In reading old books, I get lost. Old becomes withered and stiff book covers. Old is more about possession that publication date. I'd chosen this book or it chose me. I don't remember when. The pages screamed that they heard the stories I'd only told to my students. The women wrote for me without being too personal. I guess they were preparing me for what I thought I wanted to be: a writer.
How many people grow up idolizing writers? How many read and reread their books looking for a map? I dreamed of late nights filled with typewiters and arguments over gin. Loud conversations draped in progressive fear and mild distrust. Degreed and educated men and women who grown from colored to Negro to Black by planting themselves in the fertile grounds of Harlem or Chicago's Southside. My childhood friends didn't dream of these types of salons. The only way to write like that was outside the public school system. I had to sit in classrooms designed to protect the delicacy of white womanhood. I had to fit my frame into a dress code not made for me.
It isn't so much the escape. It's the exchange. I left parts of myself in every step I took to get to campus. It's weird how I shrunk, how I fell in love with the story and forgot the writer had to live, too. This writer lived in ways none of her classmates understood. I picked up the mantle that integration had dropped at my feet. I had to be better than good. I was learning the corporate fight. I was in the ring with the next generation. They could sponsor me, promote me, lift me even further away from the comforting hues of Black folks. These girls knew wealth. I could only write about it. It's not enough to study in these spaces.
"To be Young, Gifted, and Black" doesn't slide like a trombone. It's the linger of the cymbals and feathery drum. It's 16 bars. It's asking the rivah how many of us drowned to get free? Writing seemed to be the only way to document my story without being polite. Grammar ain't political. How I speak sounds like jazz, but you ain't neva heard it before, so your ears hurt. Why do I need to make myself that uncomfortable for you? I've learned that words are free. Publishing them has a price. My price was an extraordinary tuition oozing with saviorism and light-skinned privilege. My price was guilt, so heavy I needed to give it to an unsuspecting Black girl. My price was too high.
Why invest in systems that lie to you? Stories and poems write themselves. They aren't limited to stanza and paragraph. They carried lessons before parables became a thing. Repackaging what I already know doesn't make you any closer to me or me to you. I'm still Black. I'm still other. I'm still here closely listening to what you left out. Paint flakes when you repaint too much.
I thought I was pushing the dreams of my people forward. I thought the closer I got and the more words I learned, the more perfect I'd become. 5 years in HS. 4 years in college. 1 year teaching. 5.5 years serving. 3.5 years in non-profits. That's almost 20 years of whiteness. I'm almost 50. I thought I was being a more perfect Black Woman. Turns out, we will never be if we keep letting other people's words define us. Ain't nobody getting close enough to me to take my words.
No comments:
Post a Comment