With it being awards season and all, I felt called to watch Sinners again. This might have been my fifth or sixth time. I’m sorry, I’ve lost count. It still hasn’t lost its magic. The film just keeps on giving for me. To me.
This time, I’m struck by how many times freedom is mentioned. How to get free? How to be free? How to protect that freedom?
I think Sinners explores the price of freedom. The price of being free. There’s always a cost for attempting to live life on your own terms.
From the beginning, we might be introduced to sharecroppers, working for the white men, still on plantations. But this will be a self-sustaining community. More than bodies for working on the farms, the land they do not own. But they have each other. Each character is developed at the beginning of the film. The viewer is allowed to get to know them and see them in their element. They be vibrant and they be fixing to be free. Free from the restrictions of white supremacy culture, capitalism, patriarchy the whole shebang. And this isn’t without pain but also joy and laugher and love.
Sinners is what happens when a community, when people are living their own lives and are infiltrated by others, who want what they have. Outside threats come to ruin the day. Vampires come and covet what this community has. Sammie. Sammie has a gift, the gift of music that connects him with all ages. Griot.
Delta Slim’s says, “With this here ritual, we heal our people. And we be free.” This is the power of music and how a community can tell their stories through music. And outside forces, in this case vampires, who hear, see, realise this power, are threatened by it as well as want it. Want to control it take it away from this black community who are gain strength and sustainance through it all. And be free.
Sammie’s gift, the music, the very culture needs to be/ has to be protected from these outside threats at all costs. As culture, its very existence is threatened from being sucked dry by the devils coming tonight.
So as a people, as black people, we do whatever we can do to tell our own stories, protect and preserve our music, our culture as through this we heal. And we be free.
Yesterday, I was on here cheering myself along. Congratulating myself on a job well done, showing up here for 350 days last year. Stretching my creative muscles. In public.
All those posts are still here. I’m creating an archive of things and stuff that tickled my fancy over the years. Stuff that made me stop and think but more so feel.
If you’ve been here this year, last year or the all the years before that and something here has tickled your fancy. Something here has landed with you, made you think, or even better made you feel than please consider buying me a coffee.
Coffee culture for me is getting a good table in the local coffee shop, ordering an extra hot oat vanilla latte, settling in for some visual journaling as well as some people watching or eaves dropping.
I’m part of society but not. I’m in amongst it but detached. The perfect position from which to create.
So far this year, I’ve been out for one coffee after my little hotel stay, and I started my next essay. Out in public, in the noise and bustle, there are pockets of retreat where ideas can percolate and take shape. I always enjoy a coffee writing outing as I’m never sure what will come to the page.
Thank you. Your support of my creativity is most appreciated.
I’m been talking here about finding my tribe. About my search for comrades in solidarity. I’ve remained pine in the process, for real. From one particular source I asked for further reading, as something was niggling me. Id expressed my concerns in terms of using the oppressors language as well as, well I felt as, the lack of warmth, kindness, care and love. And then through the further reading it all became clear. This was my response.
I believe that there needs to be unity to fight all oppressions. You can’t fight racism without fighting against capitalism.
But I realise through this further reading where my concerns lie. It’s not in the socialist/Marxist movement as a whole but it’s with the people who make up the movement.
I’m not sure if the people of the movement have/ or continue to take the time to work on their own racism. There seems to be a given that because the movement is against all oppressions that it means those who are part of the movement can’t be racist or sexist because they say they are against all forms of oppression. Saying it is one thing. Practising it is another.
In practice there is still the use of the oppressors language as I’ve mentioned before. Using ‘non-white’ or ‘minorities’ is offence as they still centre whiteness which is used for division and oppression.
The articles mention the BPP alienating white people because of their support for Black Nationalism and Separatism, and their language used around Black Power. You even mentioned yourself that we can’t fight capitalism through language and its use. Modifying language is not going to bring about material change you say.
And yet it is language the party is using to rally the masses, to bring people together. Language is the tool of persuasion no? Language is the tool of education.
