February 26, 2024 • 37 mins
Can language practices break down the separation between “us” and “them”? Reid Gómez, a native speaker of Black vernacular English and Navlish (Navajo-English), shares her multi-lingual writing practice. To “make the story speak,” she criss-crosses the boundaries between languages, embracing various linguistic structures and vocabularies simultaneously. Her writing moves away from oppositional colonial frameworks and toward a more fluid poetics of relation. This allows each of us to perceive one another as related rather than separated. In this final episode of Season 1, she explores the idea of “quantum entanglements” and shows how the relationship between writing, translation, and the nature of being are not fundamentally different.
Dr. Gómez is a writer and scholar from San Francisco, CA. She currently is an assistant professor at the University of Arizona. Her latest writing project, The Web of Differing Versions: Where Africa Ends and America Begins, engages with Silko studies, Indigenous studies and Critical Black studies.
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(00:00):
Race/Remix
This is Race
Remix, a podcast that pushes forwardenriching
and challenging conversationsabout the arts in racial justice.
We talk with artists, poets, writers,
directors, dancers, designers, performers,and creative practitioners
(00:21):
from the Arizona community and beyond.
As you listen, be inspired
to advocate and activatein your community.
Together, we can create a more just
joyful and sustainable world.
Welcome to Race Remix.
Okay.
Welcome to Race Remix.
(00:43):
I'm your host, gloria wilson.
Co-hosting this episode is Amy Kraehe.
And visiting with us todayin the studio is Dr.
Reid Gomez.
Welcome to the show, Reid.
It's great to have you with us.
Thank you for inviting me.
It's an honor and a pleasure.
Dr. Reid Gomez is a brilliant
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scholarand human who is currently assistant
professor in Gender and Women'sstudies at the University of Arizona.
Reid has put a wealth of timeand research in writing,
teaching and speaking widelyabout quantum entanglements,
slavery, colonization, black Indian
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and storytelling translation.
Her latest book projectThe web of differing Versions
Where Africa Ends and America Begins.
This monograph challenges the limitscreated by the grammar of colonialism.
Her work is in conversationwith Silko studies,
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Indigenous Studiesand Critical Black Studies.
Her central interventionis an understanding of language
and land as archivebased in Indigenous epistemologies.
I've been looking forward to
talking about this book with youso it's such a pleasure to have you here.
(02:10):
Thank you.
Very gracious introduction.
So to start off,can you tell us a bit about yourself
and the work that you do?
I always say
my superpower is thatI was raised by my grandparents and
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that it really didtake a village to raise this child.
So I was passed around a lot and I'mwith all the females in my family line,
but my home base is my grandparents.
And then when my grandmother died
when I was nine,I was raised fully by my mom at that time.
But I feel like that'smy superpower is I know my people.
(02:56):
Nobody ever took me from my home.
And it's super prescient right nowwith the Indian
Child Welfare Act being under attack.
But how important it is to know where youcome from and to have all those stories.
And even though my grandparentsare like the War of the Roses
and they had so many different worldsthat I navigated,
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I just went from one world to the other,like upstairs, This is how it was.
These were the rules downstairs.
This is how it wasthese were the rules inside the house.
This is how it was.
These were the rules outside the housewhen you’re at Auntie Corah’s
it's like this when you Auntie Ruby’sit’s like this.
And that.
I feel likeI do feel like that's my superpower.
And the other thing that I always say isthat I will never deny my people, which is
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challenging for some peoplebecause I have a lot of people
and sometimes they want youto be one person or come from one person.
And I don't because I was raisedlike how I was raised and
and I fully inhabited each worldas opposed to try
to have one worldthat I filtered all of the worlds through.
(04:01):
So I'm from San Francisco,and that's probably
a defining characteristic of mine.
I say I live in language,but my life is music
is my other wayof talking about myself. And
like I said, those are my people.
I am Dine, I am Congo and I am Mexican.
And I'm not half of anything.
(04:23):
I'm fully everything.
So that's a brief introduction of myself.
The streets are my playground
and the radio is probably my...
I love the radio. Contrary to podcast.
I love having to be there at the timeand missing it if I miss it,
because then I got to talk to peopleand ask them about what I missed.
Amazing.
(04:45):
I was fascinated by reading your bio
on the University of Arizona website.
Tell us more about quantum entanglements.
You know, it's one thing I love about
that is I came to Karen Barrett's work
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partiallybecause this is an interesting move.
And I think when when you said
you want to hear about my bookand what I'm doing now,
I really needed a way
to say what I was saying,because every time I said
what I was saying, folks would sayit didn't have any structure. Or.
(05:27):
It was too convoluted. And I like that.
I love convolutes, like the WalterBenjamin idea of the convolutes. And
I needed an externally
validated, officially as Maxim Maximus
person that I could say, look at somethingI could point to with my finger
since I'm really into pointy thingswith my finger with the P-Funk.
(05:51):
And so when I found Karen, somebodypointed me to Karen Barrett's work,
and it's sort of it's athe blending that I understood in life.
It's the the way like I used to writethis blog called My Grandpa knew that.
It's like my grandpa knew that.
But by Karen Barrett
writing it and publishing it,it gave me something to to show people.
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And I could handle the physics
because people get afraid of the physics,but I could handle it.
And because it's science, it makes peoplego “Ooh and Ahh.” And I work in language
which makes people say,you're an Indian, you tell stories.
And so
the thing that I love
continually about Karen's workis this idea of
when you cut things apart,you actually cut them together.
(06:36):
And so this for me,which because I'm working in Black Indian
and especially
and people like to think of Black Indianin terms of lineal descendancy are people
like to think of Black Indian in termsof who's your mother, who's your father?
And I'm thinking black Indianin a quantum way,
which has that when you cut us apart,you cut us together
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and we can't be thoughtwithout each other.
And so I love that when you cut thingsapart, you cut them together.
The other thing that I love aboutthe quantum is the idea that when the
when a quantum leap is made is like, poof,now it's gone.
It was there and now it's somewhere elseand the linearity of it is gone.
And the temporality of it's gone.
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And that all makes sense to mewith how I think,
how I, how I know.
And I want to say how I know,like how I was raised up
that was the world I was raisedthat things were and they weren’t.
This.
They appeared that disappeared.
Things were cut together and cuttin apart.
So that's why I love that quantumlike legibility.
(07:41):
They gave me legible language.
You know,I just published a piece about writing,
I call itI'm calling it writing translation
because I don't think this isall these things what Karen's work does.
I went Barrett’s work does this allows youto move away from ontology.
And I'm like way away from ontology.
And so it allows you to say writingand translation
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are not ontologically different,
just like Black and Indianand ontologically different.
Just like, you know,
slavery, colonizationare not ontologically different,
and we tend to racialize thoseor we're comfortable
in other-izing everything,including those, those things.
So with that, evenwith writing in translation, that they
we like to cut them apart,but we would cut them together.
(08:24):
I like that ideaa lot and a lot of the work
about the queernessof physics and particles
and it is that inability to be fixed,which kind of think to me,
doctor based work on transingbeing a verb, like call the verbiness.
I'm about I'mall about language and grammar.
So I'm like, things are verbs
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where verbies the words that Philips said,what if it's all about verbs?
And I'm like, Yes,it is all about verbena.
And so Barrett's work is, is like that.
And so.
So can I ask a follow up question.
I'm imagining
there might be folkswho've not heard the word ontology before.
Can you explain how you're using that?
(09:06):
Yeah, you know, that's a good question.
See, that's a good restatement.Can you explain how you're using that?
