Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Black Excellence Explored: NC Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green's Literary Journey
Can the relentless pursuit of excellence be more performative than purposeful? In the continued conversation with NC Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green, the Besties inquire about Jaki’s views on the Black Excellence archetype with the hopes and realism placed on the potential of a Kamala Harris presidency. Reflecting on her personal journey and her mother's wisdom, Jaki challenges the notion of seeking external validation and illuminates the importance of finding joy in oneself. The discussion examines the societal expectations and classism that can be pervasive within Black communities, providing a nuanced critique of what excellence means today.
Jaki recounts her enriching experiences as a young creative with icons like Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and Audre Lorde. Their mentorship and camaraderie have shaped her path, highlighting the past and present dynamics of literary communities. As traditional spaces become more fragmented, Jaki underscores the importance of creating inclusive spaces for literary expression. Additionally, she introduces us to her unique Human Museum project, which has sparked enthusiasm among her peers and challenges us to think about how we curate our own life's artifacts.
The episode wraps up with an invitation to listeners to write a letter to the curator of their own human museum, encouraging reflection on personal narratives. We celebrate Jaki's collaborative exhibit "The Communion of White Dresses" and tease the exciting possibilities of future creative retreats aimed at fostering community among Black women.
This episode is a heartfelt journey through art, history, and the creation of personally meaningful spaces.
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Let me just bring in the idea of Black excellence in that it's something that we talk about on this podcast quite a bit. It has served us, I think, as Black folks, and I would say in some generations I don't know how much it serves us now. I would say in some generations I don't know how much it serves us now, and what I mean by that. It may have different definitions to different people. Just to kind of say what when we talk about it, what we mean is this idea of always being the best you know, working five times as hard to get half as much you know it's. I talk about it in terms of the whole being a credit to your race type of sense of things, making sure you don't give them anything bad to talk about when it comes to making us look bad, all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what we mean. And, jackie, what do you think about that word and that notion, and whether it's something that we need to look at a different way?
Speaker 3:Well, I've been looking at, been looking at it For the past 50 some years, you know. You know I started writing in my 20s that's when I had a job and everything that you just listed have been the checkoffs that I've never that I have worked real hard not to check off. That's why we love you, wow, to be self-defining, to be self-actualizing, you know, to do the work that's in front of me but not for. You know, there's the notion of doing the work for what it looks like. You know, the performative, all the so what that that Black excellence to me is performative, if that makes any sense. Yes, because there are people that love to check off all those things and they check them off in a way that affirms them. That's their affirmation. You know what I'm trying to say? Yeah, absolutely, they stand up in it, kind of like white people who introduce themselves with the first thing they say is well, I know I'm, I know I'm privileged and I'm like I actually your name, I didn't add it it's like slow your roll right and right.
Speaker 3:It's standing up in it. It's like what are you doing for yourself? And that's see, this whole thing is just so cyclic for me, because in this culture that's not even put forth to young people coming out of school. What do you want to do for yourself? Yeah, you know, I mean for your. What brings you joy at the end of the day when you come home from your work like you work or did it work you? I mean, if you come home every night, worked, then wait a minute you know I worked over.
Speaker 2:You know I've never worked on, never worked on or worked over you know I've never Worked on Never. Worked on.
Speaker 3:Worked on. Worked under the answer is yes, yes, yes, you know, it's kind of like my mom. Oh my gosh, for some reason my mom's coming up a lot today, but my and my mom just died in 2022 leslie, at the age of 106 oh, my, my my yeah, but she was funny.
Speaker 3:but one day she came home and she had a bee sting up her behind. I was like what is wrong with you? That car makes me sick. I said mom, why are you mad at miss car? Every time I go to the beauty parlor she'd be talking about that boy of hers. She'd say he ain't nothing but a font, what you know. She'd always brag and she's like well, you know my son Charles. He's been at IBM over 35 years now. He's still the first only Negro there. I'm so proud of him. And my mother that day said that boy been there for 35 years and he's still the first only Negro there. He got a problem. You ought to be ashamed of him because he's not like anybody else. Tell the truth, wow. So my mom, it ain't nothing but a font, okay. So I wanted to do the font and when I've been in those positions I have been, we all have been the font, yeah we've all been fonts.
