A lot can happen in a year. It was an eventful one for me. I wanted to do a rundown of my accomplishments for the past 12 month, how I truly honored my goals and took them on painstakingly, with curiosity. And lots and lots of nerves and luck. But all I can think about, and all that has consumed me is grief. There’s the tangible but still abstract grief of witnessing interconnected imperial genocidal violence. Then there’s the interpersonal grief of witnessing vulnerable communities living through calamity and still clout chasing, ostensibly to pay the bills, and perhaps to ward off loneliness.
Then there is the fugue of grief that has wracked my brain and warped my heart, my beloved stepfather is now a part of the ether – his remains sitting in a golden brass urn in my Harlem apartment. This time last year I was rolling my eyes at the man and his gentle curmudgeonly ways. This year I can barely confront that sentence without hot wet pain spilling out of my tired eyes. I am a wreck. What’s the point of a rundown of (professional) accomplishments when you are unraveling and splintering with grief?
The fear that comes from living as a Black femme in a world openly hostile to that identity seems to be coming into shape as an antagonizing presence. A wannabe omnipotent force of racism. I mean, it’s always been there, but this American legislative regression barreling towards fascism is something new; pasty white and nasty. While our creative outlets are being vaporized we’re submitting our imaginations to the same process. The expectation of the contemporary creative culture is to perform who you are – opposed to living it. And I reached a breaking point. I’ve tired of showing and shit… I’ve become annoyed with the telling to some degree. Pessimism? Afro Pessimism? Yaky Glueless 26-inch Pessimism?
Writing creative nonfiction and nurturing the artist who answered the assignment of writer has left me exhausted. It has also slowed my responses to cultural, personal, and social provocations. Mount this on to the grim fact that I’m capable of performing beauty – a slight of hand that distracts the average onlooker from the truth. I can understand on these super sad days, how people choose to stop giving a fuck – but for me – the minute I throw that level of care to the side, I increase my chances for encountering more trouble. Just by being misread. Not to say my laid hair, designer threads, or annunciation can fully protect me from those things – but they function as shields. And in this political climate, I need as much help as I can fucking get.
A capitalist world demands you get over things and get yo ass back to work. When? RIGHT NOW! After this last US pysop of an election– lots of rhetoric sprung up about resting, and community. How? Online, in between shifts apparently or when the boss ain’t lookin. It seemed we were urging one another to rush through devastation. Distances between classes, social and cultural felt so palpable as I mourned the outline of a parent that was once there – and thus a life that will never be the same. Folks who have the luxury of critical opinions had so much to say about millions of folks who could give a damn about their convoluted take on what’s next for America. And what angered me – in the literal wake of my stepfather’s sudden death – was that the world kept on moving, there was no ritual for my family to tend to the wound. My brothers and sister, and sister-in-law all had to go back to work, nieces and nephew back to school and my mother to probate court. I avoided the funeral home where my father’s cremains waited for their decorative container for weeks, carrying around the prayer card from his funeral service in my small purse, reminding me of this new laminate reality.
The world through the lenses of media, social media kept on moving on – and would only seem to halt in my proximity if I decided to perform my sorrow. I didn’t tell many folks, didn’t cry for help in my IG stories, just a lone post in a transparent font in between birthday wishes and reposts. Thankfully, I barely remember those days. My friendtor, Saeed told me in a voice note in the weeks after daddy’s death - how some of us are confronted with needy audiences, that in our performances of grief we’re expected to move at the paces of others. This to me is a proxy for how internalized capitalism (and the very bread and butter reality of survival) forces us to barely reckon with the weight of the truth of our most devastating revelations, and our joyful moments too. I’ll never get over it.
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” —Zora Neale Hurston
When I was thinking through my goals for this year, I wanted so much to be in a different position in my career than I was in the year before – ostensibly a heightened profile. To be considered legitimate. A projection cast on to the world as someone on the rise. This meant I would have to do things that made me uncomfortable, that challenged me. And I’m savvy enough and pragmatic enough to know that when dabbling in industry – it means conforming to shapes of capitalism, squeezing into the containers that barely fit in exchange for money (or worse exposure). It’s all about survival for me, for us, for most of us to varying degrees. There is zero relief in industry, zero pleasure in excoriating oneself to slide into positions of earning. I know this, am at odds with it – but I have needs, and wishes to provide for my family. And I like nice things.
I also wanted to do things I felt only real writers could do. It was that work that felt pure, that felt genuine, that could not be performed because it happens on a cellular and (pardon the hotep nomenclature) soulular level. I met many of my goals, just short of one – selling my books, and that is chiefly because I could not lie to myself. My heartbreak stopped me in my tracks. And still capitalism demands I pen a missive to people to reassure them that I haven’t stepped away forever – into the depths of anonymity, into forgottenness. Hi, y’all.
