They can, but what we need is the education and also ultimately the resources to be able to do that. So, that’s what I’m for. And every day is a fight to figure out what I can do with my skills to help further that narrative. Because at the end of the day, I’m not gonna be everything. I’m not gonna be a civil rights lawyer and a banker and…There are so many avenues through which you can achieve freedom. You need a group of people who are working in that field who also think the way you think, because my pursuit is as a writer and as a businesswoman. That’s what I care about, so I’ll fight in that regard and work to put myself in a space where I have power. We need to have that to really change the system that we’re in. But we live in a capitalist society. We’re not human-centric. We’re profit-centric. Which is why you have slavery, which is why you can get food for a dollar that’s not good for you, but getting something healthy is gonna cost you a lot of money. If we were in a human-centric society, that wouldn’t be the way the healthcare system was set up, it wouldn’t be the way the education system is set up. There are so many things impacted by capitalism and it’s so many intersections, so it’s about learning how to change the values of a society and changing your values as a person, because you are impacted by the society. Are you people-centric? Are you thinking about profit? If you are still that person, then how can you expect to change the entire world, if you can’t change your own mind? If you can’t even change the block you live on, to change the people who surround you at least? Change starts with a few. You convince people to be where you are and then that spreads. I’m not really interested in changing the world in the sense that, like, “I’m gonna start an international organization.” We only have a certain time on this planet – hundred years, maybe, as human beings. If we lived four-five hundred years, then maybe I could pursue that goal of changing the world. I think what’s more realistic is that we have people around us, the organizations and networks, people we can connect to to build a better society. I’m learning that lesson all the time – to start at home, to start with the personal. Your personal is political. So, how you grew up is important to what you fight for. I fight the way I do because I have a personal connection to it based on my experience. I’ve seen people get brutalized by the police. I’ve seen the effects of the education system, ‘cus my brother didn’t know until he was 27 that black people had a history before slavery. So his entire life he was thinking that we haven’t been anything more. I care about these issues, because it’s not just something I read in a textbook. They are real alive human beings, who have these stories inside of them and all I do is just listen to them.
You mentioned history and its rediscovery. Can you tell me more?
I think it’s the lack of history that is a really big part of my life. It’s not about knowing history, it’s being aware that I don’t know. Being aware that as a person from the diaspora, I can go back in my family timeline only as far back as 1770. It’s hard to find documents of your ancestors from before that point, because they weren’t even considered human beings. You were given a dot on the census. You didn’t even have a name. If you did have a name, it was given to you by a slave master. So, it’s only that far that I can go, outside of a biological test with my blood and DNA. I can’t get that information from my family, because they can only go that far back. There’s a level of pain I feel, because as a Black American I may never know who I truly am. That fluctuating feeling keeps me on my feet. It’s that unsurety of not having a way to know. “Black American” is a political identity, but not everywhere in the world people consider themselves “Black,” even if they’re dark-skinned and look like me. People have different identities depending on where they went on a slave trade and how they were involved within that trade. There’s a different connection I have to the “Black American” identity, because it specifically speaks to a group of people who were brought here by force and reassembling their identity. We have no tribe or country to call our own. Black is almost omnipotent, yet notwhere. What does it even mean to be black? It that a nationality? What is that word? I’m confused by the term itself, because I believe in a fight for blackness, but at the same time you have to think deeper about what it means to be a black person. Because if you were from West Africa, being “black” wasn’t a thing. You were defined by your family, your country. In this society it is also a state of being and a cast system, which people use for discrimination. History is going back and learning about my great-grandmothers and as far back as I can go. History always informs my writing, because the more I learn the more I’m putting it into my work. The more I can call the name Oshun or Obatala. I’ll call different names of deities or places. The more I know, the more I’ll express it. But you are still holding on to fragments or parts that you try to put together into something that looks pretty. Though at the end of the day you can only be whole by recognizing that you’re not.
There’s such an important difference between names we are given and names we give ourselves. I know your name is Nakia, but you changed it to Fire Angelou? How did that come about?
Fire Angelou is Nakia without the fear. As a young child I was very very shy. I was the nerd girl at the back of the class, who always wrote. The person, who couldn’t find anyone to sit with, so I just sat at the principal’s office or the counselor’s office because I didn’t wanna look, like “Ah, no one wants to sit with me!” I was always very shy, though I always felt something very powerful inside of me. I always felt like I was different from the other people in my class. Always felt like I had a level of awareness of myself. “Fire Angelou” was a name given to me. A good friend of mine, Black Chakra, one night we were hanging out talking about me and Slangston’s relationship and he just yelled out: “If Slangston Hughes is your father, then you’re basically Fire Angelou.” Just took a twist off of his name. Then I was, like, that’s very interesting name. From that space I took on that name, but Fire Angelou 2-3 years ago meant something different from what she means now. She’s evolved and I’ve let her, because even your alter egos can go through identity crises. They just don’t know what they wanna be in life and you have to redefine a different part of you. So, Fire Angelou used to just be a person into Spoken Word and Slam Poetry, but since then I felt like just to make her that is unfair, because she’s not just that. Fire Angelou is the part of me that has always been denied, the part that I should have let speak up a long time ago, but I was too afraid to. So, I find her saying the things I’ve always wanted to say and from that Nakia becomes inspired to be who she is. At the end of the day what happens is that Fire Angleou is Nakia and that’s what the goal is: that she is just Nakia, not Nakia without fear. She is Nakia, because Nakia is already without fear. I want to get to a point where I don’t even need to use Fire Angelou as a way to get there anymore. That’s what I always talk about: being fearless, being honest, being truthful about who you are, where you come from and what you want to do to help the world. To help your mama, your sister, the lady at the barbershop, whoever it is you wanna help. But sticking to it and being true to that.
