“...many Haitians in the contemporary United States perceive themselves to be living nan djaspora, ‘in the diaspora,’ defined against Haiti as an essential location of its own, regardless of whether they live in Miami, Montreal, Paris, or Senegal. Haiti itself is real, tangible, and, in fact, often a place of partial residence. From local points ‘in the diaspora,’ Haitians live transnational lives. That is, they live embedded in international networks, sustaining social relations that link their societies of origin with their new settlement (Basch et al. 1994). Haitian transmigrants typically work jobs in New York to support homes in Haiti, keeping their children in Haitian schools until they are young teens. They return to Haiti during periods of illness or unemployment; for vacations; for important family events like baptisms, marriages, or funerals; and sometimes for national celebrations like the inauguration of a president, the yearly Carnival or Rara, or the pilgrimage to Sodo for Fèt Vièj Mirak. After decades in the United States, the elderly may return to spend their last years at home. Family roles shift between the two countries, so that children come of age and migrate north, and old folks retire and return southward to home. Both opportunity and tragedy can be the occasion to janbe dlo, or ‘cross over the water.’
”
Labadee, Haiti. 2015.
Cap-Haïtien, Haiti. 2015.
sibyl #3 in progess
a lot of nothings disguised as people
will try to find you
and make you like them
but
do not shrink
do not become small
for something so small
just because it is easy
you have a responsibility
to remain hungry
vast and rippling
alarming and strange
do not abandon
all the grandness you'll become
in exchange for toxic company
burning the midnight oil. #latergramsandselfies.
In 2012, I sat for artist Nakeya Brown's The Refutation of 'Good' Hair.
Pelican Bomb's new digital exclusive on her series presents interviews from each model.
Read what I shared and don't sleep on the never before seen unsolicited submissions either, I'm in love...
"...we would sit there, still,
watching our mothers mix dreams
with a spatula..."
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"In Within and Without: The Refutation of "Good" Hair, a digital presentation created exclusively with Pelican Bomb, we excavate the dialogue between the three positions within the project—that of artist, subject, and audience. We alternate Brown’s original images from 2012, recent interviews with her models, and unsolicited emails and poems she received throughout to visualize a type of disruption and co-creation previously unmapped in relation to her project, finding new points of convergence, deviation, and transcendence."
Follow Nakeya's work here and on her Tumblr.
Hours Spent Loving You is a summation of how relationships are viewed both earthly and heavenly.
This project was created for the people who have deeply supported SPZRKT & Sango. So in return, they felt it was right by giving thanks, and allowing these people to understand their stories in and out. Enjoy.
Mixed & Mastered by Marvel Alexander & Sango
Artwork by Sango
sibyl #3 in progress
“WHAT IS TENDER, undeniable, fluid, like winter, memory, or hunger: this practice of pairing with an/other and oscillating between states of (dis) identification yields a liminal identity, a subjectivity that is material and corporeal but which also transcends the limits imposed by corporeality, visual culture, and colonization—a selfhood that challenges the normative constructions of ‘self.’ This liminal subjectivity is not exactly an achieved state; instead, it is a series of uncovering—like the ever outward concentric circles made by a pebble’s break of pond surface, circles that also progress ever inward. What is uncovered is not a new identity but, instead, a self that was always there: the girlfriend subject in her full humanity had always been a multiplied subject of remarkable depth, and her practice of coupling with an/others is subjectivity as revelation. These revelations mark an/other part of the ‘waiting’ self, the self that was and is always there, a self that was, is, and (un)becomes.
+Kevin Everod Quashie,
Black Women, Identity, and Cultural Theory: (Un)Becoming the Subject
”