Week 5. Belonging & Visibility: Guest Lecture with Téa Mutonji

hello everyone we have a very special guest today for our lecture uh Tia matoni thank you so much for joining us Tia we're very delighted to have you join our class today uh as you all know we reading her um text to talk article for our class this week it is an honor to discuss the text with the writer herself so before we go ahead just a little about our guest born in Congo Kinshasa TAA matoni is a writer and poet based in trono her short stories property of Neil and the photographer's wife were awarded

in the journey prize 3033 33 moton's debut collection sharab your pretty was shortlisted for the artwood Gibson writers trust fiction prize and won the Edmund white debut fiction award and the chillim book award motoni is the recipient of the Jill Davis fic uh Fellowship in fiction at New York University where she is an MFA candidate she also currently serves as the writer resence at Western thank you TAA for joining us thank you for having me yeah we're delighted and excited and um text to talk the piece that we reading is a fierce piece of selfhood

and self-acceptance and we're uh excited to learn from uh it about you uh over to you Tia hi y'all thanks for having me um I've yeah I've been kind of I'm obsessed with hair and sometimes me and my my old roommate who's a really good friend of mine we often say to each other that we regret not getting into like the YouTube hair fanatic at the time because we used to braid our own hair and like talk so much about our different textures and like what's 4 C what's 4B anyway so I really grew up

really not I really grew up but in my 20s especially my early 20s I was very cons compulsively obsessed with learning about hair and specifically understanding my hair and and then it eventually made its way into my writing which is exciting always and so this piece is on fashion Canada I will say my iPad is following my head movement so I'm really sorry if that's this that's disturbing or that's okay I don't know if you talk I also do that so that's fine I think we're used to that I'm seeing this happening a lot so

I'm so sorry Advanced wording um and so this is the one on fashion Canada okay texture talk sorry just for background also this is part of a series that fashion Canada had launched back in 20122 um so my essay is called shaving my head helped me find my power in my hair when the world is blowing up you have two choices blow up with it or find shelter for me Me Shelter became hours of digesting Instagram infographics mostly from black women writing about racial gas fighting antiblackness and most gloriously radical self-love while I was reposting

champing and connecting with these women from around the globe a voice inside of me kept saying radical means doing something that scares you so I took a pair of scissors and began 10 minutes in not knowing what I was doing I asked my little sister to finish the job and hour later horrified and crying over the keyboard after seeing my scalp for the first time in my life I ordered my first wig it's not that I regret shaving my head it's that I felt naked my hair was completely damaged from years of perme processing and

being pulled tightly by braids I had tried every home remedy to address the intense patchness of dryness that would sometimes bleed when I scratched I visited dermatologist but deep down I knew that the big chop was a and true defense just like rubbing vix on your chest when I'm sick with a cold or a broken heart still while waiting for my way I wore hats and scarves whenever I went grocery shopping I wouldn't answer any zooms or FaceTime requests unless I was hiding underneath the hoodie I felt like anyone who saw me bald knew that

I was going through something big and at times I could help but feel like a cliche black girl messes up her hair so bad that she has to start over then just before my birthday my wig arrived it was long and Sleek I went all the way down to my butt I felt like a sophisticated serus adult who drinks coffee after dinner in reality I am a burger and beer kind of girl until then the most expensive thing I own was my work laptop suddenly I was wearing something that cost $800 the wig had an

immediate effect on me I felt powerful like it was a cape and with it I could fly anywhere tonight I'm someone else I'd say to friends and then flip my Tresses over my shoulders like I've seen it done in in movies and order a martini suddenly I love the process of getting ready for my zoom calls I would blast Feelgood music and use spray and wax to melt the lace on the wig onto my forehead I let it dry and then spend theal 30 minutes styling my new strands my definition of self-care used to be

checking in with my therapist and talking about my daily and taking my daily vitamins but this new process an act of beautification had me feeling like a famous YouTuber being asked to walk viewers through my morning routine I took a lot of care it took a lot of care in patience it forced me to SP spend quality time with myself in a way I hadn't done in recent memory three months later I had seven wigs they were all different styles and textures color and shape I felt espe she carry branchaw in my blonde wig a

