Black Futures is a new book from Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham that collects photos, essays, memes, tweets, and poems to tell the narrative of Black creators. Kimberly and Jenna joined The PEN Pod to discuss how their new book came about, its lasting and widespread record of Black art and culture, and the way it can heal the wounds we experience in our current moment. Listen below for our full conversation (our interview with Kimberly and Jenna is up until the 13:30 mark).
Kimberly, I feel like my introduction doesn’t do justice, so how do you describe Black Futures?
KIMBERLY DREW: I would say our definition—as a pair—of Black Futures often changes, but the easiest way to draw a circle around what we intended to do was to ask this broader question of what it means to be Black and alive, and invite a really beautiful, diverse, and geodiverse set of creatives together to answer it. The book extends from dance floors in Johannesburg to classrooms in Finland, to arabbers walking the streets of Baltimore, really in the interest of taking on the task of archiving what it means to be Black and alive right now, because we were so informed by projects like Toni Morrison’s The Black Book, Fire!! of the Harlem Renaissance, and so many others that really so gracefully were responding to Black art and culture, because I think at the end of the day, any cultural group—any group of people in general—really benefit from being able to tell their own stories. So that’s what Jenna and I set out to do.
“We’re able to be in community with other parts of the diaspora in ways that we haven’t been prior, so it just feels really good to catalog that or even just a portion of it, because there’s so much more that’s happening than we could ever capture in a book. We just name it, and name it in a way that’s not ephemeral—that’s not going to disappear in a tweet thread, that’s not going to disappear when the next media website goes under and those articles are lost—but we really name that there is an incredible abundance in Black art and Black culture right now.”
—Jenna Wortham
Jenna, from what Kimberly just said, this idea of what it means to have Black art and Black creativity right now, what do you think this book might do to help shift a narrative a bit about what we think of as art and creative work in the U.S. and globally?
JENNA WORTHAM: Our hope, I think, is that it will just round it out. I don’t know that there’s a narrative that needs to be shifted or changed, but it feels really good, as Kimberly put beautifully, to get our arms around something that we intuitively and instinctively know is happening, and we are bearing witness to it—to get our arms around this flourishing and just tremendous dialogue that’s intergenerational, that people are riffing on each other, people are in community and they’re in community in new ways. We’re able to be in community with other parts of the diaspora in ways that we haven’t been prior, so it just feels really good to catalog that or even just a portion of it, because there’s so much more that’s happening than we could ever capture in a book. We just name it, and name it in a way that’s not ephemeral—that’s not going to disappear in a tweet thread, that’s not going to disappear when the next media website goes under and those articles are lost—but we really name that there is an incredible abundance in Black art and Black culture right now, and we’re so lucky to be a part of it.
DREW: Everything that Jenna said is so exquisite, but the only thing I want to underscore is that everyone has the capacity to do this recording, and this is just the version that we did. I think if there’s a shift, it’s that everyone takes on that responsibility and also takes on the trust of themselves to do it. We all have the facility to record, remember, and understand, if so much of our work, our connectivity, and our experiences are happening in this digital space, that we may not have capacity to record—or there may not be an external office or archive that can record it—but we can take that on, do that for ourselves, and on our own behalf.
“When you really enter into the zone of the book, it’s almost impossible to be ignored. That’s when things get applied to syllabi, that’s when you can just get a lot more accomplished, in terms of pushing forth your ideas. I don’t necessarily agree with it; I think that is something that should be probably moved away from, because it is kind of an elitist idea. But for me as a writer and the kind of books and projects that I wanted to work on—which are only possible through this incredible support network that I’ve had—there’s a real interest in making sure that the ideas get spread as widely as possible.”
—Kimberly Drew
Kimberly, this idea of trying to capture this moment, with some concern in the background that there’s a fleetingness to the digital side of all of this, that we might not be able to hold on to it. This is your second book this year—you’ve made such a name, I think, for yourself and for the moment in the digital space. I’m wondering, why the medium of the book, and how is it different from digital platforms to archive and name?
DREW: It’s absolutely something that’s inspired by my relationship with Jenna, as a writer that I really respect, because even when Jen and I became friends, I wasn’t writing as much, and I was really reading writers like her and Ashley Ford to learn how to be a better writer, to learn how to better articulate the things that I was taking in, and to take my ideas more seriously. My background is in art, and art is like, if you’re not writing, no one’s listening. You can show up, and you can do as many public programs as you want to—you can write as many articles as you want to—but when you really enter into the zone of the book, it’s almost impossible to be ignored. That’s when things get applied to syllabi, that’s when you can just get a lot more accomplished, in terms of pushing forth your ideas. I don’t necessarily agree with it; I think that is something that should be probably moved away from, because it is kind of an elitist idea. But for me as a writer and the kind of books and projects that I wanted to work on—which are only possible through this incredible support network that I’ve had—there’s a real interest in making sure that the ideas get spread as widely as possible.
