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2blackgrits-blog · 7 years ago

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An American Marriage: A Novel by Tayari Jones

My journey back to leisure reading might remind you of my (many) roads back to this blog—I was going about my business, busy with allegedly gaining an education, when I realized I’d read less than fifteen books (and written less than fifteen blog posts) in the entirety of 2017.

I’m an extremely competitive person, and someone who detests the idea of having peaked, in any form, during high school—after all, I hopefully have much more life to live. I remembered my freshman year reading habits, when I used to zip through fifty books before the summer hit, and knew something had to change. While I will likely never hit some of my high school numbers again, I’m determined that my annual book count can return to where my weight can’t.

So far, my literary path home has been paved with masterfully familiar books like Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage, and I knew we had to talk about this one here at 2BG.

As many of y’all already know, Tayari Jones’ fourth novel has gotten the equally coveted and disdained book club nod from Oprah Winfrey. I’m not sure we will ever see a time where people don’t have elitist responses to black opinions about anything, let alone about the ambiguous collection of work considered to be “fine art.” Black women have never been able to fully rely on canonical scales of literature to value our authors, whose worth can exist outside of the tradition of dead white men, and in my opinion, this democratic curation is exactly what Oprah’s Book Club attempts to do. In Jones’ specific case, it’s not that An American Marriage doesn’t have literary merit, it’s that its merit is inextricably tied up in its love for everyday black folk.

I recently attended a book talk Tayari Jones gave with fellow author Stephanie Powell Watts, and felt more at home than I had in several months of Sundays. Ms. Jones and Ms. Watts’ readings were a window into the worlds I leave behind every time I attend school, worlds with cheeky religious humor and involuntarily religious women I didn’t realize I’d missed. During her book signing, I found out Tayari Jones graduated in the same Spelman class as my godmother, which surprised me more than it should have. In person and in literature, she knows my people—the future Spelmanites in my Jack & Jill chapter I regarded with (perhaps too much) reverence, the self-assured men they’ll one day marry, and of course, my godmother, who puts herself together in that “articulate in front of strangers” fashion we all attempt to do. Jones knows these people, who become her characters, so well that she uncovers what lies beneath their gleaming, degreed exteriors.

This time, her excavation begins with Celestial and Roy, newlyweds poised to join Atlanta’s black professional community and leave behind their ancestral pasts in the small-town, less prosperous, “Old South” (we’ll get back to that in a minute.) Their plans are upended when a trip back to Roy’s hometown lands him wrongfully convicted of rape, and sentenced to 12 years in a Louisiana prison. Here, Jones humbles a black couple who believe themselves beyond humility’s tax bracket, the sort of people who could otherwise sigh about how no black man is safe in America from the security of their living rooms.

I’ve seen this novel compared to Sing, Unburied, Sing, another fantastic novel by one of my favorite southern writers. For all of its merits as a love story, An American Marriage is also a portrait of the earth-and-time traveling relationships we have with our biological and chosen parents, whose journeys so often dictate our own. Celestial, Roy, and their “best man” Andre are haunted by their parents’ infidelities and blended families, and bring these ghosts into their own lives, much like Jojo’s apparitional companions in Ward’s (second!) National Book Award winner.

Like Ward, Tayari Jones is an author people deem part of the “New South,” while her newest novel features a prison in the historied Deep South. I think it’s telling that both books shed light on the carceral experience by showing how quickly, how willingly, we leave the old behind. Jones’ novel is mostly set in her hometown of Atlanta, but its emotional crux is in such an abandoned place, Eloe, Louisiana. It reminds me of Ward’s idea in Men We Reaped, of the rural, familial South being a place that always pulls you back. For better or worse, Celestial, Roy, and Andre are pulled back to Roy’s small hometown, which, by foil, has shaped their concepts of mobility and the New South as much as Atlanta. Jones captures Roy’s pride in “moving on” alongside the richness of those he has “left behind,” who have made him who he is, and continue to sustain him after Atlanta has forgotten his name. I thought about my Sunday School lessons in Ecclesiastes, about how the New South lives in the shadow of the Old. In Atlanta, as in Eloe, there is nothing new under the sun.

In her novel, Jones also shares some stunning revelations about the real-life implications of consent, perhaps fitting given her main character’s “crime,” and incredibly timely given the whiteness of our national conversation about sexual assault. Throughout the novel, Roy “lives his life due to the vast generosity of women,” so much so that he comes to take it without sanction. He feels most entitled to the self-sabotaging loyalty of his wife, perhaps the most impressive character in the novel.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration when I say that everyone will want to read about Celestial for at least five more books. She exudes that peculiar brand of convention and progressivism all Spelmanites balance like toddlers on their hip, her human-scale contradictions a rare trait for black female characters. We have so many books about women who are irreverent, but so few about women who are irreverent and still steeped in communal tradition. Celestial is highly independent, easily irritated, but also stubbornly long-suffering—in her own way, she fights for a marriage she’s not even sure she wants. Your jaw will drop not from her revelations, but from how precisely she identifies her circumstances. It’s proof that no one can critique something—marriage, fidelity, her alma mater—like a woman who loves it.

I imagine some people will feel let down, or too neatly tied up, by the epilogue. I think the relatively happy ending has its footing in Jones’ desire to lose the “expectation of genre” in this novel: “The expectation of genre means if you say something is a love triangle it means who gets the girl? Who gets the guy? And I had to take that genre expectation out of my own head. And the question is: How can they each move forward whole?”

In An American Marriage, the expectations are twofold: first, in a story about a love triangle, you’re not expecting everyone to walk away loved. By introducing Davina, Jones shows the multitude of ways love can save a man, and the multitude of women who are worthy of love. Secondly, in a story about black people, you’re not expecting to see these characters catch a break, let alone give each other one. By simply seeking to restore the personal lives of these characters, it feels like Jones is flipping our genre and societal expectations on their heads.

She says in her Electric Literature interview that “social justice is not a character. Every person who is impacted by social issues is also busy living a life.” In An American Marriage, Tayari Jones exposes a great social injustice, as a means to do something much rarer—bulldoze, mine, and reconstruct the lives of the people it affects. This is one way we restore humanity to black & brown characters in literature—by not just exposing their trauma, but also their prolonged, much-deserved healing.

As I get closer and closer to adulthood, I find myself thinking of Janet Mock’s ideas about what happily ever after looks like for black women. I find myself thinking about the women of my childhood, about the models they’ve left for me. I find myself thinking about my godmother, who has made happily ever after through my adorably precocious and dynamic godsister, through an incredible career, through continued service of her community, and so many other aspects I could name (y’all don’t need to know her business like that, though.)

With An American Marriage, I now find myself thinking about Tayari Jones, who has left us with a vital opportunity to consider how a new generation of black Southern women can put our inner selves together as well as we assemble our outer ones. In the very short new year, it’s been one of my favorite books to get lost in, because it’s one where I’ve found the writing, people, and places I love.

If you’re looking for more information about An American Marriage, check out Oprah’s reading guide, the Buzzfeed and Electric Literature interviews referenced above, or my Goodreads review of the book (which heard all these ideas first.)

If you’re interested in holding me accountable to my 2018 Reading Challenge, please (please!) friend me on Goodreads, or leave your profile in the comments below.

