#richmond for me.. to the family we were born with. and to the family we make along the way etc etc etc | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

saywhatjessie · 9 months

Text

Like V-J Day

Or the lads kiss each other to cover for Colin kissing Michael after West Ham and a new Richmond tradition is born. 5.9k [Ao3]

Never did Sam Obisanya think he’d be clutching and screaming with Jamie Tartt after scoring the winning goal in a premier league trophy match.

For several reasons, really. He’d always believed the team could do well and he’d believed he could do himself and his family proud in this sport he loved but after everything they’d gone through and with Jamie Tartt of all people…

He was having a little trouble trying to believe he wasn’t dreaming.

That feeling only increased when Jamie stopped screaming, his eyes on something past Sam’s shoulder and going wide with panic.

“Sam!” Jamie yelled. “Kiss me! Kiss me on the mouth!”

Sam blinked at him, unsure he’d heard right. “What!?”

Jamie shook his head, his eyes still wide, and moved his hands from Sams’s shoulders to his face. “I’m gonna kiss you now.”

There wasn’t really time to think so Sam just said “Oh. Okay!” and Jamie leaned in and kissed him.

It was quick – nothing fancy. Jamie pulled away and patted Sam on the cheek. “Good lad.”

Sam just nodded, not sure how to respond to the situation. Was this another trick? Like winning an Oscar at the Espys?

Sam got distracted by Isaac and Bumbercatch colliding with him, dogpiling and screaming about his goal.

He wasn’t sure anyone else saw Jamie kiss Dani and then Jan Maas. Was this something they did now? Were they kissing each other?

Just in case, Sam pressed his lips to Moe’s temple and kissed Isaac on his nose. Isaac’s face scrunched up rather adorably but he was still screaming so Sam didn’t think he’d actually overstepped.

The rest of the team joined their huddle and with Coach Lasso’s victory dance, Sam's thoughts of kissing were quickly abandoned.

Until the following press conference.

It was a rare triple-coach event with both Sam and Jamie representing the players.

The reporters lobbed them easy questions about how excited they were for their win and how disappointing it was that Man City also won their match. But it was Marcus Adebayo, The Independent, who really brought the heat.

“Mr. Tartt, any comment on why you kissed three of your teammates on the pitch after the match?”

The coaches turned slowly to look at Jamie – Ted, surprised and delighted, Roy, surprised but trying very hard not to look it, and Beard, extremely unsurprised but pleased.

Jamie shrugged, his arms folded in front of him on the table, the picture of smugness. “Celebration, innit? We’d just won a really big match the season after we’d been promoted. ‘S like that old picture from America. After the war or summat.”

“‘V-J Day in Times Square’?”

“No, the kissin’ one,” Jamie told him. “Not sure what a VJ is but I don’t think you can do that in public.”

A couple people laughed. Sam heard Roy growl. He leaned forward to speak into his mic.

“We kiss people on the pitch after a victory all the time,” Sam said. “I don’t know why a victory this great would be different.”

“Well, you don’t often kiss each other,” Marcus offered.

“Well, never has a team been as close as this team has gotten,” Roy interjected, leaning toward his own mic. “We encourage our players to express themselves however they like. If kissing on the pitch is something they want to do after they play some good fucking football, we’ll fucking support them.” He grunted, slouching back a little. “It’s the Lasso way.”

“Aw, come on now, Coach,” Ted said, smiling softly at him. “It’s the Richmond way.”

Roy rolled his eyes but he offered a soft smile back. Sam beamed at them and Jamie’s smile was as bright as Trafalgar Square.

Jamie offered Roy a cheeky wink. “Nothing wrong with kissin’ the lads, yeah?”

“Oh fuck you,” Roy said back and everyone laughed.

They moved onto the next question.

On the way back to the dressing room, Sam hung back to walk with Jamie. “What was the kiss really about?”

Jamie grinned at him. “I’m supposed to be playing decoy, aren’t I? So I saw Colin kissin’ Michael on the pitch and I knew I had to distract everyone, yeah? Make it normal.” Jamie shrugged. “Knew Colin didn’t want to come out yet. Now he doesn’t have to.”

Sam melted a bit, taking a moment to appreciate the Jamie they have compared to the one they started with. He wrapped an arm around Jamie’s shoulders, clapping him on the arm. “Jamie, that is so sweet. I’m sure Colin will be so grateful.”

“Weren’t planning on telling him, to be honest.” Jamie frowned. “Don’t want to put him on the spot or whatever.”

“Jamie,” He shook him a bit and Jamie dropped his head, pleased. “That really is wonderful. But we should at least talk to the team. See who else might like to get in on it. The more teammates kissing, the more normal it gets.”

“Yeah, alright,” Jamie said, smiling up at him. “And I’m sorry for kind of ambushing you. Shoulda probably explained meself better first.”

“No, it was fine, I understand.” Sam told him, letting go of his shoulders as they entered the room, almost everyone else in the shower already. “And it was a nice kiss.”

“Oi, mate,” Jamie grinned. “You haven’t seen a good kiss yet.”

The transition through the off season and then back into pre-season training without Coach Lasso had everyone noticeably glum. They’d kept Coach Beard, and Nate had been promoted back to assistant coach again, but Roy as manager didn’t quite have the same charm as their American friend.

Not that Roy was bad. And not that he didn’t try.

He actually did a phenomenal job of bringing his own unique perspective of the game into coaching them on the pitch while keeping up with some of Coach Lasso’s open and compassionate policies. It was quite the environment.

An environment that spurred them to win their first game of the season for the first time since Sam started at Richmond.