daring choice for a woman who only wears black it was thrilling soon I stopped feeling watched I felt seen getting ready continued to be fun one woman show I subjected everyone on my Instagram's close friends to but taking off my wig at the end of the day and meeting myself with my vulnerability and patience is when the healing really took place the first time you see your scalp you should introduce yourself hello scalp my name is after carefully removing my wig always spraying the lace with warm water first and then rubbing not pulling I learned

to take a moment to appreciate my bare scalp and how far I'd come I learned to care for this part of my body in a way I hadn't before I fed it with moisturizer and homemade mask made of avocado eggs and oil it didn't last contrary to what I thought my fory hair grew back in a blank of an eye I paid more attention to the little coils I watched them shape shift and curl I felt confident going out as is when myir hair grew back enough that I was able to bre into cornwells I

remember being gentle and and not rushed I learned that my hair is not hard or tough it is delicate just like me okay that is thank you so much for for reading that for us it was it was amazing it was it felt very viseral thank you for doing that um you know uh when I uh when I read your article go for the first time the term that I think like really spoke to me or you know I kept revisiting the term as I read the article was the word radical um there's so much

trauma that is often um Associated to black women's hair right and you talk about the trauma of seeing your scalp for the first time and you describe your chopping your hair off as radical so I think what my question is here how do you think your selflove or the kindness that you had towards your hair in this instance is radical I think when anything that goes against the expected status quo sort of falls into that that concept of radicalness but it also is kind of reaiming back your power yes associate the act of something radical

with the ACT of something truthful and vulnerable it is sort of like there's a wrong word that is in my tongue like the word of like going to war is wrong but it's more like a protest it's more like standing it's transgressional right and for me it's like you know I I do have another essay that is also about my hair that's on the room magazine and that one is called to love again so I have a lot of themes here that are intersecting but in that essay I actually revisit my history with my hair

history Journey began and because I was a child actor and I was convinced that I was going to end up on television I started processing and pering my hair very very young sort of became I felt I had to do that in order to be accepted in society and then you know later on in my life I became a bartender and I was working in a specific industry where my natural hair actually couldn't strive in that environment with the heat and just all the little things so I had to subject my hair for most of

my life to really strong processing to a lot of perming and at the time I genuinely believe that that's like that was my only option and that I had to do that to conform uh to be accepted uh to be allowed in certain spaces I was dead convinced that otherwise it wouldn't be true so the reason why I use the word radical In this passage it's because I had to give up my own system of belief in order to make room for new one and in order for me to like go against and unlearn all

of the things that I was taught by Society by my environment by my own even like maybe anti Blackness that I personally had that I had internalized growing up and felt I don't know it felt so um it felt like I was like really giving up a part of me that I've just known for so long so that's why I feel like I use the word radical and even today I have now not per my hair in five years and I'm striving you know it's great love it my relationship with my hair has only continued

to grow and expand and I'm I'm every every season when I'm changing my hairstyle it's with a lot of attitude so I think that is resistance in itself right that you you finally were like no this is your truth and you want to reclaim your truth so um you know what what struck me was the the surveillance that you were talking about right when when you were saying when you were discussing your hair that how you had to permit and process it and like just you know really torture it for so long just to be

accepted yeah there is so much cultural surveillance around black women's hair right the way you perceived or your approach often times depends on the way you wear your hair now how do you how do you finally ster away from this sort of surveillance in order to actually give the hair give your hair the love and kindness that it deserves and you know sort of reclaim your identity and reclaim your your Blackness you know I I think that there's two answers to this question there's a like the personal Journey which is just my own coming into

you know like I I did grow up in a predominantly white environment and I have consistently remained in predominantly white spaces both in publishing bartender working in um Academia like it it seems that that is something that I I have not really uh I grant so Toronto is a bit bit of a cliche in that way that it's the illusion of of culture radicalness but there's actually quite small Pockets I all to say because I recognized the spes that I was entering and by virtue of just being a certain person or liking thing I happened