#books #Gabriella #Georgia #Louisiana #writers we love

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2blackgrits-blog · 8 years ago

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For Grits Who "Got Indian in Their Family" (Or Something Like That)

If you ask me where I’m from, I’ll tell you South Carolina. If you ask me where my family is from, I’ll name some towns in Alabama, counties in Carolina. Beyond that, my knowledge of my ancestry is pretty rudimentary, and honestly based on assumptions that center on one thing that’s common for GRITS—I am descended from enslaved peoples.

This is something I used to be pretty ashamed of. I have no recollections of being embarrassed to be black, but I do recall not wanting to be the type of black I am, something I referred to as a child as being “Just Black.” Now, I prefer the term Black American, which refers to the ethnic identity of people who have descended from the enslaved Africans who were brought to this country. We’ve been called many things over the years—negroes, colored, and now usually “African-American.” I have never identified with this phrase, even though as a child I was desperate to feel African, connected to the people I read about in folk stories and young adult novels (Shout out to my mom for always surrounding me with black literature though). Africans were strong and beautiful, they had specific cultures and languages and heritages that I felt I lacked as a girl whose parents first languages were English, whose grandparents were born sharecroppers and farmers. There was nothing special about being “just black,” and I felt ashamed—I wanted to know what I “was.”

I wanted to know where in Africa my ancestors were from. I had this sort of far fetched idea that if I knew, I would start to learn the language and the customs of these places and one day perhaps return there, if only to visit, and be welcomed home in the way that people are in those stories your hotep uncle shares on Facebook. I became enamored with the idea of getting my DNA tests done through one of the many services that are now available so I could begin my transition to the motherland.

Now we been had told you that you should be listening to Another Round with Heben and Tracy, but if you haven’t yet, a great place to dip your toe in is Episode 88: I Got Indian in My Family, which follows Tracy as she gets her ancestry tested from a few different companies, and it opens with this really interesting conversation she and Crissle West have about a fear that I understand, as irrational as it may be. They both discussed that, before they got their ancestry results back, they were afraid that they would find out they were majority something other than black, or not connected to anywhere in Africa. This seems like a silly irrational fear, but it stems from something that Crissle explains well—a fear that having a family that has been in America for so many generations has “warped her genetically,” and drained her blackness from her in some way. This may seem unscientific, but America has affected black people so many ways—economically, psychologically, physically—that I wondered if it could have affected my genetics. I shared their fear that maybe it had done something to the part of me that I found so beautiful in other black people, had stolen something else from me on the way.

There are other fears that black Americans often have when we start researching our ancestry—concerns about uncovering family secrets or discrepancies from the folklore that we’ve been told about ourselves. Especially in the South, these stories influence how we think about ourselves. Since I was a child, I have been told that my mother’s family was black and Choctaw, and that my father’s family was black and white. Because of the complex violence and abuse perpetrated against our people throughout history, I believe these tales of mixed ancestry to a certain extent, but I suspect that a DNA test might reveal that we are significantly less Native than some of my family members believe. Still, as a child this idea of a distant mixed heritage appealed to me. Maybe this was a result of being surrounded by the pretty mixed girls or the “1/4 Irish, 1/16th Cherokee, 2/3rd French” girls at school. Maybe this was because the majority of the black people on TV were light skinned with curls and freckles. Maybe this was because I didn’t understand the value of my own culture.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when I started to become proud of my specific black American heritage (it probably wasn’t long before this blog started), but something that helped reaffirm the value of having enslaved ancestors was episode 13 of the podcast Identity Politics, titled “Where I’m From.” Identity Politics focuses on the intersections of black womanhood and Muslim identity, and this episode took some time out to discuss the ways that being a black American effected those experiences. I took particular encouragement from hearing their guests, Bashirah and Kameelah, discuss coming to terms with the value of both their black American heritage and their more distant African ancestry. This really emphasized one of my concerns about the whole DNA testing craze (besides the question of what these companies are doing with your DNA after they test it, I’m just saying). I worried that learning about my distant history would make me devalue the heritage I do know about. There is no knowledge of a distant ancestor that will change the story of how my family came to this country, and there is no reason for me to be ashamed of that history. My ancestors’ ability to survive is something that comforts me when I’m discouraged, and their culture is just as vast and deep and any other. It took me a while to realize that the way my family makes oxtails and okra doesn’t make us a better type of black than any other black people. Though we all still have room to grow on the tensions between Africans and Black Americans, I’ve begun to find value in the customs that I had that differentiated me from other types of black people. Dishes like Hoppin’ John and holidays like Juneteenth are specific to my experience and a sign of my cultural heritage.

I may never get my DNA ancestry report, but there are still things I know about my heritage. Just as slavery shaped the South economically, culinarily, culturally, it shaped the people who were born and brought here, lived and died here, the people who passed on their stories as enslavers and the enslaved. There is nothing shameful about the beautiful of reclaiming the land my ancestors once toiled over. There is nothing simple about being “just black.”

#family #podcasts

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2blackgrits-blog · 8 years ago

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For GRITS Whose Hair Won’t Act Right

I once saw this meme equating natural hair to a disrespectful child—you feed it, grow it, and take care of it with your hard-earned money, and still it has the unmitigated gall to have you out here looking stupid on a constant basis. Personally, that constant basis has gotten to be enough, considering it’s been six long years since my big chop.

I know we naturals love to get extra-religious about having our minds made up and not turning back to the olden days, but I’m a big believer that some black hair care tips will always apply. My aunts have schooled me on the importance of training your hair more times than I need to hear, and thankfully, I’m now listening to them. Even though I’m not heat training anything over here, the general idea is the same—identifying your hair’s consistent problems, developing a routine to solve them, and sticking to those solutions until they work. In the hopes of us all getting where we want to be, I’m sharing my problems and fixes with y’all today.

Precautionary Note: Some of these suggestions are pretty wash-and-go specific, because this is pretty much the only way that my fine-textured hair consistently looks full. Some of them are also pretty specific to women with low-porosity hair, because I’ve found that our necessary routines go against much of the common wisdom in the natural hair community. All of these suggestions are intended for women who have less than 4 hours a week and $40 a month to spend on hair.

Problem: The front of my hair doesn’t curl like the rest of it. This fix could definitely apply to any part of your hair, it just happens that due to over-manipulation (I’ll admit it) and a bit of a finer texture, the front pieces of my hair are significantly shorter and stragglier than the curls in the back or crown of my head. If you know me off the internet, then you know that I usually solve this problem by flat-twisting the front pieces halfway, and pinning the rest back to the sides, which works to blend the length and keep my hair out of my face. In addition to probably harming my edges long-term, the detangling I have to do to get a neat flat twist un-clumps my hair, which means that the hair doesn’t blend texture-wise.

Solution: Twist your problem sections to make them more defined. Recently, I’ve found an easy fix—pinning the flat twist, and then continuing it into a two-strand twist, which I later take out. This is perfect because it causes all those straggly pieces to clump together, almost a bit too perfectly. You can frizz this section up a bit by running your fingers through it once you take it out, preferably while it’s damp, though sometimes you will forget and be walking around with several twists in your otherwise curly head—exhibit A, my work badge.

Problem: None of my hair curls like I know it can. Please don’t get this confused with hair hate, which, unlike Shea Moisture would have you believe, weighs the heaviest on women with more kinks and coils, who have been told that curls and straight hair are the better options. As many natural hair bloggers and vloggers have discussed, texture discrimination is very real, and very wrong, and not of for debate.

