Black History 365: Lee Odom

Lee Odom, instrumental spectrum includes, the clarinet, bass clarient, soprano/alto/tenor saxophone, flute, and oboe.  Lee is also a composer/band leader, whose musical spectrum includes, gospel,free improved music, jazz, R&B, and classical.

Lee has worked on selected virtual service projects for Canaan Baptist Church, Harlem and Mt. Zion AME, Bronx as sound engineer. Lee was commissioned as Producer/Director for the first virtual production of Joeseph Daley’s Colorations/Explorations, performed by the Dance Clarinets, directed by JD Parran. Sound/Video editing services are available.  Please fill out contact form below for more information. 

Lee has performed with many outstanding groups and musicians such as Don Byron, JD Parran, Whitney Marcelle, The Karl Berger Improv Orchestra, Canaan Baptist Church Music Ministry, 12 Houses Free Improv, the Makanda Project Boston, MA, Craig Harris, and the David Murray Octet.  Lee Odom also performs as band leader, with Sweet Lee Music, performing at various venues and festivals throughout NY, Boston, CT, New Jersey, Washington DC and Florida 

https://www.sweetleemusic.com/bio

Lee Odom played with the David Sanford Big Band at Bombyx Center for Arts and Equity in Florence, MA on September 11, 2022.

Black History 365: Damon Young

Damon Young is a writer, critic, humorist, satirist, and professional Black person.

He’s a co-founder and editor in chief of VerySmartBrothas—coined “the blackest thing that ever happened to the internet” by The Washington Post and recently acquired by Univision and Gizmodo Media Group to be a vertical of The Root—and a columnist for GQ. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, LitHub, Time Magazine, Slate, LongReads, Salon, The Guardian, New York Magazine, EBONY, Jezebel, and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Damon’s writing—which vacillates from anthropological satire and absurdist racial insights to razor sharp cultural critique and unflinching indictments of privilege and bias—has often generated praise from from his peers. Ava DuVernay called his voice “clear and critical.” Micheal Eric Dyson said he’s “one of the most important young voices in humor writing today.” And Kiese Laymon called his work “the best of American twenty-first century writing.” 

Damon’s debut memoir—What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir In Essays (Ecco/HarperCollins)—is a 2019 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and is a tragicomic exploration of the angsts, anxieties, and absurdities of existing while black in America. NPR called it an “outstanding collection of nonfiction” and The Washington Post “hilarious” and “unflinching.”

https://www.damonjyoung.com/about

Black History 365: Sapelo Island

Gullah Geechee community reaches a deal with Ga. county in a fight for services

Sapelo Island, sitting off the coast of Georgia, has been home to one of America’s last intact Gullah Geechee communities. The Gullah Geechee is a community of descendants of enslaved people who arrived before the start of the Civil War. The island was also the focus of a legal battle between its residents and local and state governments.

The Gullah Geechee community filed a lawsuit against the state of Georgia and McIntosh County in 2015, complaining that they were neglected, taxed unfairly, and had their civil rights violated. In the suit, the Sapelo Island residents said they’ve been lacking basic resources like fire or police services and a ferry system that doesn’t run enough to link the island and mainland Georgia effectively.

Reginald Hall, one of the descendants who live on Sapelo Island, is an advocate for the community. On Thursday, Hall talked with Morning Edition about the current condition the Gullah Geechee community has been dealing with.

“At this very moment, we’re on the island at our own risk because we don’t have proper emergency services,” Hall said.

In addition to the lack of presence from a police or fire department, Hall also says that trash pickup on the island has been irregular, and old dirt roads have been poorly maintained.

The lack of services has had a devastating effect on the Gullah Geechee population that lives on Sapelo Island. At the turn of the 20th century, there were nearly 1,000 residents living on Sapelo Island, according to Time magazine.Now only 29 descendants are living on the Island, Hall says.

“There is a clear picture. When you have 29 Black family members left on an island surrounded by marsh and beautiful ocean,” Hall said. “Who in their right mind would purposely get up and leave that land?”

Hall says that people left the island because McIntosh County did not invest much money in essential services for the island, even though Sapelo residents have paid taxes similar to the mainland.

“My question is, when do you stop oppressing?” Hall said. “Let us live.”

Recently Hall and other residents of Sapelo Island have received some good news. In 2020, Georgia agreed to improve the docks and passenger ferry service.

