Now That I'm Twenty

I've been having headaches wrapping my mind around the fact that I'm 20. It just seems surreal that my teenage years are actually behind me, and that I'm now two decades old. This year has been an exciting one, and adulthood has actually been quite a liberating experience. I don't feel bound by the same impoverished mentality that seemed to trap me. Life has been good. 

What's getting to me is the crushing feeling I'm not doing enough. I'm just living. Because I changed my major to screenwriting, I haven't done an internship or seriously networking within the screenwriting community. I just exist; that's not productive.

Now that I'm twenty, I really need to get on my grind. It's time I start submitting work to literary magazines. It's time I seriously work on Jack. It's time I start reading a book a week and really indulging in my craft. The sandglass is permanently tipped against my favor as I feel the wrinkles forming in my brow (slowly of course, because I'm black). I'm not getting any younger, and thus, must use my time wisely. The thought of publishing a book before I get my degree doesn't have to be so far fetched. At least not as far fetched as actually getting justice in this country.

On Finishing "Wench" and being the future

A week ago, I finished "Wench" after a whole weekend of reading and thinking and, well, being sad. I went to class excited to tell my professor I read the book in a weekend. She was surprised; now three of the the twelve students read the book!

It's a week later and now whenever I think about the girls I see at my beautiful HBCU, I see slave girls. I see Mawu, Reenie, Sweet, and Lizzie. It only makes things worse because I see them even more in the African girls I know on campus. The Black faces I see today can't be too different from the Black faces 150 years ago. Seeing this makes it harder to think about slavery, as I can see it in real, living people. I see it in my friends, my family, my professors, my associates – everyone.

But, in all of this, I feel pride. I go to an HBCU. Here, is where I learned to love myself and my skin. While I had the confidence before, it is here that I feel complete. It is here that I see other talented, Black people like myself and feel part of a community. I walk on the steps of legacy. I walk on the paths of struggle and triumph. I walk on the trail that overcomes adversity. I walk.

I tweeted the author, Dolen Perkins-Valdez about the book and my disappointment in the ending. It wasn't a disappointment in that it was a bad book; oh no! It was more like a post-partum depression; the feeling when you leave a movie with a cliffhanger. That feeling when your mind asks Well, something happens next?

She made the characters as real as I had, and I felt it was by magic. I felt the weight of these people who were supposed to be words on a page. Real-world emotions were felt and Perkins-Valdez made them just as real as I imagined them to be. 

Maybe they do exist after all. 

Reading Part One of "Wench" at Work and the Fear of White Men

Reading Part One

As I think about this past weekend with Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, I think about my experience as a Black man today in America, and I have to just sigh. Professor Verdelle, whose class I'm reading the book for, always tells us to keep in mind that fiction is just that – fiction. But as I read Wench I forget that, and the story just depresses and depresses and depresses until I'm sitting in a mall, waiting to punch the clock at work, face full of enough despair to fuel sixty-five Drake albums. 

Wench is the stories of four slave women - Lizzie, Mawu, Reenie, and Sweet - as they spend their summers at Tawawa House, a resort in Ohio, one of the freed states. Each woman has their kinks and curves in their personalities, but they're sisterhood is something amazing. They're in it for thick and thin.

The storytelling in the book is magnificent and the elements of the story are so captivating. I find myself rooting for all the girls; however, at this point, I feel an extreme disdain for Lizzie. While I understand her condition, I hate the betrayal to the women. But! I must stop with the victim blaming, because the true monsters of the story are the slavemasters themselves. The ways they physically, psychologically, sexually, and emotionally abuse them were insidious. The hate I had for them consumed me, and it reflected in my attitude towards the white men I helped today. While I composed myself professionally, I imagined many of them as the slaveholders. When I picked the book up, going on my lunch break, the connection made reading even worse. There was an older man in particular who came to ask about the Microsoft Band. I'd just come back from break, and wasn't fully recovered. Thinking about the story of Drayle's two sons, I wondered how so much evil could rest in a single person, let alone a group of them!

The Lone Chocolate Chip

The book stayed on my mind throughout the rest of my shift. It was around 8:20PM and I started a search, just to see the demographics on the board of directors at many popular stores in the mall. A strong proponent of small and black-owned businesses, I looked at Microsoft, Urban Outfitters, Nike, Apple, and a few other places. Cocoa-colored folks weren't abundant in my findings, and I just wanted to sigh. Meanwhile, cocoa-colored folks, mostly young teenagers (13-16) were spending money at these companies. 

Yes, Jeremy, white men still rule the world. 

Reading, Writing, and Paying Attention

I've been reading "Where Are You Coming From Sweetheart" by Sarah Salecky for the second time. Although I read it last semester, I couldn't help but read it again, this time paying attention to the voice and the tone and the literary elements as I write my own story for a writing competition. The story is a very good one. I love Sonia's craziness, and I do pity Christine. Her father is annoying, gross, and very unlikeable as a character. I pity him too. Salecky doesn't make it hard to feel sorry for Christine at all and I think its a good thing. At the end, although the circumstances are very unfortunate, she gets what she wants.

I've been making a goal to reread a lot of stuff that I've read before. This time I want to pay attention to the details. This time around, instead of glossing over scenes and being so caught up in the imagination of things, I can pay attention to the words as, well, words.