What I’m talking about here is when you know your hair curls a certain way under water and when you first put in your products, but it quickly loses its hold and amounts to frizziness or stringy-ness during your day. For years, I’d constantly have the problem of seeing my hair look and behave a drastically different way in my bathroom mirror and shower versus out in the real world.

Solution: Get serious about your styling products, and shingle with cheap conditioner as your base. First off—I’m listing the products I use, because I do think they make a difference. When it comes to wash-and-go’s, Kinky Curly’s Knot Today Leave-In Conditioner/Detangler and Curling Custard Natural Styling Gel are the real deal. They’re products that work on most all hair types and textures, and for a myriad of different styles, though they’re primarily intended for wash-and-go’s. For those of us transitioning from Shea Moisture’s $7.49-with-BOGO price-point, paying $20 for a gel and $12 for a leave-in isn’t ideal, but these really are the only things that consistently work for my hair. In terms of longevity, the gel lasts at least six weeks, and the leave-in conditioner lasts a month for me. If it helps, you can use the Curly Custard as gel and edge control, so you’re really paying $10 for each.

To consistently achieve the most defined results, I’ve been using the shingling method, which I learned from this video, but was inspired to try based on this one. I have to use lots of conditioner for this, because the Curling Custard is pretty sticky, and also because my hair takes a lot of product to detangle, and I don’t want to waste the aforementioned, super-expensive, good stuff. I’ve heard Knot Today is a great detangler, but honestly, I’ll probably never know because I don’t feel like wasting the 8 ounces.

Instead, I rake Aussie’s 3 Minute Miracle Moist Deep Conditioner through my wet hair until it’s satisfactorily detangled, and the different curls are clumping together. Then, I smooth in a bit of Knot Today, not really for detangling, but just because it activates the Curling Custard. If you decide to (or already do) use these products, you’ll get a feel for how much of this you need with the Aussie already under it. With the curling custard, it’s easy—I just rake it through the whole section (I part my hair in two sections, and only need two globs for each), and then smooth it through each individual curl with a bit more product on my fingers.

After this, I hop out of the shower, flat and two-strand twist my fronts in the mirror, put on my edges scarf, and put the rest of my hair in a Turbie Twist for a half hour. Lots of people use a diffuser or air dry, but this is the broke girl’s guide to quick natural hair success, so I really just do enough to not have my hair dripping excessively! Lots of times, I will leave my scarf on while I ride to work, just because I like my edges to be really laid so I don’t have to touch my hair again for three or four days.

Like I said, I really don’t like having to redo any part of my hair, so for the next few days until another wash and go, I just put my scarf on, pineapple with a wide scrunchie, and then cover it with a bonnet. This lasts me three or four days, and a whole week if I unravel the front twists and go with a less-defined, bigger look.

Problem: My hair never lasts the whole week! This has been a continual problem of mine. While I’d love to be one of those girls who can stretch a wash and go a whole week, with my current length and lifestyle (i.e. living in a perpetually and randomly rainy city), it usually isn’t possible. I’d love to just re-wet portions of my hair without getting back in the shower, but whenever I do this it irrevocably frizzes up, which isn’t always the move.

Solution: Do it more often! Before you protest, this doesn’t necessarily mean more time, just more frequency. One of the main reasons I stick to wash and gos is because even with shingling they don’t take too long, and if you’re training your hair to anticipate the style, you can re-wet your hair mid-week without having to spend forever detangling (since you just did earlier that week.) Right now, I wash/detangle/deep condition/style on Wednesday mornings, and simply wet and style on Sundays (so I basically start my hair routine by detangling with the 3 Minute Miracle.)

When I was first getting used to my curly hair, my mother used to tell me that I needed to wet it everyday to work. While we have different hair textures, and this does not work for me, I do see what she means now, because the once-a-week styling doesn’t either. Though my scalp doesn’t need to be cleansed every three or four days, my style definitely does, at least until I can find another hack to this wash and go game.

Problem: My hair comes out great some wash-and-gos, and terrible on others. As we all know, one of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If your wash-and-go method never varies, but your outcome does, maybe it's time to change your earlier steps.

Solution: Consistently, but reasonably, wash & deep condition. If you’re low porosity, the first thing you’ll want to do is seriously consider switching to shampoo at least once a week. I know this sounds like natural hair blasphemy, but with a hair type that quickly develops build-up, it’s important to fully cleanse your hair. If you’re still kind of scared of this idea, a good natural shampoo to start with is the EDENBodyworks Peppermint Tea Tree. At $8.49, it’s reasonably priced, and will last you at least an entire season—even with weekly washes—because you’ll probably only need three squirts for your entire head. (During the school year, I use Kinky Curly Come Clean, since it’s formulated to cleanse your scalp of the hard-water minerals more prevalent in the North. I’ve also heard good things about The Mane Choice Easy On The Curls Detangling Hydration Shampoo, so I’ll probably try that soon.)

While you could use the coordinating conditioner, I pretty much stick to Aussie Mega Moist, since in the words of Curly Nikki, I enjoy using “finance-disrespecting amounts” of conditioner, and you get a huge bottle with a pump for around $5. When I’m being good, I rinse a bit of this out and follow up with the EDEN BodyWorks JojOba Monoi Deep Conditioner. This stuff is super thick—almost too thick for my hair in the summer, so I’ve thought of switching it up, but I want to finish this bottle first because I’m trying to curb my product junkie tendencies.

In terms of logistics, like I said, I’m low porosity, which means I have to deep condition with heat. I have a Hot Head deep conditioning cap, which is a great alternative to a hooded dryer if you move around while deep conditioning, or move around your city too much to keep a bulky dryer with you. I’ll usually stay under the Hot Head for 30 minutes, but sometimes I do less if I’m running late.

When I’m being bad, which is often during the school year, Aussie’s 3 Minute Miracle Moist Deep Conditioner is my best friend. The 3 Minute Miracle is a quick moisturizing deep conditioner that I use on my busier days to still get a bit of TLC in. While I’m bathing and/or shaving, I let this stuff sit in my head with a shower cap and try to utilize the steam from the shower (obviously, I use skin-scalding water during this point.)

While it definitely took me a couple eons, I’m glad I'm inheriting more of the patience, innovation, and good graces that have helped many of the women in my family become my eternal hair goals. Soon and very soon, I'm hoping to join them, but I'm not in too much of a rush—after all, to let the slideshow above tell it, I've already come a mighty long way.

For more tips on how to make your wash and go’s behave or establish a regimen that lets you live your best low-porosity life, clink on the links.

Have a hack I didn’t mention? Want to teach me to take pictures that actually show my hair? Dying for Michaela to talk about her routine? Let us know in the comments!

#Natural Hair

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2blackgrits-blog · 8 years ago

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The Supremacy of South Carolina BBQ: Part One - Meeting Maurice

One of the founding principles of this blog is that in general, Northerners don’t know how to write about the South because in general, Northerners know nothing about the South. New Yorker staff writer Lauren Collins must have Southern roots, then, because her popular April piece, “America’s Most Political Food” hit the nail on the head. Barbeque is, indeed, one of the most contentious foods in the United States—take for proof the fact that a boy from DC (not the South) and I once had a ten-minute argument about whether my preference for pork barbeque made me a fake barbeque fan or not. Outside of the arguments about which meats belong inside the categorization, Collins takes a moment to discuss which people are welcome at the barbeque table—and which of us are excluded.

