niaforrester

Why is Black Pain High Art?

Posted on June 8, 2019June 8, 2019 by niaforrester

Go to the African American Literary top 100 list on Amazon today. Go there any day. And I promise you, out of the top 20 books, sometimes half of them, and occasionally even more than that will be about some of the most difficult periods in Black history and contemporary Black life– enslavement, Jim Crow, incarceration, addiction. It’s all there. For some reason, Black pain is more … literary, i.e., artistic. People are winning awards for their most authentic portrayals of how we suffer and bleed. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely don’t blame the artists. I’m pretty preoccupied with Black trauma myself. I find it difficult to look away from it, and have to remind myself that that isn’t all there is to us.

Alice Walker did that, didn’t she? She said that Black people, possess the “secret of joy.” I remember buying her book ‘Possessing the Secret of Joy’ almost entirely because of that title, because it sounded both true of us, and counter-intuitive. Because of the depth of our lows, our highs are so much more heady. We revel in them, we languish in them, and we celebrate the hell out of our celebrations, grabbing our joy where we find it and holding on as tight and for as long as we can. Well, the joke was on me, because that book, too, is not about joy at all, but about enduring pain.

After an emotionally exhausting week of anticipating and then finally getting up the guts to watch Ava Duvernay’s ‘When They See Us’, I honestly don’t have the stamina to begin to truly examine what all this means — that we, too, see high art in our own pain, and render it painstakingly, and over and over again, re-traumatizing ourselves and each other. I think part of it is the artist’s essential role as town-crier, helping the rest of us to bear witness, and make sure we never forget. But I don’t know … I’m starting to wonder whether we also have another responsibility, to portray ourselves as healthy, happy and whole. Can’t that be high art, too?

That’s all I got.

Love & Light,
N.

“Loving Cassie” by Jacinta Howard

Posted on June 8, 2019June 8, 2019 by niaforrester

Settle in, folks. This is going to be a long one. I am ridiculously excited about this release. Jacinta Howard is one of my favorite authors. And I’ll tell you why in a minute, but let me just start with my review of ‘Loving Cassie’ .
This book, like all this author’s books, has a mood and rhythm all its own, that reminds me of the music that her characters in The Prototype Series create—deep, soulful, incredibly memorable. And Bam and Cassie’s story continues that trend.

Bam is the percussionist in the soul band The Prototype, who we met in previous novels as the loveable comic relief, the counterpoint to all of the angst that seems to swirl around his friends. But in this story, his story, we learn that Bam is just as focused on his craft as the other members
of the band, just as steadfast underneath all the jokes. Like his bandmates, he also has some pretty complicated stuff to contend with, including the difficult family histories or distant parents that seem to typify the experience of almost all the band members in one way or another. The members of The Prototype understand each other in ways that their families of birth don’t always understand them, and Bam’s experience is no different.

Still, despite his frivolous façade, Bam actually has things pretty well under control—he has a lover who he enjoys, and who enjoys him, and who understands his limits where commitment of time and emotion are concerned; and he has a fatalistic attitude about his distant relationship with his mother, and his almost non-existent one with his father. He doesn’t agonize about much of anything, he just gets on with it, recognizing that if he puts the time and work in with the band, he’s going to wind up in a different place from where he is now as a struggling college student.

As an aside, I never hesitate to say this about Jacinta Howard’s characters: they are not frivolous. Young, yes, but frivolous, no. And I don’t mean they don’t display frivolity in their behavior, what I mean is, as an author Howard respects them, even though they’re young. Their feelings, experiences and aspirations are not portrayed in a way that’s too … cute, or too precious. The significance of their story is never minimized because they’re just on the cusp of embarking on more adult lives. Some writers write new adult characters with a tone that’s almost glib, as though they’re patting them on the head and going, ‘Isn’t that sweet? You think you’re in love!’ or, ‘Aw! You crazy kids!’ With that approach, you feel the writer’s outsider perspective in their tone and so what should be earnest comes across as disingenuous. Jacinta Howard doesn’t do that. She pulls you back to that time in your life, if you’ve already passed it; or she roots you in it, if you’re currently there. She empathizes with her characters in a way that is clearly genuine.

Back to the review: so Bam is, despite the joking around, a young man on very firm footing. Knows who he is, and where he’s going. Enter Cassie, his bandmate Kennedy’s (from ‘Finding Kennedy’) somewhat flighty sister, who is like a whirlwind in more ways than one. She’s rebounding from the end of a long relationship and doing her “free Black girl” thing, rolling where the wind takes her and trying to temper her penchant for occasionally causing “drama.” This time, she tells herself, she’s going to straighten out, starting with putting a codependent relationship behind her. But … then comes (as Cassie later reflects on their connection): Bam:A sudden impact or occurrence.

Together, she and he are combustible, something neither of them wants, but both are powerless to resist. Their respective plans, resolutions and routines are up-ended by their connection. Bam has to learn to deal with Cassie’s changeable, volatile and unpredictable nature; and she must learn to trust that Bam’s steadfastness is not a mirage, and that he will not fail her. What one has, the other lacks, but together, there is balance. Watching them go through the process of trying to reach balance was fun, nerve-wracking in a way only passionate people can be, and all kinds of sexy. That’s all I’m gonna say, other than READ THE BOOK.

Back to why I love this author. I feel like she’s not just entertaining us, but documenting a time. A kind of revolution in Black creativity. I feel like we lost it for a while behind a focus on flashy commercialism, but things are changing and Black creatives are more mindful of their place in our story. For sure, there have always been young Black artists who are in it for the artistry, and not for the glory. We don’t hear about them much, because … again, they’re not in it for the glory. Still, far fewer books—especially contemporary relationship-focused fiction, or romance—look at the grit, the struggle, the sacrifice, the determination and the pure love of an art (in this case, music) in
the way Jacinta Howard does. And fewer still allude to the existence of a quiet tribe of young Black creatives who do it #ForTheCulture; the ones for whom,maybe the fame comes, maybe it doesn’t, but they press on because the work itself has inherent value. I feel like that about this author’s work. I know that out there, there’s a reader who wants to see a dimension of us that’s not as frequently portrayed in modern Black romance. So I think it’s pretty cool that Jacinta Howard is giving us other stories, not as frequently told stories about Black people, Black love, and Black art. You know … for the culture.