But if that language continues to use the language of the oppressor and is offensive to certain groups of people, they are accused of being confused, ill informed and falling into the identity politics trap again.
However, from my experience, through reading the literature of the party, I feel that the language used reflects a party line where the people behind that line are not continuing to work on their own racism/ biases while focusing their efforts on society’s ills, outside of themselves.
I do not feed into white supremacy culture with the characteristics of either/or. I believe in and/both. That means for me, there has to be the work on the individual’s internalised racism and sexism at the same time as working against oppressions within society. Working on our own blind spots and prejudices can only benefit the movement as a whole. Where this fails to take place is where the oppressors divide and rule become fixed without our recognition of it.
To say that ‘non-white’ is every day language, quote, ‘commonly understood by ordinary people as respectful ways to refer to some people who are oppressed’, as a black person being referred to as ‘non-white’ is offensive to me and I’m not really bothered if other black people are okay with it. I might be falling into an identity police trap but one my identity is not built on my relation to whiteness that is racism. Two, if someone says they find it offensive and that is not recognised or is questioned and explained away as being the norm is denying that person’s experience which is racist. Three, to bring this up then to have it dismissed as being defensive and accusing someone of being a bigot/ racist and dismissed as a distraction from the cause is another example of an individual failing to check themselves and work on themselves to combat their racism/ discrimination tendencies.
I work on myself daily to check my prejudices or biases or judgments and blind spots. I only wish more people would also as I do believe the world would be a better place because of it. Movements and societies are groupings made up of individuals. Working on the individual at the same time as the collective can only strengthen that connection and keep moving it forward in an effective way, I believe.
If we think about what is happen in the USA today, and the ICE raids within every community. The Latino community is coming out and asking where are the black people why are they not out here on the streets with them protesting? Why are they sitting this fight out etc.? Black people are tired, esp. black women. Black people told everyone to vote for Kamala Harris and they didn’t listen. They voted for Trump. And now he is doing all that he said he would do.
Now people are asking for black people once again to put their bodies on the line. And yeah this is a prime example of the ruling class dividing and ruling. Pitting one group against another. But what is true there and what is true here, black people only make up a small percentage of the population. In the states 12% here 4% with other ethnicities. And yet it is expected for us to save the world. ( Aside here we might be termed ‘minorities’ within these countries but we are the global majority. I don’t use ‘minorities’ because it is used as language of control. Black Feminism or Third World Feminism has always been global in its remit).
It is expected for black people to put aside those differences which on a daily effect our life chances. Our lives in terms of life and death. And this is not feeding into a victim hierarchy and who’s suffering is more than someone else’s. It’s a reality. Black people, black women do not just suffer violence and brutality from the state but do so from person to person in their every day and yet black feminism still criticises and attempts to bring material change for all through fighting all oppressions including capitalism and yet if they ‘fail’ to bring about material change it is because of ill-fighting or confusion in their ideology but no mention of doing this within a racist/ sexist society that does not see Black women as anything except mules of the world. Not either/or but and/both.
As black women we continue to not be seen as human. Read Fugitive Feminism by Akuwgo Emejulu to understand this, which is anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist. It’s arguing for a rejection of the whole system. A refusal of what has already been refused to us. Other ways of being are possible.
Marx himself saw the future of capitalism as self-destruction and a social mode of production being the outcome. Fugitive Feminism is being/working now with the other possibilities. It’s about creating an outside while still on the inside. Creating spaces of liberation and joy on our own terms. It’s not waiting until then for it to be now. It’s collective and speculative and might be fostered by black women but can be utilised for all, all oppressions including capitalism and the class struggle. It is probably dismissed though because it comes from the mouths, minds and hearts of black women.
Thanks for all these readings. They have helped in clarifying where I stand. In solidarity but at the same time in my own fullness and power which I lend to any movement which recognises this and works with me to bring about dismantling all oppressions for all people.
The reply I got, was thanks, I’ll reflect on it, and wish you luck on finding your people.
I’m sharing it here as I don’t want my realisation to do to waste. The words I shared to go to waste, as I’m still open for the conversation, still open to standing together.