How has the role of communities and belonging been important to you?
My communities have changed over time, depending on what my life has been. Communities are important, because essentially you give people access to your brain. You give them access to your neuro-networks to change them, alter them, because whoever you keep in your circle will talk to you a certain way, will have certain things they do that you’ll pick up on. Yeah, you’re an adult, I get it, but also you’re still a baby in various ways, you’re still influenced by people whether you want to believe it or not. My roommate, who is also a very good friend of mine, is from Dominican Republic and speaks Spanish, so just by us being around each other I’m learning about Spanish culture. And I’m learning how to speak Spanish. Now it’s a part of who I am. I’ve always known how to dance bachata, I don’t need her for that, but whenever I have a new interest or something I care about, I always find community to support that because every community is different. So, the community that I had when I started out with Poetry Slams would be at dinner talking, like “Did you see that such-and-such got 8.8 at that poem? I just can’t believe it!” Then they’d spent the entire night deciphering why the 8.8 should had been a 9.2 and I’m just, like, who really cares? But that’s the community and it built me in various ways, because I was able to have these conversations. Where I’m working in blogging and business, I’m having different conversations. Maybe if I’m going to a networking event with friends, who are into business, their conversations will be, like, “Well, it’s very important to have a simple logo for your company, but it doesn’t need to be…” They’ll just sit there and talk about the effectiveness of a brand logo for hours. So, if you spend time around people who talk about 8.8s and 9.2s, you will be thinking about that and if you hang around people who think about brand logos, you might find yourself looking at a brand, thinking, “Hm, I wonder if the shape of that circle could had been…different.” To me whatever you’re feeling inside – whether that’s dance, school, art, whatever your interests are, hiking, writing, cats, anything. Having a community builds that and I don’t think I’d be anywhere without a community of people who were there for me, starting from the very intimate moments, where I’m crying on the floor to people who come with me to a conference. Community has different meanings, depending on the depth, but each one is important and serves a different purpose. But I still don’t think people should talk about 8.8s and 9.2s all day.
Your brain seems like such a nice place.
It’s very disturbing sometimes. I try to meditate to keep my brain from going everywhere. My brain is really scattered, has lots of stuff happening all the time. So I try to write to organize what I’m thinking. It’s a beautiful place, but that’s only after the storm. Basically, I’m a big raging storm and I have a bucket where I put it to concentrate all the water in one little space. That’s what people usually see – the water, the water bucket – but really I had to go through a whole storm to get that bucket of water that people can drink and it nourishes them. But trust me, it’s a thunder and cows and cats are flying everywhere.
Is there value in going through storms for that bucket of water?
Of course. How many tears did you have to cry and how many stories to hear to write that poem. There’s value in the poem, because you don’t know what had to happen for it come into existence. I have poems about stuff I had been thinking for a long time or particular experience that was very beautiful or even very damning that I wrote about. So, I think poetry essentially wants to tap into the human space and empathy in a very short amount of time. And it’s for me a very economical form of writing, because you don’t spend a month writing a poem, though you could. Fiction takes more time and requires more resources to just sit at home and write a novel or a memoir. But poetry is accessible to people of all class and it’s also trying to read someone. That’s why I like it and why I think it’s valuable. Especially as a Spoken Word artist, I’m not writing to stayon the page; it’s not something I’m sending to a literary journal for someone to read thirty miles away. Spoken Word is like the here and now. You can see me, the sweat on my skin, you can see my mouth moving. My heart’s racing. I’m present with you. To me that’s value, because it’s life value: I’m not just writing this, but I’m also speaking this into you. I’m using the vibration of my own body to give something to you. If people don’t value that, then it’s ridiculous to me, because Spoken Word takes time. It’s not something you just write and edit. Every poem performs, whether it’s on page or on stage, but Spoken Word has a different performance because most of the time you’ll have to memorize your work and then learn how to edit it on stage. You have to know where your hand goes, how you wanna say a certain word to invoke a certain feeling. It could take weeks to get that 3-5 minute poem in front of you, but to you it’s, like, “Oh, that was nice.” It took how many hours of work to get it to that space.
Any recent poems you could read?
There is…[looks in her journal]…this poem I wrote about Greenmount Avenue.
Greenmount
The first time I saw your light
it was not 1817. It was 2007.
Renee, a woman with skin and lips of sun
opened the door to a brick townhouse on Greenmount Avenue.
Where I come from, Greenmount was a war story –
a ghost tale of Hennessy liquor bottles.
I proclaimed Greenmount at cafeteria “rep yo block” battles
I wore your hardcore name on my chest whenever they asked “Where’re you from?”
I could never say the upper class suburb of Owings Mills
Nobody respects saltless chicken boxes and sugar free half’n’halfs.
Renee had thick brown hair braided to her neck and knew every mans –
The weed man, the ice-cream man, the pop off man, my man’s man.
The city lived under her tongue.
She knew the names of streets like lovers,
While North Avenue looked at me like betrayal.
I wanted LaFayette to love me
I wanted Pennsylvania Avenue to be my baby father.
I wanted Baltimore to love me like it loved Renee.
Barclay, tell me your secrets.
I walked down Greenmount
With ruby red hills, gold earrings I stole from Macy’s,
And a throbbing desire to make you mine.
Renee took me to a local Chinese store and
Ordered a chicken box –
The first time I heard saltpepperketchup become one word.
On Greenmount my name was Shorty – beautiful, or
“Aye, girl with the green shirt.”