Early Morning

Posted on June 8, 2019June 8, 2019 by niaforrester

Ibrahim’s eyes open around four in the morning, as always. He sits up, and next to him, Jada mumbles in her sleep, turning over onto her side and away from him. Lowering his feet to the floor, he slips out of the room and into the hallway. He showers then dresses quietly in the next room, not wanting to wake his wife. When he leaves the house, it is still dark outside. He shoves open the front gate and steps onto the sidewalk, and his mind is drawn to his son, about an hour away.

Kaleem will be already be up and training with his coach. It is mere weeks from the 2020 Olympic Trials and the pressure is up, especially since now Kaleem is a father—and Ibrahim a grandfather—to a six-month-old baby boy.

His name is Anwar.

It means, ‘light’, Kaleem explained, his voice filled with pride. Anwar Ibrahim Carter.

And Ibrahim smiled.

Anwar looks like both his parents. His complexion, currently that of a lightly-roasted peanut, will ripen slightly to a richer, darker hue, but his eyes are the same hazel as those of his mother, Asha, with her dense, spiky eyelashes. Anwar has her disposition as well. He is often still, smiles easily, and is content to lie quietly in his crib or play alone. Occasionally he gurgles to himself, or bursts into loud, high-pitched shrieks as if testing to make sure he still has a voice in this world. He rarely cries. His nose, his lips, his ears are Kaleem’s, and he reminds Ibrahim of what his son looked like as an infant.

Like I spat him out, Kaleem likes to say when he picks Anwar up, holding him above his head like Mufasa did Simba in ‘The Lion King’. We gotta make some more, babe. Two more. Or three. Let’s make three more just like this one.

Whenever he does this, and says this, Asha rolls her eyes but Ibrahim can see the deep feeling in them, and the indulgence. Kaleem will no doubt get three more babies out of that girl. He will get whatever he wants.

About two months after Anwar was born, Ibrahim spent a weekend with his son and daughter-in-law. In the morning, when Kaleem woke up to run, Asha was up as well, and breastfed their son, sitting on the sofa next to him while Kaleem put his runners on and prepared to leave the house. Walking in on the moment, Ibrahim apologized and retreated to the second bedroom listening to their voices trailing behind him.

Kaleem and Asha talk all the time, their apartment filled with the sound of their voices, of them narrating to each other details of their days and the hours they were apart.

Bruh peeled out of the parking lot at like, ninety, I’m tellin’ you …

… She is the meanest teacher in the whole school, and I kind of hope they fire her before I get back … I guess that makes me mean?

I was so high offa that run, babe, I almost jumped over the car instead of getting into it …

… Wonder if I’ll always have this little pooch now. Will you still love me if I’m fat?

Kaleem makes Asha laugh, and when Ibrahim looks at her with his son, he sees a light in Kaleem’s eyes that no one else—except now, Anwar—can ignite with the same ease.

Ibrahim found himself wishing that he and his wife talked as much. They used to, but not now. Now, there is often silence in their house.

When he first came home, they talked. Well into the night, and for weeks afterwards, they had long, winding conversations and frantic bouts of spontaneous lovemaking. But that, too, has slowed and almost stopped.

The very first time he touched Jada, after he came home from prison, Ibrahim was hesitant, slow, and embarrassed that his hands trembled. He was afraid of the strength of his need, and that he might hurt her. Jada was patient, and kept saying that it was okay, that he could go slow, that it was okay … okay … okay.

Her saying that had an effect that was opposite of what she probably intended. He was not reassured. It made him worry that prison had not only stripped them of their easy intimacy, but of her belief that he could please her as a man. And if she doubted his manhood, he wasn’t sure what he had left.

They managed it that night, though the first time had been fast, and no doubt unsatisfactory for her. He waited until he was ready again, and the second time had been better, but still, not good enough. He wanted to try again, but Jada said it was okay … okay … okay. And so he just held her until she fell asleep.

He did not sleep as easily. Or, really, at all, until early the next morning after he was finally able to make her pant and perspire and moan out his name the way she used to before his own foolish actions and the State of California had splintered his family, and separated him from his wife.

Making his way down the block to Free Range, the newest hipster café in the neighborhood, Ibrahim notes that the streets are quiet, deserted, and clean. All the gangbangers are gone these days and in their place are signs on almost every block about city council meetings, and block parties, farmers’ markets and garage sales. Free Range is open twenty-four hours because the couple who owns it, lives in the upper level and have a rotating cast of characters who staff it around the clock. They are young, this couple, and friendly, and fair-haired and perpetually suntanned. The dude wears flip flops all the time no matter his attire, and occasionally he wears skirts, which bear Polynesian prints.

It’s called an ie lavalava, he told Ibrahim when he caught him looking.

And then he launched into a soliloquy about how he didn’t really buy into the whole “gender binary thing” especially when it came to something as meaningless as the garments one put on their body.

That’s cool, Ibrahim told him, though really he was just hoping he would stop talking.

His name is Martin, and his partner’s name is Thea. That’s what he calls her, his “partner.” Funny, the changes in meaning that words have gone through in Ibrahim’s lifetime. While he was in prison, ‘partner’ also came to mean ‘life partner’ or ‘domestic partner.’ Apparently heterosexual people used those terms now as well and it wasn’t just the inadequate subsitute that gay people had to adopt when they couldn’t get married.