to be a burer and I happen to like literature so these two spaces coincidentally happened to be predominantly white I had to do a lot of work for my own personal surv sural in order to uh maintain my like safe my like mental safety in in considering and throughout that kind of work it was a lot of unlearning things that I learned in high school that definitely felt very anti-black and internalized at at that at that too um and the more I was really plugging in into learning about like who I was as a person

black the world representation mic regression gaslighting all these things that were things I definitely experienced but didn't have words for it I didn't have ways to to voice them the more I started to understand that language and I started to be able to name certain feelings I've had or uh certain experiences I've experienced this the more my relationship with my blackness and myself just started to change like fundamentally like there you go and so that was all in the personal stuff right that was all like me just growing up and me finding love within myself

but then on a craft level as a writer I think that having written sh up here pretty and having seen the reaction from it both from my own Community but just from book by the way you know how I feel about it thank you but just so having to see it you you start to there's like this moment where people start to like respect you or count on you or look up to you and then you want to be that person that they see so you sort of submit to that right if all these people

were going to think that I was capable of doing something that was intelligent and that was emotional and that was know that that was worth sharing that I had to start to believe that too so I feel my writing career and also the personal work that I was doing in my own life they sort of just met each other in a very beautiful way and now here I am I guess with my relationship with myself and in my position that was a long way of answering your no thank you listen I I would just we

would love for you to talk and express yourself right because the thing about this is this is so personal the thing that like this is your journey yet it finds itself you know in a very political space like you by expressing your journey or expressing your selfhood are you know intentionally and unintentionally just reclaiming a space for black women and their experiences right just enabling them a platform so I think I please tell us more you know uh something that I mean I have understood in my journey of learning and unlearning is how there is

so much pressure for being Afrocentric right the pressure for uh you know wearing your natural hair it's immense it's it's loed and perceived as you know be being true to your roots F yeah right and now my question is do you think it is important to move away from this pressure and how do you achieve this while still staying true to yourself and your ancestry yeah no I this is so it's such this is I feel like loaded question yeah but it's just so fascinating because we we really ought to talk more about the damage

and the surveillance that we ourselves do within our communities right like the hierarchy that exists within specific spaces and that's not limited to black folks I'm sure that it also exists in like Asian communities and just I could go on like yeah the the way we watch each other and we are upholding each other in a way that we deem is the right way it of still aligns with whiteness excellent thank you yes and it's just to me and I could be wrong right I I don't I don't actually study race Theory as a practice

I understand race Theory as the way I live it right and that's probably always going to be the extent of how I could really present myself when I'm answering this particular question but to me is surveilling or judging or commenting on the way one person chooses to be black rather that involves the way they raise their children the religion they practice the way they style their hair and or who they marry and from what culture yeah prevailing that is still sort of submitting to White perspective of Blackness ABS yeah and so I really do not

give any time to that kind of discourse it's not part part of the way I'm going to go forth with my journey um I think that I am black and I'm truthfully black regardless of any decisions I make about myself or my blackness there's just like in that sentence there's only one thing that I cannot contest which is the fact that I am black therefore anything that comes outside of that fact to me is just oppression to me these are white supremist strictures which you know want you to submit to this idea of there's just

one way of being right and this surveillance is is supremacy yeah keep us against each other the way I see it right like that's how they Propel right that's how white supremacy propels by pitting you know people in a community against each other right you become Warriors within your own community so I just I really wanted to google right before I forgot that there's actually a book I don't know if you've heard of it it's called the other black girl yeah I have heard of it yes just yes it's really fascinating because I think that

in a weird way um Zakia is actually taking both of those arguments and pinning it against each other and then walking away from it being like well you decide what's going on here and I love that um and it's been one of the most successful examples of this exact I guess in a weird way in a really weird subtle way it is a form of black- onblack violence right yeah absolutely and it it it's maddening to me um and I see it on social media like I see the judgment and the upholding that have black

wom and to me it's like no no no no we are supposed to be in a same team because what you are doing is sort of like like your grou you're bowing down to P tury systems you're bowing down systems of Oppression you're bowing white n you're like this is to me not the correct way to go about things so I feel very strongly that um you should just go about it however you want and interestingly enough like I actually started wearing braids pretty predominantly because my lifestyle changed um because now I'm like always at

