The people who feel most entitled to live also feel most entitled to talk. From what I’ve seen, white people don’t hesitate to speak up in class. To ask for extra sugar at a café. To submit their writing for publishing. Isn’t it interesting how they’ve been conditioned to know that whatever they say is valid and accepted and true from birth? Isn’t it interesting.
I am in a creative nonfiction workshop that’s full of white people. I can hear them now, their voices, crowding inside my head, leaning over my shoulder, smothering every sentence that I write. “What do you mean by that,” they ask. “Was that repetition intentional,” they continue. “Can you explain a little more about what you mean by white people,” they exasperate.
I gasp and perspirate. I’m so tired of explaining. It’s only been a few weeks since this program started. I’m so tired of explaining. Now, in my head, I find myself explaining myself to myself. Explain might not be the best word for it. Justifying. As in, justifying my existence. Justifying my ability to write. Justifying my right to the word.
The average white reader might call me paranoid. I push back against that. I’ve lived in this country, in this skin, long enough to know when my right to exist is being challenged. The emotional labor that comes with the intellectual labor as a black writer in this country is unreal.
Every time I try and write, now, a non-black face pops into my head to give me unrequited advice. I don’t want their advice. I want to grow, as a writer, sure, but I don’t want to be crippled in the process. I feel that this process is crippling me. And I have no one to tell. I’m more alone than I’ve ever been.
I found a liquor bottle in the basement of the mosque last night. My friend laughed; said the place used to be a bar, before they bought it 7 years ago and converted it. He asked me how I saw that liquor bottle when no one managed to spot it for the last 7 years. I said they probably didn’t know what to look for.
Years of being an alcoholic, staying drunk for days at a time, throwing up till I saw blood, waking up feeling dead or dying, it teaches you. It’ll train your eye to notice a half-drank pint of vodka in any situation. And 7 years ago, I probably would have drank that pint of vodka. Even if you told me that the bottle was, at that time, 7 years old. I would have said, “poison only gets stronger with fermentation. I’m not tryna see straight.”
I can’t see straight when they markup my words. I feel that the white critique, and I’m using white to refer to anyone who is not expressly black, in my workshops is killing my voice. Squelching it. Silencing it. I don’t know who to tell about this. I feel like they stole my joy. And my joy was writing.
One of my professors told me to focus on writing my book instead of my day-to-day life in this program. This is the same one who casually mentioned Heart of Darkness in class, the one that I wrote about in my assignment for another class, the assignment that was marked up by the white teacher of that class (“I’ve never heard of heart of darkness being racist, hmmm”).
“Needed?” they write on my papers. I’m so sick of that question. Is your presence in this program needed? Wouldn’t you be better off back in Africa foraging for ripe guavas on the streets of Mombassa? Needed? Is your black skin really needed, and if so, can’t you just peel it back? We’re all pink under there, right, needed? Is it needed for you to write about being black so often? Why or Why Not?
These people don’t get it man, they can’t, and they never will. I’ve been told on multiple occasions to “change my expectations.” I can’t do that. Writing is like a competition to them. This is my means of survival and if they take that away from me, how will I survive?
I knew this program would either destroy me or make me. Am I being made right now or slowly breaking? I’ve felt like breaking for a long time. My whole life is one big breaking.