Though the streets are quiet, and it would be an ideal morning for it, Ibrahim no longer runs as often. He lost the habit when he was in prison, and afterward, found that he did not enjoy it as much as he used to. When he started, many years ago, it was because it gave him an outlet for the urge he had to move, to get things moving, to get ahead. Now, he has a different impulse – to sit still, to contemplate, to enjoy details, and to appreciate. He is not as hungry as he once was. This lack of hunger and the absence of a fire in his belly concerns him.

Sometimes, he still runs with Kaleem; though not lately now that his son has had to train harder. Now, Kaleem can run circles around him.

“Mr. Carter!”

Ibrahim approaches Free Range and finds the front door open, and Thea on her knees wiping the glass with a cheesecloth, holding a bottle of organic cleaner.

She stands upright and smiles at him, wiping her hands on the thighs of her jeans and setting aside the cleaning tools to take one of his hands in both of hers. She does a little bow when she greets him, a habit she says she picked up in India, where she once lived on an ashram.

Although he is aware she’s a cliché, Ibrahim likes her. She has that kind of blonde hair that always looks frizzy and dry, and out of control that she doesn’t do much with, except pull it back with a scarf once in a while. Stray strands are always wafting out of nowhere into her greenish eyes, upon which she will swat them away impatiently. She reminds Ibrahim of someone. He can’t remember who.

There is no one else in sight, either inside the café, or on the street. Ibrahim wonders at Thea’s comfort being this alone with him, a tall, brawny Black man. Over the years, Ibrahim met a few white kids like this—the ones in whose eyes he detected no awareness of his being different from them. The ones who he believed truly did not attach any consequence to him being Black and them being white. To whom their difference was a matter of descriptive significance only.

Obama Babies was how Ibrahim thought of them – young people who were in middle school when the Black President was elected, and who grew up in uber-liberal enclaves where it was so accepted it didn’t even merit discussion. Some of those young, white Obama Babies used to come into San Quentin as volunteers. Some of them looked truly surprised at what prison was like. Some of them even cried while they were there, or as they left. Many of them didn’t come back.

“Lemme guess,” Thea says. “Spinach omelet with egg whites only.”

“You got it.” Ibrahim nods. “I’ll help out while you’re doing that … put these …” He indicates the umbrellas for the outdoor seating, still folded, and stacked in a corner.

“Yeah, thanks. That’d be cool. It’s going to be a real scorcher today, apparently.”

While Thea goes in to make his breakfast, Ibrahim unfolds the umbrellas one by one and chooses a place to sit. When he sits, he takes the time to look around and sees that the neighborhood is still quiet. He realizes that he has left his phone at home. Having a cell phone with him all the time is something he still hasn’t become accustomed to, so he often leaves it places.

You can’t do that, Ibrahim! Jada said to him once, when she returned from work and found his phone sitting on the entryway table.

He discovered her sitting on the sofa, his phone clutched tightly in both her hands, still wearing her scrubs from work, eyes rimmed in red.

I didn’t know what to think! she continued, her eyes still a little wild.

You should think I forgot my phone, he told her, calmly.

And then she dropped it to the carpeted floor beneath her feet, put her face in her hands and began to cry.

It was like that at first, after he came out. Like she wasn’t sure she knew him anymore, and didn’t know what to expect. It stung that she thought there was any scenario, any circumstance that would have him walking out on her without even a word. Walking out on her at all. Before prison, she knew that there was no way he would ever leave her unless he didn’t have a choice. Now, he was constantly reassuring her and she was constantly reassuring him when before, no reassurance was necessary.

When Jada works a long shift, as she did last night, his wakefulness unsettles her and that is why Ibrahim leaves the house. She sleeps better, he thinks, when he is not there. And yet, paradoxically, his absence also makes her uneasy.

“Here we go!”

Thea returns, bearing a tray, but on it are three plates. One with Ibrahim’s omelet, another with scrambled egg whites and avocado, and another with whole grain toast. There is also a decorative teapot, and two teacups.

“Do you mind if I join you?” Thea asks.

“Of course not. Please.” Ibrahim gives a brief nod.

Thea sits in the chair opposite him. She has pulled her hair back more securely, and is now wearing sunglasses atop her head. She pours them tea.

Ibrahim smiles at her and then shuts his eyes to say a brief, silent blessing over their meal. When he opens them, Thea is staring at him.

“Were you praying?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“To whom?” Thea’s head falls to one side.

Ibrahim’s eyebrows involuntarily lift.

“I mean … what religion are you?” she amends.

“I believe in the existence of the Divine, the Most Holy.”

Thea smiles. “That’s not really an answer though, is it?”

Ibrahim shrugs.

“I don’t believe in God,” Thea says conversationally.

“No?”

“No.” Thea picks up her fork. “The world is just a random, violent place. And we have to take from it whatever joy we can find.”

Staring at her for a moment, Ibrahim feels a sudden sadness.

“You’re really young to have such a grim outlook,” he said.

“You don’t think it’s random and violent?” Thea asks. “The world?”

“Sometimes violent. But not random.”

“If you really believe that, Mr. Carter, then you must have been a lucky, lucky man.”

“Ibrahim,” he says. “Please. Call me Ibrahim.”

‘Loving Cassie’ by Jacinta Howard

Posted on May 24, 2019May 23, 2019 by niaforrester

About the book:

Cassandra James thinks she has her place in the world all figured out. But an unexpected betrayal forces her to ask if her “free black girl” vibe is a myth, or worse, a mask to hide herself from the world.

Bam Mosley, keyboardist for the alt-soul band, the Prototype, knows who he is. He just wants to make good music and see the people he cares about win.

Then he meets her.

