A conversation between Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful and Sherese Francis
NDER: Can you tell us briefly about afrofuturism and the role that this literary genre plays in your work?
SF: Afrofuturism is a growing movement and cultural lens that looks at the intersections of black cultures and the African diaspora with tropes of science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, mythology, spirituality and mysticism. It is a movement that encourages centering the perspectives, philosophies and stories of black people all over the globe through speculative imagination, and investigating the possibilities of alternative times and spaces. That is part of my mission for my blog, Futuristically Ancient, and the fantasy novel I am writing: to explore alternative, buried, lost and underrepresented pasts, presents and from futures of marginalized groups and give them a platform to be spotlighted.
NDER: I am curious as to how Jamaica, Queens, would look from an afrofuturist perspective?
SF: Well Jamaica, Queens is a place that I consider quietly afrofuturistic. It is why I decided to base my fantasy novel here. Various afro-diasporic communities from U.S. black Americans to Afro-Caribbeans have given much culture to the area. It is where several jazz and funk musicians lived. It was where the second wave of hip hop including Run DMC and Salt n Pepa rose. The Afrikan Poetry Theatre. The Black Spectrum Theatre. People had the vision to build institutions here before they gave Queens any notice and thought it was only a wasteland. But that is part of what afrofuturism is -- seeing visionary value in yourself and your community and culture when no one else does. Everyone else just has to catch up.
NDER: There are obvious connections linking the Caribbean, more so the English speaking one, to Jamaica, Queens: food, fashion, sounds and aesthetics in general, to name a few. Are there any other links that that you can think of?
SF: That is what I love about Jamaica, Queens: that pieces of Caribbean culture can be found here. One that is not the first to come to most people's minds is the dollar vans. I was in Barbados and the dollar vans is a normal part of transportation in the Caribbean culture in addition to the buses. And it is the same for the communities in Jamaica, Queens.
NDER: How can artists like you, working with words, help the rest of us rethink our neighborhoods and communities in times when these are facing big scale development and gentrification?
SF: I think artists, including writers like myself, are recorders of histories and stories. I was watching an episode of Doctor Who the other day and he said that stories are where we store our memories. I think that is true for all art. As neighborhood and communities are constantly in flux and changed by inner and outer forces, art helps us to declare that we were here and still here; that we are announcing to the world that we will not be erased so easily.
Another thing artists do is help communities to see value in our neighborhoods where we may not have before until we were forced to do so. You can live in a place so long that you end up not cherishing it and taking it for granted, but there are new discoveries that you can make in your own backyard; you don't need to travel all around the world to do so. That is what I have been challenging myself to do with my own writing, whether my poetry or my fiction -- seeing the magic and marvel in the mundane. For example, I will be including in my novel the art sculptures from Melvin Edwards and Houston Conwill in the Addabbo Building and the Jamaica Center station. I had always passed by these places but never took notice of the artwork and the symbolism till recently. We need to record and hold on to those pieces of our neighborhoods before they are snatched away.
NDER: My understanding of identity is that of a process in flux, yet for me, personally, the Caribbean remains a powerful referent and reference that is always present. I am wondering about ways in which people like you are re-envisioning Caribbean identities in Jamaica, Queens.
SF: I like to think of Caribbean identity in relation to limbo. That idea of always being in between. One of my favorite poems is Kamau Edward Brathwaite's "Limbo," which references the transatlantic slave trade and how one has to reconstruct one's identity when they cross over. My ancestors had to do it during the slave trade and my family when migrating here to the U.S.
In being a Caribbean-American (my parents are from Barbados and Dominica), I want to explore the hybridity of my identity, how I take my Caribbean heritage and transform it into U.S. culture, much in the same way that my ancestors had to take West African, European and Native American cultures and transform them into modern Western cultures. I look at the Caribbean as a global meeting point where modern "creole" or "syncretic" identities were incubated through the collision of these cultures. And I see that similar intermixing of identities happening here in Queens, including Jamaica where various immigrants from all over the Caribbean intermingle and mix creating a new Caribbean hybrid identity.
I am beginning to delve more in my work into that double consciousness of being a black American-born woman with a Caribbean heritage, navigating through a society that sees me as black but may not realize I have a different cultural and historical background than that of black people with a history and culture in the United States. Even I have to remember that. So part of my work is bringing to surface the various ways blackness can exist in the same space in Queens -- for example, the interaction between Caribbean immigrants and U.S. southern black people who migrated up north.
NDER: What is the best spot in Jamaica, Queens to stop for listening to the poetry or the day-to- day?
SF: Two of the best places to listen to poetry in Jamaica, Queens is of course the Afrikan Poetry Theatre, which has been around for 40 years and has several open mics, and the Central Queens Library which has monthly open mics. However what I would like to see is a poetry in the park day in Jamaica. Jamaica has some beautiful parks and gardens, like Rufus King park, where I like to walk around and sit for a few hours to read or do work. So I would like to see that in the future.