the gym or I'm very very like taking care of my health quite significantly and I just lost the time to actually spend time with my try hair and style it I I actually don't have that much time anymore so it's just more efficient for me to like put my hair up in a braid but for me to ever have a black woman be like you don't love yourself enough I'm just like I love myself so much that I eat green things you know I I will pick up a weight I love that it's just it's

so interesting to for one decision to cancel out all the other things right me not wearing my natural afro suddenly means that I'm not like I not respecting my mother it's such a a wild yeah and there's also like you know there's also historicity to it because you know during Civil Rights Movement a lot of like women who were coming into a young adulthood they realized you know that we're not going to process our hair and they started wearing afro and you know reclaiming their natural hair to resist you know uh white supremacy and in

that moment it was political and Urgent and amazing and lorded but they chose to do it right it was their choice and what is imperative in this is like you know somewhere you feel like your choice is being taken away you have to do this because the society is expecting something of you right in a certain way so yeah what you what you said was I mean I don't know why I'm even like trying to qualify it I should but thank you well it's really it's it's a really interesting thing I think we just don't

talk about it enough and really to be fair it's not just black women or black people who are doing this kind it really is sort of like a the new stage of of how we are criticizing black women it's actually always the same conversation just rep packaged differently um and it doesn't matter what angle it comes from at the end of the day it's doing the exact same thing so so it's like whenever The Fad disappears we're just kind of like finding a new way to have the same conversation right and that could be drifted

into like black women's bodies right absolutely you know anyway I can go on about this because it is just you are evolving poorly but you know that there's there's something so important here about like you know cultural surveillance and everything like and the pressure of being Afrocentric and all of that but um we're watching uh isa's uh the hair tales and we're watching specifically uh the second episode where isar talks about her journey of her hair right and something that really stayed with me in that episode is she talks about hair in within the context

of Versatility she uses the term versatile for black women's hair and I think that is so resistive in itself right that you are acknowledging that there are Myriad experiences of being a black woman and it's literally qualifying what you saying right that you can't contest one thing that is that you are black right that stays a fact that remains a fact but you are acknowledging that that there is a versatility to your Blackness and that is your own so I don't know I was just curious to know what you think of this term because I

I thought it it's really powerful to think of hair as versatile I mean it's the it's like the fundamental truth right which is I think something that's really interesting about a lot of the conversations that we're having there are things that are like factually undebatable yeah um and that always humors me a little bit when there's like an attempt at debating something that is just like truthfully is and you know you think of the history of even how black hair cyes began time where we were using hairstyle in order to communicate yeah safety right in

order to like create maps and conserve memory and to conserve culture that is sort of like the beginning right and now it's like now we're using hairstyle in order to express ourselves yeah in order to be presented however want to be seen right um there's like so many statements that you make with your hair like what if you have like pink hair what does that say about you maybe it it speaks to a certain kind of like aesthetic that you're into and this is true rather or not like someone is agreeing with the fact that

you are black right having your pink or in coils or in braids or in a wig just at at each point the fact of being black just just remains and I think that's what the term uh versatile really means is that you can just bent it and turn it around and you can look at it from different angles and it just continues to Trail and to that point something that I'm really really hoping to see in in media I like where I really hope we're turning towards and not just in relationship to hair but in

relationship to my culture is understanding that like Blackness is really really not a monolith um absolutely that's it and I have argued pretty much up until now and I still do that there there really is one culture identity of Blackness as it's been propelled in the media and it does favor an American sense of Blackness and even more specific um it doesn't leave room for the fact that like the people who are black in New York are probably very differently identifying the people who are black in LA or more specifically the people who are black

in the Caribbeans and people who black in yeah yeah in a very obvious way that I I just don't understand why it's not like more popular in social media is because we don't really have a lot of different skin tone differences in most of Africa the cost of the Blackness doesn't exist as a cultural as a cultural identity right of course in North and South Africa there's maybe like visually different shades of yeah ints but in most Africa everybody's pretty much just black So within countries the concept of Blackness is new right I experienced that