Everyone was on the pitch screaming and celebrating when Jamie locked eyes with him. His eyes churned, a kind of slow illumination of feral joy, and he pointed at Sam, his grin a vicious challenge.

He stalked up to Sam, his grin growing more manic, and Sam ran to meet him, wanting to share in whatever primal joy Jamie was feeling.

Jamie, of course, gripped the back of Sam’s head and brought him into a leg melting kiss.

Oh yeah. Sam had forgotten about that.

They hadn’t yet gotten around to bringing anyone else on Jamie’s kissing scheme – except for Dani and Jan Maas, who were, themselves, kissing across the pitch – but Jamie had promised Sam he hadn’t seen a good kiss yet and well..

Wow . Yeah, okay. Sam understood why the ladies on Lust Conquers All let Jamie get away with so much now.

HIs knees actually buckled and he had to grip Jamie’s shoulders tightly to keep himself from going down. He felt Jamie smile against his mouth, laughing as they broke away. “Did I actually make you go weak in the knees?”

“Fuck off,” Sam laughed, still a little dizzy. “I wasn’t ready.”

“I warned you!”

“Not recently!”

Jamie laughed again, putting an arm around Sam’s waist to hold him up. He used his other arm to reach into the cluster of teammates celebrating next to them.

“Oi, Richard!” Jamie pulled at the Frenchman, dislodging him from the group. “Kiss me!”

Richard smirked and said something in French that was probably very dirty but Sam couldn’t understand it.

He pushed up against Jamie, his side brushing Sam as Jamie still hadn’t let him go, and pulled Jamie into a kiss without any hesitation.

He immediately shoved his tongue in Jamie’s mouth, which Sam could have told Jamie was to be expected. For all Sam knew, that might have been what he’d warned in French.

Jamie laughed as he shoved Richard away. “You prick.”

Richard just winked and moved to jump on Zorro as he passed.

“Wow,” Sam said, bringing his arm up around Jamie’s shoulders. Now they were doubly linked. “Did you tell him already? About the kissing thing?”

“Nah,” Jamie said, grinning as they walked toward the dressing room. “But he’s French, inhe? Knew he’d be up for it.”

Sam groaned. “I’d call you out for stereotyping but I also know Richard.”

Jamie laughed.

“Think Cockburn might be my next target,” Jamie mused, his lips pouting out in a thinking face. “He could probably loop in Winchester and Roberts.”

“I can talk to Moe and Babutende,” Sam offered. “I already sort of kissed Moe at the last game.”

“Yeah?” Jamie grinned. “Was it as magical as I imagine?”

Sam shrugged. “Kiss him yourself.”

Jamie winked. “You know I will.”

Watching Jamie cut a path through all their teammates over the following weeks erased any doubt Sam might have had that he was 100% serious about his role as a distraction.

He did end up kissing Cockburn, then Bumbercatch, then Zorro, and also Sam and Jan Maas and Dani every chance he could get. A couple of them cornered Sam later to ask him what Jamie was up to but were more than happy to play along once they knew it was for Colin. Meaning Sam himself had kissed Richard and Dani and Winchester and O’Brien and he even got to kiss Moe properly. Jamie was right: it really was magical.

They somehow got all the way to November before they actually had to talk about it. And, unfortunately, only because they’d hurt Colin’s feelings.

He approached Sam in the dressing room, the training after their win against Crystal Palace, when Sam had actually hopped up to wrap his legs around Jamie to kiss him at a better angle. Sam had a rotation of which teammates he’d kiss after a match but he definitely always made sure to kiss Jamie.

Sam and Colin weren’t the first two in the locker room but they were early enough to be among the first, and no one was really awake yet.

Colin was already in his training kit, looking sleepy and unobtrusive. He plopped down on the bench next to Sam’s cubby with a deep sigh.

Sam chuckled, hanging his shirt up and grabbing his own kit. “Fun night?”

“What? Nah.” Colin sighed again, reaching up to rub his forehead. “Not hungover. Just couldn’t sleep. Something botherin’ me.”

“Oh,” Sam answered, startled. He was always happy to help a teammate and friend with their problems, but Colin had never come to him before, “Would you… like to talk about it?”

“Yeah, actually.” Colin turned to look up at Sam, his wide brown eyes looking tired and sad. “Do you think Jamie’s avoiding me because I’m gay?”

“What?” Sam jerked, his head shaking in an automatic denial. “Colin, of course not. Has he been avoiding you? I thought you played FIFA with him yesterday.”

“We did! I did, he’s not I guess–” Colin huffed a breath, his brow furrowed in frustration. “‘Avoid’ might not be the best word. I just, you know, I feel left out. I feel like the team’s excluding me because I’m gay.”

Sam frowned. As far as he knew, Colin had been there for all team dinners, team movie nights, the casual FIFA with the boys. If Colin was being left out, Sam wasn’t seeing it. “Excluding you how?”

“You know…” Sam screwed up his face in question and Colin sighed. “With the kissing. The after win kissing you all do on the pitch. I know Jamie started it, and he’s kissed just about everyone – even Shannon! – but he hasn’t kissed me. Is he being weird about me being gay?”

Sam blinked and immediately had to suck his lips into his mouth to keep from laughing. Laughter would not unhurt Colin’s feelings.

They really should have seen this coming. Or, if nothing else, Jamie should have just kissed Colin. Not kissing him has singled him out the same way Colin being the only one to kiss a man would have.

“Colin, I promise you, Jamie isn’t avoiding kissing you because you’re gay.” Sam stopped and frowned. “Or, he might be, but not in the way you think.”

Colin frowned back, his shoulders slumping.