Gullah Geechee community also reached a $2 million settlement with McIntosh County. The county has also committed to providing better emergency, medical, fire and road services to the island.

Hall hopes that the settlement and new commitments from both the local and state governments is the start of a bigger vision that Hall has for Sapelo Island.

“Bringing our children back home and our grandchildren back home and to sustain for the next 10 generations as we already have,” Hall said.

NPR’s Nell Clark and Reena Advani produced and edited this story for radio.

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118094337/gullah-geechee-community-reaches-a-deal-with-ga-county-in-a-fight-for-services

Black History 365: Makeda Smith

Makeda Smith of Sio Ceramics intertwines intriguing shapes and surprising details into her work.

Sio Ceramics 

Brookland Art Walk, Washington DC

Makeda Smith’s ceramics feature irresistible palates, intriguing shapes and surprising details. She first took a ceramics class in college and fell in love. After teaching for years and earning a Master’s in education, she missed her spark. She took another class, then an artist residency, and launched Sio Ceramics last year. 

It’s hard starting a second career, but the process keeps Smith motivated. “The work is really meditative,” Smith says, and then she gets to share it. “That people share stories about finding joy out of something I create is really, really satisfying,” she says. 

Smith just picked up the keys to her first retail and studio space. While she’s moving in, sales will still run through her retail partners (like Salt and Sundry and Shopmade in DC,) and her self-made website. The pandemic served as a catalyst, helping her pull it all together, but she’s not hustling. She’s savorying the process. “If it’s not sparking joy like Marie Kondo,” she says, “it’s gotta go.” 

Website – www.sioceramics.com

Instagram – @sioceramics

Smith recommends – @khaoscreates

https://craftindustryalliance.org/6-black-ceramicists-to-support-right-now/

Black History 365: Dr. Kendall Moore

Kendall Moore, PhD, is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and a Professor in the departments of Journalism and Film Media at the University of Rhode Island. Before joining the faculty at URI in 2003, she worked as a television journalist focusing on medical, health, race, and environmental issues. 

Moore has produced numerous independent documentaries that have aired on PBS and in various film festivals including Charm City (1996), Song in the Crisis (2004), Sovereign Nation/Sovereign Neighbor (2006), The Good Radical (2009), Sick Building (2014) and Jalen and Joanna: A Lead Paint Story (2017). She is also the director of the Can We Talk? Difficult Conversations with Underrepresented People of Color series. 

Moore has also written and directed fiction and experimental films, including Philosophy of the Encounter (PoE) (67min), about a college student’s journey to understand her racial identity. PoE premiered at the Arusha International Film Festival (Best Feature) in the Caribbean, and the Black International Film Festival in Nashville in October 2016. 

She has received several grants and awards for her work, including two Fulbright Scholar Awards: Tanzania (2001) and Jamaica (Specialist, 2004); The Rhode Island Film Fellowship for Outstanding Filmmaking (2007); and, the recipient of two Metcalf Awards for excellence in journalism in 2015 and 2017. In 2018, she received an NAACP award for excellence in documentary filmmaking for Jalen and Joanna: A Lead Paint Story. In 2020, she received NSF funding for her film project focusing on various efforts to decolonize science, which she is focusing on as a Fellow at MIT’s Open Documentary Lab (2020-2021). In 2020, she was honored to receive the Faculty Excellence Award for Diversity at the University of Rhode Island. And in 2021-2022, Moore was selected to be one of 10 faculty members to serve as a mentor in the Mellon Faculty of Color Working group as a mentor. 

She is a well regarded public speaker and instructor who has presented at national conferences, federal agencies, colleges and universities throughout the U.S. In 2016, she was commended by Crain’s magazine as one of 10 professors of merit in the field of journalism. 

She serves on the board of Story in the Public Square, the Rhode Island Black Film Festival, is a mentor for the She serves on the board of Story in the Public Square, the Rhode Island Black Film Festival, is a mentor for the Mellon Faculty of Color Working Group for the New England Humanities Council, advisor for the American Geophysical Union’s LandInG program, and is a former board member of The Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting. She has been active in mentoring women of color interested in documentary film production. 

She earned her B.A. from Syracuse University in Latin American Studies and an M.A. in Media Studies and documentary film from The New School for Social Research. Her PhD, which she completed at the European Graduate School for Media and Communication, focuses on black aesthetics, metaphysical philosophy.