when I was growing up in Canada I was surprised almost to find out that I'm black I didn't know that I what that mean yeah more I'm so curious what does that mean you know I was genuinely like this is a fascinating concept I had to learn what it meant socially to be black yeah and found very early on that I actually didn't agree with it not because it was wrong but because it just wasn't the way I was raised because I ra cones household yeah I was raised to think that I'm congales before black

absolutely like what what oh you know this is this is so important just what you mentioned because Blackness as a construct is created by white supremacy right or like you know whiteness because any you know when we identify ourselves as people of color we are placing ourselves in direct opposition to whiteness so we are of color because whiteness is this structural truth right yeah it's just it's it's the norm like the understandable norm and what you said like spoke to me too because you know when I moved to Canada that's when I was like astutely

aware of like oh I'm Brown and I'm Indian like what what what does that yeah but what does that mean and I I remember my professor when I was in university she she she said this thing that I'll never forget that when you um leave your house after you know 10 p.m. you suddenly become aware that you're a woman and I think that's what happened the second I arrived in Canada I suddenly became aware that I was distinctive right or I was brown and what did that entail that was an external lens that was looking

at us right this is just to say that like yes Blackness is not a monolith right and it is so important to address the specificity of a certain kind of Blackness right what do we mean when we say a black experience it's not a universal experience right it cannot be so thank you for that um something that you know when when we were uh talking about uh being versatile or you know uh I was thinking of the radicality of um pink color hair or the self-expression that you have with colored hair and I remember like

you mentioning that you had uh a blonde hair at some point and I just I like I think you mentioned that it made you feel like a like a boss like really powerful right and I just am curious to like know how like it actually like really made you feel through your words yeah no it was so fun because I had just found out that I had gone into NYU and then I would be moving to New York so and then I had shortly after that that wig erupted my house and I was like I'm

gonna call her Manhattan for the longest whenever I would put this this W on I really was like practicing about how was going to be in New York I was like a Minh girl it was just really fun because it does just it changes your relationship with yourself but I think the most important thing though about hair and about dressing is that like you get to play into something you get to you just get to express and that have to be a performance in like a I'm not being authentic but it can actually the reversal

of that I'm being hyper authentic because I'm allowing myself play and as we know from being children like playing is how we come too like these are fundamental things that as adults we forget we just like go off right like time is important for the brain you know being able to laugh and smile and to just be joyful that is an important component to like having a healthy brain and to me it really was that like I felt so excited to what what identity am I going to be today like how am I going to

present myself to the world today it was a fun thing and I loved it and I still love it admittedly I don't wear wigs anymore but I seem to change uh with season I seem to just like every it's funny because now when I reflect back on my life Journey every stage gives you a new thing to like lean into and then move on from um and it's it's really really fun but I uh yeah I had like really big curly wig and I was like oh I'm like Catra I'm like Beyonce I love that

I love kept going this this you know I actually I have to I have to address this now the fact that you named your wi wig and I'm assuming most of your wigs I'm sorry if I'm being presumptuous but there something so um tender or delicate about actually humanizing your wig or your like in your um your uh article itself you you know you're saying you should introduce yourself to your scalp right and it's it's such an important moment because you know your scalp has gone through years of abuse right so in that moment you're

just you know you're acknowledging her you're validating her and you're like okay I see you right so I I don't know I I think there is something really powerful about just you know acknowledging your hair your wig in that way and just like humanizing her and just like putting her on a pedestal yeah that's that's all I wanted to say that was that was really cool um thank you I you know I the part that that I keep going back to in your article is where and I'm going to read it okay so that I

don't mess it up uh is where you say I paid more attention to the little coils I watch them sh shift and curl there's something so beautiful and tender about this attentive observation right because as it's as if you're relearning your hair like you were robbed off the chance to you know engage with your hair and this is your chance to relearn your hair and this time with a kind curiosity so I don't know would you say that the growth of your hair insinuates your growth as well like would you say your growth with your