“No, hey, listen.” Sam reached forward and gripped Colin’s shoulders. “I promise, just let Jamie explain. Oh, Jamie! JAMIE!”

The locker room had been filling up while they’d been talking, the boys getting gradually livelier as their coffee kicked in. Jamie had just sauntered in, dressed in peak form in his floral track suit and orange tinted sunglasses.

He grinned over at Sam and Colin and trotted up to them. “Yeah, mate?”

“Tell Colin you haven’t been avoiding kissing him because he’s gay.”

“What?” Jamie jerked, pulling off his sunglasses so they could see his blue eyes wide in shock. “Mate, definitely not! I’ll kiss you now if you like, make everything square.”

Colin put his hand out as if to stop Jamie from kissing him. “No. No, don’t do that.”

Sam wasn’t quite as successful with stopping a laugh. He choked on it a bit. “Jamie, Colin has noticed that you’ve been kissing everyone else on the team and would like to know why you haven’t kissed him.”

Jamie frowned. “Oh. yeah, I guess that would look homophobic. You were probably right and we should have told him.”

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Sam agreed, clapping Jamie on the back.

“Sorry,” Colin said, his frown looking more perplexed now than unhappy so at least that was good. “How is Jamie kissing the whole team a good deed?”

“I’m playin’ decoy!” Jamie tells him with an undercurrent of pride you would have never seen from Jamie Tartt three years ago. “Distractin’ the press like so you and Michael can kiss after matches if you want.”

“Kiss Michael…” Colin started before his eyes widened in understanding. “Oh! After West Ham last season!”

“Yeah, mate,” Jamie said, bouncing a little on his feet. “Saw you snogging on the pitch so I quick kissed Sam and some of the other lads so at the conference, they asked me about that instead of what was happening with you.”

Colin looked at Jamie, awed and a little impressed. “I’d just thought no one had seen us. Thought I got lucky.”

Sam chuckled. “You’d have to be very lucky. There were thousands of people watching.”

Colin shrugged.

Jamie scoffed. “Nah, mate. It was me! And then Sam thought the rest of the team might want in on it, so we’ve been, like, creatin’ this culture of kissin’ the lads after a win. So if you ever wanted to do it again, you’d be sorted.”

Colin smiled. “That’s real sweet, boyo.” He punched Jamie in the arm. “But you still should have told me!”

“He was trying to be humble,” Sam told him, rolling his eyes.

“Well now that he knows–” Jamie grinned, stepping up on the bench and shouting. “Oi!”

Everyone was in the locker room by now, the stragglers still changing while everyone else chatted. They all looked up at Jamie.

“Oi! Tartt!” Roy yelled back. “Why aren’t you changed?”

“One minute, Coach.” Jamie grinned. He turned back to the team. “Everyone knows about the after-win kisses, yeah?”

Everyone muttered in affirmation, some of the boys elbowing each other cheekily.

“Well Colin knows now!”

“Was it a secret?” Zorro, asked, confused.

“It would have been hard for him not to notice,” Jan Maas added.

“Weren’t a secret, just didn’t want to make it a big deal,” Jamie answered. “But now it is. So I figured we should have, like, an open discussion of boundaries or whatever. Now that we all know what’s happening.”

More muttering of agreement but then Bumbercatch asked, “What was wrong with how we were doing it?”

“Nothing,” Jamie asked, over yet more muttering. “I fucking loved it. But I do want to make sure we’re all on the same page, yeah?”

Everyone started nodding, throwing in their agreement. The coaches were all hanging by the door of their office, passively observing, until Nate piped in, “That’s very mature, Jamie.”

Jamie scoffed. “Fuck right it is. I’m a legend at open communication.”

Nate visibly sighed. Sam smirked.

“I do want to thank you all for doing this, by the way,” Colin interjected. “I did like being able to kiss my fella after a game like that. I was worried I wouldn’t be allowed to do it again.”

“Well first of all,” Roy started, commanding the room. “It’s not a matter of ‘allowed’. We’re never gonna stop you from doing whatever the fuck you wanna do with whoever the fuck you wanna do it with.”

Colin smiled. “Thanks coach.”

Roy nodded. “On this team, we all have each other’s backs. And if that means snogging on the pitch so one of our own doesn’t have to hide, have at it.”

Jamie grinned. “Was there a second of all, Coach?”

Roy grunted, scowling at Jamie. Sam fought not to giggle.

“ Second of all,” Roy started. “Show of hands. Who’s in on this shit?”

Jamie’s hand was the first in the air, Dani and Sam’s coming up almost as quickly. Most of the rest of the starters raised their hands, as well as half of the reserves. Isaac’s hands were folded against his chest.

Sam watched Roy nod at him and Isaac nod back. He would leave that one alone. It wasn’t his business.

“What about you, Coach?” Jamie asked.

“What, me?” Roy snorted. “Fuck no, I can’t be kissing players.”

Jamie shrugged. “Don’t see why not. Same as a bum pat, innit? Besides: we need to kiss some people who aren’t teammates so Colin kissing Michael in’t suspicious.”

Roy’s eyebrows seem reluctantly swayed by Jamie’s logic but his frown didn’t move.

“I’m up for it,” Beard offered, his hand raised. “I’m always down to kiss beautiful men.”

Richard yelled something in French that sounded like agreement.

“I’m free for some smooching as well,” Will said, awkward but grinning. “I’m small so you can definitely pick me up and spin me around.”

Jamie scoffed. “‘Small’. You’re taller than me, man.”

Winchester leered at the kit man. “Been thinking about that, Will?”

Will went red and ducked his head but his lips were pulled into his mouth like he was trying not to smile.