Because I this is what I always say. Like
we use words the way we want to like bookshas that I use the language
that you've given me and I like to knowa chair is like, I'm going to make it.
Do what? I'm a writer. I'mgoing to make it do what I want it to do.
And so because I'm not into anybodyowning any language
(09:29):
and I'm not into language, I'minto languaging
like even that that I have a wealthof languages at my disposal
and I just grab what I want and I use itand I make it do what I want.
So that's my long ass, sorry. Excuse me.
That's my long answer for
why I what I mean by that with ontology,
I think this to me and Michelle Wright'swork on physics of Blackness
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also help me with some of the languageand get to where I could.
I think for me, running, write, writingis running naked in the fields of joy.
And so every time somebody correctsmy pronunciation or corrects my English
or corrects my grammar, I am not runningnaked in the fields of joy.
And I really like to runnaked in the fields of joy.
I do not like to have clothes onand I do not like to be in that joyful.
(10:15):
So you like don't disturb this groove.
You are really disturbing this groove.
So with Barrett’s work gave me that.
And then Michelle Wright’s.I'm answering your ontology question.
This is how I go
at a is what?
What is it?
And for those folks that live life,
the way that I'm I'm a what is it?
(10:37):
That's a really ugly thing to saybut I am a what is it you know
with the way that Iwhat is visible. Right.
And we're obsessed with the ocularity,we’re obsessed with what we can see.
And I am not obsessed with what we can seebecause I grew up with the unseen
and respect for it and the ancestors and,and the gods and Orisha.
And so
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the ontology is the what?
It's the being.
So like in Spanish, it's the ser.
It's what you are and it's not.
So it's the what is it?
And so Michelle Wright'swork is like moving away from the
what is Blackness to the whereand when is Blackness.
And that allows you to be eitherin the transing world of Bae.
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And I think I'm in that transing world
with my translationtrans motion translanguaging.
I'm all about the prefix or transand that is more like estar in Spanish.
It's like where you happen to beat the given moment, what you're doing.
Like it's not your essencebecause there is no essence, right?
So that's what, that's what I,how I use ontology from the what to the
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to the verbingness.
So from moving from a nounto a verb, that's my shorthand.
Sorry.
So Reid,
your work is deeply embedded in language
as you've been talking about in grammar.
And Racial Justice Studiohas a very particular set of grammars.
(12:06):
Anti-Racism is one of those words.
And so I'm wondering how
your work is placed in conversationwith that.
Particularlyyou talk about Black and Native,
you know, in relationto quantum entanglements,
you know, that they're not necessarilyseparate from one another.
(12:28):
And so I mightyou place your work in conversation
with the notionsand the language of anti-racism.
Yeah, I think that's good question,because
let me answer itin terms of dance, in dance.
And I believe that this is also in life.
When you're doing partner dance,you need to know how to move towards
somebody.
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You also need to knowhow to move away from somebody.
And then you also need to knowhow to move against somebody
or with somebodyso that your bodies are moving together.
But there is an against part of it,whether you're hip to hip,
whether your shoulders shoulder,
whether you're front to back,whatever you are against.
So that's the there is it's not a tensionthere.
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It's a connection.
And so I think of it that wayin terms of moving towards
a way and against of everything in life.
For me, I think of Glissant's
relations of poetics and like
my I have an extreme uneasinesswith oppositional frameworks.
So like I love the prefix or trans,I don't tend to love
(13:33):
the anti, I would say a foundationalto my whole life.
And my work is I don't make others andI don't make myself and other to people.
So I don't want to engage in processeswhere I am
viewing myself as and other are viewingand other from me.
I think this is Baldwin's, you know,there's nothing in you that is not in me.
(13:54):
And so I am so deeply committed to that.
And Steyn and Glissant'spoetics of relation, how are we related?
Which for me goes to Black Indian,we are relatives.
And however that looks like,even if it's just in
the construction of us, is always togetheranyway.
Or like for people that are,
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we are relatives in some wayswe are related.
So that's my relationship with the antiit's and I like to say the dance
prefatory marks so that it doesn't I'mnot anti- anti-racism, right
That's just not the way that I enterand I think I just was
one of my teachers is Gladys“Bobi” Céspedes who is an amazing
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priest of boletaria
salsera singer abondand I take classes with her
and I'm blessedto have been one of her children.
In the tradition, though,I'm not officially a child,
but she was just talking aboutbecause sometimes people want to know the.
(14:59):
You know, that they want to knowthe the way the answer.
If we have this, why do we do this?
And she really talked about everybodybrings a part of something when they come.
This is like my web of different versions.
This is from the title of my book is that
we're not seeking a storyand we're not seeking contradiction.
We're not seeking.
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Let's not compare our stories.
Let's have the web of differing versions.
And so anti is one of the versionsof the story.
It's not the version I tell.
So I bring you what I telland everybody brings what they tell.
And as long as we allowthe differing versions and to not put them
in competitionor also in comparison with each other,
I think everybody has brought somethingbecause I don't know what is needed
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and you might have brought somethingthat's needed, right?
So who am I to say, Don't bring that.
We don't need it.I don't know what we need.
I know what I need to bringand that's what I'm doing.
So that's my relationship with that.
It's challenging because
people like to know the answerso they can do that.
And I don't give answers,
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which I think is frustrating to people.
I want to ask about your story,
but also your storytelling, right?
When did your relationship shipto storytelling
and translation began?
I do think it's it's being raised by
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everybody
basically, and run in the streetsand also being little and not.
My family is very
I say I run the streets,but I also my family's super insular.
And so but we were big, right?
We weren't like,what an American traditional family.
It wasn't the houselike I had many houses growing up.
(16:47):
So for me,I learned how to immerse myself like this.
Samuel Delany callsit Submit to the story structure.
I learned how to submitto the story structure quick style,
because I was there,you know, my my antidotes famous line,
my Auntie Dorah has a famousline is get your rags and let's go.
One time when she came get me.
So I was like, okay, I guess I'm
(17:08):
not going to live here anymore,but it lives somewhere else.
And so that I immersed.
And so that practice I thinkis very much understand now
as a grown person that that's what you do.
You immerse,you submit to the story structure.
So I'm not trying to be in charge at allever.
And some people may
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consider that a docility,but I think that's a great strength.
And the other thing is like I had to beI could I don't come from readers.
I learned myself how to read
because Disney had record booksand I'm really good with the ear hole.
I think growing up with a orally based,my grandma could read
and at night she would
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we would do this thing with holy cardsand she would read me from the Bible.
But she did not teach me how to read.
So I learned myself how to read.
So I had that
relationship with my mom a be like,read this and tell me what it says.
So I had that practice of having
to give informationthat I was able to get to my community.
When the door knocked,they say, Go answer the door.
(18:09):
And I would tell all kinds of things.
Nobody speaks English, though.No one’s home.
So I just came up with all kinds of stuffand I did the interfacing for for them.
You go in and get directions.
I mean, I call it my camouflagebecause I have my camouflage,
I could have access to a lot of placesthat folks that my family didn't.
So I also was the one thatlike what happened, Where was you at?
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What happened?
So I'm constantly narrating everythingand they wanted to know everything.
And I also think later now, like when I
when students struggle and when I'mnot great on genres of concision.
When folx struggle with my inabilityto deal with genres of concision,
to like say it quick and get to the pointand all of that.
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It's that
I cannot tell you what anything meansbecause your job is to make meaning of it.
What I can't tell you is every detailI can make the story speak,
and then I have to make know what story isneeded to speak to this moment.
I get I got it.
I get the story. I tell you the story.
That's my power is connecting.
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What story speaks to this moment?