Black Futures initially started as Jenna’s idea, and Jenna was really interested in possibly making a zine project. From my impulse as an art person, I thought it needed to be something that maybe can reach more people than a zine can reach. The book is really interested in culture, and we have this incredible library, but we wanted to make something that would have an international reach. For me, it’s about resisting erasure as the biggest principle of any of the work that I’ve done.
Jenna, I want to turn to you. First, if you have a reaction to that.
WORTHAM: That was beautifully put. I love that, Kimberly.
“We’re not trying to make a book that is just deeply steeped in Black trauma. It’s there in the pages anyway because we’ve got these chapters that deal with grief, memory, legacy, and ownership. But it also allows us to look at how artists are processing all of the Black pain and trauma that’s inherent to the history of this country and our experience on this land. In a way, that’s just undeniably clever.”
—Jenna Wortham
Jenna, because it’s easily accessible for people who are listening to this podcast, The New York Times published some excerpts of the book and it included an image of a work by David Leggett called “Invited to the Cookout.” And you wrote: “You truly cannot look away.” I’m wondering if you can describe that piece in particular and why a piece like that is part of this collection.
WORTHAM: David’s work, which Kimberly brought to the book—his pieces appear multiple times throughout the book, and they’re among our favorites. The piece that you’re describing, “Invited to the Cookout,” is a work of mixed media and multimedia. There’s a drawing of Bart Simpson, but he’s Black, so Black Bart, and he looks really anxious. He’s watching a scene unfold before him, and it’s hard to see what the scene is, because it’s a picture within a picture, and then there’s a swipe of a rainbow—pastel rainbow—across the frame. It’s a blur of motion to people, but some remember this incident a few summers ago where a white police officer tackled a young Black teenager to the ground at a pool. The video is just really horrific and touched off, rightfully so, a lot of pieces about Black people in public spaces, our historical relationship to pools in this country, and not being allowed into them. It was such a disturbing event in such an arresting image of this grown adult man, who is paid by our taxes and employed by our government, with his knee on the back of this young woman who’s in a bikini.
There’s something about David’s work that is really brilliant—first of all, because your eyes don’t know where to go and you don’t know what’s happening. It requires a lot of knowledge of popular culture to understand literacy, and I think David’s work is masterful in the way that it commands visual culture and pop culture. I think a lot about his work as almost being like a standup comedy set—you’re looking at all these images, and then you read the caption, and there’s a punchline, but who is the joke on? It’s in the book because it’s just tremendous work. Also, I think it really speaks to what we’re trying to do in the book, which is to touch on all of these areas of things that are important to us—things that we want to remember and don’t want to forget—but also we’re not trying to make a book that is just deeply steeped in Black trauma. It’s there in the pages anyway because we’ve got these chapters that deal with grief, memory, legacy, and ownership. But it also allows us to look at how artists are processing all of the Black pain and trauma that’s inherent to the history of this country and our experience on this land. In a way, that’s just undeniably clever.
“I think this book is an extension of a really keen interest in providing media and providing thoughts that are restorative for others. I don’t want to be too woo and say this is a book about healing, but it’s not not. We really want people to sit with this, see themselves in it, and to understand that you’re part of an incredible legacy and that, yes, you are living through a deeply traumatic time, but also, yes, there are so many spaces and reasons to be joyful, to be thankful, to feel connected, and to feel powerful. Should you forget how to feel powerful, turn to this page and it might remind you to be powerful.”
—Kimberly Drew
Kimberly, lastly, I don’t want to flatten this work or say that it’s about one thing, but it is called Black Futures. In our current moment, post-election, a new presidential administration is on the horizon. This wave of activism but also state-sponsored violence against Black people in the United States—how do you think this book might be read, interpreted, or seen? And how do you see the future of Black art, as it stems from this moment?
DREW: That’s a great question. This book is designed to be a resource. Speaking on behalf of both Jenna and I, the great privilege of writing this book is that we got it back first. In this time, with all these things going on, we were able to sit on Jenna’s porch and rifle through these pages, look at the different recipes, instructions, artworks, conversations, and incredible essays that we were able to compile together during a somewhat different moment.
But in many ways, I think this book is an extension of a really keen interest in providing media and providing thoughts that are restorative for others. I don’t want to be too woo and say this is a book about healing, but it’s not not. We really want people to sit with this, see themselves in it, and to understand that you’re part of an incredible legacy and that, yes, you are living through a deeply traumatic time, but also, yes, there are so many spaces and reasons to be joyful, to be thankful, to feel connected, and to feel powerful. Should you forget how to feel powerful, turn to this page and it might remind you to be powerful. The book during this time, I hope, is a wellspring for people—whether you love it or hate it, that it is a generative text. If there’s any success I feel confident about, I think it will be that.