Sure, Cassandra is gorgeous and smart, with hypnotic eyes, but his bandmate’s sister wasn’t supposed to be this…disruptive and break down all his defenses.

She sees what he hides from everyone else. He allows her to take off her mask.

But is their connection powerful enough to survive life’s low notes? Or maybe the true test of love is knowing when to let go…

AVAILABLE ON:

AMAZON | FREE ON KINDLE UNLIMITED

___________________________________________________________

NIA’s REVIEW OF ‘LOVING CASSIE’

This book, like all this author’s books, has a mood and rhythm all its own, that reminds me of the music that her characters in The Prototype Series create—deep, soulful, incredibly memorable. And Bam and Cassie’s story continues that trend. Bam is the percussionist in the soul band The Prototype, who we met in previous novels as the loveable, comic relief, the counterpoint to all of the angst that seems to swirl around his friends. But in this story, his story, we learn that Bam is just as focused on his craft as the other members of the band, just as steadfast underneath all the jokes. Like his bandmates, he also has some pretty complicated stuff to contend with, including the difficult family histories or distant parents that seem to typify the experience of almost all the band members in one way or another. The members of The Prototype understand each other in ways that their families of birth don’t always understand them, and Bam’s experience is no different.

Still despite his frivolous façade, Bam actually has things pretty well under control—he has a lover who he enjoys, and who enjoys him, and who understands his limits where commitment of time and emotion are concerned; and he has a fatalistic attitude about his distant relationship with his mother, and his almost non-existent one with his father. He doesn’t agonize about much of anything, he just gets on with it, recognizing that if he puts the time and work in with the band, he’s going to wind up in a different place from where he is now as a struggling college student.

Now, back to why I love this author. I feel like she’s not just entertaining us, but documenting a time. A kind of revolution in Black creativity. I feel like we lost it for a while behind a focus on flashy commercialism, but things are changing and Black creatives are more mindful of their place in our story. For sure, there have always been young Black artists who are in it for the artistry, and not for the glory. We don’t hear about them much, because … again, they’re not in it for the glory. In the past decade we’ve heard more about stars, and glamor and bling … and a fair amount of contemporary romance focuses on that as well. But the tide is shifting. Even the biggest commercially successful female performer on the planet is beginning to lead with a mindfulness of her place in the cycle and history of Black artistic expression. Still, far fewer books—especially contemporary relationship-focused fiction, or romance—look at the grit, the struggle, the sacrifice, the determination and the pure love of an art (in this case, music) in the way Jacinta Howard does. And fewer still allude to the existence of a quiet tribe of young Black creatives who do it #ForTheCulture; the ones for whom, maybe the fame comes, maybe it doesn’t, but they press on because the work itself has inherent value.

I feel like that about this author’s work. I know that out there, there’s a reader who wants to see a dimension of us that’s not as frequently portrayed in modern Black romance. So I think it’s pretty cool that Jacinta Howard is giving us other stories, not as frequently told stories about Black people, Black love, and Black art. You know … for the culture.

ABOUT JACINTA HOWARD

A longtime journalist and lifelong music lover, Jacinta Howard lives in the Atlanta area. She is the author of new adult, women’s fiction, and contemporary romance, a USA TODAY HEA Must-Read Author and a two-time RONE Award nominee.

AUTHOR SITE | FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | PINTEREST | BOOKBUB |GOODREADS | AUTHOR AMAZON PAGE | NEWSLETTER

SAMPLE: ‘In Black & White’

Posted on May 1, 2019 by niaforrester

About ‘In Black & White’

The abduction of their daughter and the resulting fallout from the public, their friends and families force a couple to face some difficult truths about their views on love, marriage, race, and to question whether they ever really knew each other at all.

Chapter 1.

This is How I Lost You

There is a bird sitting in the tree beneath which the Audi is parked, and just as I am opening the rear passenger door to put Samara inside, it craps on the roof, and then begins to sing, a full-throated melody as if in triumph.

I mutter a curse. I just got the darn thing washed the day before, after a long winter when the effects of snow and salt and mud were all too apparent, making my luxury SUV look more like a work truck. We live in a neighborhood where people judge you for things like that, and one where Samara and I remain somewhat of a curiosity. It is very much a two-parent family community, and most of the children are tweens or teens. Only one couple on our block has kids near Samara’s age, and they are, I think, three- and five-years-old to Samara’s eighteen months.

As I strap her into her car seat, she smiles up at me, and says, “Juice?”

Her tone is mildly inquisitive, and fully expectant that I will be able to supply what she has asked for.

I look at the diaper bag next to her on the seat and my shoulders sag when I realize I’ve left her cup inside.

“When we get to grandma’s,” I say.

“Juice!” Samara insists. Her face crumples the way it does when she is getting worked up to deliver a scream.

“Mama will get you juice,” I promise. “Just as soon as we get to grandma’s.”

She stretches out in the car seat in that way she has, making her body as straight and stiff as a board and I can already picture how this will go. I will get into the driver’s seat and shut the door, she will realize that there is no juice forthcoming, and will have an epic meltdown lasting the entire drive to Noah’s mother’s house. And I will, once again, deliver to my disapproving mother-in-law, a purple-faced, snotty-nosed, hollering child.

“Samara, please,” I say, putting the back of a hand against my forehead. “Not this morning. I …”

“Juice!” she says yet again.

I realize I am trying to reason with someone who is inherently unreasonable and take a deep breath, shutting my eyes momentarily. I reach to unfasten her from the car seat and then exhale again. Instead, I smile at her.

“Just a moment, okay? Momma’s going to get you your juice.”

I make sure I have the fob in hand, shut the door with Samara inside and engage the locks. I have a moment’s pause, but only a moment. I look up and down the tree-lined block, then make a mad dash back toward the house, glancing over my shoulder while I unlock the front door, and again when I pause at the panel that will disarm the home security system.