Where story do need atell the story in all the details
Now you're the one that'sgot to make meaning of it.
And so I need to keep all the detailsbecause what is meaningful to
you may not be meaningful to the personthat needs the story the next time.
So I was constantly doing that.
So I have facility with itand that's how I live to the world.
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That's how I read everythinglike it's a poem
my first semester in graduate school,so much
so you cannot read everythinglike it's a poem.
And I do.
I still do.
I hope that's an answer for you.
It's a beautiful answer for you.
Tell me more
about your creative focusand writing practice
(19:53):
both on and in black English and Navlish.
Navlish is named.
It's like. It's like Black English.Ah, I know you're supposed to.
Everybody has their thing.
What they say, I'm
come from June Jordan's world,so I'm sticking with Black English.
Navlish is also a coin termfrom the linguists.
There's an amazing and lovely
(20:15):
linguist, social linguists,Anthony Webster, who does work on Navlish
and grammars of intimacy in Navajo,where something Navajo
speakers are even like,I am not by any means fluent.
I have a good analytical capacitywith the language.
Like I understand it analytically,I understand the structures,
but my fluency is very poorand when Navajo speakers hear me
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speak, they go the way you talk.
Hehe Hehe.
Because I'm like,
I talk like I'm from San Francisco ina talk like Black English is probably my
my primary language.
Not Navlish but that's an actual term.
And so I use some of those I try to use.
I'm trying to communicate with ya’ll.
So I'm like, I try to use the terms likeit's kind of Beckett has this line from
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end game.
I use the language you taught me,and that's how I feel,
because like when people are like,Why are you talking like that?
I use the languageyou taught me, and this is like,
this is the oppressor’s language.I'm going to use it.
So I felt oppressed by a lot of
sciences that that want to codify.
And so Navlish is the codificationof how Navajos
(21:20):
do with languageand just the same way Black English
is that kind of thing,or African-American vernacular English.
And so translanguaging for me is really reflects
that there are no boundaries
between language and speakers like methat are multilingual,
are using all of the structuresand all of the vocabularies at one time.
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And it's not code switching, it's not.
And I will beI will throw down with you about that
like with the anti-Americanwhat we dance it.
I'm like, No, we're fighting now.
So with the code switching, we fight.
And so like, you know, sometimes fightingcan be a dance, but but now we fighting.
Yeah. So that is a big divide.
And that's
because I think people think of languagesin terms of the national distinctions
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and also hard and fast rules,which is my grammar of colonialism.
Like, you can't say that.
Why I just said it is you're not.
What is the word that you're not allowingfor my grammar to be okay.
And you're saying it's an errorinstead of a choice of the speaker.
So that is what I'm serious about.
All right. Period.
Yeah, just the my poom.
Sorry. I know, that's expensive ones but.
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Your latest book project,
the Web of Different Versions: Where Africa Ends and America Begins. (22:29):
undefined
What were your goals in this project?
My goals was to finish itand not start over.
So I've been working on this a long time.
I say sometimes to peoplewhen I that Leslie Marmon Silko’s work
and Leslie Marmon Silko world.
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That's where I exist. And
and because I don't existin a lot of worlds,
I have failed to achievesubject status in many worlds.
And so this is a world where I existand I'm not other.
And that's that.
That's why I think that's sucha foundational thing for me,
because I have been made otherby my own relations.
(23:10):
And that's so painful.
I mean, all of us know that.
I would say all of us know,I think I'm going to be bold.
All of us know that being the object ofridicule and hate is profoundly fatiguing.
And and
to experience that
from somebody that, you know, hates you
is one thing, but experiencethat from somebody you know, hates you
(23:33):
who may even love you, too,or may be somebody
who gave you birth.
That's a whole nother kind of fatigue.
And so
for me to be able to exist fully withoutI don't like explaining myself either.
So to be able to existfully without explaining myself
(23:55):
not as an other is profound.
So Leslie's Almanac of the Dead became,
even though it's a really difficult bookthat I tell people
to, is don't read this book for Your HappySpace is going to be happy.
It deals with all the nastiness.
I think if you need to understand Americasyou should read Almanac of the Dead,
(24:16):
the primary question of that
book is Who has Spiritual Possessionof the Americas?
And there is a sentence in that bookthat says,
For outsiders, it's difficultto know where Africans in America begins.
And when I say I exist in that book,I'm like, yes, these
these were the sentencesthat describe my world,
one who has spiritual possessionof the Americas because I come from deeply
(24:41):
faithful communitiesthat also were in tremendous.
I always tell the story.
I'm going to tell a brief, brief moment.
I was always with my grandmotherunless she was at work.
And even sometimes they let me go to her,work with her.
That'show spoiled I am and how loved she was.
But my grandmother had the keysto the church and so I would go with
we would go to the churchand prepare the back in the sacristy.
(25:02):
So we went back where the priests were
and we're preparing the hostand everything for the mass.
My grandmother was that devoutand was that respected in the church.
And then my grandfather was like,We don't know why God got So I was like,
This is my so really devoutand these are our sons
and this is how you believe and,
you know, telling me storiesabout the insects people.
And these are relations and everything.
(25:24):
So I come from extremely devout peopleand with really strong
religious practices and the multi-faith,so practicing all of them fully.
So to have that
question, who has spiritual possessionof the Americas, it made sense to me.
And we tend to talk about religionbecause we cannot handle the blended
aspect of gods and ancestorsin our lives, in our daily practice.
(25:45):
So when I found that that was the centralquestion of that book, I was like, yeah.
And then I don't know where Africa endsand America begins.
I don't know where Africa ends, obviously,you know that.
I don't know where Africa endsand America begins.
I cannot tell you.
And I've come up with another termfor this book.
At the coda is called Land Seais this idea of
where does the land in the sea begins?
(26:06):
Because that'ssome of the things we have to
when we talk about to think of,to use Michelle Wright's language,
the Middle Passage epistemology and right,the idea that Blackness
is this moment from middle passageas opposed to the land sea.
And you know, we have a lagoon. Yes,we know that.
But also we are of the land as well.
Black people are of the land,
not just of the seaand not just of an absence of land
(26:28):
are not just of a removal of land,and Indians are not the of the land.
They are also of the sea.
And we are also of that and of the sky.
And some of us came from the sky.
So all of that. So this book, for me,
it waswhere I lived and what had happened.
There's a line in the bookis that one of the characters says, once
(26:49):
I transcribe these almanacs,I will figure out how to use them.
I had this moment Reading Almanacafter reading that line.
Once I transcribed these almanac,
these almanac notebooks,I'll figure out how to use it.
I'm like,
I have figured out how to use itbecause I live my life through this book.
I teach this book all the time.
People that read this book are,How do you teach that book Reid?
(27:11):
I'm like,
because I know how to use it and becauseI know how to make the stories speak.
And that's my skill.
Here is here'sthis story, here's what it says.
And so for me, that's what the bookand that the truth is the web of differing
versions.
I tell people in scholarshipthat I don't do comparison
and I don't do periodization, right?
Especially with black Indian folkswho aren't periods like I use
(27:32):
punctuation periods,I don't use temporal periods.
And people like, how is that scholarship?
Well, the web of differing versionsallows the scholarship and then allows us
to have all of the different versionsbecause they all tell us something.
And one is not right and one is not wrong.
Do we have the
capacity to allow the structureof differing versions?
(27:54):
So that is is about the book.
And what I was trying to do,I think is show people how to use it
and write somethingthat was not comparative,
something that didn't have periodsand something that doesn't know
where Africa ends and America beginsand has no argument.
So this is my crazy full selfand I'm really happy with it.
