She Doesn’t Fit In

By Victoria L. Green

Although she is a black woman, in a room full of other young black women, she feels awkward because she does not feel that she can compare to the other women. She may be the darkest, or the thinnest, or the one with the shortest hair. She feels awkward because she does not know she is beautiful... Because of the young black women she sees in the media, she does not know where she fits in, and therefore she stands to the side...

Related:
• Young black women feeling awkward
• AALCI 2020

She was made to feel as if her disposition was excessive

Dawson Johnson

Although she is a Black woman in a room full of other young Black women, she feels awkward because in the past, she was made to feel as if her disposition was excessive. Just when she’d grown legs long enough to explore the whole of her being, her body was cramped into a square chalked right beside the welcome mat. Beside her, standing just as tall (if not taller), sprung a picketed sign that read, BEWARE / Do Not Leave This Space. And though the sign lacked specificity of what, exactly, she should have been wary, she stood dutifully in place, never pushing her foot past any of the square’s edges.

Related: 

• Young black women feeling awkward 

• AALCI 2020

She feels awkward because she’s wearing a wig

By Zerri Trosper

Although she is a black woman, in a room full of other young black women, she feels awkward because she’s wearing a wig. Earlier, after her stylist finished working her magic, she commented on just how much she loved this syk blue colored wig and all of its curly fullness. In the present, standing in this room with all of these beautiful black women, with their neat braids and finely pressed hair, her hands instinctively reach towards the curls in the sky, feeling like an impostor of beauty, like too much of her expression was being shown. Out of the heavens, another girl with a half shaved head approaches, “I love your hair,” she comments, but doesn’t touch. “Thank you, I love yours too,” she responds, thinking to herself that, yes, indeed, this is my hair. 

Related:
• Young black women feeling awkward
• AALCI 2020

Feeling an imposter surrounded by faces that look like yours

By Ivana Onubogu 

they were excited to be here, laid out their clothes before the first class—not because it mattered to them but they thought it might matter to someone else. now, in their seat thousands of miles away from anyone else, the familiar warning sweat prickled down their back and in their armpits. they spoke up, equal parts participation and avoidance, refusing to acknowledge their hands shaking on the track pad and their pulse blaring a disjointed rhythm in their neck. as their mouths moved they tracked each face on the screen for any sign those listening noticed that they were different, strange, other. the screen faces revealed nothing but they filled in the blank anyway— low voice, full of themself, closed off, every beat of their heart counted off another impossible claim. finally the next screen face spoke and everything unclenched; they felt like they had run a mile too fast, they felt dizzy. it was intoxicating sometimes to be surrounded by faces that look like yours and feel an imposter anyhow.

Related:

• Young black women feeling awkward

• AALCI 2020

Young black women feeling awkward

We recently discussed an episode of Issa Rae's web series Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. The episode and series led us to talk about folks who feel out of place even in places with folks like themselves.

The fellows are producing short write-ups about young black women feeling awkward in a room full of other black women, folks seemingly like themselves.


• Feeling an imposter surrounded by faces that look like yours by Ivana Onubogu
• She feels awkward because she’s wearing a wig by Zerri Trosper
• She was made to feel as if her disposition was excessive by Dawson Johnson
• She Doesn’t Fit In by Victoria L. Green

Related:

• AALCI 2020

My spy character’s mission

Victoria L. Green

My spy character’s mission would be to point out and take down corrupt government officials, as well as to expose the cures and research the government has been harboring about America’s biggest diseases (especially diseases that disproportionately affect minorities) like cancer, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19. My story will not be a love story about a woman and a man, but rather a love story about a woman and the health and safety of her people.

Related: 

• AALCI 2020

The judgements of the audience

By  Ivana Onubogu

The opening scene of American Spy is not only thrilling, but a perfect shot of the tensions of Marie being a government intelligence agent and a Black woman. Given the opportunity to replicate such a scene, I would begin the story with the black female protagonist in a potentially incriminating situation. Effectively, this opening scene should communicate that the protagonist’s trustworthiness is uncertain and that it is the audience that must take up spy work to uncover the protagonist’s motivation. Resting on Marie’s assertion that all spies are ‘liars or snitches,’ I would lean into the possibility of the protagonist being a liar so that when all things come to pass, the judgements of the audience may prove to be them snitching on themselves.

