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Race-ing nowhere

Liv's picture

This summer I worked on an object catalog for a private collection of African American art and artifacts. I have decided to make my life’s work oriented around shedding light on the disenfranchisement of the Black identity through the arts. The arts have proven to be an important tool towards creating an accessible form of communication amongst the Black community be it through the reproduction of Soujourner Truth’s portrait sold by herself and fellow abolitionists to support her lectures, Jacob Lawrence’s paintings that catalog the great migration of Blacks from the South to the North post emancipation, or Dread Scott’s performances in honor of Black acts of liberation.

E(race-ing).

Nyasa Hendrix's picture

So, in thinking about race and how I come in contact with it everyday, is almost a laughable statement. Dare I say, insulting. But in order to recognize this is I have to realize the way my body is labeled in our society and more so our community puts me in a position that I cannot over look race. It is constantly in my face and influences how I navigate spaces. I haven't been granted the privilege to not think about it. 

 

The 'another me'

Cathyyy's picture

Just like how Jordan shifted her consciousness from race and class and gender, I’ve never stop finding who I am, but from different aspects.I’ve always wondered if there’s somebody on earth that share the same thoughts and interest and characteristic of mine. If there’s really an another ‘you’ on the planet, what should you say when the encounter happens, like a miracle? Without being aware of that question, I said ‘I like your dress’ when I first met Jing, at my age of 12.

 

Race journal- What I learned this summer//Why I need to talk about Queerness

Sunshine's picture

This story is about race because my family is black, so inherently anything I say about them will be about our experiences as black people.

I described to one of my friend’s parts of my summer like a womanist poem. The day after graduation I went to Trinidad with my mother to visit my grandmother. My grandmother was staying in my aunt’s house so she could be taken care of by my cousin, who just had a baby girl. We were all taking care of each other, which made it a womanist poem. The men, my uncles and cousins, came and left. It was the women who stayed in the home and made sure everything ran well. We all had a role and it was beautiful.  

My dearest sister

Iridium's picture

I have a best best friend. We’ve been friends since first grade. We went to the same class in elementary school and became desk-mates. We went to the same middle school though her classroom was very far away from mine. During my first year in high school, she went to Sydney for further study.

As June Jordan mentioned in her work, “The contact between two individuals is less obvious and, like the weather, not predictable.”Many people lose most of their friends of childhood when they grow up. So do I. However, she is the one remained there and the one I most treasured.

There is a song named “I’ll always be with you.” We are exactly always “stick” with each other.