Deep wooden porches alive with the elders that knew everyone’s children.
Black men throwing dice over white men’s faces.
And cars buzzing, like electricity.
Baltimore, the first timeI saw your light, it was blue.
It was not sky. It was surveillance.
Baltimore, how long have you lived as a beautiful apocalypse?
Our skin deepAnd dark, like American history.
Baltimore is the one night stand
America tries to forget.
Greenmount is the one night stand Baltimore tries to forget,
While Black babies are still crying to raise themselves from the dead.
Baltimore has lived on hand-me-down hope and ketchup packets.
Baltimore, I saw your light on the 4th of July. It was not red, yellow or blue.
It was the first time I heard a gunshot of celebration.
The first time I saw Baltimore’s light. It was in Renee’s smile.
The dirtbike boys and
Everything African resurrected.
Everything African will be resurrected.
Baltimore is the sun in my hand that does not burn.
Baltimore, the first time I saw your light it was on Greenmount Avenue
And I was blinded by your darkness.
The first time I saw your light
it was not 1817. It was 2007.
Renee, a woman with skin and lips of sun
opened the door to a brick townhouse on Greenmount Avenue.
Where I come from, Greenmount was a war story –
a ghost tale of Hennessy liquor bottles.
I proclaimed Greenmount at cafeteria “rep yo block” battles
I wore your hardcore name on my chest whenever they asked “Where’re you from?”
I could never say the upper class suburb of Owings Mills
Nobody respects saltless chicken boxes and sugar free half’n’halfs.
Renee had thick brown hair braided to her neck and knew every mans –
The weed man, the ice-cream man, the pop off man, my man’s man.
The city lived under her tongue.
She knew the names of streets like lovers,
While North Avenue looked at me like betrayal.
I wanted LaFayette to love me
I wanted Pennsylvania Avenue to be my baby father.
I wanted Baltimore to love me like it loved Renee.
Barclay, tell me your secrets.
I walked down Greenmount
With ruby red hills, gold earrings I stole from Macy’s,
And a throbbing desire to make you mine.
Renee took me to a local Chinese store and
Ordered a chicken box –
The first time I heard saltpepperketchup become one word.
On Greenmount my name was Shorty – beautiful, or
“Aye, girl with the green shirt.”
Deep wooden porches alive with the elders that knew everyone’s children.
Black men throwing dice over white men’s faces.
And cars buzzing, like electricity.
Baltimore, the first timeI saw your light, it was blue.
It was not sky. It was surveillance.
Baltimore, how long have you lived as a beautiful apocalypse?
Our skin deepAnd dark, like American history.
Baltimore is the one night stand
America tries to forget.
Greenmount is the one night stand Baltimore tries to forget,
While Black babies are still crying to raise themselves from the dead.
Baltimore has lived on hand-me-down hope and ketchup packets.
Baltimore, I saw your light on the 4th of July. It was not red, yellow or blue.
It was the first time I heard a gunshot of celebration.
The first time I saw Baltimore’s light. It was in Renee’s smile.
The dirtbike boys and
Everything African resurrected.
Everything African will be resurrected.
Baltimore is the sun in my hand that does not burn.
Baltimore, the first time I saw your light it was on Greenmount Avenue
And I was blinded by your darkness.
I wrote a poem about love. Or the lack thereof, actually. This poem I wrote because my roommate and I were talking about this guy I was dating. She was talking about him and, basically, every time she said his name, my heart just dropped. I was, like, why am I still feeling things about this guy? So, I decided to write a poem or anything to get his vibration out of me.
Was it a long time after a break up?
We weren’t even in a partnership. We weren’t really anything. It was something very transient, but it was the kind of person you really wanted to love and for them to love you. You were giving all of who you were to try to make this imaginary relationship happen. Because I’m an artist, I just imagined this relationship and it wasn’t healthy, but it also made me think about deeper issues I had to look at.
Was it a long time after a break up?
We weren’t even in a partnership. We weren’t really anything. It was something very transient, but it was the kind of person you really wanted to love and for them to love you. You were giving all of who you were to try to make this imaginary relationship happen. Because I’m an artist, I just imagined this relationship and it wasn’t healthy, but it also made me think about deeper issues I had to look at.
I loved you, because you reminded me of everything African.
Your skin, layered of midnight, glowed like a dark sun.
I always wanted to lay under long thick locks,
Kiss lips full of Blackness. Skin, touched
With the spirits of other worlds.
I loved you because you were everything I never had.
I loved you because you were dangerous and deity.
Perhaps, I even loved how absent you were,
How I longed for you.
I loved how fleeting it all felt,
How I could never truly grab you.
I loved you with what was broken.
I loved you with shattered glass, so
Where did this blood come from?
I loved you, because you told me: “Don’t.”
But I’m a daredevil.
And I sky-dived to be your savior.
I loved you, because I thought my brokenness could heal you.
Because I heard you even when you barely spoke.
My face, wrapped in the crescent of your neck and
Shoulder, warm and steady.
How stable it felt to walk on your sky.
I loved you, because of how you reminded me of me –
Of doubts, of desire, of searching, of sacrifice,
Of dying, of living. I loved holding you,
Until the Sun called you home.
I loved how maybe, if I became a more golden brown,
If I smiled the way you liked or talked how you wanted,
That you’d stay.
I loved how I could become for you.
I loved imagining us cooking kale and potatoes
with your chest blessing the kitchen.
Why did the hurt feel like healing?
Why do I smile so much, when you text me?
Why are these tears so golden?
I loved that I could not catch you.
I wanted your scraps, sparkling with wisdom.
