The price I’ve paid to be “Authentic”: A Black Artist's story

Family and culture make us who we are, in our defining moments. This is true of all of our stories, our origin myths, and true of us, the ones who tell them. I am an artist who uses their voice with purpose. Who I am started with family and culture.

When I was five years-old, my mother would recall folklore stories for me and my younger siblings, stories of blind ladies, foxes, and how the tortoise got its shell. We lived in Kuwait with our father, in one small bedroom we rented from a racist couple – mom would huddle us up on the dingy, smelly mattress, and just talk to us for hours. She talked about our home and culture in Nigeria, about the morals she wanted to instill, and how special we were.

The couple forbade us from leaving the bedroom at any time except to exit their house. Our father was the only one allowed to move freely. Night and day, it felt like a prison. Sometimes my siblings and I would sneak out to watch cartoons on the living room TV when they were not there. That became our speciality: sneaking around. One night I went into the kitchen to make a snack for my sister. I heard a slap. I heard a head hit the wall.

My Dad had caught us outside our prison bedroom, and wasted no time punishing us, especially my sister. He kept hitting her. I stepped between them like an ordained warrior and screamed at him, using my voice with purpose for the first time, “YOU ARE GOING TO KILL HER! STOP THAT! LEAVE HER!”. 

My mother rushed into the room, returned from work to find me shielding my sister’s body with my back as our father yelled profanity at me. Distracted by his slurs and threats to get rid of this useless daughter, he stopped hitting my sister. I had used my voice to accomplish something with purpose. Five years-old, in a defining moment of family and culture and survival, under the sound of hands hitting flesh and walls, I gained consciousness in that defining moment of family and culture. It’s a traumatic origin, but I prefer to believe my art comes from the strength and resilience that were reactions to pain – not the pain itself.

I have practiced this art of resilience-born-in-trauma for the last seven years. At thirteen I started doing city-wide projects, race and ethnicity conferences, poetry slams, open mics, art shows, workshops,  intercultural speeches, research, racial advocacy, and writing books and articles, hustling every day and giving my all for this art, and for my community. I asked myself many times: “for what”? It has all come with a great deal of racism, but also ageism.

Imagine being a fourteen year-old girl from Nigeria, speaking to a board room of executives, political leaders, and community organizers, about the inequities of BIPOC representation in the local art community. It was terrifying. It was motrifying.I hid my age for years, just to hold onto a fragment of respect, to be taken at least slightly seriously. The pressure and loneliness far outweighed the praise. Volunteer work turned into my full-time job, with no room for burnout. I had to keep using my voice for purpose.

At eighteen I was named the Saskatchewan Youth Poet Laureate, the youngest Black Woman to receive the title. It was at the height of Covid, but I pushed myself to the breaking point and beyond, doing my absolute best with every single opportunity. I had pride in what I stood for, and would give anything to have some influence in those board rooms, to make some change in how BIPOC artists are seen and treated in my community. I pushed myself to the point of physical and mental illness.

Loneliness has always been my stepping stone, and when I feel unseen and unappreciatedI disassociate from the world. I remember my first instances with burnout and dissociation. It was a random Wednesday, and I had a poetry reading, a racial-sensitivity conference and a poetry workshop to do that day. I woke up to heaviness in my chest, like the weight of the world sinking me deeper into the bed. I stayed there unmoving for hours. My alarm rang at 10am to remind me of the poetry reading I was scheduled to perform in thirty minutes, and I just kept sinking. With two minutes to spare I finally got out of bed, found my laptop, turned on Zoom, and delivered my best poetry reading of that year. The audience loved it, and I was empty. Everything tasted like metal and herbs, still sinking. I signed into another Zoom and talked about racial issues in Saskatoon then listened to the pleas of white folks asking for my forgiveness. I smiled through the herb and metal taste, and eased their guilt. I haven’t eaten or left my room, or my bed. On Zoom, for the next three days, I performed and spoke and inspired people seeking inspiration. Once the screen turned off, once the meetings were done, I was an empty husk. Unmoving. Not there. 

Two months went by like this. I don’t remember much, but I did my work well enough that no one complained. No one mentioned my empty gazes or glossy eyes. It felt like betrayal when I came back to reality and no one noticed I was gone for so long. Why no one noticed the skin and bones that faced them. For them my work, my art, and my poetry was good enough that my human presence did not matter. They could not smell the herbs and metal, and if anyone noticed me sinking, it was not a problem.