(28:17):
And I kind of gave myself over for itto be.
I started over so many times thinkingabout what the reviewers would say.
And when I got to the pointwhere I said, I'm just writing it,
and if everybody hates it, I'mokay with that,
which is how I am with my “fiction.”And and then now it's I love it.
It's still beautiful to me.
(28:37):
Myriah Dessay carries and also one of my
she's in my dance community, butshe's also a writer and she has this line.
Black people do more than die. Yes.
And so this is. I already know this world.
And I want to be able to write somethingthat was it
and not describing it or analyzing it,but just was it.
(28:59):
So that's what I'm trying to do with thatbook.
Well, congratulations on onwrapping it up and finishing it.
Yeah.
You described the projectas challenging the limits created
by grammar of colonialism.
What is grammar of colonialism?
So Leslie Marmon Silko says that
(29:22):
all we have are the stories.
And so but as long as we retainthe stories, we have everything.
So the grammar of colonialism,as I've described it,
I wrote about thiswhen I wrote about Blackhorse
Mitchell's work,who is a writer that I work
with, his amazing writerthat is working on his second book.
And so he's also another writerthat people don't know about,
(29:44):
but he's in the
Dine Reader that was just won the prize.
But once we so if we have the stories,we have everything.
But once you startsaying who can tell the stories?
So like when Silko saysshe wrote Almanac of the Dead, she was she
talks about Zora's workand she says, I was mounted by the gods.
And this is what they said,The gods of Voodoo
(30:05):
and the Lwa the Lwa mounted meand this is what came out.
And then people say, “Oh, you're crazy.
You talk like that”.
And so once you start saying,who can tell?
So from my work,
the gods and ancestors figurethat they're everything all the time.
They're my morning, they're my night,they're every minute in between.
And if I make it to the next morning,they're my morning again.
(30:26):
And so if the gods and ancestorscannot participate in the narration,
then we've lost some of the stories.So that's one thing.
Who can tell the storieswith the grammar of colonialism?
The other thing is the structure.
And so like I said,I don't have an argument,
I'm not doing comparisonsand I'm using periods, punctuation.
I really believe in punctuating withas you running naked in fields of joy.
(30:47):
So like that kind of punctuationI just put my writing partner Kathy is
I think the way the placeyou where you put periods that she's able
to tell you anything because I know you,that's where you want it.
And so the grammar of colonialismalso tells you the structure
and what to me, part of slavery,colonization
and Black Indian and writingtranslation is a single structure.
(31:09):
And whether that structure is subject verband things like agreement,
right, Subject verb agreement,things like tense
like people,something you can't be changing the tense,
you know,all the time in the middle of a sentence
like don't change horsesin the middle of the stream, like
they'll be, quote, a tower power on metrying to tell me how to write.
Right. This is what we are.
I did change horses in the middle stream.That's why they wrote a song about it.
(31:30):
It told me not to do it anymorebecause it's possible, right?
And you start limitingthe possibility space both of the ability
to tell the story, butalso the possibility space of this is like
where we get into the P-Funk of creatingand imagining all we need and all we do.
That's who we are.
We're creators.
And as to me, as communities.
(31:51):
And so once you say you can't do thatand you get into that like cognitive
fixity and say, that's for that, that'swhat that's for, you can use it for that.
I'm like, I could use itfor what I want to use it for.
I look, it works.
And so the grammar of colonialism tellsyou the rules.
It's prescriptive,and that's about controlling power
because once we control our structures,we control our relations and Dr.
(32:15):
John, who's a faculty here, talks aboutcolonialism as a series of separations
between each others.
I think of colonialismas a severing of relations
like severing black from Indiaand severing writing
from translation,severing slavery from colonization.
Separate me from you, right?
And so that grammar of colonialismdoes that.
(32:35):
Who can speak,
how they can speak, the structuresavailable and the possibility space.
I'm really big on possibility. Space
behind this
means it is possible in Navajoand it's one of my favorite words.
This is a good pointto ask you this question.
What are some projectsthat you're excited about?
(32:57):
But folks might not be able to find
if they were to look you up online.
So there's one I'm
so I saidI had a breakthrough over the last summer.
One is because I started
writing these slavery broadcastsso that is that that's put a pin in that.
But the other thing is one of myI call him my corazon,
(33:20):
which in Spanish means my heart.
Pato Hebert is an amazing artist,and so look him up.
He's easy to find. He is easy to find.
And if you look at Pato Hebertand you look at one of the
projects called Lingering,
and youclick on that, he's put the whole book up.
It's this artist monograph.
(33:41):
And I have a piece in the center of thatwhich is really hard to find.
It's called I Feel Like Making Lovefrom the Roberta Flax song.
And so that piece is hard to find
and I love it.
And also you get to see Pato's work.
And it was a breakthrough for mebecause I actually was able to read it.
And Alexandre Dumas, who is one of Pato'scollaborators, who's also an amazing
(34:04):
media studies person, came up to meand said, Are you writing?
Is stuff like that.
Like, I want to almost likedo a crazy check on you, right?
And I said, kind of because I've beendoing this slavery broadcast like that.
And he said, Good, do it.
And so that was really empowering for me.
And I want to thank Alex.
If you ever hear this,they give for that moment.
(34:25):
So that's hard to find, but it's there.
Another piece is coming outand it should it be hard to find.
But I think it might be hard to find.Right now.
It's out of NP Press,and it's a book called Say, Listen
Writing is Care,and it's a collaborative project,
and we're called the BlackIndigenous 100’s Collective,
and we've been working togethersince 2019,
and that's actually going to come outin the new press.
(34:47):
We're going to be their inaugural book.
MP Which if you know when when things say
and means it'll have no pressright, is lacking in press.
And so that's the name of the pressbecause it's all of these works
that may not get publishedbecause they're lacking a certain
citational practiceor they're lacking a, an anything.
I mean, we'rewe're not being linear in that book.
(35:07):
We have so many languageswe don't translate because Dr.
John and I are like, I'm not translating.
You know, I have
a translation policyin my class that you translate honestly
and graciously, but that's not my lifetranslation policy for my writing.
I'm like, I'm not translating for me.
I tend to write because I care aboutmy people that are reading.
I tend to write something afterwhat I've written so that you understand.
(35:30):
So you can just this is some this goesback to my writing process and my practice
so that you can read and writein languages you don't understand.
I think that's a fundamental skilleverybody has to have,
is I'm talking the language.I don’t understand?
I'm listening to a languageI don't understand.
I'm reading a languageI don't understand and I'm not saying,
What are you saying, you other than me,Could you translate that?
(35:52):
I'm just listening.
Just Like when you dance, I dance to musicand I'm like, I give myself over to it.
So that's the same thing that happens inmy writing. I try to do that.
Reid, It has been
such a pleasure to sit with you today.
Thank you for being so generousand in sharing about your work
(36:15):
you've given usand those listeners a lot to think about.
And so thank you so much.
Incredible conversation.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for joining the conversationon Race remix today.
The podcast is the creationof Racial Justice Studio
in Tucson, Arizona, the land of the Tohono
(36:36):
Oʼodham and Pascua Yaqui.
This episode would not have been possiblewithout the efforts
of our team of students,staff and faculty fellows Chelsea Farrar,
Amy Krey, myself,Gloria Wilson, Isaac Schutz,
Deana Scott and Jenny Stern.
(36:56):
This program is brought to youby the Arizona Arts
at the University of Arizona with generoussupport from John and Sandy Flint.
If you enjoyed this episode, please
invite your friends,family, students and colleagues to listen.