I loved how your hands dug sweetly into my back
Lifting me, pressing me, living inside of me.
I loved the sugar in your breath.
And how stable the temporary was.
I wanted to feel your love and let myself be in your vortex.
I let you treat me how you wanted.
I didn’t feel strong enough to tell you
How weak
I was for you.
Your skin, layered of midnight, glowed like a dark sun.
I always wanted to lay under long thick locks,
Kiss lips full of Blackness. Skin, touched
With the spirits of other worlds.
I loved you because you were everything I never had.
I loved you because you were dangerous and deity.
Perhaps, I even loved how absent you were,
How I longed for you.
I loved how fleeting it all felt,
How I could never truly grab you.
I loved you with what was broken.
I loved you with shattered glass, so
Where did this blood come from?
I loved you, because you told me: “Don’t.”
But I’m a daredevil.
And I sky-dived to be your savior.
I loved you, because I thought my brokenness could heal you.
Because I heard you even when you barely spoke.
My face, wrapped in the crescent of your neck and
Shoulder, warm and steady.
How stable it felt to walk on your sky.
I loved you, because of how you reminded me of me –
Of doubts, of desire, of searching, of sacrifice,
Of dying, of living. I loved holding you,
Until the Sun called you home.
I loved how maybe, if I became a more golden brown,
If I smiled the way you liked or talked how you wanted,
That you’d stay.
I loved how I could become for you.
I loved imagining us cooking kale and potatoes
with your chest blessing the kitchen.
Why did the hurt feel like healing?
Why do I smile so much, when you text me?
Why are these tears so golden?
I loved that I could not catch you.
I wanted your scraps, sparkling with wisdom.
I loved how your hands dug sweetly into my back
Lifting me, pressing me, living inside of me.
I loved the sugar in your breath.
And how stable the temporary was.
I wanted to feel your love and let myself be in your vortex.
I let you treat me how you wanted.
I didn’t feel strong enough to tell you
How weak
I was for you.
Oh, wow, you’re so talented.
Thank you. I didn’t want to read this poem, because I didn’t want him in my interview, but it’s okay. It was a good thing to read, because love is always…
An accepted insanity? Something we just roll with. When you’re out of it, you’re like, it was a weird thing.
Yes, it was very weird, but writing helps me analyze myself. If I don’t do that, I’ll lie to myself all the time. In my brain, in the shower, wherever, I’ll just lie, because I don’t have to face it. But when I write, there’s a truth filter it goes through. There’s this feeling, like no one’s gonna see this – or maybe they will, perhaps – and I can just write it out. That piece for me was very intimate because I loved how fleeting it all felt. That is not really a sane thing to want to feel, but that’s a feeling that I was chasing. And many people probably chase that feeling of something they can’t catch but wanna have. A person, who’s not really good for them, but for some reason, you just text them to come over, and end up asking yourself: why I just did that? But writing helps me analyze that and if I don’t I’ll just end up doing stupid shit for the rest of my life.
It’s very refreshing – the honesty in your writing, how you don’t distance yourself or ironize and acknowledge the importance.
Everything I write starts with that intimate space and then I work my way to larger issues, because for me, while this piece had a lot to do with my feelings for him and that’s very personal. If I were to expand that, it would become about the feeling of inferiority, the feeling of depression. So, there are so many issues that spawn from this love poem for a guy…Or an un-love poem, I don’t know what to call it. “I’m trying to unlove you.” I need to write about the love, so I can see it and finally say, “Nope, I don’t want that.” It’s very crucial to me, because we’re always in the state of healing. I think that activism is human pain just healing itself, so when we fight it’s because we love ourselves. It’s only when you are just accepting and letting things happen that you start to devalue yourself. When you’re letting someone treat you a certain way, because you feel like you deserve it. So, maybe, it’s true in the issues as small as a partnership and as large as white supremacy. How do you interact with that? How do you allow that? How do you internalize that? For a young black woman like me, who is 22 and has lived in America her entire life…I’m going outside the country this summer and post-that I’ll probably be a different person, but right now I’m traveling inwards to see that there is so much in us to learn, that we can connect to the larger spectrum. I think both parts are important: You can’t think about the prison industrial complex without thinking about your brother who got locked up.
Did that happen?
Not my brother, but my ex-boyfriend’s still waiting for trial. That’s a specific experience that I had, because I know he was a good guy caught up in a bad circle, but most people won’t believe that because he’s a black man. So, they already think he’s a criminal, no matter what I say. The experience of getting his letters and asking, “Why are you still in jail waiting for trial? It’s been two years. I don’t’ understand.” Sometimes that sparks something in people. That’s the type of writer I want to be and every day I’m looking, writing to get to that. I want people to fight and I want people to heal themselves and whatever medium they do it through is fine. Mine just happens to be through writing. Other people may do it through design, finance, whatever.
Is it possible though? To heal through marketing and business?
It’s important because it gives you the power to control the narrative. Media is such a big way to put forward propaganda and make an entire civilization hate a group, an individual, an idea. That’s why people claim they hate communism and socialism. The American propaganda is so good that people don’t even know what that means, but they dislike it. When I mention Red Emma’s, the bookstore, some people go, “Isn’t it a communist bookstore?” What does that mean and, if they are, what is communism? People don’t have a definition, but they were told it’s wrong. One day, I was biting into a kiwi on Facetime with my friend and he was, like, “No, you’re not supposed to eat it like that.” “Like what?” “With the skin on it.” “Why not?” “Because…you…just can’t.” But he didn’t have a reason and that’s how people think about communism. No, you can eat a kiwi with a skin on it and you can have a great society with socialism and communism, depending on the belief system. Capitalism and democracy is not the only way people can navigate a society. Me, too, as I’m reading, I ask myself: “Do I really understand the terms these people are using?” So much political jargon makes ideas inaccessible to people. Now if you have reasons why this particular political system wouldn’t work, that’s different from “It just is, because I’m so enthralled by my own belief that I’m just an asshole.” I don’t ever wanna be that person. I’m that person, who’s, like, “Why am I using tooth paste?” Because my mama told me to use it? Why really?