Authenticity can be rare and contradicting in a space where BIPOC Artists are still ‘The Other’. Art and art communities are celebrated as being all about authenticity, but for seven years I have found the reality to be very different. For seven years my language, my accent, my age, and my way of being have been sources of alienation from the art community I constantly fight for.  The manager that fired an intercultural public speaker for having “language barriers”. The artists that still act surprised when I can speak “Good English”. The artists that ask why I don’t write “white characters” in my plays. The organizers that invite me to speak about microaggressions, but never actually hire people who look like me. Code switching just to be worthy of respect. Having to guard my heart whenever speaking to a white person. Everyone who has at once celebrated me for what I represent, and denied me space for who I am.

I won’t apologize anymore, or douse my anger. Black artists are not here to perform for your comfort. We will not be blocked out. My origin story will not be redacted because others are uncomfortable in the presence of it.

Black Lives are tired

It’s February again. Less than half a frigid day of it had passed, before I felt the weight of Black History Month on my shoulders – the exhaustion of it. I caught myself asking today, “am I a Bad Black Person for not wanting to post anything?” Am I still doing my part if I’m not actively teaching and speaking about the oppression of Black People, celebrating Black success and excellence, and amplifying Black voices? Am I a Bad Black person if I’m tired? Because I am. I’m so tired.

Black History Month has become a pretty hot topic in popular culture, there’s no denying it. We’ve got sections on Netflix, Disney+, Instagram — if ‘Market Visibility’ translated to systemic, structural, economic, or political change, we could just about call it a day. But when those symbolic gestures co-occur with the banning of books on Black History, the banning of Critical Race Theory in schools, and brazenly public acts of racism, how far can we really tell ourselves we’ve come?

I watched the events in Ottawa unfold with horror, like I imagine most Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour did. We know we live in a racist society with racist systems, but to see confederate flags and swastikas carried together with Canadian flags, not just in the context of white supremacy, but to protest the oppression of (almost all) white settlers… it just weighs you down. It makes you so, so tired.

It is another Black History Month. Another month of performative wokeness, performative allyship, and weakly disguised corporate marketing strategies. Maybe I am a Bad Black Person for not wanting to engage this year, for wishing that just once, I could have the privilege to look away. To “not pay attention to politics”, a luxury afforded to so many on this land, and not suffer the pain of seeing those flags, those symbols of hate on unceded Algonquin land. To not wear the scars from it.

A song came on while I was struggling with the month of February this year, that just so perfectly entwined both my exhaustion, and the deeper emotions that make me feel guilty for feeling tired. The lyrics of Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talmbout” are not overwritten.

My rage is deeper. My sadness is deeper. Indignation — that’s the foundation, I’m pretty sure. How can I, or any Black person “sit out” for February, and not say their names? No matter how badly we might need to. No matter how tired we are. As much as I need to rest, I need even more for their names to be said. I need us to not forget the trauma that’s still bleeding our communities, like those symbols of hate being flown proudly in Ottawa right now — bizarrely flown in protest of oppression. And that’s just it — Black People have never had the privilege to stop thinking about the pain, to put down the politics and rest. Because dehumanization is always personal. The celebration of slavery, genocide, and absolute domination of Black Bodies and Black Minds, is always personal. And if Black People don’t say something about it, especially in this shortest, darkest, lousiest month of the year, then who will? And when will they say it?

So we don’t set it down. We don’t have the privilege to ‘relax’ and ‘just take a breath’, because the burden working against our oppression is always placed on the oppressed. Queer and Trans Folks, Indigenous Folks, Black Folks, (dis)Abled Folks, — it’s always up to us to struggle for recognition as humans, which is why we don’t get to set it down. But that’s also where the strength comes from, when I start to feel weak. So while I sit here, exhausted as I am, I remember I have to be unbreakable, like every other Black Person in this reactionary era of Capitol Rioters and the Flu Klux Klan has to be. But we are so much more than our pain, and I have to hope that in some February down the road, we won’t have to be so tired.

When you live and work on the margins, you get used to mistrusting hope. But I also can’t look away from how far we have come. Even if it doesn’t always feel like it. No, not far enough, or fast enough, but change is happening. More people are fighting alongside us, and not as performative ‘allies’, but because they realize they cannot be free either, while others are oppressed. They’re using their privilege as co-conspirators to speak to those with deaf ears to Black Voices, deny safe spaces for fear and hatred to grow, and sit in the discomfort of accountability. They’re taking on some of the burden. It gives me hope that one day, some day, I’ll be able to rest, be weak, be soft, and not be a Bad Black Person for it.