She resides in Rhode Island with her husband and daughter.

https://www.kendallmooredocfilms.com/bio

Black History 365: Cremaine Booker

Nashville based cellist, Cremaine Booker (also known as ThatCelloGuy), has performed extensively in the United States in addition to being a highly accomplished studio cellist. He currently serves as a cellist in the Iris Orchestra and is former principal cellist for the Nashville Philharmonic Orchestra and The Jackson Symphony. He has also made appearances with the Trevecca Symphony, the Sewanee Symphony, Roy “Futureman” Wooten’s Black Mozart Ensemble, and the Nashville Concerto Orchestra. He has performed with the likes of Hans Zimmer, Carrie Underwood, India.Arie, Mickey Guyton, Martina McBride, Jewel, Lindsey Stirling, Michael W. Smith, LeAnn Rhimes, Mike Hicks, and many others. In addition to his live performances he has recorded cello on projects such as Geostorm (2017), The Lion King (2019), and The Ruined King (2021).
 
Cremaine has performed masterclasses with teachers such as Natalia Koma, YeonJin Kim, Julia Tanner, Eric Kutz, Peter Sheppard, and Yo-Yo Ma. Cremaine holds degrees from Middle Tennessee State University.


Cremaine plays on a modern cello gifted to him by William H. and Judith Scheide.

https://www.thatcelloguy.com/bio

Black History 365: Chelsea Gray

Chelsea Nichelle Gray (born October 8, 1992) is an American professional basketball player for the Las Vegas Aces of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA).[1] She was the eleventh pick in the 2014 WNBA Draft. She missed the 2014 WNBA season due to injury, but she made her debut with the Sun in the 2015 WNBA season. Gray won her first title with the Los Angeles Sparks in 2016. She won her second title with the Las Vegas Aces in the 2022 WNBA Finals, where she was named Finals MVP.

College career

Joanne P. McCallie coached Duke’s women’s basketball team during the time Gray played for the Duke Blue Devils. In Gray’s junior year at Duke (February 2013), she fractured her knee which caused her to be sidelined the rest of her junior year and her whole senior year. Despite this she was drafted to the Connecticut Sun in 2014.[2]

WNBA career

Gray was drafted 11th overall by the Connecticut Sun in the 2014 WNBA draft. She sat out the 2014 season while recovering from a right knee injury that she sustained in January of her senior year while playing at Duke.[3]

Gray would come back healthy in time for the 2015 season. Coming off the bench for the Sun, she averaged 6.9 ppg.

Prior to the 2016 season, Gray was traded to the Los Angeles Sparks along with two first round picks in the 2016 WNBA draft and a first round pick in the 2017 WNBA draft in exchange for draft rights to Jonquel Jones and the 17th pick in the 2016 WNBA Draft.[4] Joining forces with Candace Parker, Kristi Toliver and Nneka Ogwumike, Gray would come off the bench as the back-up point guard on the Sparks roster, playing 33 games with 1 start and averaging 5.9 ppg. The Sparks were a championship contender in the league, finishing 26–8. The Sparks were the number 2 seed in the league with a double-bye to the semi-finals (the last round before the WNBA Finals) facing the Chicago Sky due to the WNBA’s new playoff format. The Sparks defeated the Sky 3–1 in the series, advancing to the WNBA Finals for the first time since 2003. In the Finals, the Sparks were up against the championship-defending Minnesota Lynx. Gray’s playing time would be slightly increased in the Finals and was able to provide an offensive spark off the bench for the Sparks. In Game 4 with the Sparks up 2–1, Gray scored a team-high 20 points off the bench in 24 minutes of play, but the Sparks still lost the game. In the decisive Game 5, Gray scored 11 consecutive points for the Sparks in the second half. The Sparks would win Game 5 and the 2016 WNBA Championship.[5]