It’s really difficult to deal with group mentality. We had protests against essentially the government recently in Armenia and soon the movement got so segregated.
I study group mentality. I look at how people interact one-on-one compared to how they are in groups of three or four or nine. It’s fascinating how people change. Even if you’re just at a party and someone comes up, the dynamic changes. Usually what happens is in a group of three there is still one person, who leads the conversation. When you have four, people usually pair off. Five-four, there’s a group leader. I’m not a psychologist, but I think that I’m definitely a psychologist at parties. “I know why you moved that way. Because it’s the four person dynamic.” Now I don’t say that aloud. Observation is definitely a part of the process – the small things people do and how they react always gives me new material to write about. I’m observing myself and I’m observing other people, when they think I’m not looking. They’ll say, “I didn’t know you noticed that” or “I didn’t know you cared about that.” I wrote a piece about Black imagination as a tool for political warfare, which came from a conversation I had with an activist after an art event. He was, like, “This is cool. You all do your art thing. I’m not an artist, I’m an organizer.” And I said, “You don’t think there is anything creative with what you do in police reform? To me white supremacy is a complex problem and to solve that you have to be more creative than the system that oppresses you. So, to me you’re an artist.” That was something I wrote about: thinking about your imagination as a tool for your activism. It’s acceptable that children imagine when they’re in sandboxes or coloring in coloring books, but imagination is frivolous, nothing to be cared about as an adult. But, imagination can be very adult, very strategic, very political, very necessary to survival. Because how are you gonna fight for something great, if you can’t even imagine it?
People really underestimate childish things.
Yes, children are great. “Adults.” Whenever I use the word, it makes me not wanna be an adult, because it is always in the context of paying your bills on time. “You’re an adult! You have to do the things you don’t wanna do. You have to fight to be!” Why the hell do we have a totalitarian idea of adulthood? Why can’t it mean also someone free, someone who’s imagining? Of course, you have to take care of your shit, because we don’t live in a society with free housing, so you have to pay for it, but why does it have to be the defining thing? Being a young woman, I have to change my idea of who an adult is because otherwise I won’t want to be one. I talked to my aunt last night, because my grandmother’s in the hospital getting chemo. My aunts are 60-70 years old, so their idea of what it means to be an adult is, like, what? My aunt was talking about how some woman next to her went across her property line. And she said she had to write her a note and get the police involved. I was thinking, “What kinda world do we live in, where people just wanna live in their castles?” Individualistic societies are not for me. It’s a property line. You live in the same community. Figure it out. Americans have this super-hyper-individualistic society, where you kick your kids out at eighteen and say, “Go figure it out. I know I didn’t teach you anything about financial literacy or how to budget or how much it costs to own a house. Just figure it out; I had to figure it out.” I was arguing with my family yesterday, saying that’s not a good method to teach people. I just think it’s important for people to know there are different societies where don’t act like that, where people have inter-generational households and it’s okay to live with your parents. Maybe, it’s what you should do. Here “you just can’t do it, because…you can’t.”
They try to force you into the exploitative workforce.
To work for 9 dollars to pay rent for a place you’re never going to be in. It’s just not economically sound. It doesn’t even build family and community. My aunt said last night she can’t have anyone in her house, because my brother had asked her to stay there. What do you have this big house for? Just to live by yourself? And never talk to people? I think you need to have your individual solitude and that’s very important, even if you live in a house with 11 people, but at the same time you cannot remove yourself from the community, because that’s what builds people. I can only live in this house because someone built that wooden table; someone made this couch, built this house. It is a whole community effort in just the house itself. So you don’t live alone, even if you give yourself the illusion that you do.
Only interacting with the products and creating distance.
Yeah, and it’s about ownership. Humans want to own everything, I don’t get it. “I wanna own land. I wanna own the sky. I wanna own water.” Who owns the sun? That’s what I wanna know. Birds aren’t, like, “I own this cloud.” “This cloud’ll cost you $25 an hour to look at.” But that’s this society. I’m interested to travel and see other societies, how they navigate.
Where are you going?
I wanna go to Cuba. I’m going to Cuba this summer to study Yoruba and Yoruba people. I might also travel to Nepal with a friend of mine to teach English, though I don’t know how I feel about teaching English, but it’s the only language I know.
Imperialistic language?
