EDITOR’S NOTE

by Jane Link

IT’S JUST BOOKS. Well, did you know that Black American writers were on the FBI’s radar? I learnt it a few weeks ago in Frank B. Wilderson III’s Afropessimism, which reads like an essential tract from the 80s even though it was only just released two years ago. Anyway, not only did the FBI track and trace the day-to-day patterns of these individuals but they went through the trouble of launching a whole ass literary magazine—more than one, in fact—designed to mop up all that talent threatening to grow into something real. I resort to acceptability as a measure of importance, but importance is misleading here. I don’t think the FBI patrolled the folk’s writing on the lookout for finely-hatched military masterplans to rise and take hold. I know they may have told themselves that, but deep down we all know it almost never comes down to single events or people, and almost always to structures. The real threat is in the conversation. The real fear is of the community, of the self-love, of what this first poem captures.

In truth, that conversation is what ties these beautiful works together. An agitated Ghanaian preacher sporting shellac nails dreams of mounting her own Church. An American schoolgirl in the mid-twentieth century Midwest faces the cold ruthlessness we continue to endure in ever-morphing ways. I also see proof that we are so much more than what we carry, more than what or even who we want. The many scents that distinguish our lovers seems as apt a metaphor as any for our diversity and diffusion across continents vast while the publishing industry’s desperate scramble to stay relevant populates our shelves with some books that feel like home. The rest feel like empty dollhouses suited to someone smaller. Again, acceptability seems a reliable measure of importance. I’m more trusting of the book they don’t celebrate as loudly; I know that often means it was written for someone like me.

And, of course, death (the least of our worries) makes an appearance. It’s the death that has darkened our days in recent years, the same death that stretches four hundred years back and now threatens to gobble up the future as well, ravenous still. Ayanna Banwo Lloyd’s closing words hold astonishing power: “I’m not a climate change activist. I’m just a black Caribbean woman who knows this can’t be the way. The mess we’ve made is new and our ways of doing things are old. We’re so old death begins here.” I’m holding on to that like a prayer.