 Related: 

• AALCI 2020

Her layered sensitivity to others

By Zerri Trosper

If I found myself writing a mystery/spy novel, I would love to incorporate elements of the supernatural into the genre as well, a kind of fusion fiction if you will. In this novel, my protagonist would discover her true prophetic nature by walking through an old and unmarked crime scene, feeling the actual pain and death of a victim, she goes rogue, hunting the aged killer in hopes to bring him to justice...or at least a type of justice. This scene is meant to communicate not only the protagonist's complex emotions but her layered sensitivity to others as well. This will show that she’s the kind of individual to take action even if it is unexpected.

Related: 

• AALCI 2020

This black woman lead is a force

By LaMaiya Wright

If I was writing a spy novel, my opening scene would be classic and traditional of a spy film. I would have the leading black woman tied up in a dark interrogation room. She would be being interrogated by white male government officials about a recent explosion at a Russian embassy. Suddenly, there will be a knock at the door and another white official whispers a development in the story to the other officials. While the men backs were turned, the lead managed to get herself out of the rope she was tied up in and she fights and defeats all of the men that try to restrain her. As she is running out of the police station she pulls out her cell phone and dials a number. Just as she reaches outside, she pulls out a device that with a click of a button, blows up the entire police station. At the closing of the opening scene, the lead tells the person on the other end of the phone, “it’s finished.”

If not already obvious, I would want this opening scene to communicate that this black woman lead is a force to reckon with. She is a black woman that is known to give white men a run for their money and leave them a broken arm while she’s at it. She is not dangerous unless provoked and she is unmoved by threats. This character exudes what a modern-day superwoman should be.

Related: 

• AALCI 2020

If I were writing my own spy-thriller

By Dawson Johnson 

While reading American Spy, Marie’s brief mention of Sharon Scranage and her own eventual involvement in a honeypot were two aspects of the plot that were especially interesting to me. If I were writing my own spy-thriller, I’d probably begin in medias res, highlighting a more intimate moment between the relationship between the spy and her target. Because readers would (hopefully) assume the two were an authentic couple, this scene would speak highly of her competence as an agent. 

 Related: 

• AALCI 2020

Megan the Stallion Freestyle, Part 2

We were recently checking out a freestyle by Megan Thee Stallion. I asked three of the fellows the following: After viewing the freestyle, what key question would you raise to students? That is, what would you be most interested in learning about their thoughts? Why?

After viewing this freestyle with my class, I would immediately become interested to know their thoughts around rap culture. For example, I may ask why is most rap by women about sex and bashing of men and other women? And why is most rap by men about sex and the bashing of women? Is the excuse that “sex sells” old fashioned? Should there be a shift around what is being discussed in rap music? I think leading the questions in this direction would open the conversation up to an interesting debate. LaMaiya Wright

********************

After viewing Megan Thee Stallion’s Bless the Booth Freestyle, it is common to feel both positive and negative feelings about it. On one hand, Megan is a successful rapper, a college graduate, and transparent with her audiences. On the flip side, some may say she makes people uncomfortable for being so openly sexual and exhibiting her body in ways some find shameful and degrading to women. The point is that everyone has their own opinions about how they receive Megan Thee Stallion and her messages. What most people fail to do is reflect on themselves in relation to their judgements on her – or anyone for that matter. No one that I have encountered has explained what about their own personal life and upbringing produces their views. --Victoria Green

********************

Although some students had claimed that Megan was being too ‘overt’ about her sexuality during this freestyle, I found that to be completely not the case. Furthermore, I think there is one entire line that is actually about sex in this freestyle, however, I believe when individuals hear words such as “pussy” and “sexy” they immediately conflate those terms with actions of sex and sexuality, which is unfortunate to say the least. When Megan does mention the word “pussy” she talks about “putting the pussy on a pedestal” as well as “letting the pussy speak,” ultimately stating that this part of her physical anatomy has subjected her to a lack of respect and now she's simply demanding it back.

