Make This Space Home (Again)
What — and where — is “home” for Black people living in America? How Black folks are making home for ourselves during this time, amidst the pandemic.
Written by: Toluwani Ogunbesan
Photography: Angela Win
Long ago, the people of this nation lived together in faux harmony. We walked, drove and took buses to work during the week; visited loved ones and partied on weekends; worshipped and communed for tasty hangover cures on Sundays. Then, everything changed when the coronavirus attacked. Business as usual ceased. Planes flew nearly empty. College students were kicked off our campuses. Stay at home issues were ordered. The lockdown began. All of it left my peers and me wondering, where and what is home?
For many of us, trauma is our home of origin. Our primary understanding of what home is and should be come from experiencing what home is not. Those of us who are queer in homophobic households and pagan in Christian households; those of us who are women in misogynistic societies and trans in transphobic communities; those of us who are Black on predominantly white campuses, who are Black in America, know and feel that where we are is not (yet, in some cases) home.
These days, when I think of what home is, I think of a naturally lit one room apartment that I’d share with my cat and my plants. I’d smoke my weed, lay out naked, play my music, astral travel and talk aloud to my ancestors whenever and wherever I want. This imagination of home — one that is still far off in the future — brings me to Toni Morrison’s definition: home is a “social space that is psychically and physically safe.” This means that home is not just a location, but a loving and nurturing community. It is the moments in which we can move freely, without fearing for our safety, looking over our shoulders or hiding ourselves. Home is an action — a continuous exercise in cultivating safety and freedom. Since the dawn of us, we as Black folks have created homes for ourselves: in village dances under the full moon, churches during slavery and secret ballrooms in New York City.
While #StayAtHome orders seem to have limited us, our concepts and creations of home continue to expand. How are Black folks making home for ourselves during this pandemic? In no particular order:
We are taking up space.
On June 13, 2020, over 15,000 people gathered in front of the Brooklyn Museum to demand and affirm that Black Trans Lives Matter. Over 15,000 people transformed a white-dominated, gentrified space into a home. Our Black sisters and Black trans siblings themselves led this transformation. We said, Black trans men, women and gender non-conforming folks are allowed to live, thrive and take up space. And this moment of solidarity — of making Black trans folks visible and celebrating them — is not isolated, nor is it temporary. Our existence as Black trans people, Black queer people and Black women is a radical act. Wherever we gather is home, whether it be the hair salon, Riis beach or the streets. And even when we are alone, taking up space in our own corners and our own bodies, we can be at home.
Take a moment, dear reader, to notice where you are. Become conscious of your breath and the earth below, holding you up. Notice the drum in your chest and its unique rhythm. Breathe in. Breathe out. Imagine this breath of life filling your veins, your toes, your fingertips. Imagine your soul lighting up and stretching, filling every inch of space inside of you. Whisper to yourself, “I am here.” This is your body. This is your home. Your choice to live in it and love on it may not be easy—making our bodies home is indeed an often-difficult practice—but it is necessary and transformational. As individuals, we are collectively claiming and reclaiming our space wherever we go, in this nation and in this world.
We are making kin.
Some of us grew up with family friends and neighbors we called cousins, aunts and uncles. Some of us were adopted by mothers who took us in when we were houseless and homeless. Kin is not defined by blood, but love and a responsibility to care for those outside yourself. No one acts alone. And in an increasingly digital world, we are making kin with people we’ve never even met in person. Black Lives Matter has become Vidas Negras Importan/m. We stand in solidarity with our Afrolatinx siblings fighting violent and racist systems in their countries. And we stand in solidarity with our African siblings fighting capitalism and U.S. imperialism in their countries.
We move with the understanding that I am, and you are, a singular part of a collective. And not just a racial or human collective, but a collective of living beings. Donna Haraway, who coined the phrase make kin not babies! writes, “all earthlings are kin in the deepest sense, and it is past time to practice better care of kinds-as-assemblages (not species one at a time).” This means the birds, the bees and the trees are kin, but we don’t have to think of them as separate beings. We are of one family.
Of course, this species-inclusive practice of kinship is not new for many of us Black folks, nor is it new for indigenous folks and those who embody the two identities. When people of the Cahuilla and Apache tribes (amongst many others) come to harvest a plant, they give water, offerings and song. Quoting Nick Hummingbird, an indigenous California native plant expert, “We are a part of [the land], and it is a part of us.” Earth is home. And all over the U.S. it seems, more of us are tending to the spirit of the land. Community gardens and herbal collectives are increasing. Tribal coalitions are reclaiming their land through land trusts and collective activism. More of us are bringing plants into our home spaces. And whether we realize it or not, our kinship with plant spirits and animal spirits brings us closer to the god and human spirits who came before us. Our ancestors are kin.
We are creating altars and communing with Spirit.
During the Movement for Black Lives’ Week of Action from June 1 – 5, 2020, Black Feminist Future raised a call for community altar building across the U.S. Their Community Altar Building Toolkit states, “The altar represents different things to different folks and traditions: the seat of the ancestors; the place of solace, ritual and magic-making; a religious symbol; a reminder of those who left us too soon.” For many of us, the altar is a place of reunion. It is a space to commune with the spirits; to speak with and spend time with kin. The altar is home. I believe that when we build altars in community, we intensify the vibrational call to the spirits, easing their travel through the threshold to our realm. Our gathering, our collective spirit, creates an energetic field that holds them with us.
Quarantined in my mother’s home, I myself have not been able to create a physical altar. I have, however, cultivated an altar space in myself, through meditation. Isolated from my community of friends, queer folks and young energetic adults, I am often overcome with feelings of complete loneliness. A feeling of symbolic homelessness. But in speaking and communing with my ancestors — returning to Toni Morrison’s “home” as a “social space” — I know and affirm that I am not alone.
We are creating art. We are cultivating our imagination.
Those of us who are artists (and I’d argue we all are) know what it feels like to become completely engrossed and enveloped in our work. When we act, cook, garden, write poetry or make music, hours can go by without notice. In our artistic process, we are “psychically safe.” We are in a familiar and freeing space. Home is the artistic process, and it is also the art itself.
Solange Knowles’ When I Get Home, the film and the album, is a testament to the home spirit that art can possess. In an interview with Trevor Noah, she says, “Our Black notions are art. Our everyday experiences are art.” Solange (re)imagines and represents, through sound and imagery, her world: her home of Houston. Through her art, the mundane has become something magical and mystical. This work not only exists for the present, but for the past and the future. She states that her goal is to gift a spiritual, symbolic and representative universe to young Black girls, inviting us to imagine what home has been and could be—individually and for the collective. How do we remember and memorialize our homes? How do we imagine home for ourselves and for our kin in the future?
There is no limit to our visions. Toni Morrison, like some of us, perhaps, imagines our bodies, this nation, and the world as homes without race:
In this new space one can imagine safety without walls, can iterate difference that is prized but unprivileged, and can conceive of a third, if you will pardon the expression, world “already made for me, both snug and wide open, with a doorway never needing to be closed.” Home.
In our present-day movement for Black lives, we are imagining new homes for ourselves. It shows in our activism, our artivism, our dance, our rest, our dialogue. Home is the imagination made tangible, realistic and present. Let us continue to command and (re)create our bodies, spaces, worlds as home. Asé.
Read more like this in The Love Issue of our Journal
The Love Issue explores what love looks like in action. It expands our definition of the famous four-letter word, in ways both traditional and untraditional.