With Toliver leaving the Sparks in free agency to join the Washington Mystics, Gray would be moved to starting point guard, following her heroic off-the-bench performance in the Finals. Gray would have a breakout season in 2017 as she scored a career-high 25 points on May 27, 2017, in a 75–73 loss to the Atlanta Dream.[6] Gray would also be voted into the 2017 WNBA All-Star Game, making it her first career all-star game appearance.[7] She finished off the season leading the league in three-point field goal percentage and averaged career-highs in scoring, rebounds, assists and minutes as the Sparks finished second place in the league with a 26–8 record, receiving a double-bye to the semi-finals. The Sparks would go on to advance to the Finals for the second season in a row, after defeating the Phoenix Mercury in a 3-game sweep, setting up a rematch with the Lynx. In Game 1 of the 2017 WNBA Finals, Gray scored a new career-high 27 points and hit the game-winning shot with 2 seconds left, sealing an 85–84 victory to give the Sparks a 1–0 series lead.[8] However, the Sparks would lose in five games, failing to win back-to-back championships.

On May 20, 2018, in the Sparks’ season opener against the Lynx, Gray scored 18 points along with a game-winning layup at the buzzer in a 77–76 victory.[9] Later on in the season, Gray would be voted into the 2018 WNBA All-Star Game, for her second career all-star appearance. Gray finished off the season averaging a new career-highs in scoring, steals, assists and rebounds. The Sparks finished as the number 6 seed in the league with a 19–15 record. In the first round elimination game they would defeat the Lynx 75–68 in which Gray Gray scored a season-high 26 points. The Sparks would advance to the second round elimination game where they would lose 96–64 to the Washington Mystics.

On April 30, 2019, Gray re-signed with the Sparks.[10] On July 7, 2019, Gray recorded her first triple-double with 13 points, 13 assists, and 10 rebounds in a 98–81 win against the Washington Mystics, becoming both the ninth player in league history and the third player in Sparks’ franchise history to record a triple-double.[11] Gray would also be voted into the 2019 WNBA All-Star Game, making it her third all-star appearance. On August 29, 2019, Gray scored a career-high 30 points in a 87–83 win against the Indiana Fever. By the end of the season, the Sparks finished as the number 3 seed with a 22–12 record, receiving a bye to the second round. In the second round elimination game, the Sparks defeated the defending champions Seattle Storm 92–69. In the semi-finals, the Sparks were defeated in a three-game sweep by the Connecticut Sun.

In the 2020 WNBA season, Gray started all 22 games played for the Sparks, the season was shortened in a bubble at IMG Academy due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On August 28, 2020, Gray scored a season-high 27 points in a 80–76 victory over the Connecticut Sun.[12] The Sparks finished 15–7 with the number 3 seed, receiving a bye to the second round but were eliminated by the seventh seeded Connecticut Sun in the second round elimination game, making it the second year a row that they’ve been eliminated by the same team.

In 2021 free agency, Gray signed a multi-year deal with the Las Vegas Aces.[13]

Overseas career

Prior to her first WNBA season, Gray played in Israel for Hapoel Rishon Le-Zion in the 2014–15 off-season. In the 2015–16 off-season, Gray played in Spain for Uni Girona CB for the first portion of the off-season and spent the second portion of the off-season playing in Turkey for Abdullah Gul University.[14][15] In June 2016, Gray re-signed with Abdullah Gul University for the 2016–17 off-season.[16] In July 2017, Gray signed with Botaş SK for the 2017–18 off-season.[17] In July 2020, Gray signed with Fenerbahçe of the Turkish league.[18]

Personal life

Gray has participated in Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). In her free time, she has helped work out and train younger kids in AAU to become better athletes.[20] She is openly lesbian.[21]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Gray

Black History 365: Tunde Olaniran

A Midwestern museum known for mid-century design may have found the next big art world star.

Tunde Olaniran is a musician, filmmaker and artist who grew up in Flint, Michigan. Their first show,Made A Universe, just opened at the Cranbrook Art Museum near Detroit.

Made a Universe is partly a short movie, and partly an exhibition of what looks like pieces of its set: artifacts of furniture, old cars and unpaid bills that combine science fiction and social realism. It exuberantly –and pointedly — combines tropes from horror movies and TikTok videos to comment on serious issues such as environmental injustice and the carceral state.

Olaniran, who’s 35, is a planet of a person – the type other people orbit around. “This is the first film I’ve written and directed, really,” Olaniran says, who also plays the main character. “Tunde is a version of me, who is an artist, who lives in a Flint-esque place who like me is very obsessed with comic books.”

