South End Life: Through Poetry and Activism, Staceyann Chin Describes the Times We Live In

Staceyann Chin: Poetry has sustained me through difficult times, and no one can say that at this moment — particularly in the United States of America, with specific reference to Communities of Color or marginalized communities, or communities that have been for a long time struggling with either visibility or equity or access — that this is not a difficult moment for that community. This "difficulty" has an insidious reach across marginalized communities of the globe. I think we are in a time of great difficulty. If we can expand the definition of monstrous to include that great difficulty, I think that we are in a time of monsters. 

For millennia, poetry has been the call, the beacon, a salve of the people who live in difficult times. In every movement throughout history, the Black Civil Rights Movement, the LGBTQIA movements, the industrial revolution and emancipation, there have been voices that have reached through the terror and the brutality of suffering to call forth an imagination of a better time, a better world, a way forward into that better time, that better world. And so I feel as if I'm standing in a tradition of folks who insist on preparing, be it in song or in story or in verse, artwork that pulls us out of the despair of monsters under the bed, monsters in our legal system, monsters in our economic system, monsters in our neighborhoods, to imagine a better world. From the likes of Arundhati Roy to Langston Hughes to James Baldwin to Audre Lorde to Nina Simone: There are so many of them through history who have called us with their work, with their poetic renditions, to imagine, to seek a way forward, to hack a path through difficulty toward better times. 

I suppose Rev. Sekou is gathering folks, charging us with: Where are the words that will inspire people? Where are the words that will uplift people? Where are the words that will salve the exhaustion and the despair that people are feeling at the moment? And I travel from neighborhood to neighborhood, hawking goods of hope. Hope for a kinder world.

SC: As a young 24-year-old, I came out in Jamaica. I was attacked, and then I decided, "I'm going to leave Jamaica and go towards a place that seems to be freer." And so I followed the desire to be safe and be able to live an open queer life.

When I came to the U.S. initially, I don't think I thought to myself, 'I'm going to become an advocate for immigrants or an advocate for Black people or an advocate for women.' So distressed was I about being away from my home and being in this terrible isolation in this big city in New York and missing Jamaica. And when I got to the U.S., I understood immediately that my queer identity wasn't the only one in question. And so my being an immigrant was an issue, my being Black was an issue. My being a woman was an issue. And that said to me, I can't keep shifting every time pieces of me aren't accepted. So I had to become a part of the fight for a better space. I rushed headlong into activism, speaking out and being visible around my queer identity. I became that voice unwittingly under the tutelage and the inspiration of people. 

I read a lot. Ruby Sales is one of my mentors; Rev. Sekou has been a wonderful colleague and big brother. I've read the likes of Audre Lorde and June Jordan. Howard Zinn was integral. Working on a project with him was instrumental in turning me away from what could have been a Hollywood career or a career in largely academia. I began to see that my own life was of no value unless it was steeped in a struggle that had, at its core, struggle for other people's freedom. I quickly understood that if I could fight and get free, I would be very lonely without the other people who I needed to be free, who were colleagues and friends, comrades, sisters, brothers, siblings, aunts, uncles, other writers and thinkers. 

I'm always in struggle with hitting the right mark of how I become a person who shoulders my way through the opening first, created by those who came before me, and then do my part in pressing out the opening further so that more people can come in. You have to pull those behind you. When you get where you're going, you have to turn right back around and reach for the hands that are needing help being pulled up. 

I came from a reality where I had so few resources. My mother left. My father didn't come forward. My grandmother had very little. I was moved from home to home, and I very easily would have died — completely left to the mercy of far more realistic monsters than the theoretical ones we're talking about — if it hadn't been for people who reached back and helped me, strangers who said, "Oh, let me help this kid. Let me inspire this kid." Without the readings and the writings of other activists who believed heavily in a communal effort to pull each person up, I would be lost, so I can't do anything but to be in community and pull forward in terms of community.

SC: In some moments, I'm screaming for human rights and accountability, and the next moment, I'm buying notebooks and helping people to buy sanitary napkins and groceries for their kids. I'm in the middle of it. 

Seattle is particularly unique in how much work it does. Your culture is steeped in this work. From what I know, this work is ongoing and deep in Seattle. It's not perfect. I know that there are problems, but I know that there are lots of people who are talking about it. People are talking about what we need to do in order to save the planet. What we need to do to protect LGBTQIA lives. What we need to do in order to make sure immigrants are not targeted in their homes and on the streets. I know the conversation is active and alive in Seattle, and in Rev. Sekou's church. I know it sounds like I'm coming [to Seattle] to inspire, but I want to make it clear that I come to be inspired by the people doing that kind of work in Seattle.

Each community has to ask itself the question: "What are we doing wrong? How can we do this better, here?" You can go to the Black community and find out how it's managing homophobia. You can go to the white community and look at how it's managing racism, and you can look at the abled community and see how it's managing ableism. There's always something you can look at. I'm known for walking into spaces and asking really hard questions. I'm not ashamed of that. I'm proud of that. But it's not an easy conversation. We live in the microwave generation where everyone wants everything to be easy, and there's nothing that's easy. If you're doing it right, it's going to be complicated. If it isn't complicated, something is not happening right. We can't give up.