Activist and poet e nina jay calls her new book Bricks, Blood & Water a “walk through the valley of my thoughts and feelings.”
In the foreword to Bricks, Blood & Water you write, “the world is painful to me these days, inside the skin. my voice feels small. my rage tempers and flares.” What does it mean to exist as a Black lesbian today?
How did you find your voice?
I have women in my messages telling me every day that it [rape] happened to them. Seventy years old, 15 years old, and I love that they’re able to say that. It happens to so many of us and we never ever talk about it, we whisper about it. All of us are whispering the same things, which means we should be screaming.
violence don’t make me jump no more
Yes it is. The struggle is to fight the urge to because it’s a survival instinct. It’s too much happening and I’m wide-open. I keep myself wide-open. But when I stay open like that, everything can get in. For instance, Maleah Davis, [a 4-year-old Houston girl whose stepfather is a suspect in her death] I’ve been trying and trying to find a way to read the stories to bear witness to what happened to her. I can’t get through the stories because I don’t want to feel it. I’m upset with myself because she’s dead, and her story needs to be heard. She shouldn’t have had to endure what she endured. I feel guilty for allowing myself to skip over the story and not feel the pain. And that’s what I mean by that.
Thu 6/20, 7-9 PM Mary’s Attic Theatre 5400 N. Clark 773-784-6969 $15-$25 sliding scale—no one turned away $30-$40 sliding scale (includes book)