“Anyone picks me up,” Bumbercatch added. “And I’ll kick your balls into your stomach.”

“Great boundary, Moe,” Sam told him. Moe nodded. “I myself have been fine with the level of kissing so far.”

“Bet you have,” muttered Jamie, and winked when Sam shot him a look.

Sam would try not to look at that too closely.

Colin raised his hand. “I saw Richard fully snog Jamie with tongue and everything so I’d like to ask for no tongue, please. I’ll also need to clear all this with Michael, obviously.”

“I have spoken with my girlfriends about this already,” Dani said. “They have both said that it’s wonderful. So I am free to kiss all my amigos!”

Sam smiled. Dani lived such a beautiful and loving existence.

“Jane’s good,” Beard says, waving his phone redundantly.

“It’s a no for me, oh rats,” Nate said, unconvincingly. Sam couldn’t imagine his girlfriend would have been bothered by, well, anything. But if Nate wanted an out that was fine.

“My girlfriend and I actually had a conversation about this exact situation,” Will offered, smiling dreamily.

“Will, you’re a freak and I love it,” Jamie told him, pointing at him approvingly. Will grinned up at him.

“I mean I’ve kind of had that conversation,” Colin said. “But it’s more of the hall pass thing. Like ‘which five people could I hook up with and it’s not cheating.’”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve done that,” Zorro said. “Rachel McAdams and Zendaya.”

Everyone nodded at that. “Solid choices,” Roberts added.

“But wait Colin saying that means…” Jamie grinned over at him. “Which ones of us are on your hall pass list?”

Colin went red. “No. Nope. Not doing that.”

“Well I am, obviously,” Jamie said, smirking.

“And probably Bumbercatch,” Isaac added, speaking up for the first time. His face was alight with teasing his best friend.

Bumbercatch puts a hand to his naked chest in humble thanks.

“I’m not doing this!” Colin said again, louder, his face impossibly redder.

“It’s not fair that you can only have five,” Dani said, sadly. “Since there are more than five of us.”

“I don’t want to sleep with all of you!”

“Oh, so you’re out on the kissing, then?” Sam asked, grinning.

Colin sighed, crossing his arms. “No.”

“Good lad.” Jamie winked at him.

Sam grinned, climbing up on the bench next to Jamie. "And can we all tell Colin that none of us feel weird kissing him because he's gay?"

Everyone talked over each other, rushing to comfort him.

"Don't know why it should matter," Jan Maas piped in, shrugging. "I'm not straight."

Sam jerked. “Oh.”

“Oui, nor me,” Richard added.

Sam frowned. “I thought you were just French.”

“Well I mean I’m not straight either,” Jamie said, raising his hand. “But you all kind of already guessed that, right?”

“Wait,” said Colin, eyes wide. “So I’m not the only gay one?”

“Well, I mean I still like girls so–” Jamie shrugged. “I didn’t wanna steal valor or summat.”

“That’s not what that means,” Beard sighed.

“Oh, yes!” Dani said “I also love men but do not only love men. So I did not know how to respond.”

“Right and like gender and sexuality are constructs, so why should I give in to the colonialist idea of labeling my sexuality,” Bumbercatch shrugged. “I have sucked dicks before, though.”

“Oh, yeah, same,” Jamie grinned, a dreamy look in his eye. “It’s fuckin’ great.”

Roy choked, quietly. Sam knew how he was feeling.

“Okay,” Colin said, looking as thunderstruck as Sam felt. “Show of hands. Who’s not straight?”

Colin raised his hand, obviously, and so did Jamie, Dani, Jan Maas, and Richard. Also Zorro, Bumbercatch, Winchester, Reynolds, Cockburn, Shannon, and O’Brien. And Will. And Beard.

Sam raised an eyebrow at Roy whose arms were conspicuously crossed. Roy grunted at him. “You little pricks don’t need to know my business.”

“Interesting reaction,” Beard noted.

Roy growled.

Still, all totalled up, it was most of the team.

Colin’s eyes were saucers. “Oh my God, I wish Trent were here. This is almost my Oprah fantasy.”

“Ooh, I’ll raise another hand in Trent’s honor.” Beard volunteered, lifting his other hand. “We actually had a Diamond Dogs discussion about this so I’ll let him know he was right.”

“Okay…” Sam said, shaking his head. “So wait: I’m the only straight guy who’s been kissing other men for months? It’s not just something we were all doing, secure in our heterosexuality?”

“I mean, it was still all friendly, yeah?” Jamie said. “I’m not trying to fuck all me teammates. The kisses were super platonic. I just wasn’t straight while I was doin’ em.”

General agreement goes up as people lower their hands.

“This is confusing,” Sam confessed.

“Ay, don’t worry about it,” Jamie elbowed him, grinning. “We’ll just keep on, right? Nothing to panic about.”

Sam wasn’t panicking about it, but it wouldn’t let him rest either.

The team kept on the same: they lost some matches, they won others. They always kissed. They’d even started kissing the ties sometimes, just because they all liked doing it so much.

Keeley had been annoyed they hadn’t spoken to her about it first but was actually having a marvelous time managing their statements about everything. And the fan reception had been indulgent to downright elated, fans going as far as tweeting pictures of them kissing their friends after matches.

No matter which way you looked at it, Jamie’s impulsive decision to kiss Sam was an overwhelming success.

Sam just struggled a bit to figure out what this meant for him .

He was straight. He was pretty positive he was straight.

But by this point, he had kissed everyone on the team and some coaches and he had notes.

Dani’s kisses were always sloppy and enthusiastic - Dani always smiling too much to maintain a proper kiss.

Richard would grip the back of his neck which was super nice but he always worked too hard with his lips.