Interested in joining
our communityor listening to more episodes,
(37:18):
please visit Race Remix Arts Dot Arizona
dot edu and sign up to receive
emails about upcoming news and events.
You can also learn moreabout all of our guests in the show notes.
Race/Remix
Race/Remix
This is Race
Remix, a podcast that pushes forwardenriching
and challenging conversationsabout the arts in racial justice.
We talk with artists, poets, writers,
directors, dancers, designers, performers,and creative practitioners
(00:21):
from the Arizona community and beyond.
As you listen, be inspired
to advocate and activatein your community.
Together, we can create a more just
joyful and sustainable world.
Welcome to Race Remix.
Okay.
Welcome to Race Remix.
(00:43):
I'm your host, gloria wilson.
Co-hosting this episode is Amy Kraehe.
And visiting with us todayin the studio is Dr.
Reid Gomez.
Welcome to the show, Reid.
It's great to have you with us.
Thank you for inviting me.
It's an honor and a pleasure.
Dr. Reid Gomez is a brilliant
(01:05):
scholarand human who is currently assistant
professor in Gender and Women'sstudies at the University of Arizona.
Reid has put a wealth of timeand research in writing,
teaching and speaking widelyabout quantum entanglements,
slavery, colonization, black Indian
(01:29):
and storytelling translation.
Her latest book projectThe web of differing Versions
Where Africa Ends and America Begins.
This monograph challenges the limitscreated by the grammar of colonialism.
Her work is in conversationwith Silko studies,
(01:50):
Indigenous Studiesand Critical Black Studies.
Her central interventionis an understanding of language
and land as archivebased in Indigenous epistemologies.
I've been looking forward to
talking about this book with youso it's such a pleasure to have you here.
(02:10):
Thank you.
Very gracious introduction.
So to start off,can you tell us a bit about yourself
and the work that you do?
I always say
my superpower is thatI was raised by my grandparents and
(02:32):
that it really didtake a village to raise this child.
So I was passed around a lot and I'mwith all the females in my family line,
but my home base is my grandparents.
And then when my grandmother died
when I was nine,I was raised fully by my mom at that time.
But I feel like that'smy superpower is I know my people.
(02:56):
Nobody ever took me from my home.
And it's super prescient right nowwith the Indian
Child Welfare Act being under attack.
But how important it is to know where youcome from and to have all those stories.
And even though my grandparentsare like the War of the Roses
and they had so many different worldsthat I navigated,
(03:17):
I just went from one world to the other,like upstairs, This is how it was.
These were the rules downstairs.
This is how it wasthese were the rules inside the house.
This is how it was.
These were the rules outside the housewhen you’re at Auntie Corah’s
it's like this when you Auntie Ruby’sit’s like this.
And that.
I feel likeI do feel like that's my superpower.
And the other thing that I always say isthat I will never deny my people, which is
(03:40):
challenging for some peoplebecause I have a lot of people
and sometimes they want youto be one person or come from one person.
And I don't because I was raisedlike how I was raised and
and I fully inhabited each worldas opposed to try
to have one worldthat I filtered all of the worlds through.
(04:01):
So I'm from San Francisco,and that's probably
a defining characteristic of mine.
I say I live in language,but my life is music
is my other wayof talking about myself. And
like I said, those are my people.
I am Dine, I am Congo and I am Mexican.
And I'm not half of anything.
(04:23):
I'm fully everything.
So that's a brief introduction of myself.
The streets are my playground
and the radio is probably my...
I love the radio. Contrary to podcast.
I love having to be there at the timeand missing it if I miss it,
because then I got to talk to peopleand ask them about what I missed.
Amazing.
(04:45):
I was fascinated by reading your bio
on the University of Arizona website.
Tell us more about quantum entanglements.
You know, it's one thing I love about
that is I came to Karen Barrett's work
(05:06):
partiallybecause this is an interesting move.
And I think when when you said
you want to hear about my bookand what I'm doing now,
I really needed a way
to say what I was saying,because every time I said
what I was saying, folks would sayit didn't have any structure. Or.
(05:27):
It was too convoluted. And I like that.
I love convolutes, like the WalterBenjamin idea of the convolutes. And
I needed an externally
validated, officially as Maxim Maximus
person that I could say, look at somethingI could point to with my finger
since I'm really into pointy thingswith my finger with the P-Funk.
(05:51):
And so when I found Karen, somebodypointed me to Karen Barrett's work,
and it's sort of it's athe blending that I understood in life.
It's the the way like I used to writethis blog called My Grandpa knew that.
It's like my grandpa knew that.
But by Karen Barrett
writing it and publishing it,it gave me something to to show people.
(06:12):
And I could handle the physics
because people get afraid of the physics,but I could handle it.
And because it's science, it makes peoplego “Ooh and Ahh.” And I work in language
which makes people say,you're an Indian, you tell stories.
And so
the thing that I love
continually about Karen's workis this idea of
when you cut things apart,you actually cut them together.
(06:36):
And so this for me,which because I'm working in Black Indian
and especially
and people like to think of Black Indianin terms of lineal descendancy are people
like to think of Black Indian in termsof who's your mother, who's your father?
And I'm thinking black Indianin a quantum way,
which has that when you cut us apart,you cut us together
(06:58):
and we can't be thoughtwithout each other.
And so I love that when you cut thingsapart, you cut them together.
The other thing that I love aboutthe quantum is the idea that when the
when a quantum leap is made is like, poof,now it's gone.
It was there and now it's somewhere elseand the linearity of it is gone.
And the temporality of it's gone.
(07:19):
And that all makes sense to mewith how I think,
how I, how I know.
And I want to say how I know,like how I was raised up
that was the world I was raisedthat things were and they weren’t.
This.
They appeared that disappeared.
Things were cut together and cuttin apart.
So that's why I love that quantumlike legibility.
(07:41):
They gave me legible language.
You know,I just published a piece about writing,
I call itI'm calling it writing translation
because I don't think this isall these things what Karen's work does.
I went Barrett’s work does this allows youto move away from ontology.
And I'm like way away from ontology.
And so it allows you to say writingand translation
(08:01):
are not ontologically different,
just like Black and Indianand ontologically different.
Just like, you know,
slavery, colonizationare not ontologically different,
and we tend to racialize thoseor we're comfortable
in other-izing everything,including those, those things.
So with that, evenwith writing in translation, that they
we like to cut them apart,but we would cut them together.
(08:24):
I like that ideaa lot and a lot of the work
about the queernessof physics and particles
and it is that inability to be fixed,which kind of think to me,
doctor based work on transingbeing a verb, like call the verbiness.
I'm about I'mall about language and grammar.
So I'm like, things are verbs
(08:44):
where verbies the words that Philips said,what if it's all about verbs?
And I'm like, Yes,it is all about verbena.
And so Barrett's work is, is like that.
And so.
So can I ask a follow up question.
I'm imagining
there might be folkswho've not heard the word ontology before.
Can you explain how you're using that?
(09:06):
Yeah, you know, that's a good question.
See, that's a good restatement.Can you explain how you're using that?
Because I this is what I always say. Like
we use words the way we want to like bookshas that I use the language
that you've given me and I like to knowa chair is like, I'm going to make it.
Do what? I'm a writer. I'mgoing to make it do what I want it to do.
And so because I'm not into anybodyowning any language
(09:29):
and I'm not into language, I'minto languaging
like even that that I have a wealthof languages at my disposal
and I just grab what I want and I use itand I make it do what I want.
So that's my long ass, sorry. Excuse me.
That's my long answer for
why I what I mean by that with ontology,
I think this to me and Michelle Wright'swork on physics of Blackness
(09:52):
also help me with some of the languageand get to where I could.