I run back to the kitchen and spot right away Samara’s juice cup sitting on the center island. Grabbing it, I turn and trip over one of her toys, a little supermarket cart, filled with plastic fruit and vegetables, and little boxes printed with pictures to make them look like the real ones of breakfast cereal, rice, and other dried goods.

“Shit!” I yell as my right knee crashes painfully against the travertine floor, and the top snaps off the cup of juice, sending a puddle of apple juice across the floor along with the mass of fake groceries.

I right myself almost immediately and check my pants and top. Thankfully, the juice is only on the floor and not on me. I take a deep breath, blink back the reflexive tears that rise to my eyes from the sharp pain in my knee and half-walk, half-limp over to the sink. I quickly rinse the cup then go to the fridge and refill it.

Kicking aside some of the toys and stepping over others, I head for the front door then remember my keys. Grabbing them, avoiding the pool of apple juice that will no doubt be a sticky mess when I return home that evening, I finally head out. I consider leaving without rearming the security system, but then decide that I must. These tiny omissions, because of the fear of a minor inconvenience are what lead to later regret, I remind myself. I shut the door, only for as long as it takes to enter the code to arm all the entry points to the house.

Finally, I am walking down the cobblestone path from the front door and back to the Audi. I am only a few feet away when I realize I can’t see the top of Samara’s head with the ash-blonde curls. I move faster. I think only that she has managed to unfasten herself from the car seat. Kids are smart, and at her age, little sponges. Having seen me do it a million times, she has probably figured out how to do it on her own.

All these thoughts go through my mind in the mere seconds it takes me to get to the car. All these thoughts immediately disappear, replaced by other more panicked ones when I get to the car and realize that Samara is not inside.

I drop the juice cup, and grab the door handle, tugging frantically at it and not understanding why it won’t open. It is locked. For a moment, I don’t know what the keys in my hand are for. I look at them, uncomprehending. I hear nothing except for the blood rushing in my ears, feel nothing except for my heart crashing in my chest. I yank the door one last time, then remember … I use the fob to disengage the locks then practically dive into the backseat.

Samara is gone.

Her car seat is empty.

I look—irrationally—under the seats, and in the front, down at the passenger and driver’s side floorboards. She isn’t here! How could she not be here?

My mind seems to splinter like that of a panicked animal. My hands are shaking uncontrollably. I get out of the car and look under it. I look up and down the street. And then, I begin to scream her name, over and over again. I am still screaming her name when one of my neighbors comes out of her house.

I don’t know her, but she is holding a coffee mug and wearing a summer suit. Her blue eyes are wide in alarm. She can tell from the sound of my screams that I am not just calling to my child in the way that parents often do to get them to come. Her expression, which I register dimly, tells me that she knows right away that something very, very bad has happened.

∞∞∞

I am sitting on the sofa in the living room and the house is crawling with uniformed officers when Noah arrives. Next to me is the neighbor lady whose name I should know since she told it to me at some point. But it flitted immediately out of my head, and I would not be able to retrieve it if my life depended on it. She is holding my hand and I am digging my fingernails into her palms though she doesn’t complain.

I have stopped making any sound, at least outwardly, but inside my soul is screaming like a banshee. Standing over me, is Detective Lewis. I retained his name, because he is important. He is the man who I need to believe will find my baby.

“Dana!”

Noah’s suit-jacket is still on, but his tie looks askew, like he’s tugged at it. His tan face is drawn into a worried and horrified scowl. His sandy hair—always rakishly long in front—is disheveled.

“Dana!” he says again, shoving past the detective. “What … what … where’s Samara? Where’s …”

“Mr. Farris?”

The detective steps between us. He looks Noah over.

I see his eyes taking it all in—Noah’s thirtysomething all-American blonde and athletic good looks, and his frantic, frightened blue eyes. If he is at all surprised that we are an interracial couple, it is not apparent in Detective Lewis’ eyes. He probably guessed as much when he looked at the picture of my blonde-haired girl with a complexion that is light desert-sand, in contrast to my much tawnier brown.

“Yes.” Noah looks at the detective impatiently, then back at me. “Dana …”

The neighbor lady releases my hand, and though I am not looking at her, I can sense her watchfulness. I can almost feel her holding her breath, waiting for what comes next.

“Noah,” I say, reaching for him. “She’s … she’s gone.”

My face begins to crumple just as his does. But instead of crying, he raises his voice.

“What do you mean?” he demands, grabbing me by the shoulders. “What do you mean?”

“I went … She was in the car, and …”

“Mr. Farris …”

Detective Lewis tries to interject, but Noah is shaking me now, and I am flopping backward and forward as he does, unresisting. Someone pulls us apart, and I don’t see Noah because I am sobbing and looking down.

“Mr. Farris.” The detective is speaking again. “It appears … Your daughter is missing, and at least right now it appears as though she may have been abducted.”

“How could that have happened?” Noah’s voice is lower now, but not by much. “Dana! How the fuck …?”

“Your ex-wife was inside when …”

I look up, and Noah is staring at me in horror.

“How could you have been … Where was Samara when you were inside, Dana?”

“Your daughter was in the car,” Detective Lewis answers for me.

“In the car?” Noah repeats the words as though he’ll need someone to translate them for him.

“Mr. Farris.” There is stony emphasis in the detective’s tone. “If we’re to find your daughter, I’m going to need both you and your wife to answer some questions for me.”

Noah finally tears his accusing gaze from me. His face is almost blood-orange. I hear him breathing, labored and uneven breaths.

“What … what do you need to know?” he manages.

“You and your ex-wife have been …”

“My wife,” Noah says. “We’re just … we’re separated, not divorced.”

“Your wife. Yes. You’ve been living apart for how long now?”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” Noah asks, looking pained. He glances at me again.

“I told him six months,” I offer.