End / beginning of another week. Depending on if you see Sunday as the end of the week or the beginning of the next.
For me it’s and/both. Sundays are usually change over day at our house as Ella goes between my home and her dad’s. Sometimes we do things on a Sunday or sometimes we don’t.
We just take it easy.
But usually on a Sunday I reflect on the week gone and plan for the week ahead. It’s a ritual of getting my head in the game. Not the outside societal, capitalist game. No, my own game. The Sheree Mack Game, which runs counter to the White Supremacy Culture game of go go go produce produce produce and strive for perfection at the same time as avoiding conflict and being grateful for the crumbs from their table. Yeah counter to that game as I refuse to be part of this system, where my labour is being bought and sold to support the actors, that are white people.
I’ve been hibernating for months now and I’m still tired. Go figure. Maybe my exhaustion is more than a year in a dumb ass job but runs much deeper. A generational exhaustion that I just can’t shift which has to be recognised but will take a lifetime to ease.
Ease. Yes that would be welcome.
There are moments when I grasp these ease and feel it spread across my back, untightening bunched up muscles. Making my spine fluid rather than ridged. These times I can feel my heart and soul float and I’m relaxed into whatever I’m being. But these are just moments. The aim is to extend these moments into longer moments, into days and months.
I’m working on being so but it is a practice. So when I say Sundays are reflecting/ planning days. I don’t mean around a to-do-list of jobs that need to be completed in order to bring in the tainted coin. I mean, where did I experience ease this week and where can I factor in/ plan for more ease next week. Where did I experience joy and pleasure and how can that be replicated moving forward.
Yeah in the Sheree Mack Game, all the rules and tasks are different to the societal external game. At more ease and I know I’m winning x
A few days in the Emerald Isle, staying in Dublin. Walking my little legs off and soaking up the culture and Guinness ( with a dash of blackcurrant).
Here is St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Probably the first building to get my heart a pumping. And I’m thinking gothic. I’m going back to my GCSE studies and Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. And it just really thrilled me. It touched my romantic horror capabilities. The terrible beauty of this world.
It’s a striking Cathedral, made from limestone and is constructed in a gothic style. I recognised its mystery and gloom and yet a feeling of light too. An 800 year old building probably constructed in an ancient well used by St. Patrick himself.
It’s such a beautiful construction as well as having a moody kind of vibe of pointy arches and buttresses and heavy weathered stone. I was just as in my element as I walked the streets of Dublin. And just as the limestone, is greying and dark, but still a hint of lightness, so was the city itself: full of heart with an underbelly of poverty and suffering. A terrible beauty.
*not so mush a trigger warning but saying it anyways!
I am worthy of consent. I am safe. I can heal from sexual trauma. – Lyvonne Briggs
I’m writing. Or is it rambling? I’m not sure. It’s just that I’m reading at the moment. I’m in my cave (bed) hibernating and I’m reading so many different books. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry and there’s a cross over with what’s happening within my life with my reading ( Does that happen to you?). There’s an echo or a reinforcement for the things that are causing me grief at the moment, worrying the wound as I read and rest.
So writing things out, going long is a way of making sense of it all in the moment. It’s a way of gaining some kind of clarity for now. Not thinking of the future but thinking of gathering the threads at this moment to made make a something out of this mess of yarns.
My mum died when I was 27 years old. I’d just become a mother the year before. I’ve been hearing about the ‘mother wound’ lately. I’m not sure if I understand it completely. But when I hear it, I don’t jump into definitions and theories. For me it’s simply means when my mum died and left me to cope alone. Selfish I know. But I feel as is she left a gaping, bleeding wound that festers and hurts when I worry it. When I press on it, inspect it with my touch.
This morning, following my morning routine, in bed reading (with coffee skipped ahead this morning) I’m reading Sensual Faith: The Art of Coming Home to Your Body by Lyvonne Briggs. I’m reading a section called ‘Surthrivors’ a term Briggs created to try and capture how she was feeling, living after male sexual violence. She felt ‘survivor’ was too flat to describe/ define her experience when she was living/doing what she loved studying theology and religion, in community with loving people and was an acclaimed spoken word and slam poet. “I wasn’t just surviving, I was thriving!” Briggs wrote, hence pointing the more accurate term, ‘Surthrivor’. I love it when we Black women bend and twist language, divest from the standard to better express/ more fully express our feelings and experiences. That’s creative fugitivity for you (thank you Dal).
