Grief is taking up a lot of my psychic space lately. In contrast I feel the hum of my heart beating around the anger that I’ve been so skillfully trained to keep inside. Why is it this way? Why does it have to be like this? When will it all come to an end? Why must I hide it aways – and is there enough room? The pragmatic fatalist inside of me says when I die, then it’s done, but what’s death when life and its sorrows consume all of the daylight hours and haunt the midnight ones? This is where the artist intervenes. In the months since my father’s dying, and the years since some of the formative tragedies of my past have determined my traumatic response to the new heartbreaks that seem to appear in rapid fire succession – it has been friendship and the arts that have grounded me and reminded me that grief is also a sign of living. Perhaps even a symptom of something more.
On a breezy, balmy spring night here in NYC, I traipsed past elegant, tall and very black skinned, salesmen on Canal Street hawking wares that are virtually identical to their fashion house prototypes. At least here one can afford the price tags of luxury – and get, if one is bold enough, to participate in cooperative economics. A few steps from where the iconic Pearl Paint art supply store once stood and defined a street - I entered into a loft – warming – buzzing with something akin to but not quite hope.
I Hope This Helps by Samiya Bashir
Samiya Bashir is the poetic orb inviting our bodies to remember, to never forget and to forge ahead with our imaginations as talisman and “I Hope This Helps,” will be the map. A stunning collection from the brilliant scholar-poet- with fire in her eyes and fire for hair – Samiya asks nothing of us but to be in our bodies – collapsing the differences we feel about ourselves, how we believe we are perceived and yes – to breath more; to move. That we are owed to one another and how that debt can be paid and tracked right back to ourselves. At the onset of a(nother) fascist regime, scaffolded by the well cultivated, child-left-behind-post-political-hope era, idiotocracy – folks (I’m folks) will need an atlas for humanity – to be reminded that it’s more or less our choice to do what is required to remain human with the little liberties and freedoms those of with privilege, with agency have.
Rarely do I find pleasure in going to readings. A lot of the environment dictates how my attention span will respond, but then, and there’s always a but and a then – a stage – and a mic will demand something more than what my phone and its notifications can bring. Erica Hunt, Terrance Hayes,Jacqueline Woodson and Derris Carter brought well timed panache, intimacies, and inside jokes, an important punctuation to a potent evening. Whatever we must do, we must do it together.
Prose to the People edited by Katie Mitchell
If a book can be a friend, a Black owned bookstore can be an ally. My dear friend, and ally Kiy gifted me this fine chronicle of Black owned American bookstores edited by Katie Mitchell and featuring a foreword by the LATE GREAT NIKKI GIOVANNI. Grief as synecdoche – how many words, names, people and places can be an appellation of grief by just the swift usage of language, of text? Questions that don’t need answers – what this books does do – is imprint the political nature of literacy – the history of that politization and the style, attitudes and legacies that continue despite book banning, record illiteracy, the popularity of anti-intellectualism and a heterogenous (as in mainstream) publishing industry. In the past I’ve shared my favorite bookstores, one of which is closed but open always in my memory. This coffee table/reference book feels like a time capsule and a much needed accessible archive that is both a love letter to worlds of books, it’s owners , authors, readers and those invested in insuring those institutional ties remain intact.
God-Disease by An Chang Joon
When stress and heartbreak pull me in all the directions it does – I become American. I buy things. Yes, from the Ssense sale and so many jeans from ebay but what feels important will always be book pre-orders. I try my best to avoid the evil bookseller – and when I can remember I go directly to the publisher, among my favorite non-profit presses is Sarabande. They’ve published some of my favorite works by Wendy S. Walters and Chante L. Ried and this book by An Chang Joon, a collection of shorts, with a time defying and dialogue rich homecoming/going/undoing title story. In the books I mentioned before – compact, nutrient dense literature offers an escape into fiction, hybrid & nonfiction narratives, and the eyes and minds behind some presses recognize the urgency that can often be conveyed only by form.
In Defense of Barbarism by Lousia Yousfi
Oh my god, I’m aging. I’m at the lamentable (IMO) point of adulthood where you switch from growing up to the inevitable (dying), it’s freaking me out but whatever – there’s something about having a strong political framework that both keeps you young and worried. The young part of me has figured out how to remain relevant (at least through dress) and I’m always appreciative with younger Black people see and talk to me – even as they look past the camflougue of wide legged jeans and ugly unusual shoes – they stick around because my hope is they see life is longer and that the alleged midway point can be cute. Either way auntie was in the bookshop searching one title “Dismantling the Master’s Clock” by Rasheeda Phillips – and the college-aged femme, also in baggy jeans offered up a recc after I asked. They “devoured” this book – with its zine-esque inspired design and font and quite frankly subject matter. The north African writer composed these 7 texts in 2022, and Andy Blis translated them in 2025. Feels compact enough to read on a rainy day. A Verso book.