I think for me, running, write, writingis running naked in the fields of joy.
And so every time somebody correctsmy pronunciation or corrects my English
or corrects my grammar, I am not runningnaked in the fields of joy.
And I really like to runnaked in the fields of joy.
I do not like to have clothes onand I do not like to be in that joyful.
(10:15):
So you like don't disturb this groove.
You are really disturbing this groove.
So with Barrett’s work gave me that.
And then Michelle Wright’s.I'm answering your ontology question.
This is how I go
at a is what?
What is it?
And for those folks that live life,
the way that I'm I'm a what is it?
(10:37):
That's a really ugly thing to saybut I am a what is it you know
with the way that Iwhat is visible. Right.
And we're obsessed with the ocularity,we’re obsessed with what we can see.
And I am not obsessed with what we can seebecause I grew up with the unseen
and respect for it and the ancestors and,and the gods and Orisha.
And so
(10:58):
the ontology is the what?
It's the being.
So like in Spanish, it's the ser.
It's what you are and it's not.
So it's the what is it?
And so Michelle Wright'swork is like moving away from the
what is Blackness to the whereand when is Blackness.
And that allows you to be eitherin the transing world of Bae.
(11:19):
And I think I'm in that transing world
with my translationtrans motion translanguaging.
I'm all about the prefix or transand that is more like estar in Spanish.
It's like where you happen to beat the given moment, what you're doing.
Like it's not your essencebecause there is no essence, right?
So that's what, that's what I,how I use ontology from the what to the
(11:42):
to the verbingness.
So from moving from a nounto a verb, that's my shorthand.
Sorry.
So Reid,
your work is deeply embedded in language
as you've been talking about in grammar.
And Racial Justice Studiohas a very particular set of grammars.
(12:06):
Anti-Racism is one of those words.
And so I'm wondering how
your work is placed in conversationwith that.
Particularlyyou talk about Black and Native,
you know, in relationto quantum entanglements,
you know, that they're not necessarilyseparate from one another.
(12:28):
And so I mightyou place your work in conversation
with the notionsand the language of anti-racism.
Yeah, I think that's good question,because
let me answer itin terms of dance, in dance.
And I believe that this is also in life.
When you're doing partner dance,you need to know how to move towards
somebody.
(12:48):
You also need to knowhow to move away from somebody.
And then you also need to knowhow to move against somebody
or with somebodyso that your bodies are moving together.
But there is an against part of it,whether you're hip to hip,
whether your shoulders shoulder,
whether you're front to back,whatever you are against.
So that's the there is it's not a tensionthere.
(13:10):
It's a connection.
And so I think of it that wayin terms of moving towards
a way and against of everything in life.
For me, I think of Glissant's
relations of poetics and like
my I have an extreme uneasinesswith oppositional frameworks.
So like I love the prefix or trans,I don't tend to love
(13:33):
the anti, I would say a foundationalto my whole life.
And my work is I don't make others andI don't make myself and other to people.
So I don't want to engage in processeswhere I am
viewing myself as and other are viewingand other from me.
I think this is Baldwin's, you know,there's nothing in you that is not in me.
(13:54):
And so I am so deeply committed to that.
And Steyn and Glissant'spoetics of relation, how are we related?
Which for me goes to Black Indian,we are relatives.
And however that looks like,even if it's just in
the construction of us, is always togetheranyway.
Or like for people that are,
(14:16):
we are relatives in some wayswe are related.
So that's my relationship with the antiit's and I like to say the dance
prefatory marks so that it doesn't I'mnot anti- anti-racism, right
That's just not the way that I enterand I think I just was
one of my teachers is Gladys“Bobi” Céspedes who is an amazing
(14:39):
priest of boletaria
salsera singer abondand I take classes with her
and I'm blessedto have been one of her children.
In the tradition, though,I'm not officially a child,
but she was just talking aboutbecause sometimes people want to know the.
(14:59):
You know, that they want to knowthe the way the answer.
If we have this, why do we do this?
And she really talked about everybodybrings a part of something when they come.
This is like my web of different versions.
This is from the title of my book is that
we're not seeking a storyand we're not seeking contradiction.
We're not seeking.
(15:20):
Let's not compare our stories.
Let's have the web of differing versions.
And so anti is one of the versionsof the story.
It's not the version I tell.
So I bring you what I telland everybody brings what they tell.
And as long as we allowthe differing versions and to not put them
in competitionor also in comparison with each other,
I think everybody has brought somethingbecause I don't know what is needed
(15:42):
and you might have brought somethingthat's needed, right?
So who am I to say, Don't bring that.
We don't need it.I don't know what we need.
I know what I need to bringand that's what I'm doing.
So that's my relationship with that.
It's challenging because
people like to know the answerso they can do that.
And I don't give answers,
(16:03):
which I think is frustrating to people.
I want to ask about your story,
but also your storytelling, right?
When did your relationship shipto storytelling
and translation began?
I do think it's it's being raised by
(16:26):
everybody
basically, and run in the streetsand also being little and not.
My family is very
I say I run the streets,but I also my family's super insular.
And so but we were big, right?
We weren't like,what an American traditional family.
It wasn't the houselike I had many houses growing up.
(16:47):
So for me,I learned how to immerse myself like this.
Samuel Delany callsit Submit to the story structure.
I learned how to submitto the story structure quick style,
because I was there,you know, my my antidotes famous line,
my Auntie Dorah has a famousline is get your rags and let's go.
One time when she came get me.
So I was like, okay, I guess I'm
(17:08):
not going to live here anymore,but it lives somewhere else.
And so that I immersed.
And so that practice I thinkis very much understand now
as a grown person that that's what you do.
You immerse,you submit to the story structure.
So I'm not trying to be in charge at allever.
And some people may
(17:28):
consider that a docility,but I think that's a great strength.
And the other thing is like I had to beI could I don't come from readers.
I learned myself how to read
because Disney had record booksand I'm really good with the ear hole.
I think growing up with a orally based,my grandma could read
and at night she would
(17:49):
we would do this thing with holy cardsand she would read me from the Bible.
But she did not teach me how to read.
So I learned myself how to read.
So I had that
relationship with my mom a be like,read this and tell me what it says.
So I had that practice of having
to give informationthat I was able to get to my community.
When the door knocked,they say, Go answer the door.
(18:09):
And I would tell all kinds of things.
Nobody speaks English, though.No one’s home.
So I just came up with all kinds of stuffand I did the interfacing for for them.
You go in and get directions.
I mean, I call it my camouflagebecause I have my camouflage,
I could have access to a lot of placesthat folks that my family didn't.
So I also was the one thatlike what happened, Where was you at?
(18:29):
What happened?
So I'm constantly narrating everythingand they wanted to know everything.
And I also think later now, like when I
when students struggle and when I'mnot great on genres of concision.
When folx struggle with my inabilityto deal with genres of concision,
to like say it quick and get to the pointand all of that.
(18:51):
It's that
I cannot tell you what anything meansbecause your job is to make meaning of it.
What I can't tell you is every detailI can make the story speak,
and then I have to make know what story isneeded to speak to this moment.
I get I got it.
I get the story. I tell you the story.
That's my power is connecting.
(19:12):
What story speaks to this moment?
Where story do need atell the story in all the details
Now you're the one that'sgot to make meaning of it.
And so I need to keep all the detailsbecause what is meaningful to
you may not be meaningful to the personthat needs the story the next time.
So I was constantly doing that.
So I have facility with itand that's how I live to the world.