The question that kept confronting me in different ways this year was: – what is the cost of the mask you wear? A complex question for someone who barely wants to accept the possibility (reality) of being neurodiverse. A complex question for someone who had to accept that depression changes how her brain and body work. A complex question for someone who’s body has confronted Covid-19 too many times. A complex question for a daughter who is without her father. A woman whose family dynamic has shifted and is reckoning in real time. A complex question for a fly girl from LES who has to look at people who are so mad that she won’t be their friends that they are now a new and improved tired and broke down crew of flunkies.
Deciphering what the mask is protecting is something I don’t have the courage to answer right now because looking in the mirror is too hard, and not for lack of fineness – but one can drown in the depths of her own ego death. What is the cost of every confrontation with God is Change motifs every fucking where, when in order to survive you have to goddamn pretend that everything is ok? I know I am weaker (and perhaps softer) than my foremothers and forefathers, and perhaps that was their wish – but why must I still suffer? Why must I still pretend?
The question of the will to live has been battering me. And despite my anguish that will is very strong and leaves me at odds with the gulf of emotions between my depression and living as/ in an oppressed class. I tell my therapist that life is worth living with the hope of getting to witness the liberation of Black peoples, it sounds so hyperbolic but damn it’s crazy because I believe it. It’s true. I was a suicidal teen and 20 something, a fact that most people close to me wouldn’t know unless I shared. Becoming politicized rescued me from the barrage of insults thrusted on a person living in a culture that aims to kill the soul and trap the mind and body.
This education in being able to read systemic oppression, did not leave me with the tools to manage the grief associated with living in the belly of the beast, or the very specific grief of having Black people problems. Yet, I hope that the efforts found in indigeneity, womanism, trans liberation, and radical self-acceptance offer promise to lead the collective away from where it seems to be rushing towards – and through to another less catastrophic future. I suspect (suffering with the pain of rushed-through, hidden and collapsed anguish) is the case for many of us – the deep sadness and the ability to mask it all.
We’re all struggling with grief as we write our year end recaps, our pro Palestine manifestos, as we laugh at memes, care for aging parents, mourn our dead, shop for overpriced everything, host holiday dinners, commute on the train, rot in bed, rot at work, water our plants, curl our hair figure our how to survive the next year. But a lot can happen in a year.
Nina, my friends, and some colleagues have encouraged me to use Tiny Violences to share updates and events (I didn’t listen to them at all this year), I’ll try to do better in 2025. So...here’s an undecorated list of things that I did in 2024.
Publication
Essay “Down South” Southern Cultures, Vol. 30. Issue No. 2
Short Story “How to Get Lost” Pretty Little Brick Anthology - (I recommend buying a copy (or several) of this rare collectible while they are still available.
Facilitation
Queering the Narrative Pt.2 Writing Workshop, The Free Black Women’s Library
Speaking
Storytellers - Laverne Cox with Jet Toomer, Tribeca Film Festival
Being Queer Daughters, Talkback with Jasmine Mans, Express Newark, Rutgers University
Readings
Beauty is as Beauty Does, How to Build a Fire, Open Source Gallery
NY Heartbeats with Seattle Imports, Nonfiction for No Reason Co-curated by my OG Jessica Lynne
Pretty Little Brick Book Launch, Weeksville Heritage Center
Community
Sojourn for Harriet Jacobs – A placed based gathering and exhibition, in Edenton, NC, honoring the life, archive, legacy and impact of writer and abolitionist Harriet Jacobs, co-curated by Johnica Rivers and Michelle Lanier, Harriet Jacobs Project. – Read about it ARTnews (Colony Little)
Here’s a list of things that Jet Toomer did in 2024 that count towards her being a writer (in no particular order).
Emailed an agent
Finished her Book
Drafted a book proposal for another book
Shared her writing with her peers
Offered feedback for the writing of her peers
Started a work of fiction
Planned a funeral, repass, and now in possession of her father’s remains
Spent time in the at the Ntozake Shange Archive
Read 50+ books, finished 40+Books
Sat on a stage learning in real time she is introverted
Wore bangs
Cried
Sobbed
Wept
Stopped trying to shop it away (aka credit card limits)
Died and reborn
Hosted a fabulous-chaotic organizing meeting with a ragtag group of intellectual misfits
Told her mother about her 9-year anniversary
Taught a workshop to a group of Black femme writers
Was workshopped in an intergenerational group of Black femme writers
Wrote with friends
Said no
Said YES!
Jury Duty
Manifested her friend on to RHONY
Told the truth to friends
Did not hide
Hid
Made eye contact across the dinner table, tapped thighs, nudged instead of speaking
Paid more than a few bitches dust
Composed her first viral thread, then deleted it
Squatted in a gym with real weights
Wrote a lot of bad (but luckily unpublished) essays
Habari Gani folks! Thanks for riding along and being patient and subscribing to Tiny Violences. Consider gifting a paid subscription this holiday season, or upgrading to paid, treat yourself.
You're amazing. Thank you for this. Thank you for showing up when you did/I can't believe you did. Thank you for the little shout. If you can get your hands on it, you gotta read Freda Epum's memoir when it's out in Jan. And thank you for Raquel. She and Jenna make that whole show. 🩶
Good to hear from you again. 🖤