Jan Maas was no nonsense, moving Sam where he wanted and capturing his mouth for just long enough to wind him up. And he would bring Sam in for a hug after so his tall body swallowed him.

Zorro would start with a hug – also large and safe feeling – before giving a polite kiss and a friendly clap on the shoulder.

Colin was way too timid to kiss the rest of them like he kissed Michael but he still gave the sweetest little pecks.

Bumbercatch had a way of growling into his mouth which was quite thrilling.

Winchester loved to be dipped.

Beard always put both hands on the side of his neck and pulled away from the kiss with a loud “MUAH!”

Sam always made sure to pick up Will and spin him around.

And Jamie was definitely the best kisser. But that went without saying.

Sam didn’t know what it meant that he had all of these opinions about kissing men. He knew he didn’t want to sleep with them – he didn’t feel the same spark, the same drive, the same fire that consumed him when he was pursuing Rebecca – but he did love them and he did like kissing them and apparently none of the rest of them were straight.

Which was fine! Sam wasn’t being homophobic!

His feelings were just a little complicated.

“It’s simple, right?” Jamie said as Sam spotted him in the weight room on one of their off days. “Men want to kiss you. You want to kiss them. What’s the problem?”

“There isn’t one, I suppose,” Sam answered reluctantly, his hands hovering next to Jamie’s face. “I just kind of feel like everyone’s waiting for me to have sudden gay realization or something. Like I’m a bisexual bomb counting down to detonation.”

“Have you thought about doing some gay shit? Just to see how you feel about it?” Jamie asked, a little breathlessly. “Now that all the lads are gay, I’m sure someone’ll give you a handy. Just so you can know for sure.”

Sam’s face screwed up. “I’m not entirely comfortable with using our teammates for sexual experimentation. I hope you understand.”

“Yeah, fair.” Jamie frowned, grunting slightly at the weight. “I do feel like you’d know by now. You’re around fit footballers all the time. You’re around me all the time. If you don’t want to fuck me , I don’t think you’re queer, mate.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Jamie, not every queer man wants to sleep with you.”

Jamie scoffed. “Yeah they do. They might not like me, but they do want to fuck me. Hate fucking is still fucking.”

Sam laughed. “I wish they could bottle your confidence, Jamie.”

“They bottle Lynx. It��s basically the same thing.” Jamie set the bar back on the stand and pulled himself to sitting, turning to grin at Sam. “Anyway, wish I could help you more. My bomb popped early.” He shrugged. “Fit footballers, like I said.”

Sam grinned, taking the plates off the bar to bring it to his own weight. “Like that poster of Roy in your room?”

Jamie groaned. “Why does everyone know about that?” He ran a hand down his face and sighed. “I will get him.”

“Get him?”

“Kiss him, like,” Jamie answered. “Been dreaming about it since I was a lad, haven’t I? Never had a chance like this.”

“You don’t have a chance now ,” Sam reminded him. “He’s not in on this.”

“We got Captain!” Jamie answered back. “We can get Coach.”

That was half true. They hadn’t ‘got’ Isaac. He was looped in on their kissing now, though.

Isaac was straight and, unlike Sam, refused to be kissed. Sam hadn’t gotten the whole story because apparently Isaac wasn’t talking but Sam knew enough about being black, being an athlete, and being in England to guess what the problem was. But it still felt weird to leave their captain out of something that had become such a sacred ritual for the team.

They had all found a compromise. After their win against Tottenham, Colin had kissed Isaac on the forehead in celebration. Isaac had looked so touched, so profoundly loved, that all of the rest of the team started doing it, too.

Sam kept kissing him on the nose. He really loved the face Isaac made when he did it. It was important to cherish your captain.

So, they’d kind of gotten Isaac.

“You can try and kiss the coach on the cheek,” Sam offered. “He might headbutt you, though.”

“Nah, he won’t.” Jamie told him, patting the bench and getting up to replace Sam behind the weights. “Not if I make a pretty enough goal.”

Sam was laying on the bench. He looked up to see Jamie’s smirk from below.

“I got it all worked out,” Jamie continued, hiking his shorts further up his thighs as Sam starts his presses. “We’ve just been kissing after matches, yeah? And Coach always runs off and leaves us to it. But if we’re in the middle of a game and I make a sexy goal – like proper beautiful, they’d write songs about it and shit – while we’re all celebratin’ I can trot right up to the sidelines and give him a proper snog.”

Sam grunted, holding the bar at his chest. “Kissing by ambush doesn’t sound very ethical, Jamie.”

Jamie snorts. “I’m not just gonna maul him. I bet I can get him to kiss me . All caught up in the moment like.”

Sam snorts back. “You’re mad.”

“I gotta try . Gotta make teenage Jamie proud.”

Sam shook his head, setting the bar back on the rest as he finished his set. “Bet you a hundred pounds.”

“Nah, fuck that. If I can get this done, I want a free meal at Ola’s.”

Sam blew out a breath, reaching out his hand to shake. “Done. And if I win – if he doesn’t kiss you by the end of the season – you’re bringing in the whole team and paying for everyone.”

“Definitely,” Jamie clasped his hand and shook it. “Because I’m not gonna lose. And now you’re gonna be financin’ mine and Roy’s first date.”

Sam held up his hands “If you say so. It’s already unlikely he’ll kiss you but date you?”

“Man, fuck off.” Jamie laughed, shoving him.

Sam laughed and shoved back.

“What are we laughing about,” Colin asked, smiling already.

“Hey, Colin, between us: you do want to fuck me, right?” Jamie asked. “Sam’s trying to tell me that not all queer lads want to fuck me but I know that’s wrong.”