So why then is it that upon hearing words spoken from Megan such as, “I am in love with my sexy self,” the automatic assumption is that she is a ‘thot’ or ‘hoe’ and not just that she is damn comfortable in her own body, which if I might add, has not been adequately praised or as represented as others? Is it possible for women rappers and listeners of rap to escape the male gaze, which seems to proliferate the discourse and distort the original message? Also, IF Megan did only ever rap about sex and being a “hoe,” why exactly would that be wrong and how does that make her less deserving of credit, respect, and awards? -- Zerri Trosper

Related:
• AALCI 2020

Megan the Stallion Freestyle, Part 1

We were recently checking out a freestyle by Megan Thee Stallion. I asked two of the fellows the following: If you were covering that piece by Meg with a group of first-year black students, what issues would you be sure to address with the group right before the viewing? Why?

With an influx of capable female rappers tackling subjects relevant to their identities such as financial and sexual autonomy and the relationships they share with both men and other women, these artists have seen their share of overt resistance from casual listeners, Rap journalists, and, in some cases, other rappers. Because of this, I think it would be useful to discuss misogynoir and gatekeeping in the genre. 

Although consumers are now being introduced to a larger number of female rappers than there has ever been, the genre remains male-dominated—in all of the aforementioned populations (listener/journalist/rapper). Thus, what is considered “good” or “bad” rap is chiefly decided by men, and female rappers such as Meg rarely fit into the parameters surrounding “good” rap. --Dawson Johnson

*********** 

Right before the viewing, I wouldn’t want to prime them with information, knowing as a college student the way that a professor’s approaches alter the conversation in the classroom. In the weeks leading up to this viewing, if it were a cultural commentary seminar, I would have assigned readings of Black women in the media and pop culture, Black representations, and probably on colorism as well. 

Just before the class viewing, I would offer handouts or a presentation slide featuring a biography on Megan Pete and her rap career, specifically focusing on her artistic references. Additionally, I might offer a quick explanation of things that might be useful to note, including but not limited to: what is used to set the scene; lighting; angles that are employed and how that constructs the subject; who or what is the subject of the video; her words and the accompanying images; and ultimately, and most importantly, any reactions they might have. I would emphasize that any reaction they might’ve had serves only as information in deconstructing what the video was intended to elicit. --Ivana Onubogu

Related: 

• AALCI 2020 

A Model’s Space

By Victoria L. Green 

 Who do we see most commonly on the front pages of the magazines or walking across the catwalk? A white woman. Straight hair and fair skin are much more preferred in models than our darker skin and thicker hair textures. And yes, I am very aware that there are very successful black models on the magazines and on the biggest fashion runways, but we are not guaranteed to see any women that look like us unless it’s Ebony or Essence magazine, or an event tailored for us. 

The model space was clearly not made for us in the beginning, and that still shows today. This space has had a habit a clear pattern of styling models in a way that ‘borrows’ our cultural characteristics (like our hairstyles and clothing choices) or in a way that insults our people (we’re all looking at you, Gucci…), and then calling it by a different name and nonetheless categorizing it as ‘fashion’. Oh, but when black women were doing it first it was ‘ghetto’ and ‘distasteful’. 

However, there is something about when a black woman is being presented properly as an art form, it is a beautiful sight to see – especially from the perspective of a fellow black woman. Even from a young girl’s viewpoint, seeing a model whose brown skin, curly hair, and “negro features” are exhibited as every bit of gorgeous is inspiring. Exposure of black models makes it possible to believe that we, too, can unapologetically flaunt the beautiful, unique characteristics that we have been taught to be ashamed of for centuries.

Related:

• AALCI 2020

Poolside Resort – A Liminal Space

Image courtesy of Ivana Onubogu

By Ivana Onubogu

When I stand still, I can hear water lapping against the draining holes even though the pool looks flat to my eyes. The pool water is ugly, shriveled leaves bobbing to the ebb and flow of the moon. This place feels manufactured, like something broken apart and forced together, haphazard. In a way, this place reminds me of the seeds that my mother carries in her handbag. They too do not appear to know one another despite their proximity. She tells me that they bear life, so that wherever she goes, she can always lay down roots. I know that whatever seeds that laid down this place only play at life—even the leaves are ghostly pale, as if something leeched the color from the spindly veins now crumbled in the water.

