More often than not, I find myself wrestling with history, mostly because I am reminded of my ancestral sentience: their suffering, respite, and resistance. I take comfort in knowing they were part of a successful revolution advocating for everyone’s humanity. But I am also torn by the legacies that shape anti-Black racism in fiction and history. Science fiction can conjure worlds that play to the future and the past, and recently, I’ve been turning to African American speculative writers that craft a narrative and draw us toward these challenging histories.
In their 2017 science fiction novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, the author River Solomon wrote: “History wanted to be remembered. Evidence hated having to live in dark, hidden places and devoted itself to resurfacing. Truth was messy.” The text focuses on Aster, a. person who lives on a space vessel that can be likened to the antebellum South. Like other dark-skinned people on the ship, Aster is subjected to harsh labor, toiling away for the profit of a few. Like US chattel slavery, the captives aboard this spacecraft organize and fight for their freedom. Characters like Aster do not remain frozen in space; instead, they slowly challenge the system that ultimately wants them to remain in the shadow. More than anything, this is a science fiction work that elucidates the historical and psychic elements of racialized terror. There is something in Solomon’s works that allow characters like Aster to shine, which has had me thinking about how I can work with history and the archive.
Although fiction moves me, I was reminded of the power of the archive when I visited the Audre Lorde Archives in Berlin last week with a friend, Tanna Tucker, an illustrator and writer. In late March, while taking a walk along the Landwehr Canal, we both admitted that we were dazzled by Audre Lorde and her connection to Berlin. Although I have lived in the city for five years and have read and written about Lorde, I had never visited her archives. I sat with my chagrin. But luckily, Tanna did not judge me. Instead, we decided to take a field trip together to grace ourselves with Lorde’s personal records. Together we planned to travel to Freie Universität in Berlin which houses the Audre Lorde archive in the Lankwitz. Flanked on the city's edge, in what used to be the US section of the city—I felt like I was leaving the comfortable parts of Berlin. This was far from the neighborhood Spätis (bodega for my NYC friends), nineteenth-century buildings, or East German trams. We were in the burbs, and since Americans helped rebuild this section, public transportation was sparse. Nevertheless, what was exciting about this trip was that I had a buddy. And although we traveled separately, we bounded through our minute-by-minute text messages about our difficulties finding the archive.
Me: I am waiting for a bus on the outskirts.
Tanna: I don’t want you to wait in the cold so please go inside if you beat me.
Me: Whoops, I am on the wrong side of the street and missed the bus.
Tanna: I know your pain.
Me: This is a mission worth documenting.
Tanna: See you soon.
Me: I found it.
Tanna: Omggg. I’m here, but not sure where I am lol.
Me: It is in house L, but you can get in through house H. It is confusing.
Tanna: I expected more signage
We made it to Lorde’s archive by working together with a bit of humor. But one of the things that we learned is that research can be messy and unpredictable but rewarding. Lorde was extraordinarily layered and had a life force that vibrated into the Afro-German community she came into contact with. Seeing her photographs in Berlin, sitting on a sunny balcony, or dancing with her mentee May Ayim, made me smile. I spent my time in the archive listening to her voice, her creative writing workshops at FU Berlin, and her iterative engagement with her students. She instructed them to write daily, be curious about the world, and stand firm in their identities. But more than anything, her lesson was to use the story or the poem to take of yourself and the reader.
Digesting Lorde’s archives has inspired me to take more breaks by dipping into my vinyl record player and disappearing into my library. Alternating between rest and writing has expanded my literary palette. I’m allowing myself, especially as I refine myself and my craft. To find time to escape so that my prose can jump from the page.
A Word
Earlier this month, I reviewed a “true-crime” like podcast series called Dynamite Doug for Frieze Magazine. I spent a fair bit of time discussing Doug Latchford, the late and alleged art thief, and our collective responsibility to be accountable for a museum’s provenance. I had the pleasure of interviewing the physician and co-author of Inflamed, Dr. Rupa Marya, about her philosophical practices and influence. The interview is published in Ignota Press. My latest academic article, “Medicine and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa: Transdisciplinary Approaches in Medical Humanities,” was recently published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. If you cannot access the article and want to read the text, please email me, and I will send you a pdf of the document.
I have a monthly radio show on Refuge Worldwide, a Berlin-based radio station. As We See It is a show that explores the many facets of Berlin that you may have yet to hear about. Each month, Abby Young-Powell and I dive into different aspects of the city’s culture, history, and community by going beyond the headlines to discuss the issues shaping Berlin today. With an emphasis on progressive viewpoints, the show features in-depth interviews, political debates, quirky finds, and the latest cultural events.
For our April show, Abby discussed nudity laws in Germany and how they have recently been part of an ongoing battle about gender-based discrimination. During that episode, I spoke about the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (HKW). For the first time in its 33-year history, the institution is under the direction of the first African person, Professor Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. Professor Ndking is a curator, author, and writer who was the founding director of SAVVY Contemporary, an art project space in Berlin. For the show, I asked Eric Otieno Sumba, the editor of Publication Practices, about what he is looking forward to. For those in Berlin, HKW will open on 2 June 2023 with a series of concerts and performances with the exhibition project: O Quilombismo: Of Resisting and Insisting.
A Read
Recently, I read a German language memoir that was arresting. The text began with the following lines:
“Wenn ich denke, dann bewege ich. Wenn ich denke, dann erinnere ich. Und gleichzeitig vergesse ich. Ich denke, um zu bewegen, um zu erinnern, um zu vergessen. Ich denke, um mich zu bewegen, weg von diesem Ort, von diesem Leben.”
“When I think, I move. When I think, I remember. And at the same time, I forget. And at the same time, I forget. I think to move, to remember, to forget. I think to move, to move away from this place, from this life.”
The text was published by Sinthujan Varatharajah, a non-binary Tamil German cultural critic and researcher. This excerpt is from the prologue, where the writer slowly explains their physical journey in Berlin to the various colonial structures in the city. They examine their history as the child of two Tamil refugees who sought asylum in Germany in the 1980s. In their book, To all the places that lie behind us (An alle orte, die hinter uns liegen), Varatharajah poetically braids history with geography. They trace how their Tamil identity juxtaposes their place in Europe through the camera, zoo, elephant, landscape, and air in Germany. The book embarks on a journey to trace colonialism and European asylum policies.
Over the years, I have been a fan of Nichole Chung, a writer, and editor who has written about trans-racial adoptions, grief, and care. Chung recently published “The Unbearable Costs of Becoming a Writer” in Esquire Magazine magazine about the trials and tribulations she experienced. As a writer from working-class roots, Chung’s essay hit close to home. Guilt and self-doubt can surface when we have family members outside the literary sphere, people we care for who may not understand the labor of writing.
Earlier this week, I devoured Bonnie Tsui’s book Why We Swim, which explores humanity’s love for the water. The book is a non-fiction memoir interspersed with Tsui’s interviews with experts. I love her ability to weave and enliven the text and to make us feel that we, too, are engulfed in the water.
One thing that I am learning is that no matter how difficult it is to face history when it comes to an archive, I will find my way.
With solidarity,