(19:33):
That's how I read everythinglike it's a poem
my first semester in graduate school,so much
so you cannot read everythinglike it's a poem.
And I do.
I still do.
I hope that's an answer for you.
It's a beautiful answer for you.
Tell me more
about your creative focusand writing practice
(19:53):
both on and in black English and Navlish.
Navlish is named.
It's like. It's like Black English.Ah, I know you're supposed to.
Everybody has their thing.
What they say, I'm
come from June Jordan's world,so I'm sticking with Black English.
Navlish is also a coin termfrom the linguists.
There's an amazing and lovely
(20:15):
linguist, social linguists,Anthony Webster, who does work on Navlish
and grammars of intimacy in Navajo,where something Navajo
speakers are even like,I am not by any means fluent.
I have a good analytical capacitywith the language.
Like I understand it analytically,I understand the structures,
but my fluency is very poorand when Navajo speakers hear me
(20:36):
speak, they go the way you talk.
Hehe Hehe.
Because I'm like,
I talk like I'm from San Francisco ina talk like Black English is probably my
my primary language.
Not Navlish but that's an actual term.
And so I use some of those I try to use.
I'm trying to communicate with ya’ll.
So I'm like, I try to use the terms likeit's kind of Beckett has this line from
(20:59):
end game.
I use the language you taught me,and that's how I feel,
because like when people are like,Why are you talking like that?
I use the languageyou taught me, and this is like,
this is the oppressor’s language.I'm going to use it.
So I felt oppressed by a lot of
sciences that that want to codify.
And so Navlish is the codificationof how Navajos
(21:20):
do with languageand just the same way Black English
is that kind of thing,or African-American vernacular English.
And so translanguaging for me is really reflects
that there are no boundaries
between language and speakers like methat are multilingual,
are using all of the structuresand all of the vocabularies at one time.
(21:41):
And it's not code switching, it's not.
And I will beI will throw down with you about that
like with the anti-Americanwhat we dance it.
I'm like, No, we're fighting now.
So with the code switching, we fight.
And so like, you know, sometimes fightingcan be a dance, but but now we fighting.
Yeah. So that is a big divide.
And that's
because I think people think of languagesin terms of the national distinctions
(22:03):
and also hard and fast rules,which is my grammar of colonialism.
Like, you can't say that.
Why I just said it is you're not.
What is the word that you're not allowingfor my grammar to be okay.
And you're saying it's an errorinstead of a choice of the speaker.
So that is what I'm serious about.
All right. Period.
Yeah, just the my poom.
Sorry. I know, that's expensive ones but.
(22:27):
Your latest book project,
the Web of Different Versions: Where Africa Ends and America Begins. (22:29):
undefined
What were your goals in this project?
My goals was to finish itand not start over.
So I've been working on this a long time.
I say sometimes to peoplewhen I that Leslie Marmon Silko’s work
and Leslie Marmon Silko world.
(22:50):
That's where I exist. And
and because I don't existin a lot of worlds,
I have failed to achievesubject status in many worlds.
And so this is a world where I existand I'm not other.
And that's that.
That's why I think that's sucha foundational thing for me,
because I have been made otherby my own relations.
(23:10):
And that's so painful.
I mean, all of us know that.
I would say all of us know,I think I'm going to be bold.
All of us know that being the object ofridicule and hate is profoundly fatiguing.
And and
to experience that
from somebody that, you know, hates you
is one thing, but experiencethat from somebody you know, hates you
(23:33):
who may even love you, too,or may be somebody
who gave you birth.
That's a whole nother kind of fatigue.
And so
for me to be able to exist fully withoutI don't like explaining myself either.
So to be able to existfully without explaining myself
(23:55):
not as an other is profound.
So Leslie's Almanac of the Dead became,
even though it's a really difficult bookthat I tell people
to, is don't read this book for Your HappySpace is going to be happy.
It deals with all the nastiness.
I think if you need to understand Americasyou should read Almanac of the Dead,
(24:16):
the primary question of that
book is Who has Spiritual Possessionof the Americas?
And there is a sentence in that bookthat says,
For outsiders, it's difficultto know where Africans in America begins.
And when I say I exist in that book,I'm like, yes, these
these were the sentencesthat describe my world,
one who has spiritual possessionof the Americas because I come from deeply
(24:41):
faithful communitiesthat also were in tremendous.
I always tell the story.
I'm going to tell a brief, brief moment.
I was always with my grandmotherunless she was at work.
And even sometimes they let me go to her,work with her.
That'show spoiled I am and how loved she was.
But my grandmother had the keysto the church and so I would go with
we would go to the churchand prepare the back in the sacristy.
(25:02):
So we went back where the priests were
and we're preparing the hostand everything for the mass.
My grandmother was that devoutand was that respected in the church.
And then my grandfather was like,We don't know why God got So I was like,
This is my so really devoutand these are our sons
and this is how you believe and,
you know, telling me storiesabout the insects people.
And these are relations and everything.
(25:24):
So I come from extremely devout peopleand with really strong
religious practices and the multi-faith,so practicing all of them fully.
So to have that
question, who has spiritual possessionof the Americas, it made sense to me.
And we tend to talk about religionbecause we cannot handle the blended
aspect of gods and ancestorsin our lives, in our daily practice.
(25:45):
So when I found that that was the centralquestion of that book, I was like, yeah.
And then I don't know where Africa endsand America begins.
I don't know where Africa ends, obviously,you know that.
I don't know where Africa endsand America begins.
I cannot tell you.
And I've come up with another termfor this book.
At the coda is called Land Seais this idea of
where does the land in the sea begins?
(26:06):
Because that'ssome of the things we have to
when we talk about to think of,to use Michelle Wright's language,
the Middle Passage epistemology and right,the idea that Blackness
is this moment from middle passageas opposed to the land sea.
And you know, we have a lagoon. Yes,we know that.
But also we are of the land as well.
Black people are of the land,
not just of the seaand not just of an absence of land
(26:28):
are not just of a removal of land,and Indians are not the of the land.
They are also of the sea.
And we are also of that and of the sky.
And some of us came from the sky.
So all of that. So this book, for me,
it waswhere I lived and what had happened.
There's a line in the bookis that one of the characters says, once
(26:49):
I transcribe these almanacs,I will figure out how to use them.
I had this moment Reading Almanacafter reading that line.
Once I transcribed these almanac,
these almanac notebooks,I'll figure out how to use it.
I'm like,
I have figured out how to use itbecause I live my life through this book.
I teach this book all the time.
People that read this book are,How do you teach that book Reid?
(27:11):
I'm like,
because I know how to use it and becauseI know how to make the stories speak.
And that's my skill.
Here is here'sthis story, here's what it says.
And so for me, that's what the bookand that the truth is the web of differing
versions.
I tell people in scholarshipthat I don't do comparison
and I don't do periodization, right?
Especially with black Indian folkswho aren't periods like I use
(27:32):
punctuation periods,I don't use temporal periods.
And people like, how is that scholarship?
Well, the web of differing versionsallows the scholarship and then allows us
to have all of the different versionsbecause they all tell us something.
And one is not right and one is not wrong.
Do we have the
capacity to allow the structureof differing versions?
(27:54):
So that is is about the book.
And what I was trying to do,I think is show people how to use it
and write somethingthat was not comparative,
something that didn't have periodsand something that doesn't know
where Africa ends and America beginsand has no argument.
So this is my crazy full selfand I'm really happy with it.
(28:17):
And I kind of gave myself over for itto be.
I started over so many times thinkingabout what the reviewers would say.
