Verdict: Guilty. Some folks celebrate, some dig their heels into the racist constructs of their minds. Others are having a much more complicated response. Derek Chauvin was guilty the moment the world saw him murder George Floyd as he was literally crying for his mother. The fact that it took this long to reach a legal standpoint is reason enough for complex reactions, but there is so much more history and systemic pain behind all of this than just one racist killer of Black bodies. Three counts of murder; guilty on all counts. This is something. It’s not justice but it’s at least accountability.
I started reading The Fire This Time by Jesmyn Ward last night. It’s a collection of writers and poets who, together, voice their anger, pain, and stories. (I’m on just the third essay and I’m in love. Highly recommend.) But there was a section in the introduction that Jasmyn spoke of the power of words and storytelling. It ignited my love affair for storytelling and validated every ounce of my research. It’s as if she and I were having a cup of coffee and discussing the importance of storytelling and its essential role in communities. I wanted to share a bit of Jesmyn’s words with you:
All of these essays give me hope. I believe there is power in words, power in asserting our existence, our experience, our lives, through words. That sharing our stories confirms our humanity. That it creates community, both within our own community and beyond it. Maybe someone who didn’t perceive us as human will think differently after reading Garnette Cadogan’s essay on the black body in space, or after reading Emily Raboteau’s work on urban murals. Perhaps after reading Kiese Laymon’s essay on black artists and black love and OutKast, or after reading Mitchell S. Jackson’s piece on composite fathers, a reader might see those like me anew. Maybe after reading Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah’s essay on Baldwin or Kevin Young’s hilarious essay about Rachel Dolezal and what it means to be black, a reader might cry in sympathy and then rise to laughter, and in doing so, feel kindship…
…I hope this book makes each one of you, dear readers, feel as if we are sitting together, you and me and Baldwin and Trethewey and Wilkerson and Jeffers and Walters and Anderson and Smith and all the serious, clear-sighted writers here – and that we are composing our story together. That we are writing an epic wherein black lives carry worth, wherein black boys can walk to the store and buy candy without thinking they will die, wherein black girls can have a bad day and be mouthy without being physically assaulted by a police officer, wherein cops see twelve-year-old black boys playing with fake guns as silly kids and not homicidal maniacs, wherein black women can stop to ask for directions without being shot in the face by paranoid white homeowners.
I burn, I hope.
Jesmyn Ward, The Fire This Time