By Japheth (Jeff) Monzon, BSWN Project Officer
On a relatively rainy afternoon on Saturday the 20th of July, rays of sunlight emanated brightly from the Coach House in St Pauls. Whilst not forecasted by Bristol’s meteorologists, an intimate group of writers brought much needed light to the halls of our 19th century building through the sharing of stories, expressions of gratitude, and showers of joy and laughter.
It is not often that people of Black, Brown, and Minoritised backgrounds are expected to write about their victories. More often than not, we’re expected to mould ourselves into their forlorn expectations of anger, pain, struggle, and grief – after all, that’s the common narrative woven throughout society’s view of us. But what if I told you that doesn’t have to be the case? What if I told you that you can – nay, you should – write about your joy? We as racialised people, contain multitudes, rich tapestries of cultural heritage that add untold splashes of colour onto the frequently used red-white-and-blue. In writing about our joy, we can begin important internal conversations about what makes us human that isn’t just derived from negative experiences.
In writing about our joy, we set ourselves free.
When I first had a conversation with Dr Chris Omni (PhD, Art Education) and Vincent Omni (McKnight Doctoral Fellowship) to plan a collaboration between the OMNI Institute and Black South West Network, there was one thing that struck me hardest: they exude warmth and joy. For those of us who work with communities and charities, the day-to-day is usually filled with a grim image of what life is like for Black, Minoritised, and similarly disadvantaged folk. So when I was presented a rare chance to flip the narrative, to accentuate the need for joy amongst our people, I knew that I had to take it. From there on, we decided to collaborate on a workshop providing Black writers in Bristol a guided seminar on writing, with a particular focus on joy being a protective factor in Black experiences.
I must admit, the dreary weather dampened my hopes of an overwhelmingly successful event. But I was quickly proven wrong. When our writers and creatives started trickling into the room, the joy and excitement generated within those four walls were compounded, multiplied, and pervasive to the point where I, myself, couldn’t stop smiling. Indeed, there was plentiful amounts of joy to be written about on that day.
Dr Chris Omni, through her research, provided our writers an extremely powerful sentiment: in writing about our experiences and our joys, we become researchers. This form of research, an autoethnography one, places the experiences of the writer at the forefront. Autoethnography, for those who haven’t encountered this term before, helps writers and researchers connect what they experience and how they feel with much wider societal and cultural norms. She juxtaposes the term ‘enlightened’ with the term ‘endarkened’, mobilising the latter term to refer to the self-actualization of Black people running counter to White, heteronormative, and patriarchal systems of knowledge that have traditionally limited the intellectual and expressive opportunities of melanated folk. Dr Omni also introduced ‘Endarkened Visual Narrative Inquiry’ to our writers: described as a critical, arts-based methodology where the words of Black people are also supported by images of and by Black people. Lastly, and most potently, she concludes her portion with an important lesson: that we are all artists.
“Everyone is an artist. When you’re using your family recipes, that’s art. When you’re gardening, there’s artistry in that. When you tell us your stories, there’s artistry in that!”
– Dr Chris Omni, The OMNI Institute
This sentiment is certainly echoed by our findings in our UnMuseum Project. In cooking with our families’ recipes, in gardening, in telling our stories we become artists. With this message placed firmly in the minds of our writers, Vince Omni proceeded with the guided writing portion of our event. After 15 minutes of writing with a focus on nature and natural imagery, we convened to discuss our written works. Whilst I cannot go over all the excellent pieces of work that were shared that day, I state with great confidence that I was blown away by the degree of imagination, eloquence, creativity, and poetry that was displayed by our writers that day. I was particularly impressed by the scintillating poetry of E Shiva in her work ‘The Distance’. Indeed, I hope one day that you all get to read or hear the fantastic stories that were shared on that fateful Saturday afternoon.
Whilst the event itself formally concluded in the late afternoon, jubilations didn’t stop there. When such a rare opportunity such as this shows itself, one where Black joy is put front and centre for writers, then the wise action would be to grab it. That is exactly what our attendees did. Of their own volition (and certainly inspired by the fantastic work of session hosts) they formed Bristol’s very first ‘Black Joy Book Club’ – a safer space that allows for the expression of Black joy in all its shades and permutations through the written form. We, at BSWN, are certainly excited to see what they get up to in the coming weeks and months!
All in all, the joy that was present in that room has even carried on to now. As I write this three days from the conclusion of our workshop, I still cannot help but crack a smile from the joy that was shared so freely and so trustingly. I want to thank Dr Chris Omni and Vincent Omni of the OMNI Institute for taking the time to share their work with us and guiding us through a much-needed celebration of Black joy. I also want to thank our attending writers for placing trust in us to share your joy, happiness, and creativity. We hope that you continue sharing your joy with us and others in our city