hair insinuates your growth as well I mean absolutely what's so interesting is before I shaved my head I actually I didn't know I had curls like you know we would hear like like afro wom have curls and I was like I've never seen a curl in my life on my head because they had been processed for so many years that they actually just couldn't form and it wasn't as simple as shampoo with a good conditioner I really needed I needed the whole thing to go kind of thing so when I first started my hair started

to grow and I was like oh wait there's actual girls in there so excited um and you know it was just a fun thing to watch and I can apply that to so many changes that's happened in my life since I've you you sort of have to accept certain things as they are and then like give them chance to grow and I mean for me I have acknowledged certain things about myself as a person um I do talk about that like the fact that you know by virtue of my experiences like naturally I do struggle

quite a bit with my mental health and a previous me would have been very like beaten up by that but now I'm sort of like oh yeah I I tend to say oh you know my brain just needs a little bit more attention right like I just needs a little bit more um and so I I do certain things that are very much in Awareness that like certain things are not going to be are not going to be as easy for me as it is for other people unless it's okay and that's okay yeah that's

okay just the same way that I'm like okay well I know that I need to you know make sure I'm like washing conditioning my hair twice a week and I'm I'm doing this to it and that to it I also know okay well I need to also like exercise and eat well and like maybe sleep better hours little things like that in order to also support my brain function so I do think that they're all so entertwined the second to like slow down and pay so much attention to one thing of my body I was

like oh wait I can this method in other places and it really carried through in the sense that I have I previously was a very Speedy writer like I would wow oh like I was dramatic like I would just spit ball in a day and my desk I would just like really obsessively but now I'm like well what if there's power in just doing things little by little by little okay my novels took a little longer than my short Story collection did to write and maybe that's fine maybe in the same way that like I

got to see my hair grow in a very slow progression way maybe when I that's like what writing my novel has been the fact that I did it in small intervals you know maybe I also paid more attention in a way that I probably wouldn't have if I was like let get it all down right now um so I really learned through my journey with my hair that the quick fix or like the expected method might not necessarily work for me and that's okay and I'm very big on pausing you know I yesterday I took

a mental health day and whenever someone would text me like oh I'm not working today I'm I'm on a mental health day which is really dramatic because I am a full-time writer so technically a mental health day is every day technically but I intentionally was like okay I know that I need to take a beat I'm flying a lot in the next couple of days I'm gonna not do anything today I'm gonna actually amazing you know um and I get to do that because I made certain choices for my life right right you know like

I yeah there's certain things I I get to do that because I had you know I learned how much power at least I experience when I just take things one thing at a time and when I take a break right yeah yeah my hair a break and now I do it all the time for every aspect of my life and that is so important CU like I mean you said that you're a writer and that means you're you know on a mental health week but actually not really because that blurs the lines between you know

your work time and your being time you struggle with you know oh when do I work and when do I be so actually having those demarcated boundaries for yourself is fantastic and I'm so happy that you're doing that um I think we did talk about this but I did want to like ask you a little more about that and just circle back to it um your identity is very specific right as a a kesian woman in Canada you know have a diasporic experience right very specific to your identity uh how do you think your identity

or your diasporic roots translated into you know your you reclaiming your hair and by extension your identity eventually I think the one thing that my umom gets de crit for is I actually was always raised with like a very almost like overwhelming awareness that I was conges first andan I actually do remember the first time that I heard myself identify as Canadian I was quite old I was like 13 by then but all my life I was very much like cones cones cones and the thought of being something other never really felt true to me

and when I moved to New York in my 20s and people would ask me oh like where are you from it was so striking yeah it's such a loed question right like I yeah it's almost a microaggression that question but like for me it was my first time where I actually didn't just come from Congo I came from Canada like there I was like it was like the first time I was oh I I I guess anyway I digress all to say I really did grow up with a very strong awareness of my kungo roots

um and I think if anything as I'm as I'm really rejecting the concept of what Blackness looks like I think that's more so what's happening I'm giving more space to really be very like well you know I don't actually identify as black in the way you want me to am black this is a fact but I don't think about that it's not something that goes in my head you think about it right yes I most likely like the decision I'm making is probably closer to like oh I'm conal this means XYZ that it is like

