In the Thick of It: 2012, month by month
by Kiini Ibura Salaam
May people one day love your words so much that
they want to eat them!
This year I came out of
hiding as a writer. Before I had my daughter I was on a trajectory. I was
writing and publishing in anthologies frequently, I was doing readings, and
speaking to kids about being a writer. Out of necessity, I had to step back and
commit to parenting. When I came up for air and tried to regroup as a writer,
it did not come as easily as I expected it to. I went through some dark years,
certain that I would never be able to continue my writing life.
So many years later—and
with a much more self-sufficient little person in tow—I’m back in the thick of
it. It’s still a monumental challenge and I am still not moving at the pace
that I know I can maintain. Yet 2012 has been a triumphant year in which my
collection of short stories came out and I participated in readings and
conferences.
I did a group reading with
Linda Addison that felt like coming full circle in a way. We met while doing
promotional work for the Dark Matter anthology.
Then here we were over ten years later—both promoting books, both working on
novels that had begun back in 2000 when Dark Matter came out.
Me and Linda Addison
Continuing with the theme
of coming full circle, back in 2001, Jennifer Brissett—a long-time lover and
supporter of speculative fiction—held fundraiser for me and Ibi Zoboi to attend
Clarion West at her bookstore Indigo Books. Now, she’s a speculative fiction
writer in her own right and she has organized the Kindred Reading series for
speculative fiction writers of color.
K. Tempest Bradford, Ibi
Zoboi, Kiini Salaam, Daniel Older, Jennifer Brissett at a Kindred Reading
Series book event.
Jennifer Brissett, N.K.
Jemisin, Linda Addison, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Daniel Older at a Kindred Reading
Series book event
Between the readings, the
communing with writers, and the continued growth of my collection’s audience, I
spent much of 2012 exulting—as Celie did in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple—“I’m here!” And my dream lives of writing words
that are so beloved that someday, somewhere, someone will want to eat them:
So my pleasures of 2012 are all about rediscovering what had
been buried or newly discovering what had been there all along. As well as the
usual, finding inspiration in the world around me. Speaking of inspiration, my
Clarion West class is very much on fire.
•
Linda DeMeulemeester was
the first out of the gate some years ago with her Grim Hill Series:
grimhill.com
• Benjamin Rosenbaum
then published the Ant King and Other Stories
• Stephanie Burgis
then sold her middle grade fantasy series featuring Kat Stephenson, three of which have been published to date
Then this year all hell broke loose:
• My collection Ancient, Ancient was published
• Susan Ee self
published Angelfall in 2011, which has now been picked up by Amazon’s new
publishing arm and has been optioned to be made into a movie.
• Raymund Eich after self
publishing his first two novels in 2011, published two more this year, plus a short story collection.
• Emily Mah
announced, just a few days ago, that her self published chick lit (under the
pen name E.M. Tippets) broke into the top 100—officially bestseller status
• Ari Goelman
announced that his middle grade summer camp mystery The Path of Names will be
coming out from Scholastic 2013
• Patrick Samphire announced
that his middle grade steampunk novel was purchased
My mind is blown. There is more in the works, both Ibi Zoboi and Sean Klein are chipping away at their novels. I am too… a-hem. It
is amazing to feel this push from our class. They inspire me every day!
January: “I Can’t
Believe This Has Been Here All Along and I Never Even Knew It.”
Wildwood by Colin Meloy
I am a voracious reader but I hate to start a book because I
will read it to distraction, ignoring mealtime and parenting duties to finish
the book. I am no savorer, I am a devourer—to my own peril. Ironically, I
rarely buy books. I tend to read whatever is on hand, and feel that I have some
kind of reprieve when I have nothing to read. As a birthday present, a friend
gave my daughter “Wildwood” by Colin Meloy. She refused to read it, but a book
about a baby “abducted by a murder of crows and taken to the Impassable
Wilderness, a dense, tangled forest on the edge of Portland [that n]o one’s
ever gone in—or at least returned to tell of it”—cannot go unread, right?