“Well I can’t speak for everyone but me, yeah.” Colin shrugged as Jamie grinned and gestured at Sam like ‘see?’. “You are actually on my hall pass list.”

“See, I knew it!” Jamie huffed a breath like he was glad to have that settled. “We won’t be fucking, Colin, sorry to say. I’ve got bigger fish, you get it.”

“What, like Roy?” Colin grinned and Sam laughed at Jamie’s expression. “No offense taken. He’s a bit scary for me but certainly a big fish.”

“Right, fuck you both.” But Jamie still helped Sam finish his weights.

When it did happen, it happened almost exactly as Jamie said.

Jamie made an absolutely filthy goal. And it was a hat trick. And it won them the match.

And Sam had to watch as Jamie charged the sidelines and stopped directly in front of the manager, arms spread and head cocked. He couldn’t see Jamie’s face but he could see Roy’s. He saw how Roy rolled his eyes, his mouth set in that annoyed smile Sam had only ever seen him use when Jamie was being a prick. He reached one hand into Jamie’s hair, his fingers clutching at it, and the other moved up to cup his jaw as he moved in to kiss Jamie.

Sam swore, loudly and enthusiastically, as the rest of the team hooted and hollered, hats raining down on the pitch.

Jamie ran back on the pitch, cheeks high with color and hair an absolute tragedy. His grin was nothing short of euphoric.

“How’s teenage Jamie doing?” Sam asked him.

“He’s fuckin’ great!” Jamie told him. “Let’s finish this fucking match.”

They ran down the clock, playing very silly but very strong for the final twenty seconds of added time.

Jamie all but tackled Sam when the buzzer sounded, lifting him up by his collar and kissing him soundly. Sam laughed and gripped Jamie’s shoulder to steady himself as he kissed back.

“So Ola’s at 6 tomorrow, yeah?” Jamie asked him after he pulled away.

Sam laughed, shoving at his face.

Other players descended on them, yanking them to their feet and into kisses.

They were lucky this was a match at home so they could all pour into their dressing room and scream their heads off without having to worry about catching the bus home. Cries of Richmond Til We Die permeated the air, inside and still out in the stands.

When everything had calmed down and people were making plans for how to celebrate, Jan Maas called across the locker room. “So, Coach, do we need to get a hat trick for you to kiss us or is that just for Jamie?”

The surrounding players ‘Ooohed’ and laughed as Jamie went red, elated smile still spread.

“That was a special exception,” Roy told them, not quite masking his own smile. “Tartt was asking for it.”

Louder ‘ooh’s’ and a couple wolf whistles went up.

“No! Fuck off!” Roy yelled at them. “I’m not kissing any more players. Stay the fuck out of my business.”

He turned to Sam. “And I want those fried plantain things tomorrow, alright? Cheers.” And then he turned and walked into his office, closing the door behind him.

Sam turned to Jamie, flabbergasted. “Did you tell him already?”

“Maybe,” Jamie grinned, shrugging. “Had to try.”

“You are a miracle, Jamie Tartt.”

Jamie shoved at him as they continued changing.

They all agreed to meet at Colin’s for a boy’s night of beer and Fifa to celebrate their win. Sam walked out to the car park with Jamie, the two of them riding over in Zorro’s jeep.

Sam turned to Jamie as they reached the car, waiting for the rest of the team to join them.

“If you and Roy start dating seriously – which I would support you in, of course – would that mean we’d have to stop kissing after games?”

“Mate, never ,” Jamie told him, looking horrified that Sam had even suggested it. “Roy knows that the lads come first.”

“Good,” Sam said, releasing a sigh of relief bigger than he thought it would be. “I think I’m definitely still straight. But to have to stop kissing you would break my heart I think.”

“Aw, Sammy boy,” Jamie slung an arm around Sam’s shoulders, pulling his head down to press their foreheads together. “I told you, didn’t I? A good kiss can change your life.”

#Ted Lasso #oops I wrote a thing #Ted Lasso fic #AFC Richmond

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nanowrimo · 7 months

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Back to School: Interview with Sarah Lile, Young Writers Program Educator

NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program helps over 85,000 kids, teens, teachers, and families set creative goals and tell stories they care about. We asked some of our amazing YWP educators to share how they take on the NaNoWriMo challenge in their classroom. Today’s advice comes from Sarah, a middle school ELA teacher in Richmond, Virginia.

Q: What grade/ age level do you work with? What type of NaNoWriMo group is it (whole class, club, homeschool, elective, etc.)?

A: Whole classes, grades 6-8

Q: How long have you been doing NaNoWriMo with your students?

A: Since 2019

Q: How do you structure the entire project (for example, do you start prepping in October and write in November, do you have kids work on it all year, etc.)?

A: We don't do much prep and I always regret it. Students use class time to write throughout November. Some students already have an idea of what they'd like to write, others are pantsers like me!

Q: What does a normal NaNoWriMo day look like for your students?

A: Arrive to class and settle in, open laptops and begin feverishly typing!

Q: How do you set and manage word-count goals?

A: I allow students to set their own goals, though I've started to require no less than 7,000 words.

Q: How do you manage grading? Do you grade?

A: I ask students to submit an excerpt of their novel each week and post them on the wall in the classroom. This helps with accountability and sharing.

Q: How do you approach revision/ publishing (if at all)?

A: I don't grade their novels, instead they revise an excerpt for a grade and a public reading.

Q: Any NaNoWriMo tips or tricks to share with other educators? Hard-won lessons? Ah-ha moments?

A: Every year I wish we had done more prep.

It's more fun when I write WITH them.