I close my eyes. This space is less ugly, more bearable this way. I sit down and some tension flows out of my legs, into the water perhaps. I let myself drain the pool water out of my mind, listening to the night sounds. There are insects chittering in the far bushes and wind in the leaves overhead. Finally, I can feel the cold night air. It bristles through the hairs on my arms and my face and my legs. I swear I can feel every goosebump bloom on my skin and it’s beautiful because every cell in my body speaks to me and I never realized I walk around with dead limbs until this moment.

The instructor speaks. My eyes open. It’s dark still and the pool is still ugly. Somebody kicks their feet under the shallow side of the pool. I can’t make them out and don’t care to. My limbs are dead again. I can’t hear myself anymore. It’s just the wet sound of the flat water and the instructor and the disembodied legs waving at me from beneath the surface.                                                                    

Related: AALCI 2020

A Black Love Space

Jacob Lawrence, The Lovers, 1946

By Dawson Johnson

The Black Love space is the gap between your uncle’s fingers that, when pressed to his lips, rolls off the wood-tip and ambles in your direction alongside his grunts about saving the twenty he slipped you. You’ve seen it before. It is the glaze that coats your older cousin’s yellow eyes after one too many King Cobras—the glisten of his slugz that dances under Grandma’s stove light as he slurs something about how proud he is of you. It was the draft before hand met rump, and your mama promised that what she was doing hurt her more than it did you. You remember it staring back at you and your cousin while the two of you stirred mud soup for the squirrels you were sure would enjoy the delicacy. It’s wound in the strings that pull your Aunt away from her grocery shopping and entangles her with an old classmate until the duo giddily works the knot out themselves and they go their separate ways. The Black Love space is the relatedness that binds us all; it’s every inch of Black life.

The Black Love space escapes between each breath my professors take, especially when they insist my classmates and myself are significantly more intelligent than we have been made to believe we are. The Black Love space is the darkness that envelops the picnic tables at Tougaloo Park when it’s someone’s birthday or the last night before a holiday break. The Black Love space is what has kept me alive—whether it’s the bouncing ellipses that let me know my friend wants to talk to me or the touch of hand to arm when someone knows I’m not OK.

When I think of how the Black Love space has been mutated by the reverberations of slavery, I think of how those resoundings prevent me from enjoying the space to its full extent. The Black Love space harms me when my mama suddenly remembers the passed-down trick of not getting too close to her child for fear of a disquieting loss. This space harms me and those like me when the wish for financial stability and capacity to fully care for one’s family causes us to mistakenly prioritize money above all else. When distorted, the Black Love space can prevent me and others like me from connecting to the fullest extent.

Related:
• AALCI 2020

Commentary on Phenomenal Woman by Victoria L. Green

By Victoria L. Green

For a woman who stayed silent for five years, Maya Angelou has a beautiful soul and a powerful way with words that is shown in this well know poem "Phenomenal Woman." Angelou knows that there are power to her words, as she once truly believed at eight years old that she ended the life of a disgusting man with just the mention of his name. A woman who has been through such a horrific event (if not more than what we are aware of as an audience) would understandably face issues realizing how amazing she is.

 To know that she realized her worth and discovered the strength within her is inspiring – and in fact, others believe there is some kind of secret behind her confidence. Even watching her performance, I was immediately mesmerized by Maya; her voice was captivating – both soothing and animated all at once. She uses her influential speech to inspire other women (and men), while also letting us know that she is a phenomenal woman, beautiful from her head to her toes, and very aware of it.

Related:

• AALCI 2020

Commentary on Jae Nichelle’s “Friends with Benefits” by LaMaiya Wright

Jae Nichelle's "Friends with Benefits"

By LaMaiya Wright

“Friendswith Benefits” performed by Jae Nichelle brings viewers inside the non-consensual, intimate relationship between herself and the dreadful disorder of anxiety. Throughout this work, Nichelle personifies anxiety to mimic something like an abusive boyfriend; whose choke hold prevents her for functioning in her day to day life and maintaining healthy relationships with the opposite sex.