Coyote Soldiers, the Owl King as a savior, a plot involving bloodthirsty ivy
and desperate secret deals made by childless parents made for a fun, creative
jaunt through an enchanted wilderness. After the main character, Prue, gets
into the Impassable Wilderness, “Wildwood” is a tale that goes down smoothly as
it taps into the idea that an enchanted world full of unimaginable danger and
excitement is right around the corner.
February: “You
Shouldn’t Have to Move to Live in a Better Neighborhood”—Majora Carter
The Vineyards of Chateau Hough
I find inspiration in many different realms. Specifically, I
find acts of daring invigorating. People who dare to make original choices,
take risks in their lives and work, and who make change in the world around
them engage me. I’m fascinated and enriched by Mansfield Frazier’s Chateau
Hough Vineyards. Besides his energy, intelligence, and wit, I just love that
he’s doing his own thing, and in doing so he’s creating community, educating
and enriching the lives of people who had been imprisoned, and creating a new
world for himself and a new environment and wealth for Cleveland. If he can
build a vineyard (and biocellar) in Cleveland, I can build something surprising
in the worlds I’m writing.
March: What Does It
Mean to Be a Man?
Questionbridge at Brooklyn Museum of Art
In March, I viewed the
Question Bridge installation at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. In this video
installation, black men ask and answer questions about themselves, their lives,
and their perspectives on race. It is easy to make assumptions about the value
of something before experiencing it (and sometimes even while experiencing it).
I didn’t expect to get much from the installation, I assumed it would be a
rehashing of ideas and conversations I had heard before. I was wrong. Listening
to a prison philosopher talk about self esteem and self worth, a middle aged
man tearfully admit to still having father issues, and a young baby-faced kid
asking what it means to be a man was a genuinely moving experience. The
installation is framed as an internal conversation, so there isn't the
posturing or aggression that can emerge when confronted by the outside eye. The
participants shared intimate thought with introspection and reflection. It was
refreshing and intriguing. The museum closed before the film ended but not
before I was reminded by one of the interviewees that we are always changing
and always growing. Question Bridge puts some of those changes and expressions
of growth front and center for all to take in and reflect upon.
April: “I’m On My Seventh Year Sustaining Against Multinational, Transnational
Giants”
Arunachalam Muruganatham: How I started a sanitary napkin
revolution
Arunachalam Muruganatham
risked ridicule to invent a decentralized, inexpensive method for creating
sanitary napkins. In India, only 2% of women use sanitary napkins because of
cost. His goal is to create employment for rural communities and to make India
a 100% sanitary-pad using country. In this video he explains his invention
while dropping quite a bit of philosophy. His invention and his thoughts
interrupt assumptions of worth tied to class. He is a high-school dropout who
learned English to extend his research, truly a unique and multi-faceted character.
He is both an example of what one person can do (his invention has been adopted
by other countries and across the Indian nation), and an example of what a
person can be: surprising, unconventional, intelligent, and wholly himself. His
message: I’ve done this with a little education, what are you going to do for
society with your education?
This Very Windy
Desert Became Our Playground
Massoud Hassani: A prototype for a creative, cost effective
landmine detector
This is art, inventiveness and social good all rolled up in one.
Plus, the invention looks like a character in a science fiction novel! How
could this not inspire?
May: “We Can’t Stay Long Out Our Own Time. Every Minute Is a Heartbeat
Snatched From Somewhere Else.”—Andrea Hairston
WisCon 2012
Without experiencing it
firsthand, it is almost impossible to understand what a feminist speculative
fiction conference could be. Having attended Wiscon, I now understand that it's
a place that works to hear all voices and make space for all listeners. It
brought to mind my visits to the Occupy movement in Zuccotti Park as they
worked to create a new society, a new way of being. WisCon was its own bubble
with its own norms and mores, a place where time was suspended so that everyone
could talk, laugh, adorn themselves, and commune. Some highlights were: a panel
on the silences around reproductive health, a panel on sex education for
children, meeting other writers from New York and serenading Guest of Honor
Andrea Hairston with a group reading of excerpts from Redwood and Wildfire.
