the most heartbreaking epiphany// a personal reflection on Shange’s “Justice”

“Far/and away/

 the most painful aspect/

 of this wishful absenting of Africans from “our”/own history/is the terrible/

isolation 

experienced by those of us/ who are descendants of Diaspora/

In the New World.” (Shange, 125)

I met with my father on Monday to purchase my mom’s birthday gift. On the drive home from Best-Buy, we landed on the topic of the historical situations of black people across the Western Hemisphere. How our collective experiences seem to all “begin” at point of pickup from the Bight of Benin and how throughout history there has been a concerted effort to sabotage the progress of African-descendant peoples. There is also a concerted effort to both keep us ignorant of our inherent right to justice and humanity and find a way to gaslight us when we get too riled up, too knowledgeable about our historical situations. In the chapter, “Justice” within Lost in Language and Sound Shange stated, “justice is inconceivable where there is ignorance” (125). This statement reverberated the inner core of my being.

That statement took me not only back to that Monday evening car ride with my father, but also to the moment where I realized the historical underpinnings of my existence within the Western world. I was sixteen years old and really began to lean into my identification as a black person in this country. Where before, I clung to my Caribbean heritage as my most salient identity, now I’d begin to love my Blackness. One day in particular, I was laying in my bed and in deep rumination about my race and then it dawned on me. I had this deep realization that my entire existence within this Western hemisphere was dictated for me generations ago as a result of slavery. I’d like to be clear, I always had an understanding that my ancestors were slaves because of the way American history classes are structured but  my parents’ status as Caribbean-immigrants along with my status as an American person of the 21st century allowed me a level of distance within conversations and interactions with American slavery. In that moment, that distance that allowed me not to get too close to the truth dissipated. And what hurt me so much in that moment, was this deep feeling of displacement, this feeling of true “isolation”, much like what you see in my poetic interpretation of Shange’s sentiment. I was ashamed to not have fully situated myself in that truth until then, but also found myself disillusioned by the progress we have made as a society and skeptical of the reasoning behind my ignorance, for me to have this specific quite affective epiphany at 16 years old. It is from that moment on, however, that I had fully understood the true gravity of seeking out and understanding where you come from as a Black individual.

Like Shange, I still don’t know what that means for justice but I do know it must begin with knowledge production and exchange.