Olaniran comes from a working-class family with a grandfather who built cars on Flint’s assembly lines, a dad who immigrated from Nigeria and a mom who worked for labor unions and influenced the main storyline in Made A Universe, about a teenage boy named Leon.

“Leon is based on a person who lived in my neighborhood and robbed us continually,” Olaniran explains. “And I think the way my mom raised me was really to think, what is the structure that they’re living in and would lead them to make these kinds of choices?

In the movie Made A Universe, Leon is abducted. He vanishes through a mysterious portal. But in real life, Olaniran says, Leon was killed.

“Senseless does not even begin to describe it,” they say, adding that the movie fulfilled a deep, fantastical longing for a different kind of ending for the young man. “What if the person I knew did not have to die the way they did?”

Tunde the character searches for Leon in the movie that might remind viewers at various points of Get Out and A Wrinkle in Time. Leon’s been imprisoned by an affectless bureaucrat, standing in for a state that’s allowed Flint’s water to be poisoned for nearly a decade. Something subversive, outrageous and defiantly local about the film also evokes early John Waters, who made all of his movies in Baltimore: Olanian’s cast and crew are all based in Flint and Detroit.

Olaniran never formally trained as a filmmaker. They studied anthropology at the University of Michigan-Flint, played music in bars and worked for Planned Parenthood as a sex educator.

“I would teach adults with developmental disabilities,” they say. “So, how do you teach about consent? How do you teach someone basic anatomy who maybe grew up in a group home?”

This work, Olaniran says, ended up as incredibly helpful training for a career as an artist. “What do you do with someone’s attention if you get it at all? What are you doing in their minds?”

Something unique and brilliant, says Laura Mott, chief curator at the Cranbook Art Museum. “I really want Tunde to be a household name,” she says. “I really believe they’re one of the most talented people I’ve ever met in my life.”

Mott helped the artist raise about $250,000 to make the movie and introduced Olaniran to celebrity cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The two collaborated on a recording, and Ma is on the credits for the film.

Yo-Yo Ma and Tunde Olaniran blend classical music, hip-hop and R&B on “Doorway.YouTube

In one scene of Made A Universe, Tunde unexpectedly lands in a drab billing processing office with several Flint women whose poisoned water has been shut off because they could not pay for it. One of them begs the stone-faced woman working behind the desk for help. For a minute, it seems that she might soften. But in this science fiction scenario, she’s suddenly taken over by the malign voice of a broken system, pitiless and predatory. It’s terrifying.

But then something beautiful happens. Tunde and the other women begin to sing. They sing open a portal in the universe.

“Our energy is transforming it and pushing against the edges of it,” Olaniran says.

Tunde and the woman from the billing processing office rescue Leon. They even rescue the woman trapped behind the desk. Made A Universe convincingly tells a story about the power of art. But Olaniran, the product of a city once known for working class collectivity, says that’s only part of the message.

“If we connect,” they say, “What power does that generate instead of separately trying to escape?”

Tunde Olaniran’s Made a Universe will be on display through September at the Cranbrook Art Museum. Curator Laura Mott says other museums have expressed interest in bringing the show across the country.

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/30/1113829988/artist-tunde-olanirans-made-a-universe-opens-a-portal-at-a-detroit-museum

Black History 365: Fani T. Willis

Fani Taifa Willis[1] (FAH-nee,[1] born October 27, 1971) is an American attorney from the state of Georgia. She is the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, which contains most of Atlanta.[2] She is the first woman to hold the office of Fulton County district attorney.[3]

Biography

Willis graduated from Howard University and Emory University School of Law.[3] She spent 16 years as a prosecutor in the Fulton County district attorney‘s office. Her most prominent case was her prosecution of the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal. In 2018, she went into private practice.[4] That year, she ran for a seat on the Fulton County Superior Court, and lost.[5] In 2020, Willis was elected district attorney for Fulton County, defeating Paul Howard, a six-term incumbent and her former boss.[6][7]

2020 election influence investigation

On February 10, 2021, Willis launched a criminal investigation into a telephone call with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and other attempts by Donald Trump to influence Georgia election officials, including the governor and the attorney general, to “find” enough votes to override Joe Biden‘s win in that state and thus undo Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election .[8][9][10] In January 2022, she requested a special grand jury to consider charges of election interference by Trump and his allies.[11][12] A 26-member special grand jury was given investigative authority and subpoena power and tasked with submitting a report to the judge and Willis on whether a crime was committed.[13]