To learn more about Sherese Francis’ work: http://futuristicallyancient.com
Photo: Sherese Francis
NDER: Can you tell us briefly about afrofuturism and the role that this literary genre plays in your work?
SF: Afrofuturism is a growing movement and cultural lens that looks at the intersections of black cultures and the African diaspora with tropes of science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, mythology, spirituality and mysticism. It is a movement that encourages centering the perspectives, philosophies and stories of black people all over the globe through speculative imagination, and investigating the possibilities of alternative times and spaces. That is part of my mission for my blog, Futuristically Ancient, and the fantasy novel I am writing: to explore alternative, buried, lost and underrepresented pasts, presents and from futures of marginalized groups and give them a platform to be spotlighted.
NDER: I am curious as to how Jamaica, Queens, would look from an afrofuturist perspective?
SF: Well Jamaica, Queens is a place that I consider quietly afrofuturistic. It is why I decided to base my fantasy novel here. Various afro-diasporic communities from U.S. black Americans to Afro-Caribbeans have given much culture to the area. It is where several jazz and funk musicians lived. It was where the second wave of hip hop including Run DMC and Salt n Pepa rose. The Afrikan Poetry Theatre. The Black Spectrum Theatre. People had the vision to build institutions here before they gave Queens any notice and thought it was only a wasteland. But that is part of what afrofuturism is -- seeing visionary value in yourself and your community and culture when no one else does. Everyone else just has to catch up.
NDER: There are obvious connections linking the Caribbean, more so the English speaking one, to Jamaica, Queens: food, fashion, sounds and aesthetics in general, to name a few. Are there any other links that that you can think of?
SF: That is what I love about Jamaica, Queens: that pieces of Caribbean culture can be found here. One that is not the first to come to most people's minds is the dollar vans. I was in Barbados and the dollar vans is a normal part of transportation in the Caribbean culture in addition to the buses. And it is the same for the communities in Jamaica, Queens.
NDER: How can artists like you, working with words, help the rest of us rethink our neighborhoods and communities in times when these are facing big scale development and gentrification?
SF: I think artists, including writers like myself, are recorders of histories and stories. I was watching an episode of Doctor Who the other day and he said that stories are where we store our memories. I think that is true for all art. As neighborhood and communities are constantly in flux and changed by inner and outer forces, art helps us to declare that we were here and still here; that we are announcing to the world that we will not be erased so easily.
Another thing artists do is help communities to see value in our neighborhoods where we may not have before until we were forced to do so. You can live in a place so long that you end up not cherishing it and taking it for granted, but there are new discoveries that you can make in your own backyard; you don't need to travel all around the world to do so. That is what I have been challenging myself to do with my own writing, whether my poetry or my fiction -- seeing the magic and marvel in the mundane. For example, I will be including in my novel the art sculptures from Melvin Edwards and Houston Conwill in the Addabbo Building and the Jamaica Center station. I had always passed by these places but never took notice of the artwork and the symbolism till recently. We need to record and hold on to those pieces of our neighborhoods before they are snatched away.
NDER: My understanding of identity is that of a process in flux, yet for me, personally, the Caribbean remains a powerful referent and reference that is always present. I am wondering about ways in which people like you are re-envisioning Caribbean identities in Jamaica, Queens.
SF: I like to think of Caribbean identity in relation to limbo. That idea of always being in between. One of my favorite poems is Kamau Edward Brathwaite's "Limbo," which references the transatlantic slave trade and how one has to reconstruct one's identity when they cross over. My ancestors had to do it during the slave trade and my family when migrating here to the U.S.
In being a Caribbean-American (my parents are from Barbados and Dominica), I want to explore the hybridity of my identity, how I take my Caribbean heritage and transform it into U.S. culture, much in the same way that my ancestors had to take West African, European and Native American cultures and transform them into modern Western cultures. I look at the Caribbean as a global meeting point where modern "creole" or "syncretic" identities were incubated through the collision of these cultures. And I see that similar intermixing of identities happening here in Queens, including Jamaica where various immigrants from all over the Caribbean intermingle and mix creating a new Caribbean hybrid identity.
I am beginning to delve more in my work into that double consciousness of being a black American-born woman with a Caribbean heritage, navigating through a society that sees me as black but may not realize I have a different cultural and historical background than that of black people with a history and culture in the United States. Even I have to remember that. So part of my work is bringing to surface the various ways blackness can exist in the same space in Queens -- for example, the interaction between Caribbean immigrants and U.S. southern black people who migrated up north.
NDER: What is the best spot in Jamaica, Queens to stop for listening to the poetry or the day-to- day?
SF: Two of the best places to listen to poetry in Jamaica, Queens is of course the Afrikan Poetry Theatre, which has been around for 40 years and has several open mics, and the Central Queens Library which has monthly open mics. However what I would like to see is a poetry in the park day in Jamaica. Jamaica has some beautiful parks and gardens, like Rufus King park, where I like to walk around and sit for a few hours to read or do work. So I would like to see that in the future.
To learn more about Sherese Francis’ work: http://futuristicallyancient.com
Photo: Sherese Francis