Speaker 1:Yes, indeed.
Speaker 3:But I also, you know, have made inertia at the table, letting folk know it's enough, pull up another chair, it's enough room for about five more chairs, or hey, there's some space over there, we could bring in another table. So you know, it's how we embrace, how we're going to show up in this culture, yeah, you know. And then there's the gatekeeper, because then there are the folk that point at you, point at you because they want to, they want to be first only Negro there. And surprisingly and sadly, that stuff has come back around in a shameless kind of way of people playing gatekeeper, showing their classism, exercising their classism.
Speaker 1:Yes, you know what?
Speaker 3:I'm saying and wanting to perpetuate that whole thing of of of being the elite blacks in certain places, and that's the stuff we don't talk about. So we don't talk about class, we talk, don't talk about classism. We talk about racism all day long. We talk about sexism, homophobia, classism. We don't talk about the classism. Yes, yeah, I'm better than them.
Speaker 2:I pulled myself up by my bootstraps why can't they? Or why won won't they? Or them and us and?
Speaker 3:well, I mean, and even the petty stuff. And when I became the poet laureate there were, there were black people and north carolina government who's black folks that I have never met in my life, who didn't know me but were in his ear like you know, she's militant, are you not sure you really? Or, uh, you might not be. You know, she might embarrass you, you might make you look bad, what?
Speaker 3:oh yeah, this is coming from black folk so us still needing to play foreman for a woman? You know, we still need to ride the horse with the wheel.
Speaker 1:Yes, we're in the uniform so that To master yes.
Speaker 3:I'm a different kind of Negro.
Speaker 2:Yes, and gladly taking on that role. You know, voluntarily, yeah, and it's gone back around.
Speaker 3:It just looks different. You know, the sky is differently, but it's the same spirit. It's the same spirit and we have to get over that. Yes, we do. You know, it's kind of like Kamala wants to win and I pray she wins. She's got to be with all the sisters, not just the ones with some money, those with 10, 15, 20, $50, they add up too. Yes, absolutely. You know you've got to help that sister who's at the factory with the four children jobs trying to make it.
Speaker 3:Gotta help her understand that, that she's part of this movement too yeah yeah, she's a strong black woman too, because I know she's a strong black woman, right. So it's, you know, it's who we hold up, who we hold up in front of people all the time, who we laud and who we don't laud. You know we talk about role models. You know my I used to. Always people would ask me like, well, who are your role models? I've never liked the word role models because people in my life weren't playing roles, they were living real lives. Oh, wow, living real lives. So those people were, you know, not just and there were many teachers and business people and entrepreneurs, and but not just the people who had the means to be a model for me, but they were the women who my elementary school cooked. Like the cafeteria was all the women in the neighborhood, not all the women, but the staff of the cafeteria were women from the neighborhood. So food was good. Yeah, it was real good. Those were, those were people I look to who inspired me the janitor's wife.
Speaker 3:Who just blew my mind on Sundays, because during the week she wore a bandana. She wore overhauls and these plaid shirts and a bandana and on Sunday she'd walk into church and I'd be like is that the same?
Speaker 3:with her church hat. Wow, I mean, she was Dorothy Dandridge, you know. Wow, and yeah, and I was like dang, I mean, yeah. So all of these people, that the men in my neighborhood who slaughtered pigs, you know, in the fall and at christmas time there'll be a little knock at the back door. You knew who it was. Yeah, it was one of three men and they all three came through. One would bring you three pounds of bacon. One came through with the ham hocks. One came through with a whole side of side of the. Wow, you see what I'm saying. Yeah, you had fat back and bacon and sausage. These men fed the neighborhood, yeah, and then there were the farmers who fed the neighborhoods.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad you brought that up because I was looking at one of your pieces online of many, and you spoke about how you grew up in a neighborhood, in an area where no one went hungry and no one was homeless, that's right, unhoused, where everyone looked out for their neighbor. You know, love thy neighbor.
