How Can I Be Myself When Strangers Are Watching? Performing Blackness and Black Joy
During a conversation with a friend, who is also an artist and a photographer, he said, “What is it with you writers, why are you always writing sad stuff?” The most honest answer would be I haven’t experienced enough joy to write about it at any length, but I can’t speak for anyone else. Secondly, when the joyful moments seem so few and far between, I want to enjoy them; I cannot be bothered to intellectualize them.
Last month, I gave a talk to University of Calgary Sociology students about the politics of desirability in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. An attendee asked me how I felt about Black trauma as an art genre. In the past, I have openly criticized Black Trauma porn, which for those who may not be familiar with the term refers to any media depicting sensitive and dehumanizing content about the black experience / trauma for shock value, usually under the guise of activism, e.g. sharing footage of police brutality or slave movies. I think it is problematic that so much of our writing is centred on trauma. When I was younger, I thought I was destined to write a book because I had a story to tell. What I understood as a story to tell was simply trauma, what I needed then and what I need now is healing. I must come to terms with the fact that just because I have experienced trauma does not mean I have to write a book. If the purpose of art is only to document trauma, where should I expect to find stories about Black Joy? But it is not as simple as that, in my exploration of disaporan guilt, intergenerational trauma, I rarely find joy. I recognize the part I play in documenting and distributing my own Black trauma. I am hesitant to seek the joy in black trauma, the same way I disapprove of a photograph of poverty-stricken black children smiling, captured by a white missionary during a volunteer trip to Africa. When I write about missing home, or being a black woman, I am lauded with messages of encouragement and admiration by people who “can’t imagine what that’s like.” I think this is in part because my trauma accentuates my racial difference and that trauma took place in a context of racial difference, which supports the argument that, “to achieve Fame in the white public sphere the negro artist must accentuate racial difference to the point of caricature.” It is not simply that I thought I had a story to tell because I experienced trauma, but the world affirmed that my racial difference and identity in trauma is the only useful contribution I could make to art.
Still, I think we should be weary of dismissing art inspired by black trauma. As I watched Chenelle Roberts sing “A Change is Gonna come,” at the Strawberry and Peaches Cabaret, I remembered that this beautiful song was also played at Malcolm X’s funeral, and it represents the collective grief of black people over the years. Black art must continue to speak to the experiences of black people, therefore, not all art that depicts black trauma is black trauma porn. Toni Morrison’s stories were not all about black joy, but she openly stated that she wrote specifically for black people; she has never been accused of creating black trauma porn. When I think seriously about what constitutes black trauma porn, I believe it is more about the audience than it is about the content. When I watch a movie on slavery, I do so because I feel I owe enslaved black people a place in my memory. In a tweet by @alexandererin, they described gallows humour:
“If the person on the gallows makes a grim joke, that's gallows humor. If someone in the crowd makes a joke, that's part of the execution.”
In some ways, I think black art is like gallows humour, the sadness and joy shared on the gallows can be liberating and comforting to those being executed, but if you have the privilege to watch, and if you find the humour in my jokes or share the sadness in my tears, it becomes difficult for me to feel liberated or comforted. My conclusion is not an answer but a question, how do we stop creating art at our own expense while still being able to share it freely?