“Six months, yes. Six months,” Noah says.

He glances up as a uniformed officer walks by, his radio squawking.

“What’re they looking for? Why are they even here, when Samara …?”

His voice cracks, and my heart does as well. He looks at me. His eyes are brimming with a look of betrayal.

“Dana,” he says, his face crumpling again. “You lost her? How could you do … how could you lose her?”

Chapter 2.

Focus

The clock across the room reads just past nine a.m., but I’m not sure how that could be. It seems like mere minutes ago, I was getting Samara ready to take her to her grandmother’s house. I was singing to her as I pulled on her pink-and-white romper, the one that has snaps along the inside seams of the legs, making it easier to change her. Noah’s mother bought that romper. I picked it out this morning because she bought it, and I was trying to curry favor with her by bringing over her grandchild dressed in one of her gifts. Currying favor with Noah’s mother, Suzanne has become a mission of mine lately, ever since the separation.

“Mrs. Farris.”

I look up, numbly. Detective Lewis is staring at me. He has asked me something. I can’t remember what it might be.

“What Samara was wearing …” he prompts.

“Oh.” My voice sounds wooden. “Pink. A pink-and-white romper. A white t-shirt underneath.”

I think he has asked me this before, but I can’t be certain. He must have asked it. Because hours have passed since …

Hours.

My eyes fill with tears again, but I blink them away, knowing that if I give in to crying, I will be useless. And I can’t be useless. I need to focus so I can help them find her.

“Are you sure?” Detective Lewis says. “That that’s what she was wearing?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you sure?”

At that, I study his face. He is about eight or ten years older than I am, I think. Maybe forty or so. He has lines bracketing his full mouth, the lips a little dark, like someone who smokes or used to. He has the solid body of a man who plays a sport on weekends or works out. I notice things like this about people, I remember details.

“I remember details,” I say aloud.

“Pardon me?” The detective leans in.

I didn’t intend to say it aloud.

He is sitting on the ottoman, directly across from me, his knees up high, because the ottoman is almost comically low to the ground for a man his height, which I estimate at six-three.

“I said … I’m the kind of person who remembers details,” I say, and clear my throat.

“Good. That’s good,” he says. “Because we’re going to need that. For instance, locking the car. You said you’re sure you locked the car?”

This I do remember him asking me before. At least twice. He spread it around, asking other questions in between. But he keeps returning to that.

“I’m sure,” I say. “I wouldn’t have left her there without locking …” My voice breaks. “I’m sure.”

Detective Lewis nods as though this has settled the matter, but I know it has not. He will ask this question again. Or maybe his partner will. I assume she’s his partner, the woman in the boxy suit who arrived about an hour after he did, and who has hung back almost the entire time she’s been here.

She’s Black, about fifty or so. Slender, with a narrow, mean face, short-cut hair. I feel like she’s judging me. Judging, and assessing. The assessing, I don’t mind because it’s her job, to see whether I might be hiding something, or am acting suspiciously, whatever that might mean in circumstances like this. But the judging makes me uncomfortable.

I imagine she has taken in my luxury SUV, my luxury home, my nice clothes, my handsome husband, and made judgments about my entire life, lived in the comfort of this leafy suburb. I imagine she is inwardly curling her lip with disgust at a woman who has so much, and would risk the most precious thing of all—her child—by leaving her outside in the car while she went inside to dawdle over God-knows-what.

“Well, given that,” Detective Lewis says. “Given your attention to detail, I mean. It’s surprising that you forgot the juice inside, isn’t it?”

I sit up a little straighter, sensing that I may later remember this moment, perhaps as the moment things took a subtle turn.

“It … today was different,” I say, swallowing hard.

Even as I speak, it enters my mind that somewhere out there, Samara will be crying. Looking around and not knowing where she is, or who the person, or people are who she is with. She will be screaming and crying, and her little face will go purple with distress, or with … terror. Is she in a car? Being carried even farther away, even as I sit here? I try to tamp down the panic I begin to feel, the resurgence of the hysteria with which I first greeted the sight of my empty car.

“Why was today different?”

This he hasn’t asked me before.

“I was trying to get to an appointment,” I say.

“What appointment?” He glances at the mean-faced woman, and she takes out a notepad, and begins to write.

“With … I was going to see my lawyer.”

Detective Lewis lets the words hang there for a moment.

“Why were you going to see your lawyer, Dana? Can I call you Dana?” His voice is lower now, sympathetic. I’ve seen enough detective shows to know that he is cultivating rapport, trying to get me to open up further.

Jesus Christ! I want to yell. You don’t have to do that. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Just find my baby!

“Is … are other officers out looki…”

“Of course, they are,” the detective says with a kind smile. “About a dozen other things are happening while we sit here, Dana. And all of them focused on the same goal—getting Samara home to you.”

At the sound of her name, my face crumples and I make a sound in my throat, and feel something like a hand gripping it, and squeezing, and squeezing as though it will steal my ability to take another breath.

“We’re working very hard on that,” Detective Lewis says, touching my knee briefly. “And I just need you to fill in some things. So, you were saying that you had an appointment with your lawyer. What was that about, that appointment?”

“Noah and I are separated,” I say.

The detective nods.

“I was going to see, to hear what my options … I was going to have some questions answered about maybe filing for divorce.”

Detective Lewis’ partner doesn’t quite move when I say that, but her stillness is different. It alters in some hard to pinpoint way.

“What’s your name?” I ask her.

My voice sounds like that of a child. Shy, but inquisitive.

She looks at me evenly.

“Nelson,” she says. Her voice is unexpectedly soft, and feminine, despite the mean face. “Detective Nelson.”

I nod.

“Dana?” Detective Lewis is calling my attention back to him. “You said you went to your lawyer to see about filing for divorce …”

“No.” I shake my head. “To see what my options are. In case I need … in case I want to.”