Speaker 3:Yes, from generation to generation. I remember you know I talk about permissions and what we require of ourselves. I mean, I saw those enactments as a child. I remember a very poor lady in our neighborhood. Her husband died. They lived in this really house was like really substandard conditions. I'll never forget my grandmother went to the house, of course, my mom and her two sisters followed her, and then some other women showed up and she took over and I was there.
Speaker 3:I probably was about seven or eight, and my grandmother told my uncle, go to the hardware store, get some paint, come back here and paint this whole house. So and so y'all paint on the outside. So and so, put some steps. Somebody going to break their neck?
Speaker 2:put some steps in the front, put some steps in the back Wow.
Speaker 3:And told my mother. I remember she said go to the dime store, that's what they call roses. Then are those and get some curtains, get some go. Get some curtains, get some rugs in here.
Speaker 2:We're gonna fix this place up because and the lady of the house.
Speaker 3:She, you know she said nothing and you know there was a party. She was. You know it wasn't. There was nothing bad, it was. This is what you did. Yeah, yeah, this is what you did. My father had many, many strokes during my childhood and there were many times when we would come home, we get off the school bus and our cousin who we would call aunt Auntie because she was an older cousin, but cousin Carrie, would meet us and she'd say y'all come on across the road with me, your daddy's back at the hospital. So my grandmother, my aunt, uncle, my mom would be at the hospital and we would. You know this was a relative. She took care of us and Auntie had gone to the house, got our pajamas because she didn't know what time they were coming. She fed us, gave us a bath, put us is what you did, yeah, so personification of love thy neighbor.
Speaker 2:It really is, and I know we did an episode where we spoke about how you know, with what the evangelists have been saying lately and how they've embraced one of the candidates, where it didn't look like the teaching of the Bible that we're familiar with. It just didn't look that way. That's to me. What you describe is what I read in the passages in in the word taking care of people, loving up on them, not letting people starve when you can share, and those things, yeah taking care of people and sometimes things in the neighborhood that got done and nobody knew where the money came from.
Speaker 3:Nobody needed to, nobody needed to tell that they paid somebody's lights or they paid somebody's rent. You know what I mean. Or maybe the ones who went with so-and-so to get their son or husband out of jail. So it's that spirit that I still it won't go away inside of me. Wow, it all is Like with women's, you know. Know, there have been instances where women say, well, I just didn't expect for you. Like, like, how did you, why would you even do something like that for me? I said, well, because that's all I know. I mean, that's what I know yeah like I.
Speaker 3:I know what. I know what sisterhood looks like through my mother and my aunt, my grandmother and my grandmother's peers, those old sisters, you know, when I went away to prep school I got a full scholarship but I'll never forget they came with. You know, they gave me three dollars in a little envelope, five dollars in an envelope, One was the money right, seven pair underwear.
Speaker 3:She said oh, he's gonna have some clean underwear and that's what I would get when my grandma would send me a little care package. Miss someone, so sent you some more underwear. But here's and these were women you, they're living off of their social security.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:They find a way they find a way. They found a way to invest in the next generation. It's a different time and there are different rules and a different codes and people are. You know, the requirements are different, yeah, and the permissions are different.
Speaker 2:They are. But I'd like to think, much like you said earlier, that that type of love I'm reading this book called the Way to Love Meditations on Life and the way that you describe love I think that's also in our DNA, it's culturally in our DNA. It's culturally in our DNA and I think that we have to tap into that and be our authentic selves in that way. I'd like to say and admit that I'm very altruistic and giving to people I see on the street.