After an absence from
reading and appearing in public as a writer, it also felt wonderful to be
embodying my writing self again. WisCon reminded me that silences in our lives
do not mean that a particular part of our lives are dead; it may be burrowing
deeper, it may be healing in slumber, it may be shoring itself up. I left
WisCon enriched by the knowledge that I was in the company of so many people who
are on their own creative paths, working to create the lives they want to live.
June: The Stone That
the Builder Refuse Will Always Be the Headcorner Stone
MARLEY: A Documentary
A beautiful exploration of Bob Marley’s life, history, and
music. There was so much richness in the interviews with family members,
friends, and band members. I learned a lot about his family history, his
lifestyle, and the politics (musical, governmental, and financial) that
surrounded him. It was interesting to gain insight into the meaning and
motivation behind some of the songs I know so well. I was deeply touched by the
interviews with his siblings—his father’s children who he never had a
relationship with but who shared something very special with him. The film
reminded me that our power as artists doesn’t just come from our genius, it
also comes from our pain. I can run away from the conditions that make it
difficult for me to write/create, or I can embrace them and weave them into my
work. It doesn’t matter, we all have a unique song to sing, it is my job to
sing it.
July: Find the Order in the Chaos
Miko Kuro’s Midnight Tea
Poet Khadijah Queen invited me to
participate in a performance art event called Miko Kuro's Midnight Tea. Despite
the fact that I am not a “performer,” I was excited to participate in a
completely new experiences. Rather than being briefed on the event’s structure,
we special guests were blindfolded and led into the performance area where we
were guided to stand in a circle. We stood there for what seemed like an
eternity as people took our shoes, fanned us, and adjusted our bodies.
When we were allowed to remove our blindfolds, I saw tents around me, an audience behind me, and a young man sitting in front of a traditional tea service. I could only see inside one tent in which a woman rocked a baby doll with soothing, semi-eerie audio playing in the tent. Someone entered the tent and she rocked them too. I was guided to enter another tent in which a woman was waiting with balled up pieces of paper scattered on the floor. The woman asked me about hiding, and when I told her I wasn't using my full voice, she asked me what my voice would say to me now and what my voice would say to me if it died. She made lyrics out of my answers and invited me to sing with her. As we were singing together, a masked woman kneeled in the entrance to the tent and handed me a sheet paper. The paper directed me to find the order in chaos: that was my role for the night. It was up to me to interpret what that meant.
Upon instruction, I left the tent and
used my book to divine for the tea master. (Divining from Ancient, Ancient was the performance I had chosen to do in advance
of the tea.) Emboldened by the activity in the tent about using my voice, I led
the audience in a mediation, not that I meditate on a regular basis, mind you, but
I surrendered to the moment and followed what my voice wanted to say rather than
what my brain wanted to do.
After I divined for the tea master, he
served me tea. As I was drinking a scream rang out. The night’s activities were
set into motion: screaming, movement, poetry recitation, wailing, singing, and
audience members entering and exiting the tents. With the layers of performance
swirling around me, it was left to me to find my space of performance. So I invited performers and audience members
to sit before me for divinations. Due to the noise, I could not speak,
everything was communicated through writing. Halfway through the experience, I
realized I was drawing energy from all the activity around me and I had
actually found order in the middle of chaos.
I think sometimes we resist madness and mad activity, but it was instructive to me that I could draw on it and--because I couldn't use my voice--I used another way to connect and communicate that was equally as effective as using my voice. As a parent driving by life’s logistics everyday life can feel like chaos, and this experience helped me see that I did not have to resist the chaos, I just need to find my little space of peace in it so that I can create and continue to fulfill myself as an artist. Full description of my experience at the tea here: http://kislist.blogspot.com/2012/07/vol-79-readercon-in-boston-and-miko.html
August: “When I Am
Free, I Will Choose Who Shapes Me”
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin
I met N.K. Jemisin at
WisCon where she was generously gifting copies of her Inheritance Trilogy to
conference attendees. Months after the conference I started the trilogy with
Book One: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
immediately reveals a few things about the author: she's smart, she's a
wordsmith, and she's got a raging, complex, fierce imagination. The novel is
incredibly layered, revealing and reveling in a complex world with intense
emotional, psychological, and physical relationships between characters.