I’m a big fan of barbeque of all kinds, but I was raised on one thing—tangy, sweet, vinegary (fight me Gabby) mustard based barbecue, the kind South Carolina is known for. It’s a unique sauce that is hard to find (done well) outside the Carolinas, and is used solely on pork, especially pulled pork sandwiches and ribs. There’s no shortage of places to find this sauce in the state, especially in the Midlands, but the place that practically birthed the sauce is Maurice’s Piggie Park, a local barbecue chain with a history as infamous and important to my understanding of the South as any confederate landmark.

I can’t recall the first time I saw a Maurice’s, but I do remember the first time I saw someone eating it. I was at play rehearsal for The Sound of Music, in which I played Louisa in an interracial Von Trapp family, when my friend’s mother brought him an after school snack. The whole theatre immediately filled with the smell of meat and salt, particularly alluring to us all, since food was technically off-limits during rehearsal. I remember turning to ask him what his mother had brought him and seeing, to my surprise, a white bag adorned with the Maurice’s logo, an apathetic-looking pig wearing a red crop top a la Winnie the Pooh. I was shocked because the people I knew didn’t eat Maurice’s. Despite there being one directly across the street from where I’ve lived almost all my life, I’ve never eaten at a Maurice’s, not even once, for one simple reason—the flag.

We’ve already talked a bit about the confederate flag, and in that post I alluded to the several restaurants in the South that fly it. For many years, Maurice’s was one of them.or many years, it was the only one who’d held out in this particular display of blatant racism. This can mainly be attributed to the founder of Maurice’s, Maurice Bessinger, a well-known white supremacist. He fought against desegregation, and when he lost that fight, made it clear that black people were not welcome at his restaurants. In 2000, when South Carolina’s congress brought the flag down off the top of the South Carolina state house, he put the flag back up at each location. Soon after, his barbeque sauce line was pulled from local grocery stores, and a court case followed. Bessinger claimed discrimination. He made it known that black people simply were not welcome at his restaurants, no matter what the law said. And for a while, that’s the way things were in Columbia--Maurice had the flag, and thusly, no black customers.

But one day, Bessinger died. And soon after, the flags came down.

It’s here that our Northern friend Lauren Collins enters with her question—is it now okay to eat at the Piggie Park? It seems that the answer has still been no. To this day, I know no one, especially no black people, who frequent Maurice’s, even though there have been a couple of write ups of people hemming and hawing over it. His children, who run his restaurants now, say they just want to talk barbeque, not politics, but the legacy that Maurice Bessinger had over my hometown still seems to stand.

But I can’t help but be curious. I really enjoy barbeque, y’all. More importantly, I feel a right to enter this place that is such a landmark of my home. They say it defines something that’s a part of region--our love for something tangy and sweet, our stubbornness when it comes to our beliefs.And so, that’s why I’ve started this series, both to respond to Collin’s amazing article, but also answer the question I’ve had since I was a kid—am I missing something at Maurice’s?

Illustration Credit to David Sandlin and the New Yorker.

#SC BBQ Series #south carolina #barbecue

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2blackgrits-blog · 9 years ago

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For GRITS Who Are Vain and Proud

By the time this post goes up, we will have almost entered Virgo season, which means it will almost be my 18th birthday. Now that I’m almost a legal adult (despite having the impulsivity and tender-headedness of a fourth-grader), I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a black woman raised in the South, as opposed to a girl raised there. This means I’m thinking about what separates the women from the girls in my life, specifically those of us who are in the 15-24 age range where we are constantly growing but never entirely grown. One of the ways I’ve been studying this transition is through our beauty rituals.

My sister, who will turn 17 in October, is often mistaken for the older one of us. In addition to being taller than me, Moogie also looks like your average aspirational IG model with Baptist parents—nails done, hair done, everything did, so to speak. In the last year, there have been maybe five times that she wasn’t fancier coming from volleyball practice than I was coming out of my junior prom (I’m not sure how this girl doesn’t sweat her hair out while playing, but it’s truly a skill.) In this way, and many others, she takes after our aunts and cousins and grandmothers, women who had a sense of togetherness we both aspire to (I've added a photo gallery so you can see just what I mean.) Growing up, this was the most visible form of womanhood—always looking put together, even when your life wasn’t.

My mother, who prefers the more natural look (with skin and hair like hers, who can blame her), still made it clear that you didn’t leave the house without matching sets of earrings and your clothes getting to know an iron. According to my aunt, no girls trip is complete without a trip to three places: the mall, Costco, and the nail salon. It’s not because she literally thinks that having presentable toenails is as important as having a full fridge of food; it’s because she knows the sense of dignity that self-care can impart on black women who would otherwise be convinced of their worthlessness, ugliness, and helplessness through everyday life. I know there are lots of people who say beauty rituals like these are the most superficial way of showing your adulthood, but for many of us, it’s about something more. Keeping yourself up is sometimes the smallest, most accessible way you can assert your presence in this world.

For a long time, I didn’t really believe in self-care, specifically beauty rituals, in a personal sense. I’m an Ivy League college student who comes from a very comfortable two-parent home in a small town with some of the best schools in our state. I’m blessed to have been spared any significant struggles with mental illness, and for once, everyone in my family is in good physical health. Self-care, I told myself, was for girls with the world on their shoulders, both communally and also personally. They could worry about their nails as a form of resistance or recuperation, but I didn’t deserve that. You might not be surprised to hear that this kind of thought led to my introduction to burnout. There were too many clubs, too many volunteering gigs, too many classes I didn’t care about, and not enough things I did for sheer enjoyment. The things that truly made me happy (the blog, for one) fell by the wayside because I told myself they weren’t as “important” as these other activities. By the beginning of this summer, I finally realized why so many black women I know prioritize beauty rituals that may not seem important—because everyone needs time for themselves, even if it’s only those thirty minutes in the morning. This summer, I tried to find that time.

I started watching YouTube videos for skin care tips, which was probably a good call. Everyone on my mom and dad’s side is prone to oily skin, and I seem to have inherited the strongest genes on both sides—I’m banking on the whole “what gives you zits now won’t give you wrinkles later” logic. The point is, I’m currently trying to embrace the DIY/college student budget solutions, which is where YouTube comes in handy. Looking at nighttime skin routines quickly evolved*** into me looking at holy grail highlighter videos and FashionNova hauls, from which I learned two things: 1. Fashion Nova is a real place non-racially ambiguous people with real jobs can buy clothes from, and 2. The purpose of bodysuits isn’t actually to show your hipbones (are those a thing?), but actually to provide a clear silhouette when you want to tuck your shirt (or suit?) into your pants. This world was foreign, but also kind of familiar—after time, it reminded me of the magic that black women have continuously created without even leaving their bathrooms and kitchen sinks, of the magic the women I love practice and perfect day in and day out.

