“From now on your name will be…”
Like choosing a name for a pet, looking around you as your eyes glance over a chair, a mantlepiece, a window, a rug. My name could’ve been window, an opening I could run out of.
Put it on your tongue, let your teeth and gums hold it. Hold it.
“From now on your name will be…”
Listen to how that sounds. You are nothing unless I name you.
“Oh I know!...”
My names contain lifetimes.
As a Black creative we often have to ask ourselves, Is this something that is useful? Why do we always look at Black pain porn and not at the other stories? Our history is not only slavery, but also the centuries before, why root it in this?
Why is it that these are the stories that are funded? Delivered? Written about?
I get that it often feels that this is all anyone wants to engage with. I get that we are more than this. I agree.
But, I think about the silences.
The structured absences.
I think about what it means for a writer, like me to look at this. I know I may never find their real names but since these are the ones that I’ve found then this is what I have.
I need to say to these people, with names that aren’t theirs, ‘I see you’.
Speak the unspeakable. We must see archives as a source of reparative justice.
We were always here.
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