What Nichelle evokes through this work is a call for society to address the heaviness of mental illness in the African American community; more specifically speaking, its effects on African American women. What Nichelle does here is make it clear that anxiety is not just feeling, emotion, or fear. Anxiety is a paralyzing, sometimes unbearable illness that prevents African American women from being fully present in a world that neglects their presence anyway.

Related: 

• AALCI 2020

The Medical Space

By Zerri Trosper

Although the medical field is supposed to treat patients equally and fairly, no matter their background (i.e. race, religion, sexual orientation), that does not appear to be the case in America. Indeed, all doctors are made to swear an oath based on ethics, but implicit and unconscious bias still exists within our medical institutions and medical textbooks, which ultimately trickles down into our medical doctors and/or healthcare professionals. This space has historically been dominated by whiteness and maleness, and only in recent decades have we begun to see black people, people of color, and women be fully welcome into the fold of this space.

Furthermore, hospitals are very important to me, as I was, afterall, born in one. But the space first made my mother and me susceptible to maternal and infant mortality. What should have been an easy birth turned out to be an evening in Hell for my mother who tirelessly fought for someone to believe her about the extensive pain she was experiencing during childbirth. My mom always tells me she just knew we were going to die that day, but she says that an angel, a black nurse, was the one who saved and advocated for us until we made it. The medical space makes it possible for me to live a healthy life, but it also needs to become a more inclusive space if we ever hope to see it treat all people equally.

The medical space prevents me from being excited for things such as childbirth. This is an event that should be surrounded by happiness and joy, but many are not getting to experience that. Because the medical field has been a mainly white dominated space for so long, black women in particular are dying at alarming rates compared to their white counterparts during childbirth. This space restricts me and others like me from being taken seriously on account of our pain and our experiences and that is why this space stands out to me the most.

Related:
• AALCI 2020

A Black male space

By LaMaiya Wright

This Black male space is completely male dominated, except for the one Black woman that braids hair and/or re-twist dreadlocks. However, even her presence is partial because the owner assigned her to the booth in the far back of the barbershop. This space is lined up with 3 chairs alongside both the right and left walls. These chairs are often occupied with black men getting fresh line ups and tapers by fellow black barbers. What makes this space a black space is the black art that rests on the walls, the big beautiful black laughter, the profanity, the jokes, and the constant toss of the word “nigga” used as a term of endearment.

Occasionally, conversation may turn serious debating black politics, sports highlights, and racial issues. What’s so distinct about this space? Well. it is one of the very few outlets that the black man has to let his hair down (figuratively and literally), live in his truth, and be his full authentic self.

For me, this space creates the opportunity for someone like me to witness black boy joy. I have not been to many barbershops, but the few that I have encountered was full of fun. This space is a great way to see a black male in his casual element.

This space, however, does not come without restriction. For some, this space can be a bashing site for the average black woman. I have no doubt that the occasional misogynistic remark is thrown around in regard to black women. This is a not a space for a black woman to discuss her grievances with her black man, nor is it a space for a black women to come and voice her opinions.

Related:
• AALCI 2020

Commentary on Jae Nichelle’s “Friends with Benefits” by Ivana Onubogu

Jae Nichelle's "Friends with Benefits"

By Ivana Onubogu

Jae Nichelle’s “Friends with Benefits” plays with the titular connotation of a sexually anchored relationship in order to parse through her personal relationship to anxiety. While invoking language of possession and domination to animate her anxiety to listeners, Nichelle also probes at the permeability of the interior/exterior binarism. Most salient to this point, Nichelle describes coming into relation with her anxiety as simultaneously being a “weight on [her] shoulders” and “the only relationship that [she] can count on.”

Nichelle’s spoken word accentuates the harm of all relationships, pointing to the possibility of locating merit in fraught relationships while still underlining her bodily response to maintaining this relationship. Indeed, for Nichelle, her anxiety is inescapable, ‘crushing,’ and yet so committed a friend that she is able to locate stability in the “irrational.” Her work suggests that there may be benefits to the uncomfortable and that sites of rehabilitation, of healing are necessarily threaded through one’s experiences.