Now that I’m back in Philly but not quite back at school, my favorite way to unwind between jobs is still by watching GlamTwinz videos on the AppleTV in the room I’m renting. Yes, this means that I’m saying no to more things, and some of my to-dos aren’t crossed off as quickly, but this also means my days never go by without something I enjoy. It’s not necessarily the contouring tutorials or foundation reviews that interest me—anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I haven’t used foundation a day in my life. However, the tradition of putting pride into one’s looks is something that reminds me of a more hopeful time, where I thought the adult world I was headed into (and the adult I was going to be) was much less complicated. And more and more, I’m finding that it’s a way to control a piece of my own world, while I'm still learning to control myself.

***Right now, my favorite beauty YouTubers are very predictable and #SheaButterTwitter adjacent: GlamTwinz334 (Kelsey and Kendra are black GRITS at our finest—they understand when makeup goes too far, and wouldn’t have you out here looking “hoochie.”) and Jackie Aina (follow her on SnapChat and I promise you’ll have at least two things to laugh at everyday), but I also watch BeautyByLee’s videos whenever I’m with my mother at home. Michaela turned me onto Jackie and also watches waay more people, so after she writes a piece about this we will put a little playlist together of some of our favorites.

#family #Youtube #self care #Alabama #Georgia #south carolina #beauty

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2blackgrits-blog · 9 years ago

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For GRITS Who Know the Value of Their History

So, as all you GRITS know, the February meeting of the Black Coalition just occurred. It was a great meeting, and though it started twenty minutes late, we got a lot done. There are a lot of minutes to go over, but I think it’s important that we get the big and controversial topic out of the way. This month’s meeting was focused on what the Black Coalition would be willing to accept in exchange for Black History Month. While we all know that Black History Month is truly invaluable, we also know we are tired of hearing white people (and other non-black people of color, to be honest) complain that we’re the only ones having all the fun, and we might as well see what we could get out of a deal. It was a long and arduous process, but we’ve narrowed the list down to five things we’d accept in place of Black History Month.

A Permanent Ban on Crunchy Collard Greens Recipes

White people keep thinking they’ve discovered things people of color have known about for years (like collard greens, or America) and we’re tired of it. After Whole Foods suggested we all put peanuts in our collard greens and we calmed down our aunties, we decided it would be worth it to give up black history month if all of our recipes, from potato salad to collard greens, were given protection from white folks by being designated as historical landmarks .

Unlimited Free Beyonce Tickets

This one might be a little difficult to work out, but Beyonce has confirmed that she’s willing to cooperate with us. If white people would be willing to ban all the white children who are rich enough to go to see Beyonce but only know the words to Irreplaceable, there would be just enough tickets left at every stop on the tour for all black people to go see the Queen. They know they don’t have a negro nose. Of course, your cousin who is really into respectability politics objected, but the Hive took care of that.

Free Fair Trade Coconut Oil and Shea Butter

Since we as a people rediscovered the beauty of our natural hair, we’ve also remembered the magic of products like shea butter, coconut oil, and edge control (ok, I don’t think we ever forgot that last one.) If the US government would be willing to compensate every auntie in Ghana who’s doing the Lord’s work of providing organic and unrefined shea butter to us for free, we could start talking about coming down to a Black History Week.

One Year Exclusive Rights to the Newest Dance Moves

Let’s face it, the nae nae and the whip are dead. Silento dug the grave, but the ten thousand vines of mediocre white cross country teams hitting the most offbeat whip you’ve ever seen in your life pushed the trend six feet under. Now we’ve got the dab, and it’s not going to last long if we don’t take action to protect it. We also want exclusive strolling rights for the Divine Nine now that Gabby's friend, the White Kappa is a thing.

Reparations

Gabby and I couldn't decide if we prefered the Tracy Clayton or the Ta-nehisi Coates plan better, but either way, this needs no explanation.

At the end of the day, we know we won’t be able to get rid of Black History or Black History Month, no matter what they offer us, but it’s nice to dream of all the things that we could have. See y’all next month in the back of the barbershop, and don’t be late.

#Michaela #Beyoncè #Collard greens

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2blackgrits-blog · 9 years ago

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For GRITS Preserving the Land | Gravy Ep. 29

We don’t want to give y’all too much homework all this month, but we’re also committed to not exploring the same old same old with black Southern history. As you could imagine, this commitment often requires outside sources. This week, we’re actually encouraging you to leave our blog (who would’ve thought), open your podcast app of choice, and download the second-to-most recent episode of Gravy.

Michaela wrote a more comprehensive review of this podcast back in December, and we’ve lost no love for the show since then. Time and time again, I’ve seen depictions of the South fall short in appreciating our culture while also acknowledging the past and present nuances of each group under the Southern umbrella. Nearly every installment of Gravy meets this challenge, offering stories of “New South” residents that are easy-to-follow without being reductive.

When we first saw that Shirley Sherrod, the former Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the USDA and lifelong agricultural activist, was being covered on the show, Michaela and I immediately freaked out. While Sherrod’s public experiences with systemic racism could be their own series of episodes, her legacy of organizing and advocating for black farmers in Georgia is something that should be discussed in this month and every other one.

Black farmers have been largely absent for decades from our historical discussions of the post-Antebellum South, which amazes me as someone who couldn’t imagine a South without them. When I think about the black Southerners around me who have been able to amass land, start small businesses, and create other forms of self-sufficiency, they all have roots in agriculture. While Gravy by no means covers all there is to say about these families, it’s an accurate and accessible entryway to one of the most inspirational communities in black Southern history.

Hopefully, this month will encourage all of us to seek out more information about the black Southerners who have built, defended, re-built, and re-defined this land we call home. We hope you’ll find time to listen, and tell us what you think below!

#Gabriella #Georgia #politics #Activism

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2blackgrits-blog · 9 years ago

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For GRITS Preserving the Land | Gravy Ep. 29

#Gabriella #Georgia #politics #Activism

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2blackgrits-blog · 9 years ago

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For GRITS Who Spread the Good News | Sweet Honey in the Rock

I didn’t grow up listening to Stevie Wonder or Marvin Gaye. My mama was raised in the church, and so was I, so most of my early musical memories are religious in nature. I can probably identify the sample of any gospel song in the background of your favorite rap battle, and recently, a friend texted me to find “an upbeat gospel song the mother of the church sings while washing greens,” and I was able to provide her with Be Ready When He Comes Again, and I think it fits pretty well. All the music I listened to (pre-Kanye West) all had a great effect on my understanding of my blackness and my history. I viewed music religiously, as the thing that differentiated my loud and interactive church services from the short and contemplative sermons I heard in my private school chapel. But I also viewed music as something political, and that’s probably due to Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Sweet Honey is an a capella group that probably describes itself better than I ever could—their mission statement says they are “rooted in African American history and culture…[Sweet Honey In the Rock] educates, entertains and empowers its audience and community through the dynamic vehicles of a cappella singing and American Sign Language interpretation for the Deaf and hearing impaired.” They are a group of black women artists and activists who have been singing and signing since 1973, when their founder, Bernice Johnson Reagon, one of the most influential GRITS in my life, held a workshop in the group’s home base of DC.