I just don’t know how I feel about English. Sometimes I love it, which is strange, ‘cus I hate it. I don’t wanna speak it, because it’s not my language, really. I’m an African person speaking English. Makes no sense, but at the same time this is how I grew up and also how I’ve been able to tell my story. So, it’s a love-hate relationship. I’m still learning to forgive English for what it’s done to me and learn to love it for all the things it has done, too. Nepal, Cuba…I wanna go a couple of places after I finish school next semester. I’m into business because I’m interested in generating wealth, so I can invest and build black communities. My goal is to have enough money to be able to buy up a block, like Johns Hopkins does all the time. Buy up a block and move black people into those spaces. Invest in black businesses. Invest in black schools. The only reason why people can’t do it now is because we don’t have the economic resources. To me the end game is to get profit to help people; not to get profit to get more profit. A part of me is, like, “I wanna move back to Africa, because I can’t deal with America, but I recognize America is a very strong influence across the world. I didn’t know that until I started researching. I’d talk to people from different parts of the world and they’d be, like, “You wanna come here? What do you mean? Everyone’s trying to go to America.” That’s interesting. Because it’s $200,000 for a college class. You have to basically die to go to school. The whole scheme of education is very profit-driven. If I knew what I know now about education, I don’t know if I would have even gotten into the field. I’d just get the skills I need to get the job that I want. There are so many resources online. You can go read it yourself. So, people go to school to network and to meet likeminded people, start their businesses and organizations with people they know, but outside that part – which is a crucial part – it’s hard to see why you’d pay so much money for it. So, I have zero patience for America’s education system. I’m not gonna raise kids here, if the education system is not gonna be affordable and the health care system is not universal. It’s such a basic thing. Why build a nation with so much wealth, if it takes six years to raise the minimum wage, when people are hungry now? The whole idea that “companies can’t afford that.” Do you mean these companies that are making billions of dollars? Maybe they need to cut their marketing campaign cost or the cost of whoever is the CEO.
So much energy wasted on creating things we don’t need and so few investments in what’s important.
It’s an oversaturated market. Why do I need twenty options for jam? You don’t need that many options. I don’t understand why the supermarket is so big. This is so wasteful. Who’s gonna buy all this food and who’s not eating in other parts of the world so Americans can have those big shelves? I’m looking at this from the point of economic justice. I don’t want to hoard wealth. I want to have wealth, so I can spread it. That’s its own goal and maybe writing will be a way for that.
Do you think the poet has a responsibility in those terms to always be involved in the politics and economics of the society in which he/she operates?
That’s my idea of what a poet is. I feel like the poet has a political responsibility to make people feel and to make people feel enough that they wanna act and that role is important. As a writer and poet, you have to be educated. I spend a lot more time reading, than I do talking. Because when I speak, it’s important that my self-education comes through in my writing. I think poets have a really important role. I look at Harlem Renaissance poets and the things they say still move me to this day. Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes…There are so many poets who speak to America and what it has been and what it has not been for black people in this country. That is our role. At least it’s my role to process what I experience and make it relatable to people. Sometimes I’ll have readers from different parts of the world and I’m always curious about how they read my poems. I always question where they find the connection, because my stories are always personal, intimate, so I’m sure they find a connection in that way. It’s always learning that you don’t have to be black to get black issues and to want to fight for black lives. Or you can be a black person, who doesn’t wanna fight for black lives. I could inherently think you want to and I’d be totally wrong. That may not be true. I love poets so much.
You do?
I do love poets. Sometimes they say stuff that people don’t understand. Sometimes they say things that make you wonder why you even started to write in the first place. Sometimes they confuse you, celebrate you, educate you, they lift you up.
And sometimes there are poems you live with.
Right. I forgot, there was a poem…”Ode to the drum.” It’s one of my favorite poems. It’s just a poem about all the materials that go into creating the drum. It’s an ode to the things we don’t ever think about, created from animals or from different parts of nature that we just use and don’t think about. An ode to this table, the bookshelf…That awareness of respecting the life in everything, even stuff that to you doesn’t look like it’s breathing. But something’s always vibrating.
Follow the vibes.
Yea, you know, people say, like “vibes,” but it’s a very metaphysical and beautiful term. What does that mean? A vibration. Everything has it. And everything is impacted by it. From the water to speech.
Well, I won’t torture you anymore, but I have to ask about your beautiful necklace.
Thank you. Don’t remember where I got it from. An elephant – the symbol of strength.
Thank you. I didn’t want to read this poem, because I didn’t want him in my interview, but it’s okay. It was a good thing to read, because love is always…
An accepted insanity? Something we just roll with. When you’re out of it, you’re like, it was a weird thing.
Yes, it was very weird, but writing helps me analyze myself. If I don’t do that, I’ll lie to myself all the time. In my brain, in the shower, wherever, I’ll just lie, because I don’t have to face it. But when I write, there’s a truth filter it goes through. There’s this feeling, like no one’s gonna see this – or maybe they will, perhaps – and I can just write it out. That piece for me was very intimate because I loved how fleeting it all felt. That is not really a sane thing to want to feel, but that’s a feeling that I was chasing. And many people probably chase that feeling of something they can’t catch but wanna have. A person, who’s not really good for them, but for some reason, you just text them to come over, and end up asking yourself: why I just did that? But writing helps me analyze that and if I don’t I’ll just end up doing stupid shit for the rest of my life.
It’s very refreshing – the honesty in your writing, how you don’t distance yourself or ironize and acknowledge the importance.
Everything I write starts with that intimate space and then I work my way to larger issues, because for me, while this piece had a lot to do with my feelings for him and that’s very personal. If I were to expand that, it would become about the feeling of inferiority, the feeling of depression. So, there are so many issues that spawn from this love poem for a guy…Or an un-love poem, I don’t know what to call it. “I’m trying to unlove you.” I need to write about the love, so I can see it and finally say, “Nope, I don’t want that.” It’s very crucial to me, because we’re always in the state of healing. I think that activism is human pain just healing itself, so when we fight it’s because we love ourselves. It’s only when you are just accepting and letting things happen that you start to devalue yourself. When you’re letting someone treat you a certain way, because you feel like you deserve it. So, maybe, it’s true in the issues as small as a partnership and as large as white supremacy. How do you interact with that? How do you allow that? How do you internalize that? For a young black woman like me, who is 22 and has lived in America her entire life…I’m going outside the country this summer and post-that I’ll probably be a different person, but right now I’m traveling inwards to see that there is so much in us to learn, that we can connect to the larger spectrum. I think both parts are important: You can’t think about the prison industrial complex without thinking about your brother who got locked up.