Briggs goes on to talk about how she got into the ministry so she could change how the church handles sexual abuse, not very well, as there is a silence around it. Or they blame demons instead of the actually men. I’m not here to talk about male sexual abuse. I’m not her to talk about the church. I’m not a religious person. I was brought up saying my prayers. I remember a black bible, creased leather, brought from Trinidad and Tobago with my dad when he stowed away to England. This black bible sat toad-like in the teak sideboard of my childhood living room. West Indian style living room, I may add. I gave up believing in a ‘God’ when my daddy died when I was 9 years old. I’ve now come around to the idea that we are Gods/ Goddesses ourselves, inside us. I’m spiritual rather than religious. So I’m not sure why I’m reading this book.
I lie. Yes I do know why I’m reading Sensual Faith. I followed a trail to this book left by Christina Cleveland and God is a Blackwoman. But also because of the subheading of Sacred Faith: The Art of Coming Home to Your Body, is a journey I always seem to be on.
Anyway. Back to the reading this morning which went on to discuss the worship centre in a church is called the ‘sanctuary’. When you the word ‘sanctuary’, does anyone else think of Quasimodo? ‘Sanctuary, sanctuary!’
A ‘sanctuary’ is a safe or holy place. I wrote a poem titled ‘sanctuary’ and it was about my mum. My mum’s home, body, arms. When she was alive, it was her I went to for safe harbour. I didn’t realise until she was gone. It has come a way for me to practice mothering my own children, through sanctuary for them. Once my mum died, I lost who and where I could return to for safety. I lost my home, my sanctuary when she died and I suppose I’ve been searching for sanctuary ever since, looking outside myself, looking for it in others ( husband for one!)
I don’t how long I’ve been in battle with my being, with my body, chastising her for not being enough. But also for being too much. Too fat. Too broad, too Black. But over the last few years, eyes open, something has been changing or shifting within me and how I view, treat and talk to my body. . Maybe that’s where my mum did me a disservice and where I’m making amends with my kids. I’m not sure she taught me how to find sanctuary within myself, within my own body.
Monday nights I dread. Not always. Just the last few months as I complete my level 3 diploma in counselling skills. I’m not jesting that I hate turning up for this course. And I never use ‘hate’ as a word usually, always thinking it’s too strong a word for a feeling. Too final without any redeeming features. But this is where we’ve got to with this course.
And it wasn’t always the case. I could blame the dark, cold nights I have to turn up for 3 hours of lecturing and talking in an empty, sterile office block. I could blame the electric fluorescent lighting that flickers and buzzes and can give me a bad head. But I would be lying. I’m here to be wide open and honest. So here goes!
This course is taking away pieces of my soul, week after week. And I’m not ashamed to say that I have contemplated dropping out week after week, researching for alternatives. I even enrolled on a supplementary course, decolonising counselling, that would tend to all the damage this course is doing, but I had to withdraw from that due to costs and timings.
If you’ve ever studied counselling and therapy, you’ll know that everything; theories and tools and practices are all taken from dead white guys. Dead white guys acting like Gods (and I don’t mean the internal Gods I’m just mentioned). White male, usually heterosexual and middle class theorists who pontificate that they know everything about what’s happening in everybody’s mental health. They have the solutions to make us feel/ do /be better. As it’s always the individual’s fault and can be traced back to their childhood, their mother? Bullshit!
It hurts to be fed this shite every Monday. In the beginning I pushed back and attempted to decolonise the teaching, the theory, the responses. Bringing in other theorists and arguments. Being the only Black face in the class, girl has to represent.