Speaker 2:It just warms my heart to help people if I'm in a position to. And we shouldn't try to put a cover over that part of ourselves and resist the urge to offer underwear to someone who might need underwear. But very often we say I don't know how they're going to receive. Ah, I don't know how they're going to receive it, I don't know how it's going to look, I don't know what they're going to say about me. That's not why we give.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's not why we give Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's kind of like I teach this. Well, I don't teach it, but I have a speech on literary citizenship and it was for a group of writers. But it was like what did I require of myself when I became the poet laureate? You know what did I require of myself? What standards were I holding myself to as the poet laureate? And you know they're pretty much the same standards by which I live. You know, because I, in the same setting we were calling you know like now the literary community is very fragmented and it's horrible. A lot of power plays. Just it's ugly, it's very ugly.
Speaker 3:Wow, when I was cutting my teeth and like I was telling some young writer recently, young emerging writer, I said when I would show up in New York this was before any social media Leroy Jones, imara Baraka. I was there and some, some random stranger would walk up to me on the street and say yo, bro, leroy. I said you better get your little narrow butt over there. Say yo, bro, leroy said you better get your little narrow butt over there. Call him. A message would be coming from left to right. You call Leroy, wow, became Imar Baraka. Yes, yes. And he would call me hey, little sis, you got any money, where you staying, who you up here with, what you doing, who you rolling with? Yeah, he called me three or four times. You got something to eat, you eating, and I was the little sister from his thing, was he tell? For this is from north carolina, up here, y'all got a place, y'all got anything for her to do while she up here. He would find me a portrait reading wow isn't that something that's?
Speaker 3:a space. Yeah, when I met sister Sonia Sanchez, when I was pregnant with my son, who is now 51. I was pregnant with him. I audited her class when she was teaching at UMass. We lived in Connecticut.
Speaker 3:My daughter, imani who would be 53 if she were alive, used to sit and bounce on her lap. Wow, you know, so I could, I could history, I could do the class. So I, you know, I met audrey lord, you know, right before she died down in the virgin islands, and what she said to me has stayed with me, uh, and the way she held my hand, uh, and she told me I've come home to die, I've come back here to die, I've come here to die. But the things that she said to me and those car, you know those conversations with those writers. Back then I was just a little sister down south and now you know, the lines are drawn in the sand. You know, um, it's, it's a mess, it's a mess.
Speaker 3:The gatekeepers, the this. You know the folk who get to say who's in, who's out. You know what I mean who's invited, who ain't invited. You know who gets the grant, who it's. It's. Um, it's a different time and my thing has always been rather, I'm not a push back at. Yeah, it's. What do you create? What do you create that serves? If this over here is not serving you and you're not wanting to be served by these people, then how do you serve yourself and others like you? You're not wanting to be served by these people, then how do you serve yourself and others like you who are not invited to that table? And what I've been saying is we have enough intellectual property resources right now. This is currency. Yeah, you have enough currency to build some tables. Yes, you know, like we, some of us of a certain age, like the tables that you said I can't sit at.
Speaker 3:That's my table, you don't even know, I drag it in the room before you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I put that table there.
Speaker 3:Amen, I put that table there but it's okay, you can have it.
Speaker 2:Because I got more, because we got more tables.
Speaker 1:I can make another table. It's not. I'm in the table making business. Yes.
Speaker 2:And you know what the Lord said about the table right.
Speaker 1:That's right. Set the table before your enemies.
Speaker 3:We can do that. I have wood. I have wood. I hate to say as the timekeeper.
Speaker 1:We 10 minutes and oh no, miss jackie has a hard, stop oh so if you want to speak a little bit and I love that you had a segue into your poetry experience, but I want to talk about your human museum okay, well, let's talk about.
Speaker 3:I need to hear more about that and where that came from, that is is a whole.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Jackie, just give us all of the bits about this human museum. It was one of the most fantastic ideas that I have heard of. Honestly and you know I dabble- and we're going to steal it.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying so if it's not copyrighted let's grab onto it.
Speaker 3:What did you say, jackie? You did the workshop right, I did.