Did that happen?
Not my brother, but my ex-boyfriend’s still waiting for trial. That’s a specific experience that I had, because I know he was a good guy caught up in a bad circle, but most people won’t believe that because he’s a black man. So, they already think he’s a criminal, no matter what I say. The experience of getting his letters and asking, “Why are you still in jail waiting for trial? It’s been two years. I don’t’ understand.” Sometimes that sparks something in people. That’s the type of writer I want to be and every day I’m looking, writing to get to that. I want people to fight and I want people to heal themselves and whatever medium they do it through is fine. Mine just happens to be through writing. Other people may do it through design, finance, whatever.
Is it possible though? To heal through marketing and business?
It’s important because it gives you the power to control the narrative. Media is such a big way to put forward propaganda and make an entire civilization hate a group, an individual, an idea. That’s why people claim they hate communism and socialism. The American propaganda is so good that people don’t even know what that means, but they dislike it. When I mention Red Emma’s, the bookstore, some people go, “Isn’t it a communist bookstore?” What does that mean and, if they are, what is communism? People don’t have a definition, but they were told it’s wrong. One day, I was biting into a kiwi on Facetime with my friend and he was, like, “No, you’re not supposed to eat it like that.” “Like what?” “With the skin on it.” “Why not?” “Because…you…just can’t.” But he didn’t have a reason and that’s how people think about communism. No, you can eat a kiwi with a skin on it and you can have a great society with socialism and communism, depending on the belief system. Capitalism and democracy is not the only way people can navigate a society. Me, too, as I’m reading, I ask myself: “Do I really understand the terms these people are using?” So much political jargon makes ideas inaccessible to people. Now if you have reasons why this particular political system wouldn’t work, that’s different from “It just is, because I’m so enthralled by my own belief that I’m just an asshole.” I don’t ever wanna be that person. I’m that person, who’s, like, “Why am I using tooth paste?” Because my mama told me to use it? Why really?
It’s really difficult to deal with group mentality. We had protests against essentially the government recently in Armenia and soon the movement got so segregated.
I study group mentality. I look at how people interact one-on-one compared to how they are in groups of three or four or nine. It’s fascinating how people change. Even if you’re just at a party and someone comes up, the dynamic changes. Usually what happens is in a group of three there is still one person, who leads the conversation. When you have four, people usually pair off. Five-four, there’s a group leader. I’m not a psychologist, but I think that I’m definitely a psychologist at parties. “I know why you moved that way. Because it’s the four person dynamic.” Now I don’t say that aloud. Observation is definitely a part of the process – the small things people do and how they react always gives me new material to write about. I’m observing myself and I’m observing other people, when they think I’m not looking. They’ll say, “I didn’t know you noticed that” or “I didn’t know you cared about that.” I wrote a piece about Black imagination as a tool for political warfare, which came from a conversation I had with an activist after an art event. He was, like, “This is cool. You all do your art thing. I’m not an artist, I’m an organizer.” And I said, “You don’t think there is anything creative with what you do in police reform? To me white supremacy is a complex problem and to solve that you have to be more creative than the system that oppresses you. So, to me you’re an artist.” That was something I wrote about: thinking about your imagination as a tool for your activism. It’s acceptable that children imagine when they’re in sandboxes or coloring in coloring books, but imagination is frivolous, nothing to be cared about as an adult. But, imagination can be very adult, very strategic, very political, very necessary to survival. Because how are you gonna fight for something great, if you can’t even imagine it?
People really underestimate childish things.
Yes, children are great. “Adults.” Whenever I use the word, it makes me not wanna be an adult, because it is always in the context of paying your bills on time. “You’re an adult! You have to do the things you don’t wanna do. You have to fight to be!” Why the hell do we have a totalitarian idea of adulthood? Why can’t it mean also someone free, someone who’s imagining? Of course, you have to take care of your shit, because we don’t live in a society with free housing, so you have to pay for it, but why does it have to be the defining thing? Being a young woman, I have to change my idea of who an adult is because otherwise I won’t want to be one. I talked to my aunt last night, because my grandmother’s in the hospital getting chemo. My aunts are 60-70 years old, so their idea of what it means to be an adult is, like, what? My aunt was talking about how some woman next to her went across her property line. And she said she had to write her a note and get the police involved. I was thinking, “What kinda world do we live in, where people just wanna live in their castles?” Individualistic societies are not for me. It’s a property line. You live in the same community. Figure it out. Americans have this super-hyper-individualistic society, where you kick your kids out at eighteen and say, “Go figure it out. I know I didn’t teach you anything about financial literacy or how to budget or how much it costs to own a house. Just figure it out; I had to figure it out.” I was arguing with my family yesterday, saying that’s not a good method to teach people. I just think it’s important for people to know there are different societies where don’t act like that, where people have inter-generational households and it’s okay to live with your parents. Maybe, it’s what you should do. Here “you just can’t do it, because…you can’t.”
They try to force you into the exploitative workforce.
To work for 9 dollars to pay rent for a place you’re never going to be in. It’s just not economically sound. It doesn’t even build family and community. My aunt said last night she can’t have anyone in her house, because my brother had asked her to stay there. What do you have this big house for? Just to live by yourself? And never talk to people? I think you need to have your individual solitude and that’s very important, even if you live in a house with 11 people, but at the same time you cannot remove yourself from the community, because that’s what builds people. I can only live in this house because someone built that wooden table; someone made this couch, built this house. It is a whole community effort in just the house itself. So you don’t live alone, even if you give yourself the illusion that you do.