“Why would you need to file for divorce?”

It seems the handsome detective also pays attention to detail. My choice of words and the quick correction did not go unnoticed.

“I don’t,” I say quickly. “I meant in case I wanted to.”

“In the other room.” Detective Lewis leans in. “Someone else is talking to your husband. If you’re more comfortable talking about this elsewhere …”

“Like where?”

“We could go down to the district, and …”

“No,” I say quickly.

If I leave, and especially if I leave to go to a police station, it will mean that this is a … case, something that could go on longer than the length of this day. Something serious.

Ridiculously, there is part of me that doesn’t want to accept that it is. Samara is gone, and deep inside, I am still hoping there has been some kind of misunderstanding, though I cannot fathom what that might be. All benign alternatives disappeared the moment I opened the door to the SUV and saw that she was not in it.

“Is there a reason you would need a divorce?” the detective asks again.

He leans in closer, and I get a whiff of a cologne that is pleasant, earthy. Noah only likes colognes that don’t smell like cologne. I am unaccustomed to this scent and it makes my nostrils flare, as though reaching for more of it.

None of that pretty-boy crap, I remember Noah saying once about scents, though he is very much a pretty-boy himself.

“Not … no, not need,” I say.

“Then what did you mean when you …?”

“I don’t understand why you’re asking me this,” I say. “What does it have to do with …?”

“If perhaps there’s a reason you need to get out of your marriage, then that might suggest that …”

“We’ve answered enough questions about our marriage.” Noah comes striding into the room. His hair is even more disheveled, his shirt a little crumpled.

“Isn’t it time,” he demands, “you get the fuck out there and find our daughter?”

Detective Lewis and Nelson turn at the same time, and I see what they see. I see what Noah cannot, and would not, even if I explained it to him.

They see a tall, blonde man who is accustomed to being in charge of things, or having people do what he tells them to do, because he is tall, because he is blonde, because he is the handsome, American ideal. They see arrogance.

I know that this is not arrogance. It is Noah, terrified. But I also know they see not just that—or not that at all—but entitlement. That is what they see in his steely blue eyes–the firm belief that it is his right to order around the lowly civil servants, and they must jump when he tells them to.

Detective Lewis looks unfazed by this outburst. He’s likely heard much worse.

“That’s what we’re trying to do, Mr. Farris,” he says. He stands. He is slightly taller than Noah. I feel him exerting dominance over the room. “But we need to cover all bases, and …”

“Let me save you some time,” Noah says, gritting his teeth. “Dana and I are not in a custody fight over Samara. Nor would we ever be. I didn’t kidnap her because my wife is divorcing me. And my wife didn’t stage a kidnapping to keep Samara away from me. This separation is temporary, and we are not getting a divorce.”

I freeze at that last sentence. Not because it was said, but because it is so patently untrue.

I didn’t tell the detective so, because I am only just beginning to face it myself and cannot say it aloud, but Noah and I are absolutely getting a divorce.

He cheated on me in the last few months of my pregnancy, and during the first few months after our daughter’s birth. He cheated and continued cheating even after watching me labor to push our child out of my body. So, as far as I’m concerned, our separation is not temporary, and we absolutely are getting a divorce.

Reflections from the 1st Annual National Antiracist Book Festival

Posted on May 1, 2019 by niaforrester

This past weekend I went to a book festival. Not that unusual for me. I like book festivals, and whenever there’s one I can make it to, I go. And if there isn’t, I make my own by buying way too many books. Being surrounded by the written word, the people who write it, and the people who read it is one of my favorite things to do. But this one was different. It was the National Antiracist Book Festival, being held at the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in Washington DC.

The fact that I was going with two cool women sweetened the deal, but I have to admit, I’ve been in a funk recently at my unwelcome sense of grievance about the resurgence of virulent and often violent racism. I imagined an ‘antiracist’ book festival would be much too heavy for a Saturday afternoon, and would only feed my not-entirely-positive outlook because I would be in a space with similarly aggrieved people. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The thing is, I should be one of the least aggrieved Black people in America. I grew up in a majority Black nation and can honestly say that I never for one solitary moment harbored suspicions of my own inferiority to any other race. The American Civil Rights Movement was largely of academic interest, and American bigotry was a curiosity and little more. Bigotry, to me, was an affliction carried by the bigot and touched me not at all.

And then I moved to the States when I was seventeen and though I remained largely unscathed I had a slow, sad education about so-called “equality” in America. Some of it I learned it through names like Yusuf Hawkins, Amadou Diallo, and Rodney King. Every year there was a new name. I listened as Black boys-barely-turned-men who I knew well, and some of whom I loved spoke matter-of-factly about their dread and distrust of law enforcement. And finally—as is a rite of passage for most Black folks—had a few of my own perplexing and nerve-wracking run-ins with cops just because of where I was, who I was with and yeah, I really do think because of the color of my skin, and that of my companions.

“So much of the national dialogue about race deals with either terrible trauma or black excellence. I was more interested in the space in between, because that’s where I exist.”
Damon Young, author of ‘What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays’

But by and large, I believed there were ways to channel those experiences into something positive, and through activism, allyship and advocacy, there was change to be made. We just had to “do the work”, right? Over the last few years, I’ve lost much of my faith in advocacy, no longer believe in allyship, and am pretty much low-key enraged about racism all the time.

So yeah. An Antiracist Book Festival could have been either the best place for me to be, or the absolute worst. Thank God, it turned out to be the former. My friends and I only had time for two sessions. I went to On Poverty which featured Damon Young and D Watkins, moderated by Vann R. Newkirk. Damon Young is very much, as advertised, a Very Smart Brotha, as were the other two men on the panel. Apart from the gems they were dropping just about every other sentence, I was just enriched by the way they spoke. Like they were talking to family; like we the audience were “in this thing together” with them, and instinctively understood every emotion, and experience they described. And it was true. There were mm hms and finger snaps and head-nodding aplenty.