therefore for this and that I know if that an question but it's a it's only recently that I've I've been even falling very deeply into that um you know granted I am older and I have access to education in a way that I didn't necessarily growing up and now also with virtue of what's currently happening DRC there's just I'm so plugged in in a way that I wasn't gr up yeah and that just changes you entirely I I fully fully fully uh hear you and that's amazing well you know uh TAA I think this is

my last question and more of a statement or a question you can treat it however you want to but um we as we watching uh isa's the epode um she talks about uh chopping her hair off as liberating right and as a start of a New Journey of being reborn almost what is so powerful here is that I can't stop thinking how something so personal which is her story becomes a platform like we discussed showcasing experiences off by and for black women like your story does too why do you think something so personal sharing something

so personal becomes so political and why do you think that is so important I mean I think it's because there's always this Obsession we all have that we're alone in our experiences share something that is supposed to be private or vulnerable it really does like do this really magnetic thing of protest and ofm and of paying it for MH something that I in my position right now I get to do a lot of class visits across Canada and first the the main thing that's always that's something that's an experience that I'm really holding dear is

when I'm in a classroom it's like one or two person of color or one or two black person and they might pull me aside later on and be like how are you doing this like my parents wouldn't support me being a or like my mom wouldn't be comfortable if I was writing about X spicy topic that you're doing MH and then just for me saying yes I'll come speak at Western I am doing so much for the one person who you know needed to see that and I didn't mean to do that I was just

saying yeah I'll come speak of course like why not so I think that's the importance of sharing and of showing up and of being really truthfully you abely because fundamentally Humanity runs through like Community Care and so much of being an artist actually in a weird way it's almost like the entire mag magnet of being an artist is community care right we read we watch TV we go then front of a painting to be inspired to take care of ourselves to let our creativity run it is an exchange that the artist is doing with the

recipient so like for me I have now become aware of the community care that I do just by being honest in my writing or just by showing up honestly as myself as an artist right and I think that that's really important I even think of like my social media I'm so on on like I'm so not cool on social media but I allow my un coolness to just be true right and I love it when I get DMS from people being like Oh it's so weird like you're so not what I think of when I

think of a writer like you're so not what I think of when I think of someone in Academia it might be insult but the way no I think that's the biggest compliment you can receive trust me and I I think that's really important you know I I'm in spaces that are not historically open to people of color specifically to black women not at all to immigrants refugees and I'm just living my truth living my life sharing it to the best of my ability and to the way that I choose to and to to know that

it's leaving a last impression on someone is getting them closer to like their own personal journey I can't say I can't say confidently that's my goal but the fact that that is happening it is a privilege that I get to cherish that I'm so grateful for and I think that that that's why sharing my story especially something that I know that I I touch on a lot is I speak very openly about growing up and having a lot of anti- race anti-blackness thoughts I think really important because a lot of people of col grew up

in small town Ontario the suburbs where they might be the only person of color for months and that's the uncomfortable experience and when we are throwing the black love radical love and not giving space for those people who didn't get the chance to experience that love for themselves gr up I think that's a deserv as so it's like my really important for me my cat wants oh I think she agrees with you is what that is that's just super hungry very important to me to be like when I choose to share about my experience with

Blackness it is not fair for me to be like I'm so per black and I love it I I absolutely also need to be very honest about the fact that will wasn't always like that right because I'm mindful that there might be someone in Barry Ontario um the only like for girl in her class who fall upon this article online and for three whole seconds we'll feel seen and I that's really cool and that's that's a really big privilege that artists get to have you know I think that's the most beautiful thing I'll heard all

day uh well the thank you is a very very small expression to actually Express how grateful I am that you came to our class and you chose to share yourself with us and thank you that we had uh this privilege you know um this has been very honestly my most favorite moment teaching for this class so um for taking the time to talk to us today and this was very generative and um you continue to be defiant and fiercely true to your identity uh through your writing so so I'm wishing you all the best and

thank you so much yeah thank you by everyone bye thank you of course thank you