Johnson Reagon was an activist and artist in her own rite before the group was even formed. Born in Albany, Georgia in 1942, she was expelled from Albany State College due to her arrest after a Civil Rights demonstration, and transferred to Spelman College (my mama’s alma mater) for a short period of time. Soon after, she left the college (she would finish her undergraduate degree there in 1970, and earn her PhD from Howard in 1975), and joined the Freedom Singers, a group who raised money for SNCC. She worked at the Smithsonian, won a MacArthur, and had a folk music career of her own (honestly, your fave could never) before she formed and led Sweet Honey in the Rock, which she named after Psalms 81:16—“and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.” Sweet Honey is unique in that its members are constantly and intentionally moving in and out—more than twenty members have come and gone, though currently the group is five people, including their sign language interpreter and my favorite lightskin, Shirley Childress Saxton.

Johnson Reagon’s political history and southern heritage have a strong influence on the music Sweet Honey in the Rock creates. Their sound is very raw, accompanied only by basic percussion and some serious talent. Their music reflects the balance of simple lyrics and complex harmonies negro spirituals and folk songs have perfected throughout history. One of my first musical memories is of their rendition of “No More Auction Block” (famously recorded by Bob Dylan, whose ancestors were more likely on the other side of the auction) being sung to me—it was one of the ways I learned not only about slavery, but also about the courage and strength it took to end it.

And their music educated me on activism and history. I can give a decent explanation of the history of voting rights in Washington D.C because of their song Give the People the Right to Vote, and they also make a point to record songs that were important to the Civil Rights movement, like their rendition of "This May Be The Last TIme." But Sweet Honey in the Rock also taught me the importance of advocating for struggles that don’t apply to you—if everyone could understand the literal and metaphorical lesson in their song “Would You Harbor Me,” there would be no refugee crisis. One of the moments that brought me to appreciate their poetry was the combination of the negro spiritual “Stay on the Battlefield” with Sonia Sanchez’s poem “For Sweet Honey in the Rock,” which should be in every ‘Introduction to Intersectionality’ course in the world. If all this weren’t enough, as we previously mentioned on this blog, “Ella’s Song” introduced me to the powerhouse that is Ella Baker.

My mother came to know Sweet Honey through their performances on Spelman’s campus, and I came to know their music and their message through her. They taught me the intersection of activism and art, they taught me black history, they taught me the value of my blackness, and they taught me the power of my voice. In Sweet Honey, I found a network of elders that reminded me (in a very hotep way, bear with me y’all) of the ancestors we reference when we talk about black history, or of the way we talk about ‘us’ we when refer to blackness, to southern-ness, as a collective. I try to anchor myself to these voices that give such wisdom and comfort, by opening each new year with their song “Breaths." I feel connected to history, their activism, and most of all, their motivation to keep spreading our good news.

For more information on Sweet Honey in the Rock, visit their website.

#Michaela #Sweet Honey in the Rock #Activism #Black History Month

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2blackgrits-blog · 9 years ago

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For GRITS Who Spread the Good News | Sweet Honey in the Rock

I didn’t grow up listening to Stevie Wonder or Marvin Gaye. My mama was raised in the church, and so did I, and so most of my early musical memories are religious in nature. I can probably identify the sample of any gospel song in the background of your favorite rap battle, and recently, a friend texted me to find “an upbeat gospel song the mother of the church sings while washing greens,” and I was able to provide her with Be Ready When He Comes Again, and I think it fits pretty well. All the music I listened to (pre-Kanye West) all had a great effect on my understanding of my blackness and my history. I viewed music religiously, as the thing that differentiated my loud and interactive church services from the short and contemplative sermons I heard in my private school chapel. But I also viewed music as something political, and that’s probably due to Sweet Honey in the Rock.

For more information on Sweet Honey in the Rock, visit their website.

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2blackgrits-blog · 10 years ago

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For GRITS Who Been On | Formation Review

Soon and very soon, we’re going to see The King, in all her Texan Negro-Creole (we recognize there may not need to be a distinction here) glory. By we, I mean the rest of y’all, seeing as how there’s already an indispensable portion of the world that has always been aware of how Southern Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter is. For us, her most recent video, Formation, was just a reminder of what we already knew. Now, I could spend this post talking about how several folks not worth their weight in salt have been quick to jump onto this video without recognizing that it is just as unapologetically Southern as it is unapologetically black, but I feel like we’ve dragged on Northerners enough—at least for this month. So, instead, I think we should take some time to celebrate the first artist since Big K.R.I.T. to put Texas Pete and the region that perfected it back on the map.

Because we’re talking about formation, I think it’s important to start off by looking at who formed this masterpiece—namely, Bey herself, but also Mike WiLL Made-It (production) Swae Lee from Rae Sremmurd (co-writing.) In many ways, this line-up itself is a celebration of the New South’s contributions to 2015 hip-hop culture: you couldn’t go anywhere last summer without hearing SremmLife, a project that is greatly influenced by the brothers’ Tupelo roots and Atlanta upbringings, and Mike Will’s sound has long been recognized as a distinctly ATL creation.

Given all this Georgian influence, people may be a bit confused about why we’re all considering this to be bounce music. I had a friend who tried to classify this as trap, which we will forgive him for—New Yorkers don’t be knowing. While this may be a logical conclusion, it overlooks Formation’s other two contributors: Big Freedia and Messy Mya, Gulf Coast cultural icons ho really helped elevate the cultural importance of this song. Swae and Mike are essentially Latavia and Latoya—the group (or in this case, song) wouldn’t have come off without them, but we all know Kelly and Michelle (i.e. Freedia and Mya) are the ones helping Bey make it do what it do for the 99 and the 2000 (or the 15 and 2016?) What Formation does do is nothing short of magical: by bringing these voices back into the mainstream, Beyoncé pays homage to and raises up the queer black Southern community, for those of y’all who aren’t aware how much our current culture rests on their work.

While we’re on the topic, there’s also the sonic inclusion of drum major riffs, which immediately brought to mind one of the best aspects of collegiate Southern blackness, our HBCU marching bands. Whether your Aggie Pride leads you to believe that A&T has the best band (like me!), or you for some reason side with FAMU like Michaela, it’s undeniable that these musicians—and majorettes! —have been a staple of black Southern culture for decades. Beyoncé was clearly aware of this other “formation” we often reference in the black South, because those bridge notes had homecoming halftime stamped all over them.

Furthermore, I just want to appreciate the depth of Beyoncé’s alignment with her countryness. Finally, someone has showcased the over-coordination we black Southerners seem to particularly love (denim-on-denim, Gucci outfits) outside of Instagram memes. She also makes sure to get the dinnertime references in—someone is literally pulling apart lobsters in this video, and I praise the Good Lord for it. If we’re talking teams, we can’t leave out her inclusion of my favorite swamp town mascots, albino alligators (which are indigenous to the coastal Southeastern U.S., and are focal points in most all of our aquariums.) The succinct recounting of her family history (“My daddy Alabama/mama Louisiana/you mix that Negro with that Creole/make a Texas bama”) is immediately legendary, and gives almost all your coastal cousins a chance to rep their states. It’s also proof of why this woman should be teaching courses (specifically on black Southern genealogy) at Rice along with Bun B.

Y’all know we at 2BG love a GRIT who knows her roots, and thanks to Formation, Beyoncé clearly passes our test. Everyone’s favorite look from this scene comes from her experimentation with Southern Gothic, Antebellum, and voodoo aesthetics, reclaiming them in order to show how the black women deprived of lace and luxury in that time period still ran the show from behind the scenes. Her insistence on anchoring New Orleans scenery and culture in this video (a city-specific focus which, lest y’all forget, she has done for Houston in “No Angel”) adds her to the long list of black artists who continue to make sure we don’t forget the tragedies inflicted upon black people in Katrina. I can only hope this is only the start of her showcasing our not-so-distant past for the whole world to see.