Speaker 1:We did a different workshop, we did a sister right.
Speaker 3:But you didn't come to the Human Museum workshop.
Speaker 1:I did not, I just heard about it, but please, I'd love to share that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I believe that we're all human museums and that we're all holding our own archaeology, anthropology, all of our stories. The museum is here, and even how we are homes, homes. I mean, I could say I'd say, okay, I want you to walk through your house and pick up five objects that are holding a story, that you keep this thing because it's dear to you. I believe that what we keep keeps us so if you keep a lot of junk.
Speaker 3:A lot of junk is keeping you, but I also believe in like this house is full of ancestral presences. There are things here from my grandmother, from my mother's sisters, uh, like the, the dressers in my bedroom where my oldest aunt's bed bedroom set. I think my brother has the bed. I have the two dressers. They don't match my bed but I can't, and they need to be replaced.
Speaker 2:But they match something else. I can't, there's so much energy in your home, Jackie.
Speaker 1:I can't get rid of it.
Speaker 2:My spirit won't let up.
Speaker 3:That's right, I can't believe that what we keep keeps us. And in the keeping there are all of these stories. So I ask people, what's inside of your human museum? What are the rooms? You know what's your room of joy. If you create a human museum on a grid, you know like you think about a public museum. What are the exhibit halls that are open? And you know there there are. Sometimes you go to a museum and some exhibit halls are closed. Yes, they're roped off.
Speaker 3:What is open to the public and what is like the closed doors. For whatever reason, they're locked. What are the rooms that need locking? What are some rooms that need unlocking? What's inside? And I always give this metaphor, I tease people. I said I said so. In my house we got this kitchen draw, not a drawer, but the draw. Where are the scissors in the draw? In the draw, you see such a set in the drawer. Look in the drawer. Look in the drawer.
Speaker 3:And everybody laughed because they said yep, we all got it. Everybody got it. When you look at that drawer, it's keeping all these things, and a stranger in your house could really do a composite of who you are, about the drawer as well as so. For years I have been collecting. When people drop their grocery lists or their to-do lists in stores, I like picking them up. You learn a lot about somebody. So, pampers formula buy more onesies. You see what I'm saying? Yogurt Right. Or it might be pick up and then rum.
Speaker 2:After all those baby things, rum Right.
Speaker 3:So you know, these lists that we create, that we carry. It's just like I teach a whole thing on the selfie, the commercialization of the selfie. The commercialization of the selfie, the politicalization of the selfie, the sexualization of the selfie, the commodification of the selfie. It just goes on and on. The industrialization of the selfie. Thinking about that's why now we we feed so much of who we are in our little gadgets by going to websites and clicking on accepting cookies and all of this stuff. People know what we like. So before, when I used to go to the grocery store because I would buy, say, I bought a lot of yogurt, I get random yogurt coupons. Now I get my yogurt coupon because I have given them a profile.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, yes, they know the profile.
Speaker 3:You know, I can do one search for blue cobalt, blue suede boots and I will get a thousand things. Click for me. Ads for cobalt. Well, it's the same thing in our human museum. What's inside of your human museum? And, uh, part of the workshop is inviting people to write a letter to the curator of their human museum. Oh, wow, the curator should be yourself. It may not, it may not always be yourself, and if it's not yourself, that should be something.
Speaker 3:And then I I have done this with all kinds of people. I've done this exercise with the Duke Hospital. What do you call the clergy? Duke Hospital clergy? I did this with them and I'll get every blue moon. I'll get an email to say I'm still doing this 10 years later. I'm still using this. I, with terminal patients, with families. That is rich. I explore when I do it with my college retreat uh-huh, I will ask my freshman to do it in their freshman year. I said okay. I said in your senior year, I want you to do this in their freshman year. I said okay. I said in your senior year, I want you to do this again because your human museum should have changed. Some rooms may not look the same. You may have moved some things around. Some rooms may not exist anymore. You might have lopped off a whole wing of your museum. You might have some new rooms. You may have locked a door that was open.