Jemisin keeps tight command of the world and uses the plot to explode the
interpersonal crises and conflicts to make astute and moving commentary on the
human condition.
In The Hundred Thousand
Kingdoms, Nahadoth the god of change, terrifyingly powerful, changeable, and
dangerous, is shaped by other's perceptions of him. When Yeine, the main
character expresses sorrow that he is bidden to change form by others, he says:
"When I am free, I will choose who shapes me." The main character
tells him this isn't freedom, but he responds that she must do the same when
she is free. I think we have a romantic view of us being capable of absolute
independence, but this is fallacy. We are all shaped both by our life
experiences and by those who surround us. At the beginning of our lives, we
have no choice over what is shaping us. Later, as adults, although our
addictions and unresolved issues from childhood (a time when we had no choice
about the influencers surrounding us) still shape us, we have the opportunity
for true freedom. We don’t get to resist all influence and we cannot escape the
impact of our environments, but we have the opportunity to choose our
environment, and in so doing choose what shapes us. This distinction resonates
deeply in the novel and also resonates deeply in everyday life.
September: “It’s Just a Matter of Staying on Top of
It”—Oliver Jeffers
Brooklyn Go
The Internet is doing a lot
to provide a voice for people that media channels have not provided with a
stamp of approval. A recent article noted that the New York Times just reviewed
its first self-published book. Music, visual art, film, and other art forms
have received a much-needed direct connection with viewers and consumers. Back
in September, the Brooklyn Museum of Art held an event called Brooklyn Go in
which they encouraged artists to open their studios to the public. Thousands of
artists registered and invited the public in. Viewers then had the opportunity
to check in to the website and vote for the artists they liked best. The ten
artists with the most votes then got a studio visit from the Brooklyn Museum
and five of them were selected for a group show.
I loved going to the
studios, not just because I am curious about art production and love the to see
artists at work, but also because I am a visual artist who desperately wants to
have the time, finances, and freedom to have a studio and let my creativity run
wild. One of the reasons I love living in New York is the abundance of creative
people. I echo the sentiment of Oliver Jeffers, one of the selected artists,
that in living in New York, “I’m surrounded by other people who want to
accomplish as much as I do.”
October: In 318, the
Geeks, They Are the Athletes
Brooklyn Castle
A moving exploration of Public School 318’s chess team—what
chess has done for the students and what the chess students have done for the
profile of their school. Inspiring, spirited, eye-opening, and, yes, tear
inducing. A beautiful profile of what schools can do to support the growth and
development of children. The profile of each kid was heartwarming, I was
especially touched by one kid who had ADD and constantly lost games. I loved
his determination and the support his team members gave him. One of the biggest
cliffhangers was a competition where they needed him to win so that the team
could win. All of the kids had so much focus and commitment that it was
instructive and compelling.
November: Outrageously
Tactile, Rhinestone-studded Surfaces
Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe
Brooklyn Museum of Art http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/arts/design/mickalene-thomas-origin-of-the-universe-at-brooklyn-museum.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
The Brooklyn Museum has a
large Mickalene Thomas in their private collection. I had seen it multiple
times, but I didn’t have a strong response to it. When her solo show opened, I
might not have gone, but both the media and friends who had attended raving
about the work convinced me to give it a look. Walking through the Origin of
the Universe exhibition, I “got” it. Thomas’s work is vibrant, sumptuous,
detailed, and glimmering. The scale is absolutely stunning, and the content is
clearly all Mickalene. She has not created an alternate self, she has instead
magnified her self and the selves she adores to celebrate them on the altar of
art.
December:
Old dirty bags, grease, bones, hair . . . it's
about us, it's about me.
David Hammonds
Now
Dig This!:
Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980 at
P.S. 1
Just a few days ago, I headed up to
P.S. 1 to check out the Now Dig This! exhibition of (mostly) black artist who
were working in L.A. in the 70s. I was pulled in by the image of David
Hammons’s Bag Lady in Flight, which photographs amazingly. The shopping bags
are stained with grease from food and the piece incorporates human hair—a
hallmark of Hammons’s work at that period. I wasn’t as interested in the
unorthodox materials as I was in the grace and beauty of the folded paper.