I know there are arguably more important reclamations of Black History Month, and we’ll get to them eventually. But right now, I’m feeling like the black, female, queer South has risen again, and that’s something to be celebrated.

For other great pieces by Southern women on this topic, click one of the links below!

Getting in Line: Working through Beyoncé’s “Formation” by Regina Bradley

We Slay, Part I by Zandria Robinson

#Gabriella #new orleans #music #texas

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2blackgrits-blog · 10 years ago

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For GRITS Celebrating Their History | Black History Month

Harambe! What’s good? What’s really good? Happy Black History Month Y’all! We’ve come out of our South Carolina focused month to transition into the best (and shortest) month of the year, and we here at 2BG are excited to celebrate our first February with y’all. As the Negro National Anthem reminds us, our history has been a bit dark and difficult (you know, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered and all), so we decided to start off the month with a lighthearted post that will get you in the mood to celebrate our heritage and culture together.

If you’re not soulless like Gabby and you like children, you’ll love Because of Them We Can’s response to Stacey Dash suggesting that we cancel Black History Month and Buzzfeed’s “Kids Reenact Black Leaders.” The comment sections on both are absolutely toxic, and the history is a little fuzzy, but hey, maybe children born after 2000 are gonna be alright.

If you’re looking to support black businesses this month, you could pay for some of these textbooks I just bought, or you could check out Buzzfeed’s list of ways you can celebrate black history month in style.. It features Philadelphia Printworks’ fictional HBCU sweatshirts, all named after black activists and your favorite response to white nonsense on a pillow, made by Black Proverbs. You can also up your black girl magic by getting one of the stunning head wraps from The WrapLife, or a sweatshirt featuring the real HU (just kidding Hampton and Howard grads, please don’t come for us), Hillman, especially if you didn’t end up going to an HBCU like us.

And finally, if you’re looking to support black creatives this Black History Month, may I recommend this video of Octavia Spencer and a slightly inebriated Crissle, from the excellent podcast, The Read, telling the story of Harriet Tubman’s slave raids in South Carolina. I also enjoy Jackie Aina’s Black History Month beauty tutorials, which honor the versatile and underappreciated beauty of black women throughout history. And, of course, there is the currently inactive, but always funny Little Known Black History Facts, featured on this weeks episode of the podcast Another Round, which you should check out if you want to know some fictional black contributions to history, and Buzzfeed’s “Things You Wouldn’t Have If Black People Didn’t Invent Them,” which features factual black contributions.

We’ll be dealing with some more serious topics as the month goes on, but we wanted to know—what are some of your favorite and most fun ways to celebrate history month? Tell us in the comments and on social media.

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2blackgrits-blog · 10 years ago

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GRIT of the Month: Latria Graham

We’re overjoyed to end our month with an interview from one of our new favorite GRITS, Latria Graham. We first were introduced to Latria through this (wonderful) Guardian piece, and we’ve been in love with her work ever since. Luckily, she agreed to talk with us about her home, art, family, and several other things. Check it out below!!

First things first: where are you from? Haha I like to say I’m from everywhere—my family moved around quite a bit when I was younger. I claim Spartanburg, SC as my hometown, but I was actually born in Huntsville, AL. I spent 10 years in Nashville, TN, before my parents settled in Spartanburg. My mom is from Columbia, SC and my dad’s from Silverstreet, SC, so I’ve been in and out of South Carolina my whole life. That’s part of the reason that I claim it I think. It would be easier to say I’m from Nashville—there’s some glamour around it, and it shaped my early ear for music, but I definitely consider myself a South Carolina woman.

Where else have you lived, and what were those places like? I went to college in New Hampshire. People ask me why and I mention that it was as far as I could get from South Carolina without crossing the Canadian border. Hanover, New Hampshire is a small town that revolves around the student population. My mom was a fashion designer and went to school at FIT in New York, so she tried to prepare me for the fact that there were going to be students smarter and perhaps more talented than me, but I really struggled to find my place in this academic setting that expected regimented ideas. Going to my high school prepared me for that, but it couldn’t prepare me for the cold, or the fact that it got dark at 4pm during the winter. I struggled with depression quite a bit and struggled to find my footing that far north. Still on the nights when I could climb on the roof of my dorm and see Aurora Borealis, it made up for it.

After I graduated I moved to New York City, specifically to Striver’s Row in Harlem. I was beyond dirt poor. I actually moved into my apartment in the midst of the Wall Street financial meltdown, and the decently paying job that I was supposed to start went up in smoke. Still, I was in love with the city because it held so much art, so many fascinating people…there’s nowhere like it in the world. I grew up in predominantly white areas, so I missed out on some of the important cultural connections that my friends had. I lived across the street from Abyssinian Baptist Church, and I could watch the African American Day Parade from my window. My little sector of Harlem was of the few places in New York where if I was homesick I could walk a block or two to the produce man and he carried the muscadine grapes we used to eat at home.

How did leaving the South for college change you, if at all? When I left South Carolina I tried to erase my heritage, plain and simple. I knew that folks thought South Carolinians were “backwards” and we talked funny, so I tried to be like everyone else. That didn’t work too well. While trekking around in the woods on that DOC trip, we subsisted on refried beans and Cabot cheese. When I got back to the dorms, I wanted something…substantial. I was slightly homesick and it was Sunday, so I made Sunday dinner.

I found a way to connect to my dorm mates through food—through lessons I’d acquired working on the farm, and telling them stories about why I cooked the way I cooked. It was the first indicator that being Southern wasn’t all bad. I still struggled with my identity (and to be honest here, my self esteem), but I realized there were facets of myself that I liked. I started exploring those things. I quickly learned that certain aspects of my “Southern-ness" were an advantage.

Is there a particular Southern experience to you? If so, what does this look like? I don’t think there’s a particular Southern experience because there are so many facets and perspectives, even if you’re just observing the people of one town. I do think there’s a warmth and an intention to connect that comes from my particular microcosm. I think if there’s a particular experience that’s shared all over the South, perhaps it lies in our ability to tell stories, or to at least be immersed in them. Normal conversations about simple things like weather patterns can unfold into textured intricate word play. I always make it a point to chat up different people when I’m traveling just to see what their stories are.

You seem to have a very unique (and very enviable) resolve to embrace your Southern heritage. Where do you think that comes from? You know, I had to do a lot of thinking about this question because when I left for college I tried very hard NOT to be Southern, because being southern meant being backwards or being put down. In a lot of settings my background (being Black, being a woman and then ALSO being Southern) felt like three strikes. Instead I tried to deny, deny, deny.

I tried to be a biomedical engineer instead of an artist because I thought that’s what the world expected of me, and maybe it was. It took having a psychotic breakdown in the middle of the woods during a suicide attempt for me to start being honest with myself, about who I was and what I expected from my life. I was betraying my artistic integrity because I was terrified about how I would survive if I wasn’t the person everyone else expected me to be.

