Black writing as revolution

My relationship to radical Black thought has long been a double helix. At once a labour of love as I do as Du Bois instructed, “Read some good, heavy, serious books just for discipline: Take yourself in hand and master yourself. Make yourself do unpleasant things so as to gain the upper hand of your soul.” As I parse through dense academic theory and critically engage with arts and culture, I also seek, find, sense, and yearn for the levity, the lightheartedness that always comes. My night attending the Why We Write double book launch at Toronto’s Art Metropole felt like that. 

On August 30th, the non-profit artist-run centre hosted the launches of Twenty Dreams by Dr. Katherine McKittick, Professor of Gender Studies and Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University, and Selected Writing on Black Canadian Art by Yaniya Lee, a scholar whose research tracks Black creative practice and narratives of liberation across the nation. In collaboration with The Revolutionary Demand for Happiness, the book launch event was a moment in time that to me is the most special: when critical and radical Black thought is wrapped in feelings of home, care, community, joy, lighthearted gathering, sharing, love, and the behind the scenes work of revolution.

Inside the event, patrons were given bright yellow tote bags, were offered free water chilled on ice in a cooler or a tall boy of beer with a $5 donation. The counter also featured books for sale, both by Yaniya Lee: Selected Writing on Black Canadian Art, which is a collection of essays, interviews, and highlights from mostly 2017-21, and Buseje Bailey: Reasons Why We Have to Disappear Every Once In A While, A Black Art History Project. The title of the latter text immediately reminded me of Michaela Coel’s 2021 Emmy acceptance speech for outstanding writing of I May Destroy You. Coel says "In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to, in turn, feel the need to be constantly visible, for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success. Do not be afraid to disappear, from it, from us, for a while, and see what comes to you in the silence…” That relationship between the book I was seeing and the speech I was recalling warmed me, as I felt the presence and spectre of truly brilliant Black imagination, archival work, the importance of solitude, and the permission of selfhood. I was primed to have a night that grounded my dreams and my mind to this cultural milieu and its contexts. 

Amongst the shelves and racks of books for sale and art on display there was a table near the middle of the space. On it were the familiar aluminum pans that you see at most gatherings. Inside them were cod fritters (which I had not had the pleasure of indulging in since childhood), fried plantain, and jerk chicken and green pepper skewers. Food was provided by The Real Jerk, yes, the same restaurant where Drake and Rihanna filmed the “Work” music video. It felt very cool to be in the artistic space, and to have the flavours of home. My mind wandered again to a positive memory and association to more outstanding Black cultural productions.  

I filled my plate and went outside. The back patio had three tables and many chairs available to patrons. There were magazines, scissors, paper, glue, and I immediately knew this was for collaging, zine-making, nostalgia, and craftivism (craft meets activism, an inclusive way to relish in Black happiness). I saw the magazines of Black femme hairstyles of the ‘90s, the ones I used to sift through for hours and hours waiting for mother’s hair to be done. There was Essence and Ebony, issues dating back to 1982, older than me. Folks were enjoying the crafts, music, conversation and each other. I took the KIND magazine with the bright yellow cover, the Summer 2024 issue sporting Lenny Kravitz. I cut nothing out of it. 

Soon the microphones were lifted to the lips of Dr. McKittrick and Yaniya Lee who read excerpts from each other’s books. The conversation began with a focus on “the problem” of scholarly attention to race and environment sometimes conflating race to climate catastrophe, the plantocratic colonial logics riddled with race thinking. McKittrick outlines the methodological problem of relegating Black people to extra-human, pulling from theories offered by Sylvia Wynter and Paul Gilroy to name a few. 

Included in McKittrick’s Twenty Dreams is the toil of Charmaine Lurch, a Toronto-based interdisciplinary visual artist whose work draws attention to human-environmental relationalities. Lurch’s Wild Bees project started in 2012 and remains ongoing. Including materials such as mixed wire, wool, and yarn, there is a connection between nature and technology that is being teased and critical thought is being inspired. For Artforum in 2020, McKittrick said “Lurch’s beautiful giant wire bees insist on the connections among metal, mechanical loads, pollination, environmental decline, flight, and Black ecologies.” It was fitting that the talk was hosted outside, in the cool of Toronto turning into autumn. 

These themes were fitting alongside Lee’s work, particularly her approach which is “not interested in creating a discourse but taking what is already there.” Lee’s curiosity about “how” encourages us to see again and see differently. An excerpt was read about Jorian Charleton’s Out of Many exhibition. There was talk about the gaze, but I was mostly interested in the living room. Some of Charleton’s photography featured figures that were “half dressed” yet not erotic. It was “ambiguous intimacy” where the “models were beautiful because they are self possessed.” This is the gaze of Blackness that I enjoy. Not hypersexualized but agentive. 

The conversation continued into the phenomenon of Black art being punctuated by living rooms frequently (not just from Charleton’s work but that of Renee Green was also mentioned). When Lee said about her practice that “I want us to not be wasting our time searching for each other,” the symbol of the living room became more poignant. Outside, beside a parked SUV, the garbage bins, and residents having a BBQ on the patio above us, we were still in our own socially constructed living room, with food, community, and Ebony magazine on every table. We had found each other. We were together, not sequestered. We were among the bees, and the noise of the Toronto streets. We were eating food, talking books and art, taking up space, and all of that is art and resistance in itself. 

The conversation continued about the importance of independent publishing (as distinct from university publishing) and the graduate students working on Black bibliographies. It was made clear that “the book is an interdisciplinary object.” Art Metropole was the perfect backdrop for this talk. I saw from the cover of McKittrick’s book that one of the dreams was simply listed as “uncaptured.” That hit home once again. McKittrick explained that the way Lee writes allows us to participate in the art, frees us to see multiple contexts. In that back alley of the creative arts space, we Black folk were also participating in the art. We were also invited. We were encouraged. It was not performative. 

The book launch was attended by some of the Toronto Black arts scene’s best, some of whom I was at Harvard’s 2018 Black Portraitures conference alongside. At the time, I described that event as “academic Caribana” and I loved it. As I continue to decolonize myself, venture further and further outside of the academy and into myself, I found this event on the driveway off College Street to be just as amazing. The end of summer is always balmy, brimming with the promise of a new school year. Attending the “Why We Write” book launch had the same feeling. 

The name of the event, Why We Write, is reminiscent of George Orwell’s essay Why I Write. In it, Orwell scribes “It is forbidden to dream again; We maim our joys or hide them; Horses are made of chromium steel/And little fat men shall ride them.” Lee’s writing began with outlining that there is no formal archive of Black Canadian art. Perhaps that is one reason to write. McKittrick evoked Wynter to remind us that Black writing is an act of revolution. Lee reminded us that to see, and to see differently, is an act of revolution. Lurch reminded us that to be outside, together, connected, is an act of revolution. It might seem like a series of small gestures, but to me it was a living manifesto. And that is reason enough.