MARSHA by tourmaline
Not gonna lie, I’ve greedily read some of this gorgeous biographical record that is really working as an altar. (sorry to Nina who the book was the intended recipient) Tourmaline is already a brilliant visionary with a scholastic aptitude for working the archive, her sources, and being steady at the center of their work (also partial because we collect her work). What I love about this time in history and the negotiations of how some great biographies are framed – is when the writer is present. The artist is there – in no uncertain terms do they employ that sorta journalistic formality to become invisible while profiling a life. Reading about Tourmaline’s queer life in lower Manhattan, in the village, was especially resonate with me, a reader from the same milieu.
We’re flown into a bird’s eye view of queer New York over time, and we get a cinematic entrée into Marsha’s Life, holistically. There is so much about Marsha’s life I’m hungry for and so much recognition we owe to T for keeping Marsha alive on the internets – so many of the clips that add nuance to the contours of Ms. Johnson impactful life, are due in part to Tourmaline’s dedicated intentional efforts. This connection is not unlike Alice Walker’s archival obsession that was critical to ensuring the legacy of Zora Neale Hurston’s work into the literary cannon and joining the greater cultural imagination. In the digital era we’re summons by visual imagery and all sorts of iconography so often – our attention powering their influence, I love when my attention is directed towards something sincere – not looking to exploit it. Marsha is worth it.
Big Butch Energy Synergy by Nina Chanel Abney
Powerhouse visual artist, creative director and pop-culture clarion, Nina Chanel Abney’s monograph is a graphic celebration of her groundbreaking shows Big Butch Energy & Big Butch Synergy. The first of their kinds: two dedicated bodies of work centering nearly exclusively the masculine woman and nonbinary figure. Featured at the Miami ICA during Art Basel 2022, the MOCA Cleavand in 2023, and united as a singular exhibition at SCAD Museum of Art – Chanel has single handedly taken on the responsibility of canonizing herself as a visionary who isn’t beholden to the safeguards of so-called “neutral” or “beautiful” works (thought I find her precision to be delicate and lovely). Historian and writer Michele Lanier calls her work “reportage,” and I think this sums up the timely provocations her work brings up.
Collaborators include the OG poet Cheryl Clarke, in conversation with the Artist, author Briona Simone Jones and moderated by theo tyson. It also features a poem by Clarke and essays by Jones and J Wortham [and a very tiny, (you could almost miss it) acknowledgment of me lol] With so many high visibility artists conspiring in their own demise by making safe (if not cookie cutter carbon copies of their 🕶️) work – I applaud Nina for continually growing through her practice and inviting us into worlds this version of America seems hell bent on erasing.
Here's some other books that I have stacked on my desk…
Talk Stories by Jamaica Kincaid
In anticipation of her forthcoming nonfiction anthology Putting Myself Together, I figured I’d go back to the start of her writing career at the New Yorker – to get a gist of what I could expect from this forthcoming collection by the Antiguan-american literary genius. Reading an accomplished author’s early work- that skates the style of the legacy media company that housed her words is always a trip, but her deadpan wit, and inescapable order and tidiness of big, messy subjects has always been there.
How to Not Always be Working by Marlee Grace
I got this book for the multi-hyphanate-multi-disciplinary-multi-job-havin-ass-artist in my life. Mostly as a gag. Seems like a good place to start though if you’re ready to establish some keen boundaries between working and livin.
Dismantling the Master’s Clock by Rasheeda Phillips
Honestly, need this reframe because I’m feeling more and more like KC & Jo-Jo these days.
YAY! You’ve made it to the end, let me know what you’re reading - if you’ve read any of these or what you do to cope with grief. Or if you just want to show me some love leave a few 📚📚📚 (ctl+cmd+space on your 💻🖥️) to let me know that you’re still here. Consider a paid subscription to Tiny Violences so you can tell people you’re a “patron of the arts,” and you’ve helped me get a manicure (I need one).
And while the external powers and our own negative thinking can whisper insecurities in our ears, or even try to extinguish our flame altogether, the key thing to remember is that they’re external. They come from outside, not from within. - Maya Angelou. 💫
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