Students really like it when I read their work, so the excerpts are key.

My writers always hit a wall at some point, but I trust the process (and tell them to just keep typing) and the NaNoWriMo tools and they always get through it! They are natural-born storytellers.

Q: Have you ever run into resistance from your administration about doing NaNoWriMo, and if so, how did you manage it? What do you say to people who don’t see the point of having students write novels?

A: Thankfully, no. I do send the Common Core standards to parents and admin so they see how this aligns.

Q: What are the most meaningful things you or your students take away from the project? What's your best NaNoWriMo memory?

A: That they CAN DO IT! The first class that participated set their own goals and wrote feverishly every class period and during the weekends. One student was out of town for the last couple days, sick in a hotel bed, and stayed up to meet her goal. Her parents were absolutely amazed at her commitment.

Q: Anything else you'd like to add?

A: In order for this to really work, students need to write everyday. It's hard to keep momentum over weekends and especially over a week-long Thanksgiving break. I'd love advice on how to keep students writing at these times—maybe set short term word count goals?

Sarah is a middle school ELA teacher at Sabot School in Richmond, Virginia, a progressive Reggio-Inspired school for children ages 2-14. She is a wife, mother, dog-mom, writer, food-lover, and amateur potter.

#nanowrimo #ywp #nanowrimo ywp #back to school #by nano guest #sarah lile

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church-of-lilith · 11 months

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FMK: ted lasso WIPs? your writing is so good!!

omg thank you! your writing is always amazing, and your WIPs sound so interesting. I look forward to reading whatever you decide to put forward in the end.

fuck - the story you just want to read instead of having to write it yourself

I've started outlining (and I have like half a chapter written) a Keeley/Barbara & Ted/Trent fic that basically starts from Keeley introducing Barbara to Trent at one of their team get togethers. I'm so fascinated at the idea of how the two of them would interact with each other. I feel like they would be an unstoppable duo, literally autistic mlm wlw solidarity. And somewhere along the way they would get drunk and Barbara would be like 'I think I'm in love with Keeley' and Trent would be like 'I think I'm in love with Ted' and they would commiserate together. I have the idea so clearly in my head, but it's hard to put it down into words for whatever reason. So I guess that's why I would like to read it instead of having to write it myself.

marry - the story you're obsessed with writing and never want to stop working on or thinking about.

well, we all fall in love (but we disregard the danger) is my Beard/Trent fic and it consumes my thoughts on the daily. I think part of it is because I started it on a whim a few days before the finale aired, and then we were given the absolute insane ending with Beard and Jane getting together and I just could not accept that. So I think the canon ending made my brainrot with this piece even worse, because it's turned into a fix-it of sorts. I have it basically completely written but I keep going in and adding and editing it more with every little idea I get because it's just so fun to lose myself in the universe I've created for them. Part of this is also because the last scene between Ted & Trent in the finale was a thing of nightmares for me as well, and I haven't been able to even think about writing a fix-it fic ending for them after that.

kill - the story you're most frustrated with and would rather just put in the trash (or a high shelf somewhere to forget about for a long time)

long story short is my Trent post-canon fix-it fic that I started writing and published in a delusional haze the day after the finale ruined my life. It was borne out of a need for me to have some sort of solid ending for Trent (because the way they basically removed him from the Richmond family did not sit right with me.) But idk, I keep returning to the google doc and going through all of the things I wrote for the fic and none of it is really resonating with me the longer time passes. There's just so many ideas swirling around in my head and I can't really put them together in a way that I feel authentically fits. I didn't have a clear vision when I started it, and I still don't now. In a way I've already had it on a high shelf and forgotten about it for quite some time, and maybe I'll take another crack at it eventually but I can't commit right now.

#thank you!!#lily answers #my writing #my fics #ted lasso fic #ted lasso wips #tedtrent #trent crimm #ted lasso #beardtrent

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a-queer-kind-of-fear · 10 months

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15 questions, 15 mutuals

tagged by @viciousland

1. are you named after anyone?

yes, my great-grandfather who had a big impact on the family despite / owing to his early death. his first name is my middle name.

2. when was the last time you cried?

phew, the last time i remember was in late 2019, early 2020 when talking about my grandmother’s death in therapy. i may have cried since, but i don’t remember. unfortunately, i don’t cry easily.

3. do you have kids?

no. i think would like to care for children some day, in some capacity, if i’m ever in a position to do so. i wouldn’t reproduce for ethical and personal reasons, but i might adopt.

4. do you use sarcasm a lot?

oh yes.

5. what sports do you play / have played?

the only sport i really pursued is martial arts. judo, karate, kung fu, kickboxing, mixed martial arts. i’d started training with tonfas and katanas as well, but that was some time ago. i still train with and without my tonfas every now and then, but only solo these days.

6. what's the first thing you notice about people?

really depends on the person and under which circumstances i encounter them. different things stand out for different people. if i just pass them by on the street, it’ll probably be how they move. that is to say, where are they going? how slow or fast are they? do they see me? are they looking at their phone? are we in danger of bumping into each other? do they expect me to step out of the way? quick vibe check to determine if too many or not enough people step out of their way. everything i can gauge without looking at them directly for too long.

even in passing, i’ll sometimes notice when someone’s wearing something particularly elegant, is very beautiful, graceful, or has some other peculiarity. another thing that can be hard to miss and that i pay special attention to are people’s voices and their volume.

7. what's your eye colour?

results are inconclusive. the most accurate description i can give is blue-green-grey with light brown/golden rings around the pupil. people tend to become more puzzled, the more they try to settle on a colour.