On July 5, 2022, the judge approved a subpoena for members of Trump’s legal team—Rudy Giuliani, Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis and Cleta Mitchell—along with Senator Lindsey Graham and former Capitol Hill counsel Jacki Pick Deason.[14] On August 4, the grand jury subpoenaed Governor Brian Kemp.[15] Giuliani was told on August 15, two days before he testified before the special grand jury, that he was a target of the investigation.[16][17][18][19] A federal judge upheld the subpoena for Graham, stating he must testify[20] on August 23,[21] but an appeals court granted him a delay.[22] Ellis is believed to have testified on August 25.[23] Eastman testified on August 31.[24] In early September, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas ruled that Deason (who lives in Texas) need not testify. Because the Fulton County special grand jury cannot indict, neither can it compel testimony, the appeals court argued.[25]

Willis has sent target letters to people she is investigating related to the fake electors plot. These include three Republican officials — State Senator Burt Jones, State Senator Brandon Beach, and David Shafer, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party[26] — and the 16 people who falsely presented themselves as electors.[27] However, she was told by a judge she could not target Jones due to a conflict of interest.[28]

In August 2022, Sidney Powell was asked to appear due to her involvement in arranging for the collection of data from the voting machines and systems at the county’s elections office in rural Coffee County in January 2021.[29]

Atlanta gang indictments

In May 2022, Willis’ office indicted Young Thug for 56 counts of gang-related crimes under Georgia’s RICO statute and felony charges for possession of illicit firearms and drugs that were allegedly discovered after a search warrant was executed. The rapper has been held in Cobb County jail since his arrest.[30]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fani_Willis

Black History 365: Boyah J. Farah

When Boyah J. Farah arrived in the United States as a teenager, he expected the country to be paradise. And for a while it was – when he rode his bike down the quiet streets of his Boston-suburb, past smiling neighbors with their perfectly manicured lawns. “I really thought that God favored America,” he said.

But try as he might to hold on to that image, the reality of American racism eventually began to surface cracks in Farah’s fantasy. Slowly but surely, he began to understand that as a Black American, his life wouldn’t play out like the Hollywood movies he had grown up with. He would be forced into a different sort of role.

In his new memoir, America Made Me a Black Man, Farah tells the story of what American blackness has meant to him, from his childhood in Somalia to his adolescence and early adulthood in the Northeast, to the moment as an adult that he decided to return to Somalia after decades spent away.

The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.


You grew up in Somalia, in the Nugaal Valley. And you’ve described that time as the happiest of your life. So tell me a little bit about your childhood.

That particular time in the valley, it was just, like, freedom. You know, I’m a nomad. Culturally, nomads put freedom above everything else. Life is not a life unless you have freedom. And I feel like my childhood in the valley with ayeyo, my grandmother, it was basically, you know, running in the rain. Drinking goat milk straight from the goats. It was just full of freedom and full of joy. After that, my life has been nothing but turmoil and despair. I’ve been on the run ever since. At least, that’s what I feel like.

Talk about what happened. What brought you from Somalia to the U.S. in 1989?

My father – God bless the dead – died. And then after that, war came like a drifting wind. It gathered like a twister. It basically turned my childhood into dust. My mother and younger siblings and I were living in Mogadishu at the time. And civil war is the worst thing that can happen to mankind, because it’s cousins fighting cousins. Basically, Somali families that ate together, that lived together for centuries, were now fighting each other. We’d see tragedy after tragedy – competing tragedies. And so we had to walk out of that place into anywhere safe. So we went to Kenya, to a refugee camp in Mombasa, and then we came to America.

When you were growing up, what did you know about the U.S.? What was your perception of it?

To go to America was to reach for the stars, and to be an American was like running naked in the rain. You know what I mean? It was just beautiful. In the refugee camp, I remember one time I had malaria and it was gruesome. People were dying. In my family, two people died, seven days apart. And I was next because I had malaria. And I remember begging God, ‘please, God, just don’t let me die until I get to America.’ You know, if you’re going to kill me, kill me in America. That’s how much I adored America.

Where were your images of America coming from?

Movies. Movies, TV, everything. America projects itself all over the world as heaven. So all the refugee kids, they want to reach that heaven. And I was one of them. I couldn’t wait.