As I walked through the show, I was
invigorated by the creativity around me. There was a lot for the eye to take
in. Assemblage was a major presence, both as metal sculptures and as 3D wall
hangings made from found objects. There were prints and paintings as well. I
liked Melvin Edward’s “Lynch Fragments” sculptures, Suzanne Jackson’s acrylic
wash pieces, Dale Brokman Davis’s metal and ceramic bullets (titled “Viet Nam
Game”), which stood arranged together like chess pieces, one of John
Outterbridges more stark wall pieces featuring a buckle and some metal squares,
among others. I was most intrigued by David Hammons’s work and the wit,
intelligence and grace that it communicated. He was committed to
unconventionality, but the product was not a gimmick or an affront. The pieces
of his that I saw were simply beautiful, no matter what materials went into
their making.
Specifically I loved Flight
Fantasy, which is made of
found objects such as feathers, bamboo, human hair, and shards of 45 rpm
records.
Deeper
into the show, I found Hammons’s body prints, in which he put oil on his skin
to make prints from his body, which he then used to create a composition. These
images are haunting and ghostly. Here is Hammons making a body print:
Here is
a completed piece built around a body print:
More Hammons body prints: http://www.wmagazine.com/w/blogs/thedailyw/2011/10/12/la-object-david-hammons-body-prints.html
In a New York Times review for the show, the reviewer states that the work in the Now Dig! This show has merit in its own right, but that the race of the artists and the titles suggest that the work was created out of some type of solidarity—and that this solidarity shuts some viewers out. He does not critique the pieces but critiques the meaning behind the pieces and the motivation for the pieces, suggesting that they have less value because the conditions of their creation.
This type of discrediting is an apt echo of the assumptions and inequalities that these artists navigated in their prime and are most likely still navigating today. The truth is every artist performs from a very personal place. If the person/group/establishment commenting on the work does not value the person creating the work, then it will most likely disparage the work—even in cases when the work has nothing, in terms of technique and execution, to disparage.
As a nation we are still very much fractured, awkward siblings of various parentage confused as to how to value the other and often unwilling to release the myths/reigns of subjugation. It is interesting to ponder these ideas after watching Radiant Sun, the documentary about Jean Michele Basquiat. He died contorting under these questions of his value, his worth, and his deep desire for acceptance into a world that celebrated him grotesquely on the downtown scene and ignored him completely on the established scene.
In a 1977 conversation David
Hammons talked about his choice of materials: “Old dirty bags, grease,
bones, hair . . . it's about us, it's about me. It isn't negative. We should
look at these images and see how positive they are, how strong, how powerful.
Our hair is positive, it's powerful, look what it can do. There's nothing
negative about our images, it all depends on who is seeing it and we've been
depending on someone else's sight. . . . We need to look again and decide.”
This level of pride in his black
self is the dividing line, which makes it untenable for the white establishment
to celebrate a black artist that celebrates blackness. Paradoxically, this
level of self love is absolutely necessary due to the silencing and devaluing
that the black artist navigates. So you have a vicious cycle, a hyper awareness
on the side of both parties. But when we relax. When we take a deep breath, it
is easy to see that while this statement is, on the surface, about race, it is
more profoundly about the self. It is a statement fiercely in favor of defining
yourself for yourself, of celebrating yourself for yourself and of determining
your own worth. There is not an artist alive who does not need to be able to do
that. There’s not a human being alive who doesn’t wrestle with shame of self
and who can’t use those words as a guiding light to build a more resilient,
balanced, and sane self. I, for one, will be taking that love of self into 2013
with me, and I hope you will too!
For humanity!
Be well. Be love[d].
Kiini Ibura Salaam
Kiini Ibura Salaam is a writer and painter from New Orleans, LA. Her
work is rooted in eroticism, speculative events and worlds, and women's
perspectives. Her fiction has been published in a number of
anthologies, including Dark Matter, Mojo: Conjure Stories, and Dark Eros. Her essays have been published in Essence, Ms., and Colonize This. She is the author of the KIS.list, an e-column that explores the writing life. Her first collection of short stories, Ancient, Ancient, was published by Aqueduct Press in May 2012. She lives in Brooklyn.
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