Related:
• AALCI 2020

Commentary on Aiera Matthews's "Wisdom" by Dawson Johnson

By Dawson Johnson Riding The Storm (Response to “Wisdom”)

 The Mississippi house I grew up in is as old as my late grandmother, spending seventy-four years perched on one acre below the highway. She always bragged that her pop, after having been a share cropper, had built it with his own hands, and the average-height door frames and tarring pine floors always seconded that statement. I didn’t quite understand the satisfaction that coated her words, or why she left the hospital to die in her bed, tightly bound by the pangs of her last breaths. 

Most wouldn’t think it clever for a Stage IV cancer patient to rescind the moderate relief treatments offered just to have the privilege of dying in one’s own house, just as they wouldn’t consider it wise to try to ride out a storm for the same reason—especially if there was even a sliver of hope for more life. I reckon Ms. Wisdom and my grandmother figured dying at home, in a space created especially for them in the midst of communities that hadn’t always allowed those spaces (no matter how small), was better than having that home and the resistance wedged between its very floorboards taken away. And in August 2005, five hundred twenty Louisianians over the age of seventy-one felt the exact same way. 

 Related: 

• AALCI 2020

Commentary on Aiera Matthews's "Wisdom" by Zerri Trosper

Airea Matthews reads her poem "Wisdom"

By Zerri Trosper

Before Airea D. Matthews steps into the role of the speaker of the poem “Wisdom,” she opens with a claim that provides historical context, which places the audience in specific positions of both viewership and ownership. Hurricane Katrina remains a prominent environmental disaster that had disproportionately affected black lives and those who were economically disadvantaged.
Matthews deliberate change in tone paired with the orthographic variations creates an individual window into the Wisdom family no doubt, but one that is shared by many others who were forgotten about in the water.

Although, what continues to remain memorable long after listening to “Wisdom,” are the emotions that Matthews extracts throughout the senses. Not only can the audience feel the soil between our fingers, but we taste the sourness of life taken too abruptly, we hear the souls that linger between the halls, we can smell the pride that comes from living decades in something that was built for you and by you. By the end of this poem I am left asking myself is it honorable to stand beside something that is already lost and if not, were the 40% ever left with another option?

Related:

• AALCI 2020

AALCI 2020

We began activities with our 10th cohort of the African American Literatures and Cultures Institute began on Monday, June 8, with our opening reception. We are hosting our meetings remotely.

The following entries chart our progress, activities, and thinking.

Notes on Awkward Black Women

• Feeling an imposter surrounded by faces that look like yours by Ivana Onubogu 

• She feels awkward because she’s wearing a wig by Zerri Trosper 

• She was made to feel as if her disposition was excessive by Dawson Johnson 

• She Doesn’t Fit In by Victoria L. Green

American Spy 

• If I were writing my own spy-thriller by Dawson Johnson

• This black woman lead is a force by LaMaiya Wright

• Her layered sensitivity to others by Zerri Trosper

• The judgements of the audience by Ivana Onubogu

• My spy character’s mission by Victoria L. Green

Music and culture 

• Megan the Stallion Freestyle, Part 1
• Megan the Stallion Freestyle, Part 2

Defining spaces

• A Black Love Space by Dawson Johnson

• A Black male space by LaMaiya Wright

• The Medical Space by Zerri Trosper
• Poolside Resort – A Liminal Space by Ivana Onubogu

• A Model’s Space by Victoria L. Green

Poetry commentary 

• Commentary on Aiera Matthews's "Wisdom" by Dawson Johnson 

• Commentary on Aiera Matthews's "Wisdom" by Zerri Trosper

• Commentary on Jae Nichelle’s “Friends with Benefits” by Ivana Onubogu

• Commentary on Jae Nichelle’s “Friends with Benefits” by LaMaiya Wright
• Commentary on Phenomenal Woman by Victoria L. Green

Related:

• A Notebook on AALCI, 2010-2018