Finding my authenticity and my voice wasn’t easy but now that I’ve found it, it’s hard to ignore, and it hasn’t steered me wrong yet. Sometimes editors and publishers try to “neaten” my voice in an effort to streamline things for their audience, and sometimes I push back. My voice isn’t “neat” and the stories I tell aren’t antiseptic, and so the vehicle that carries these stories to the eyes and ears of audiences isn’t either. But telling those stories is what excites me and what drives me to get out of the bed every day.

Can you speak more about your work with collecting the history of your family, and other black Southerners? Sure! I worked as a library assistant at the New York Society Library on the Upper East Side, and they have a lot of historical documents. This was in the early-ish days of Wikipedia and Google. Things like The Moth and Story Corps were in their infancy and a lot of the technology (and the interconnectedness) wasn’t there. I was able to see what people were capable of collecting when they had the time and resources, and I felt that a lot of that was lacking when it came to Southern and African American stories.

I wasn’t sure how to change that, so I started small—very small. I started with my parents, and then talked to my grandparents. Living in Harlem, I heard all of these stories from or about people who used to live “down South” and I realized that I had access to something very special that other people missed, or longed for. I had access to parts of my heritage and to the land—my father’s family owns a large swath of acreage and a farm in Newberry County. I started trying to piece together their worlds and their histories, and the circle kept getting bigger and bigger.

Being acknowledged for this work led to receiving a couple of grants during graduate school that allowed me to ask bigger questions. One of my literary heroes is Zora Neale Hurston, and I wanted to recreate her travels through the South—she spent a lot of time collecting folk tales and studying people. The project didn’t go quite as intended (my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer) but I learned a lot and I hope to try again. When I go into these communities I try to spend some time there—observing and participating instead of simply coming in, drawing stories out of people and taking off.

What are you reading, listening to, watching, or otherwise consuming? I read like it’s going out of style. Right now I’m spending a lot of time with the works of Phillis Wheatley and Octavia Butler. Artists on my playlist: Rhiannon Giddens, Melissa Polinar, David Ryan Harris and JP Cooper. I’m all over the place—I adore Wagnerian operas just as much as I do the discography of the Soweto Gospel Choir. I’m a self-proclaimed nerd, and I have a thing for soundtracks from video games and movies. When I need something quieter I put on Gentle Love’s Prescription for Sleep Game Music Lullabies Vol. II

What current project of yours are you most passionate about? Short work: I’m working on an essay called Show Me Your Teeth. I struggled with bulimia for over a decade, but I’m happy to say I’m in recovery. The issue: even though I stopped purging almost ten years ago, I’ve lost 4 teeth since. I’m slated to lose two more. It’s a personal essay about how American society views teeth (there’s a lot to be said about teeth and social class) and about what it means to truly recover from a mental illness.

Long work: I’m obsessed with the Zora Neale Hurston project I described earlier. I’ve gotta do it. I just have to. I’d love to launch it in the next year. I’m also working on 2 book proposals. One is about the folk tales my family told me while growing up, and the other is about four underprivileged women of color that attend a school much like Dartmouth. What sorts of choices do they have to make to survive?

What advice do you have for younger black GRITS? ever let anyone tell you that your voice and your feelings and your heritage aren’t valid. They are. A professor that I’d never worked with told me that I needed a grammar book, and that I didn’t know how to write. I knew she was wrong—not just because I was hard headed or had a sense of entitlement, but because there were others that saw value in the work I was putting into the world—even if it needed some polishing up.

Also, don’t let “no” discourage you. I have a hard time with rejection, but writing takes persistence. On average, I get four rejections for every yes. Sometimes I just get silence from editors. It happens. That’s ok. I’m young, bold, and ambitious and I encourage young GRITS to be the same—whether it’s in artistic endeavors or otherwise. It isn’t easy (not by a long shot), but I think it’s worth it, especially when you’re able to look back on the legacy and body of work you’re creating.

Another thing—people say this and I thought they were full of crap, but it’s true: keep a journal. There are so many day-to-day things I could write about if only I could remember them. History is happening all around us, and someone will be interested in your part in it.

#Gabriella #writers we love #south carolina #journalism

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2blackgrits-blog · 10 years ago

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GRIT of the Month: Latria Graham

#Gabriella #writers we love #south carolina #journalism

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2blackgrits-blog · 10 years ago

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GRIT of the Month: Latria Graham

#Gabriella #writers we love #south carolina #journalism

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2blackgrits-blog · 10 years ago

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GRIT of the Month: Latria Graham

#Gabriella #writers we love #south carolina #journalism

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2blackgrits-blog · 10 years ago

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For GRITS Who Are Unsure of Their Magic | Response to #BlackGirlMagic

We at 2BG know how hard it is to be a black girl these days. Between facing violence, sexual assault, and general criticism from our communities, it’s amazing we’ve been able to accomplish so much and look good doing it. In celebration of our achievements, black girls have gathered around some of the things that make us so special—our creativity, intelligence, and in general, our #BlackGirlMagic.

If this is the first time you’ve heard of this hashtag, you may be unfamiliar with the uproar it’s started in the last few weeks. The concept was first credited to CaShawn Thompson, when she hashtagged #BlackGirlsareMagic, and because Twitter has not yet raised the 140 character limit, #BlackGirlMagic came soon after. This hashtag was designated as a place to celebrate the achievements and resilience of black women, an idea that resonates along the lines of this own blog’s mission. The idea picked up so much steam that Essence magazine dedicated their own issue to it, featuring our alumna Teyonah Parris (come on the blog, girl!), Netta Elzie, a founder of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and Yara Shahidi, our Black-ish hair crush.

But not everyone saw it that way. Earlier this month, Dr. Linda Chavers discussed her issues with the movement in Elle. Dr. Chavers’ problem was not with black achievement itself, but with the term “magic,” which she said helped perpetuate the stereotype of the strong black women. She also felt that because of her chronic illness, she could not participate in feeling magical in moments when she felt weak or dehumanized. She compared declaring yourself magical, and thus “superhuman” to saying that black girls are like animals, because it “implies that we are organically different” and thusly, deserve to be treated differently and protected less.

And while these are concerns that black women have, I personally think she missed the point. I recently purchased a t-shirt that declared me a “Magical Black Girl,” and I don’t think that identifying that way means I never feel pain, or I never need help. Identifying as magical means taking a look at all of the parts of being a black girl, the good and the bad, and celebrating ourselves despite all of it. And sure, we shouldn’t expect black women to be superhuman mammies—we’re magic despite the difficulties, not because of them, and Ashley Ford explained this in her response in Elle.

So, you know your cousins over on Black Twitter couldn’t resist an opportunity to respond (or clapback, depending on their mood.) And even though in her For Harriet piece, it’s clear that Dr. Chavers came from a place with nothing but love for black girls, we do have to understand that black girls need to have somewhere they can be their true selves (as popularized by the #CarefreeBlackGirl movement, which received similar criticism from your cousin Pookie who thinks black women shouldn’t twerk because it brings down the race, but who also classifies Kim Kardashian as a “baddie.”) And would it have been better if she’d brought this conversation up in a black publication like Essence? All of these topics were discussed in the links provided, and now we want to hear from y’all. What do y’all think? Is there a problem with the idea of #BlackGirlMagic, and where is the time and place to discuss it? Let us know in the comments.

#BlackGirlMagic #Elle #Essence #Michaela #twitter #journalism

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