Only interacting with the products and creating distance.
Yeah, and it’s about ownership. Humans want to own everything, I don’t get it. “I wanna own land. I wanna own the sky. I wanna own water.” Who owns the sun? That’s what I wanna know. Birds aren’t, like, “I own this cloud.” “This cloud’ll cost you $25 an hour to look at.” But that’s this society. I’m interested to travel and see other societies, how they navigate.
Where are you going?
I wanna go to Cuba. I’m going to Cuba this summer to study Yoruba and Yoruba people. I might also travel to Nepal with a friend of mine to teach English, though I don’t know how I feel about teaching English, but it’s the only language I know.
Imperialistic language?
I just don’t know how I feel about English. Sometimes I love it, which is strange, ‘cus I hate it. I don’t wanna speak it, because it’s not my language, really. I’m an African person speaking English. Makes no sense, but at the same time this is how I grew up and also how I’ve been able to tell my story. So, it’s a love-hate relationship. I’m still learning to forgive English for what it’s done to me and learn to love it for all the things it has done, too. Nepal, Cuba…I wanna go a couple of places after I finish school next semester. I’m into business because I’m interested in generating wealth, so I can invest and build black communities. My goal is to have enough money to be able to buy up a block, like Johns Hopkins does all the time. Buy up a block and move black people into those spaces. Invest in black businesses. Invest in black schools. The only reason why people can’t do it now is because we don’t have the economic resources. To me the end game is to get profit to help people; not to get profit to get more profit. A part of me is, like, “I wanna move back to Africa, because I can’t deal with America, but I recognize America is a very strong influence across the world. I didn’t know that until I started researching. I’d talk to people from different parts of the world and they’d be, like, “You wanna come here? What do you mean? Everyone’s trying to go to America.” That’s interesting. Because it’s $200,000 for a college class. You have to basically die to go to school. The whole scheme of education is very profit-driven. If I knew what I know now about education, I don’t know if I would have even gotten into the field. I’d just get the skills I need to get the job that I want. There are so many resources online. You can go read it yourself. So, people go to school to network and to meet likeminded people, start their businesses and organizations with people they know, but outside that part – which is a crucial part – it’s hard to see why you’d pay so much money for it. So, I have zero patience for America’s education system. I’m not gonna raise kids here, if the education system is not gonna be affordable and the health care system is not universal. It’s such a basic thing. Why build a nation with so much wealth, if it takes six years to raise the minimum wage, when people are hungry now? The whole idea that “companies can’t afford that.” Do you mean these companies that are making billions of dollars? Maybe they need to cut their marketing campaign cost or the cost of whoever is the CEO.
So much energy wasted on creating things we don’t need and so few investments in what’s important.
It’s an oversaturated market. Why do I need twenty options for jam? You don’t need that many options. I don’t understand why the supermarket is so big. This is so wasteful. Who’s gonna buy all this food and who’s not eating in other parts of the world so Americans can have those big shelves? I’m looking at this from the point of economic justice. I don’t want to hoard wealth. I want to have wealth, so I can spread it. That’s its own goal and maybe writing will be a way for that.
Do you think the poet has a responsibility in those terms to always be involved in the politics and economics of the society in which he/she operates?
That’s my idea of what a poet is. I feel like the poet has a political responsibility to make people feel and to make people feel enough that they wanna act and that role is important. As a writer and poet, you have to be educated. I spend a lot more time reading, than I do talking. Because when I speak, it’s important that my self-education comes through in my writing. I think poets have a really important role. I look at Harlem Renaissance poets and the things they say still move me to this day. Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes…There are so many poets who speak to America and what it has been and what it has not been for black people in this country. That is our role. At least it’s my role to process what I experience and make it relatable to people. Sometimes I’ll have readers from different parts of the world and I’m always curious about how they read my poems. I always question where they find the connection, because my stories are always personal, intimate, so I’m sure they find a connection in that way. It’s always learning that you don’t have to be black to get black issues and to want to fight for black lives. Or you can be a black person, who doesn’t wanna fight for black lives. I could inherently think you want to and I’d be totally wrong. That may not be true. I love poets so much.
You do?
I do love poets. Sometimes they say stuff that people don’t understand. Sometimes they say things that make you wonder why you even started to write in the first place. Sometimes they confuse you, celebrate you, educate you, they lift you up.
And sometimes there are poems you live with.
Right. I forgot, there was a poem…”Ode to the drum.” It’s one of my favorite poems. It’s just a poem about all the materials that go into creating the drum. It’s an ode to the things we don’t ever think about, created from animals or from different parts of nature that we just use and don’t think about. An ode to this table, the bookshelf…That awareness of respecting the life in everything, even stuff that to you doesn’t look like it’s breathing. But something’s always vibrating.
Follow the vibes.
Yea, you know, people say, like “vibes,” but it’s a very metaphysical and beautiful term. What does that mean? A vibration. Everything has it. And everything is impacted by it. From the water to speech.
Well, I won’t torture you anymore, but I have to ask about your beautiful necklace.
Thank you. Don’t remember where I got it from. An elephant – the symbol of strength.
Fire Angelou is a writer, blogger, activist, Spoken Word artist, and a Professional Black Woman on a Journey. Stalk her cool blog www.fireangelou.com or her twitter @fireangelou. Or see her live at The Crown on May 14th at 9: https://www.facebook.com/events/588906854602961/
Fire Angelou was interviewed by Naré Navasardyan, a senior at JHU, who likes song lyrics and witchery.