Speaker 3:You may have opened a door that was locked yes you know, and like I'd give an example, simply like the basement of my human museum, I have skulls and bones that say do not enter. Enter at your own risk, I said, because down there is like stuff I'm not, I don't want to revisit Deaths, sorrow, disappointments, betrayal, divorces, you know just all the things that I'm like I'll put them down there and they're going to stay down there, but I have you don't think that you have.
Speaker 1:you don't think that people should revisit them or you leave it up to them because it's their museum. That's their museum, that's your business, yeah.
Speaker 2:And on a personal level, do you put some of these things onto paper?
Speaker 3:The whole museum is onto paper. No, when you do your human, you create your human museum on paper. Okay, there are people that are very much into being artists. When we do this at a retreat, you take your own space, you go off, you create your human museum.
Speaker 1:Okay, and human museums look different, of course.
Speaker 3:I've been doing this for about 30, some years now.
Speaker 2:In the 30 seconds that we have left. What's next for you, jackie? What?
Speaker 3:more do you have to do when are you going to rest?
Speaker 3:There are. Well, I will probably be leaving the post as a North Carolina poet laureate because we will have a new governor in January. I will have served seven years by then and I'm really excited. I mean, it's sad that it's coming to an end but I'm excited for me to step back into my work. It for me to step back into my work.
Speaker 3:When I became the poet laureate, I gave myself permission to be the poet laureate and not try and be the poet at the same time. When I'm teaching, my students get all of me, you know, but I'm ready to. I have some publications I need to. I have a bunch of manuscripts to work on. I have a very serious manuscript that I can't talk about right now to work on. That. I'm excited about Got some public art stuff that I've been. My poems are going to like be out there in the world on some buildings. That's going to. I'm excited about that. I have a collaboration with a visual artist. We have a September three opening at the Mint Museum a huge exhibit that's built on one of my poems. It's called the Convenient of White Dresses, the Mint in Charlotte, north Carolina. I see it's like our Convenient of White Dresses, the Mint in Charlotte, North Carolina. I see it's like our Mint.
Speaker 3:Yeah, is that?
Speaker 2:Michelle Luke's work, the white dresses that I saw online I think I saw a YouTube video of it with an artist who curated a series of white people donated white wedding dresses, I believe it was.
Speaker 3:Oh, really, because we have um monique luck and I monique, look, that's that's what I meant.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Yes, collaborator, I saw a preview of that okay, so the communion of white.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the communion of white dresses. We have all kinds of white dresses, so so the communion of white dresses is based on a poem that I have. It's on the, it's on the. You have my CD, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, I do.
Speaker 3:It's on the CD, it's on the album and it's on the video. So, yeah, so we've been having fun with it, so that that's opening. There is some invitations are ready to take it on the road, so I have a lot of. It seems like the future is casting itself out for me and I'm excited about it. And and again to come back to, and we're trying to figure out where we might land. You know, yeah, where we want to be you know, where we want to be, absolutely.
Speaker 1:That is wonderful.
Speaker 2:I know where I'd like you to be, but you're busy so I'll follow you.
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah, we'll see Listen.
Speaker 1:Jackie creates community wherever she goes, so wherever we are, we just need to bring a pillow, I'm sure, and we'll have a place to, as we say in Jamaica, place to catch wherever she creates in the world.
Speaker 3:Think about as part of your podcast series. You know, we could actually do a retreat out of it. You know I mean, think about a fun place, black woman besties with Jackie Shelton Green.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh Are you kidding me?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean we could do a retreat. I'm open, that sounds amazing.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to let you forget that. You put that out in the universe.
Speaker 2:Jackie, that's right, we'll just replay it Instead of not imagining it.
Speaker 3:No, I'm very serious, yeah, yeah, I could see a collaboration like this.
Speaker 2:It's yeah, okay, that's, I'll say less. I'll say less. Well, jackie, wonderful meeting you and speaking to you.