And when I got to the pointwhere I said, I'm just writing it,
and if everybody hates it, I'mokay with that,
which is how I am with my “fiction.”And and then now it's I love it.
It's still beautiful to me.
(28:37):
Myriah Dessay carries and also one of my
she's in my dance community, butshe's also a writer and she has this line.
Black people do more than die. Yes.
And so this is. I already know this world.
And I want to be able to write somethingthat was it
and not describing it or analyzing it,but just was it.
(28:59):
So that's what I'm trying to do with thatbook.
Well, congratulations on onwrapping it up and finishing it.
Yeah.
You described the projectas challenging the limits created
by grammar of colonialism.
What is grammar of colonialism?
So Leslie Marmon Silko says that
(29:22):
all we have are the stories.
And so but as long as we retainthe stories, we have everything.
So the grammar of colonialism,as I've described it,
I wrote about thiswhen I wrote about Blackhorse
Mitchell's work,who is a writer that I work
with, his amazing writerthat is working on his second book.
And so he's also another writerthat people don't know about,
(29:44):
but he's in the
Dine Reader that was just won the prize.
But once we so if we have the stories,we have everything.
But once you startsaying who can tell the stories?
So like when Silko saysshe wrote Almanac of the Dead, she was she
talks about Zora's workand she says, I was mounted by the gods.
And this is what they said,The gods of Voodoo
(30:05):
and the Lwa the Lwa mounted meand this is what came out.
And then people say, “Oh, you're crazy.
You talk like that”.
And so once you start saying,who can tell?
So from my work,
the gods and ancestors figurethat they're everything all the time.
They're my morning, they're my night,they're every minute in between.
And if I make it to the next morning,they're my morning again.
(30:26):
And so if the gods and ancestorscannot participate in the narration,
then we've lost some of the stories.So that's one thing.
Who can tell the storieswith the grammar of colonialism?
The other thing is the structure.
And so like I said,I don't have an argument,
I'm not doing comparisonsand I'm using periods, punctuation.
I really believe in punctuating withas you running naked in fields of joy.
(30:47):
So like that kind of punctuationI just put my writing partner Kathy is
I think the way the placeyou where you put periods that she's able
to tell you anything because I know you,that's where you want it.
And so the grammar of colonialismalso tells you the structure
and what to me, part of slavery,colonization
and Black Indian and writingtranslation is a single structure.
(31:09):
And whether that structure is subject verband things like agreement,
right, Subject verb agreement,things like tense
like people,something you can't be changing the tense,
you know,all the time in the middle of a sentence
like don't change horsesin the middle of the stream, like
they'll be, quote, a tower power on metrying to tell me how to write.
Right. This is what we are.
I did change horses in the middle stream.That's why they wrote a song about it.
(31:30):
It told me not to do it anymorebecause it's possible, right?
And you start limitingthe possibility space both of the ability
to tell the story, butalso the possibility space of this is like
where we get into the P-Funk of creatingand imagining all we need and all we do.
That's who we are.
We're creators.
And as to me, as communities.
(31:51):
And so once you say you can't do thatand you get into that like cognitive
fixity and say, that's for that, that'swhat that's for, you can use it for that.
I'm like, I could use itfor what I want to use it for.
I look, it works.
And so the grammar of colonialism tellsyou the rules.
It's prescriptive,and that's about controlling power
because once we control our structures,we control our relations and Dr.
(32:15):
John, who's a faculty here, talks aboutcolonialism as a series of separations
between each others.
I think of colonialismas a severing of relations
like severing black from Indiaand severing writing
from translation,severing slavery from colonization.
Separate me from you, right?
And so that grammar of colonialismdoes that.
(32:35):
Who can speak,
how they can speak, the structuresavailable and the possibility space.
I'm really big on possibility. Space
behind this
means it is possible in Navajoand it's one of my favorite words.
This is a good pointto ask you this question.
What are some projectsthat you're excited about?
(32:57):
But folks might not be able to find
if they were to look you up online.
So there's one I'm
so I saidI had a breakthrough over the last summer.
One is because I started
writing these slavery broadcastsso that is that that's put a pin in that.
But the other thing is one of myI call him my corazon,
(33:20):
which in Spanish means my heart.
Pato Hebert is an amazing artist,and so look him up.
He's easy to find. He is easy to find.
And if you look at Pato Hebertand you look at one of the
projects called Lingering,
and youclick on that, he's put the whole book up.
It's this artist monograph.
(33:41):
And I have a piece in the center of thatwhich is really hard to find.
It's called I Feel Like Making Lovefrom the Roberta Flax song.
And so that piece is hard to find
and I love it.
And also you get to see Pato's work.
And it was a breakthrough for mebecause I actually was able to read it.
And Alexandre Dumas, who is one of Pato'scollaborators, who's also an amazing
(34:04):
media studies person, came up to meand said, Are you writing?
Is stuff like that.
Like, I want to almost likedo a crazy check on you, right?
And I said, kind of because I've beendoing this slavery broadcast like that.
And he said, Good, do it.
And so that was really empowering for me.
And I want to thank Alex.
If you ever hear this,they give for that moment.
(34:25):
So that's hard to find, but it's there.
Another piece is coming outand it should it be hard to find.
But I think it might be hard to find.Right now.
It's out of NP Press,and it's a book called Say, Listen
Writing is Care,and it's a collaborative project,
and we're called the BlackIndigenous 100’s Collective,
and we've been working togethersince 2019,
and that's actually going to come outin the new press.
(34:47):
We're going to be their inaugural book.
MP Which if you know when when things say
and means it'll have no pressright, is lacking in press.
And so that's the name of the pressbecause it's all of these works
that may not get publishedbecause they're lacking a certain
citational practiceor they're lacking a, an anything.
I mean, we'rewe're not being linear in that book.
(35:07):
We have so many languageswe don't translate because Dr.
John and I are like, I'm not translating.
You know, I have
a translation policyin my class that you translate honestly
and graciously, but that's not my lifetranslation policy for my writing.
I'm like, I'm not translating for me.
I tend to write because I care aboutmy people that are reading.
I tend to write something afterwhat I've written so that you understand.
(35:30):
So you can just this is some this goesback to my writing process and my practice
so that you can read and writein languages you don't understand.
I think that's a fundamental skilleverybody has to have,
is I'm talking the language.I don’t understand?
I'm listening to a languageI don't understand.
I'm reading a languageI don't understand and I'm not saying,
What are you saying, you other than me,Could you translate that?
(35:52):
I'm just listening.
Just Like when you dance, I dance to musicand I'm like, I give myself over to it.
So that's the same thing that happens inmy writing. I try to do that.
Reid, It has been
such a pleasure to sit with you today.
Thank you for being so generousand in sharing about your work
(36:15):
you've given usand those listeners a lot to think about.
And so thank you so much.
Incredible conversation.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for joining the conversationon Race remix today.
The podcast is the creationof Racial Justice Studio
in Tucson, Arizona, the land of the Tohono
(36:36):
Oʼodham and Pascua Yaqui.
This episode would not have been possiblewithout the efforts
of our team of students,staff and faculty fellows Chelsea Farrar,
Amy Krey, myself,Gloria Wilson, Isaac Schutz,
Deana Scott and Jenny Stern.
(36:56):
This program is brought to youby the Arizona Arts
at the University of Arizona with generoussupport from John and Sandy Flint.
If you enjoyed this episode, please
invite your friends,family, students and colleagues to listen.
Interested in joining
our communityor listening to more episodes,
(37:18):
please visit Race Remix Arts Dot Arizona
dot edu and sign up to receive
emails about upcoming news and events.
You can also learn moreabout all of our guests in the show notes.
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