Penpalling While Black: Introducing the Black Letter-Writers’ Society!
6/16/2020— I’ve been both an avid journaler and letter-writer all of my life. Growing up I had time and space to explore and nurture a quieter, quainter side of myself; thus, the two practices were an organic and vital part of my existence. I wrote to friends because email and texting were not options (emails were for our working parents)—and phone calls tended to be energetically draining for me: I’ve never been very proficient at small talk.
This being said, let me get to the meat of what I want to say in this post. As a Black woman it never occurred to me that writing letters and having penpals would be considered a “white people thing” but I have been the brunt of many jokes and jabs upon sharing my love for sending mail. I never understood why, since in the pre-internet decades everyone had to send letters if they wanted to communicate outside of the phone. And I think this aspect of necessity is what prevented letter writing from being a true joy. I also believe that because the letters of the prominent figures in Black history have been either confiscated by the CIA/FBI, sold as “rare” artifacts [to those who can afford them], published in books, or swiped and stashed in academic institutions ( boxed and filed in university library basements as “personal papers” that are “available to the public”…right.), we as a people have been systemically misdirected from tangible proof of the power of writing letters amongst our peoples. Lastly, because there is no real promise for coins to be made by not publishing our words on the internet, in a magazine or on TV (capitalism, founded on the selling of OUR bodies, trained us at the genetic level to treat every aspect of our existence as potential merchandise), many of us see no point in sharing beautifully-penned words ONLY for the person to whom the letter is addressed. If the words we write are good they might as well be published for all to like, comment, share and repost so that we can go viral and become and influencer…right?? Isn’t that the point these days?
ha.
When I started the Black Letter Writers’ Society (BLWS) in late 2019 my goal was simply to connect with Black people who just so happened to enjoy writing letters or were interested in igniting a love for sending letters to loved ones. My hope in starting the society’s IG page (note: despite the seeming opposite, I despise social media) was to connect those of us in the Diaspora as penpals: Addresses are exchanged through DM’s and the honor system is our code. I hoped to be an interatitial whereby we can reconnect with one another through regular written correspondence while also reviving this essential practice. In summation I’m rooting for everyone Black to find their power in this space and use letter-writing to its greatest extent while the mail system is still available to us. With a sheet of paper, envelope, and stamp you have the power to share insights that can cause another member of the Diaspora’s mind to change and thus shift a brilliant Black mind many states or even a hemisphere away from you into encouragement, uplift, and excellence. And so the society-BLWS- became an opportunity to share on the avenues and options we have to maximize the messages we can send via airmail. We explored letter writing as Afrofuturism.
The letter is a private conversation. The likes of Ralph Ellison, Ida B. Wells, Kathleen Cleaver, George Jackson, Malcolm X, Era Bell Thompson, Zora Neal Hurston, Juanita Harrison, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet etc. all used lettees to communicate with others in the Diaspora because that was the standard of their times due to lack of more advanced communication technology. Today those letters are “worth” a lot of money—why? Because they are a combination of the very things that make journaling both powerful and threatening to Western society and thus objects to be captured: memory, handwriting, soul, and privacy—in handwritten conversation with someone else. We can still apprehend the technology of the handwritten note and use it to disperse ideas and sentiments apart from the white gaze that has already dictated and oppressed the bulk of our existence.
At a time when “shelter in place”, the closing of school and church (government agencies to maintain brainwashing over our people), and an urge to garden has come to past, we now have a clearer view of the violence that underpins this Western system. Less can be hid as more is exposed; knowledge is increasing and the gimmicky veil of capitalism and white imagined supremacy is weakening as a vice grip on our minds. As the cell phone recordings of [essentially legalized] police barbarism and murder flood the internet, inciting global protests,we simultaneously are witnessing without a doubt white people organically returning to their genetic-level subhuman states unbridled, unashamed, and unhindered (this is what happens when capitalism pauses: all various peoples go to our original states of mind. For Black people it means we turn to the land, the village, our brilliance, and our history…). What we are seeing and realizing needs an outlet beyond the journal, because such level of thought can prove contagious in a positive way: hence, the boon of intra-cultural letter-writing. Many of the observations we are making about our times and our oppressors should and must be shared wuth one another in the Diaspora, as well as strategies to preserve mental health and share stories that do not belong where the colonizer’s gaze can reach and snatch.
One of white-imagined supremacy’s primary goals is to strip us away from all modes of privacy. It uses diversity, inclusion, and sharing to beguile us into publishing messages that belong only amongst our culture. Our privacy, focus, resolution and deliberate action to build our own is a threat to them. When we share our sentiments and sentience on public platforms we are unintentionally violating ourselves sordidly putting an enemy at ease. It’s imperative that in the midst of all that is occurring in our times we not make the mistake of placing the burden of capitalism and white imagined supremacy on ourselves as a force of habit—instead, let’s embrace who we can fully blossom into when we are untampered and allowed to be private.
a VGB aerogramme
To be a Black penpal means that mail becomes the vehicle, another channel carrying pieces of current Black history. That’s how I feel when I get mail from my Black penpals in NYC, OH, CA, MS, NC, etc.: I’m receiving pieces of Black history in the making—that will never see a social media page. Since starting BLWS I have come to appreciate cultural privacy as a pursuit, as a lifestyle; letter writing has made me hyper-vigilant about what I publish online and has caused me to reflect on who and what taught me that my ideas, revelations and anecdotes are “content”, income streams. When you strip Western society’s duplicitous validation from yourself you lose the urge to voluntarily produce what makes it happy—and wealthy; you also lose the instinct to stand on its auction block…
THE MOTHERS Card Set, available in the stationery shoppe!
I make stationery because it’s yet another way of fulfilling part of my humble purpose to provide vehicles for our words. The stationery is meant to hold the dialogue of the author/scribbler and to continue a richer with the receiver. I hope that when you send a card or lwtter on VGB stationery you are able to stay in touch and deflect the fiber of your words from hackable devices and platforms that have our people under surveillance and heavy-artillery paychological warfare. When we write letters we have the opportunity and duty to engage secrecy and history and have richer conversations. We can pick this system apart, passing the strategy amongst ourselves with sidereal letters. We can mobilize. The focus demanded to write a letter is the focus knocked away from us with the distraction of media and the fear produced by the mongering of living in a planned-demic, racist society that thrives from Black peoples’ amnesia.
We have to fight back by fighting to connect with what we have been seeing about the plight of our people and valuing our PRIVACY. When we prioritize our privacy we will initially see less chance to “sell” but we will—and I am speaking from personal experience here—feel the ease of the awakening of our ancestral instinct and identity making a reentrance. We will feel the resistance to be so mundane in our communication when technology has been used to condition and weaponize us into some unprecedented impatience. And we will also feel the beauty of sharing words with another in the Diaspora. That revolution cannot be televised. It’s worth writing someone about, though.
peace and blessings,
chimene
The Black Letter Writers’ Society is on IG and Pinterest (a board). Send a DM if you’d like to be connected with a penpal in the Diaspora.
