encounter with Faith, March 6, 2019

Her name is Faith. I saw her across the way from me at the café, writing in a diary first horizontally, then vertically. In a room full of laptops (including my own—for work) and umbilical cord earphone-cellphone connections, she stood out, hunched in the notetaker’s poise in the corner of the café. It was a vision of joy, a relief, and encouragement— a blessing to see a Black woman scratching away in her notebook out in public. Perhaps I don’t properly communicate why sights like this move me so deeply, but it’s simple: it’s reclamation, multigenerational futurism in action—radical privacy. Our literacy was once illegal, punishable by death. During slavery our oral traditions were persistently interrupted by our men and children being sold off to the 4 winds before we could transfer enough knowledge to preserve ourselves as family units. So to have this time in history where we can sit and write ourselves...we have to understand this power for our own sake as ancestors with a fresh opportunity. It’s #morethanjournaling.

I snapped out of my distant admiration and slightly-emotional remote appreciation, walked over to her and introduced myself. She was a dear!! I told her what I do with VGB, and asked about her diary.

She was drafting an article for a publication, doing it longhand since she’s forgotten her laptop. The subject of her piece was something about artists being overly concerned with benefitting from capitalism than their art’s message and the dangers that come with that headspace. She shared, “What your art gives you is something capitalism can never take from you.” and that statement lingered. After some other jovial exhange about hair, our West Indian heritage, Blackness, womanhood, and living with the combination of these in a world dominated by white supremacy, I walked back to my table, leaving her to her writing. I forgot to ask if she keeps an actual journal, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she does!