In your book, you talked about the fact that there was the image of America in movies, but then there was the image of Black America, and those things were often pretty different. What was your perception of Black Americans before you came?

Well, Black Americans were projected in a way that’s unfavorable. And therefore when you come to America, you want to avoid anyone Black. Because that’s what you “knew” about them: thugs, lazy people, drug dealers. Those were the images that were spread to us. So coming here, I remember taking a bus from Bedford to Alewife and seeing a couple of Black people in the back. And I was like, I don’t want to be near them – even though I had nothing to fear, I had nothing anyway, as some poor kid from Africa. But at the same time, my head was filled with a lot of pictures that were lies.

Is there a particular moment where you felt like the fantasy you had of the U.S. was fractured for the first time?

Yes. In high school I met Miss Parker [who worked at the school library]. And she’s telling me that in America, I’m an African American. “You’re no longer African. You better get used to it.” And if you haven’t seen that, now you’re going to see it. You know, it was like my first warning.

And I remember she gave me African American literature, including Malcolm X’s book. And so I used to bike every single day to the library, and read, and try to know America from the books.

And [around that time] I remember biking to a sub place to get pizza. My favorite thing to eat was pizza. And I remember the guy [who worked there] just saying, straight up, “[If you try anything,] I’m gonna call the police on you.” I still bought the pizza. But at the same time, even though I was still naive and trying to give America a chance, at that particular moment, I knew that he could easily call the police. And so I remember and I didn’t even eat the pizza inside the shop. I ate it outside next to my bike. So there were a lot of those little things that were telling me, something else is coming on the way.

It seems like throughout the book you are regularly encountering people – Black people, like Miss Parker – who are trying to help you understand different things about what it will mean to be Black in the U.S. And at different stages of your life you had very different perceptions of that. So today, how would you define blackness?

Black people were my first teachers about America – authentic teachers about America. And how do I define it? The same way I define myself. I’m an American now. You know, I know exactly what awaits an African child, an African American child, a Black child in America. I know exactly what awaits them. Because I’ve seen it. And so I feel the pain. I feel the struggle. I’m part of the struggle.

You write about certain things that were surprising to you as someone who was experiencing them for the first time – encounters with the police, discrimnation at work, subpar medical care. It seemed like there were moments when something was more painful for you than for certain Black friends because of the shock of it. Other people had accepted that certain things were going to happen to them as a result of being Black that you weren’t used to. Do you still feel like there are things that you’re not willing to accept?

Oh, yeah. I am my father’s son. I carry his culture and his nomadic lifestyle. I’m an American nomad. You know what that means is freedom is number one – for me to be free until death is very important to me. So certain things I resist and resist and resist. But America does not allow that. It’s hard to resist and still remain an American with a job.

In this culture, there’s a hierarchy and it’s systematic. It’s not about individuals. It’s a system-driven culture of oppression. This big machine of racism is systematic. So I still try to respect and honor my departed father’s culture of being free, but it’s very hard. You have to capitulate so you don’t get shot by a cop. When a cop stops me, I can’t ask him questions or challenge him. He can easily take my life. So I still have to capitulate. But inside of me, I want to honor that freedom. And I want all of us to honor our freedom as human beings, equal to everyone else.

You’ve talked a lot about the struggles. What’s your favorite thing about being Black?

Culture. I think in the book I call it the people with rhythm, style, beauty. I mean, what would America be without Black culture? I used to think Muhammad Ali was Somali. I never thought he was American. He was that popular. And also, I thought Michael Jackson was Somali, you know? Stevie Wonder! I mean, the soft power of American projection throughout the world is Black culture. And once again, my wish is for the United States to recognize that and reciprocate that love. Black people love this country. We want America to reciprocate that love.

You said earlier that you’re an American nomad. Is there any part of the U.S. that feels like home to you?

The American highways. Driving on the American highways, it almost feels like that childhood freedom in the Valley. You know, with a song that you like. Roll the windows down. If you’ve got a sunroof, open that. And drive. I’ve always found therapy doing that. I love driving across the country in America and seeing different scenes. America is beautiful, and I really want America to be as beautiful as the American highways in the way it treats its African children. When I say African children, I mean American born, African children – Black people. I want them to feel that freedom of a highway.

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/16/1123112941/q-a-author-boyah-j-farah-reflects-on-being-black-in-america