The room (and as far as I could tell, the entire book festival) was mostly Black. Damon and D Watkins talked about everything from how Black writers can shed their inclination to use language suitable for majority (i.e. white) consumption; to Blackness becoming performative as you rise in socio-economic status. Think about that: Blackness as performative. That’s some deep shit. What that refers to is that insidious process where we strip ourselves of Our culture to assimilate, such that markers of Our culture become a kind of performance. We “Black it up” around Black people when we come up because we need to reassure them we’re not too far gone; or we “dial down the Blackness” around white people because sometimes it’s just more expedient that way, or we maybe we would rather just show them the mask than expose our complete, authentic selves. We perform Blackness, gauging how much of it to exhibit based on our audience. Like … yo … tell me that isn’t a thing.

The second session I went to was DeRay McKesson, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton and Wesley Lowery On White Supremacy. Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, who wrote ‘A Kind of Freedom’ talked about her use of fiction to demonstrate the impact of white supremacy on systems, families and individuals in that insidious way that often escapes detection now that we’re no longer living under the old Jim Crow; and the ways that the New Jim Crow is just as destructive of Black lives. DeRay McKesson blew my whole mind when he talked about why it may be more constructive to “preach to the choir” when fighting against white supremacy. I was so feeling him on that, because lately, my view is that when you’re at ideological war, you don’t have time to coddle the enemy or win over uncertain, mealy-mouthed and feckless so-called allies. You just fight alongside those who are willing to fight with you; and leave the rest to tend to their own hearts and minds.

Apart from the sessions, there were the books, Lord the books—all of them focused on deconstructing the experience of Blackness, and the many permutations of how this society responds to and tries to kill not only Black bodies but Black identity itself. If you are the type of person who shies away from difficult conversations, this would not have been the place for you. And if you’re someone who believes the fight is one for acceptance and assimilation you might have had a problem with all the locs, and natural curls, and kinky ‘fros, not to mention the conversations about blackity-black-Blackness and the hysteria that Blackness sometimes produces in a white dominated society.

For me, this event was right on time. Because I realized that what’s been ailing me hasn’t been too much conversation about race, it’s been too few opportunities for meaningful discourse about race. And not even race, but about Blackness, specifically and what that means in a positive, affirmative way, rather than just in response to the negative stimuli of yet another bad police shooting or video of a young Black boy getting his head bashed into a concrete pavement. This event was precisely where I needed to be. It was a place where my mind united with my heart and my creative soul. I needed that. And for sure, I will go again.

“Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi

Posted on May 1, 2019May 1, 2019 by niaforrester

I’m late to the party with this one. Very, very late. I almost always buy critically-acclaimed books by Black authors immediately, or within a couple weeks of their release. First because I’m just happy they exist in the world, and second, because I want to support Black art in all its forms. And since I can’t (yet) afford art from Kehinde Wiley or Derrick Adams, I buy books.

‘Homegoing’ wasn’t on my list of eager-to-read, to be honest, so it sat there for a long time. I have trouble with books that depict slavery, or the abduction of African people from the Continent, their journey through the Middle Passage and the untold horrors they were subjected to as enslaved people. But, after circling this one for about two years, I finally decided to listen to it on Audible. Let me start with this: the narrator is exceptional. He easily sildes in and out of accents and eras without getting in the way of the story, dramatizes well without being over-the-top, and absolutely transports the listener to a new place.

As for the story … Someone told me it took more than a decade for the author to complete it. I can see why. In a thirteen-hour listen, the author managed to touch on just about every theme and issue that helps tell a complete story of what the scramble for Africa by Europeans meant to people of African descent there and around the world. Following the lineage of two half-sisters, one whose descendants remained on the Continent, and the other who was stolen away to the Americas, Yaa Gyasi tells the story of colonialism, slavery, the loss of parents, of language of culture, the cynical use of Christianity to further enslave and placate a people, the Reconstruction, the Nadir. She also tells of racism, of classism within the Black community, of colorism, the Great Migration, the ravage of drugs on Black families, the struggle of the Black artist to survive while practicing his art, of mothers to raise children without their men, of children to raise themselves after slavery, of Black women to protect themselves from the sexual violence of white men and Black men as well, the lure of passing (as white) for some Blacks, and of the foundation of the modern prison industrial complex … I swear, she got all of that in here, but grounded every single lesson in well-crafted, three-dimensional and unforgettable characters. My heart ached while listening to this book, but it also made me swell with pride for coming from such resilient and beautiful people.

Of all the characters that resonated (and there were so many), the one that stayed with me was Sam, the slave who when brought from the Continent could not be “tamed” or compelled to speak English; who raged and resisted until his “owner” (people can’t ‘own’ people, not really. We know this, right?) gave him a woman (Ness) to make him more manageable. It didn’t work, until Sam eventually does something that she takes the blame for, and she (and he) are brutally whipped for it. He watches her suffer because of him, and speaks his first English words: “I’m sorry.” From then on, they bond over their pain, and then in other ways as well. Eventually, he learns and speaks new English words to her; among them “love.”

What eventually convinces Sam to temper his rage at being stolen from his home is when his woman, Ness, gives birth to their son. Family and human connection is his turning point, not the lash of a whip. I tell you I just about bawled my eyes out during that part of the book. Because love and compassion were, at the end of the day what made Sam control his anger, and because it spoke to the letting go of grief at the loss of so much more than most of us have lost—a home, a language, a people, a culture. Except, of course, we have lost those things, haven’t we?

But there was more like that, a lot more. This book is not for the feint of heart and I won’t lie, it will hurt your very soul. But it’ll feed your soul as well. It definitely did mine. Highly recommended.