Soapbox: Black Trauma in Black Fiction
The best part about having my own website is that I can have a blog and make whatever rants I want without being worried about breaking the culture of the site. The culture of the site is whatever I decide, and I decide that I want to allow myself to write long rants, untagged yet still hypervisible (because it’s my blog…what else are you going to read), without worrying about any other users and mutuals who may think I’m vagueblogging them (I’m not).
Let me include Black trauma in my Black narratives. I’m not interested in the woo-woo, feel-good stories of achievement and joy. If the setting, plot, or character demands it, then I’ll write such stories—I’m currently engaged in such work while writing Delinquents. But as a rule, I’m not interested in Black triumph, vindication, hope and joy, because that is not all there is to being Black. Let me write Black trauma in Black narratives. Let me elevate Black trauma in Black narratives. Let Black creators write about Black trauma in our own fucking genres, and stop coming into genres where Black people write Black trauma and cry, “Why does every Black story have to have some racial narrative?”
In case you were wondering, this post is not directed at white people. I expect nothing of whites who consume Black literature. My expectations, and disappointments, lie with my own Family, who are prepared to throw out Black babies with the bathwater in their quest to achieve a Cosby Show fantasy where the melanin content of their skin, their African heritage, and their history of oppression are all inconsequential to their lived realities.
I’m not the type of Black author our community has gotten used to. I’m not here to tell our people that we’re naturally perfect, that we can overcome any and everything, that love and faith will stustain us in our worst moments. That’s not what Mitochondrial Assimilation is about. That’s not what A Maroon in Midnight Blue is about. Instructions, Better Wait, Red Like the Devil and Hot Like the Fire, etc. I write stories about niggas going through shit, because that’s what niggas do, we go through shit. Going through shit is quite possibly the single most unifying Black experience; not barbecues, not step-dancing, not standing in a mirror and copying James Brown/Michael Jackson/Bobby Brown/Usher, not banging to reggae, not eating Fufu and Jollof, or even demanding to know where the other 2% is on a test marked 98. Gentlemen of this esteemed institution, I submit to you this undeniable fact that the evolution of the Negro is a process by which Yoruba, Zulu, Oromo, Afar, Bantu, !Kung, Amazigh, and other peoples of that continent are subjected to such horrors and so constrained by social systems that it is nigh impossible to adapt as anything but. Peter Tosh taught us that as long as we are Black men (and women and nonbinary people), we are African,; I would stand on the shoulders of him and other great thinkers and add that where Africanness exists, hardship, horror, and often despair are not long to follow. And so I offer a sardonic and passive-aggressive thank you (punctuated with a flourish of my left most digitus teritus) to all peoples who have enslaved, raped, exterminated, and marginalized our people so thoroughly that we can now identify based not only on our continent of origin but also our experiences as global subalterns.
Of course, I am aware that our people are currently going through a change. The increased visibility of Black speculative fiction has created a new discourse among Black people, that our work should not focus so heavily on trauma, specifically racial trauma. Black horror should be removed from racial discourse, Black sci-fi should show Black people triumphing over oppressive systems, Black superheroes should fight generic aliens, and if Black witches are to use Hoodoo or Voodoo they should do so with only cursory acknowledgements to the chattel slavery which birthed it. Otherwise, it is gratuitous art profiting off Black trauma, created by people who obviously don’t care about Black people even if they are themselves Black. Exceptions can exist; great names like Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison, but also up-and-coming pros like Jordan Peele. But for anyone else to do it is problematic, and we should focus on creating more positive images of Black people.
Where this above discourse was ratified at the International Convention of Negroes, I abstained from voting. I can understand the arguments for more positive Black art, and for more escapism. What I cannot abide, however, is the idea that there is something inherently wrong about incorporating Black trauma in Black art. I do not agree that only affirming art is ‘healing’. I do not believe that social commentaries in art must always end with Black people winning. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as viewing ‘enough’ Black trauma, and I think that if our people as a whole were sufficiently aware of the horrors we experience, we’d be much further along in our social organizing than we are. I do not think it appropriate for people to praise writers who dived into the depths of Blackness, only to then bash contemporary writers trying to do the very same.
Trauma porn exists, but I think the idea that Black trauma stories have no place anymore demonstrates a lack of understanding what trauma porn actually is, and it ignores the widespread existence of toxically positive Triumph porn. The point at which Black trauma is no longer relevant to the narratives of African-descended peoples will come only at a time when it is no longer necessary to identify such people collectively.
As long as we Black people are a people, there will be a place for Black trauma, and there will always be people like me exploring it. We will produce work which is upsetting, uncomfortable, ugly, enraging and depressing, because that is a part of who we are as a people. No, it should never be something simple and surface level—the type of Black trauma art I envision does not identify real world woes and say “this is scary”, rather it should challenge us to discover why something is scary. The manifesto of Afro-horror, should one ever be written, must challenge us to dive to the darkest depths of Igbo Landing, and discover what has become of the corpses interred there. Black trauma art must serve to expand our understanding of the psychological, spiritual, cultural, and material conditions of Blackness. We must know where our injuries lay before we begin to heal, and oftentimes medicine is simply poison which does not kill the whole body.
Ultimately, there are many creators that are committed to only representing Black people positively. Despite what social media says, there is no shortage of stories by and for Black people that are free of Black trauma and the horrors of racism, where Blackness is not center-stage in the messaging or the plot. The belief that Black trauma narratives should be de-emphasized is hardly marginal, and there are many creators who feel the same way. I am not one of them. I will write stories of hope and joy and triumph where appropriate, but it will not be all that I create.