Until we got to week 9, we were exploring different types of power within the counsellor and client relationship. Power roles within the counselling arena. After a discussion, we were being presented with a list of ‘Further key aspects of power or perceived power’. And yes the list was not an exhaustive list and things could be added, the tutor said. This list did not include ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘culture’, and I voiced it as such. My comment was laughed at and dismissed as, ‘there’s always one’.
Always one who has to comment on what’s missing from the list? Or always one who has to bring up race? Who knows! I just know how this comment made me feel. Know your audience I say or was I being put into my place? This response indicated to me that this input, which a fundamentally the way white supremacy culture wields power through the hierarchy of the races. It’s the sea that we’re swimming in and to not mention is the usual state of affairs. This interaction indicated to me that this was never going to be on this course’s agenda. Me continuing to challenge the whitewashing of counselling and therapy, me constantly remarking on the culture that we’re operating in wasn’t enlightening my fellow students or suggesting that they become more aware of their ( and my own) unconscious biases. I realised I was just creating issues where they never saw issues. Problems where there are no problems. As race and racism is only a problem when there’s a Black person in the room. It’s Black people who have an issue with race as whiteness isn’t a race, right? Whiteness is a given.
After week 9, and tonight was week 15, I’ve silenced myself. I’ve disengaged from the course, no longer contributing. I turn up and get my attendance and keep my thoughts and comments and feelings to myself. I’m not giving anything of myself anymore to the group, to the course within the face to face sessions as I’ve received the message it’s not welcome, it’s not of value, it’s not relevant. I do not intend to waste my energy and heart and soul on this experience.
This hurts me. I’m making sanctuary for myself. I’m making this experience safe for myself. I’m keeping myself safe within myself, within my body as being in that classroom is no longer safe for me. And to explain that to them, I wouldn’t bother, as they wouldn’t get it. The can’t get it and it would also involve them listening to me, and me being heard, which ain’t happening.
I’m creating sanctuary for myself, within my body and its a practice. I’m using a self-soothing approach, self-talking, loving compassionate approach when I experience something that is harming, hurting, traumatic. I’m letting myself know, like that little girl inside me who needed to be loved and kept safe, I’m stroking my own chest over my heart and saying to her, saying to myself, ‘ You are love, Sheree. I’ve got you I understand why you are feeling unsafe. But I’ve got you. You’re dafe now.” I’m mothering myself. I’m making myself safe. I’m making myself sanctuary.
I’ve been reading. When I read, I feed my wonder and imagination. When I read, I fill up with ideas and dreams and plans.
Reading expands my mind and expands my understanding of the world I navigate.
I cannot stress or emphasise enough how much my world has been rocked or even burnt down since my reading and continued reading of Fugitive Feminism by Akwugo Emejulu.
This isn’t like anything I’ve read before because it goes against everything I’ve been trying to do for the last 50 years; to prove the humanity of Black people, of myself so we can finally be accepted and loved.
But what if we’ll never be accepted? Never be accepted as human beings because who gets to claim humanity is bound up with whiteness, bound up with white supremacy culture?
What if being a human is a construct and is defined by those with the power and was never constructed to allow us, people of the global majority to be as such?
So if I claim non-human what are the possibilities for my being?
This is where I’m heading. This is the space I’m navigating now. I’m making changes from the inside out. In a cellular level this speaks truth and blessings to me. How I {BE} is changing and it includes a whole more ‘fuck offs’. Well that’s how it’s shown up my so far!
Rest is important to me after a lifetime of hustling and running on empty to be the most productive person alive. All to be loved . All to be accepted. All to be successful on somebody else’s terms.
Not anymore. Nine years ago my eyes were forced open to the system. This grind culture. White Supremacy Culture. This only getting your worth from what you do rather than who you be.
No I no longer buy into that crap.
Rest is paramount for me these days as I’ve realised I cannot fulfil all things I want to do in my pursuit of joy and purpose if I do not take my right amount of rest. If I do not stop and smell the roses and {BE}.
This summer I’m taking an extended rest and the Goddess has come visiting as a result.
The Goddess will be showing up this summer because she can. Because she’s ready. Because she has further things to teach me.
Living Wild Studios 