8. scary movies or happy endings?

yeah... these are not mutually exclusive, but it’s gotta be scary movies for me.

9. any special talents?

language/s and low-level telepathy.

10. where were you born?

a small town in southwest germany, close to france.

11. what are your hobbies?

reading, writing, singing, translating.

12. do you have pets?

no, alas 😢 my parents have two cats and a dog, and i still think of the cats as ours even though i don’t live with them anymore. pretty sure the cats still think of me as part of the family, too. they’re always really happy to see me. haven’t met the dog, so we don’t have a relationship yet.

13. how tall are you?

170 cm or 5'7''

14. favourite subject in school?

probably english

15. dream job?

anaesthesist (get it? because you put people to sleep?)

tagging: @venacesaur, @azover, @autumngracy, @skeletordidntdieforthis, @sanspatronymic, @thejournalman, @voidedvisions, @dilfslayer1080p, @inthecornerreading, @deez-no-relation, @anarcho-tits, @thane-kyrell-ciena-ree, @orphiclyre, @theformerissilent, @6151-richmond-street

#thanks for the tag!#it's been ages since i did one of these #also apparently we've been following each other for 7 years! wtf #if you see this and want to do it feel free to say i tagged you

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pink-gladioli · 1 year

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guess whos back with a fanfic this time?!

its me ya boi tumblr user pink-gladioli. so this time i think i wrote something that counts as a fanfic, lets goooo. this is Macys first interactions with the Knights Academy and Jestro. Note in my rewrite/au idk what to call it, the knights academy students start their training at age 10 so jestro is a second year in this. Again in my brain au macy doesn't really start talking to the knights + jestro until shes 12/13 so thats why they're their stated age. also you might notice that the language i use when talking about squirebots almost implies that they aren't human and you'd be right! i wanted to convay the fact that almost nobody sees the squirebots as people which is why i used dehumanizing language when talking about them. (squirebots need rights, Fancypants for president 2024) anyways have fun reading this shitshow!

The holotrain ran across the capital, crossing the squirebots bellow doing their daily errands for their noble born masters, with only two one person inside. Macy stared out the window watching as her train traveled across the city getting closer and closer to her destination. She wasn’t going far and taking the high-speed train only made the trip even shorter. Finally saw her destination, The Knights Academy. She’s lucky to be out her by herself, it took a lot convincing and some help from Merlok, but she eventually was able to convince her parents to let her observe one of the tournaments of the 151st class.

Luckily a “friend” of hers was in the class, if Lances parents didn’t force him to attend the academy, she doubts that she would have been able to bring up the idea of viewing a tournament without being immediately getting shut down by her family’s squirebot before she even thought of asking her parents. However, she can’t really blame her parents for being protective over her, she is a princess and the future queen, it makes sense they would want to keep her safe inside the confines of the royal palace until she was old enough to detect dangerous people or situations. But she always felt she was old enough to leave, since she was eight, she was able to traverse the battlefield of her father’s royal balls; always knowing when the other nobles talked to her only in the hopes of getting something in return in the future. In fact, Lance was one of those nobles, but his case was always odd to her, it was clear that he had some passion but every time he dared to show it, it was put out like a candle. Foolish on his side, he was born into a family of knights, there was no point of trying to change his parents’ minds. They were even more traditional than hers! They weren’t the type to change their way of thinking, nor would they actually listen to their children, it makes her wonder they even had a second child. Perhaps it was maintain face, or did actually have that little faith in Lance to bring honor to the Richmond name? They are only twelve after all, they still have room to change.

Regardless she’s glad to be here without her parents, it made her feel mature. Of course, she had Fancypants by her side but that’s to expected for anyone born in the capital, having a personal squirebot is almost a sign of status in her world. “Princess, we’ve arrived,” said Fancypants breaking Macy out of her trance “Oh we are, we should go, I’d hate to leave Sir Brickland waiting.” As she walked the doors of the train, they opened she saw Swordmore Brickland standing in front of his school. “Ah, Princess Macy, it is always an honor to have a member of the royal family at our fine institution!” as he finished his sentence, he turned his eyes back to trains doors, expecting someone else to come out, but no one did. Macy paid no mind to this, “Thank you Sir Brickland the honor is mine, thank you for letting me observe the tournaments of some of your students” “Well I’m proud to let to you know you won’t be disappointed with my students’ abilities, Clay Moorington is in the class you will be viewing, and he is one of the best students I’ve ever seen!” Brickland said confidently. Moorington, she had heard that name before, Lance was complaining about him during one of her fathers parties last year. Something about him “having no chill” and being “a suck up and teachers pet,” she tells herself that she won’t let these outside opinions impact her thoughts on any of the students. That would impact her observations.

In truth she didn’t come to the academy because she wanted to see a bunch of children fight for a plastic trophy, she came here because she wanted to see other children her age. How did they act, what do they talk about, what is it like to live a life outside of the birdcage called the royal palace? This isn’t to say she hated her home, that’s far from the truth. She loved the governing simulations her father assigned her to prepare her for her job as Queen and watching the ministers arguer over things like whether Snottingham should have its own medical field was amusing to her.

But to say she talked to other children would just be a lie, at most she saw Lance once a month at her fathers’ parties, but she wasn’t quite fond of him. In fact, he could be a bit annoying at times, always complaining about his parents but never wanting to take on the reasonability of being a Richmond. He never talked about his future knightly duties, nor did he talk about how he planned to manage his family’s wealth when he eventually inherited it. She hoped that not all children were like this.

“There’s still some time before the tournament, let me give you a tour of the school,” Said Brickland as Macy gave a small nod. As the three two of them walked throughout the halls of the academy, Macy can feel the eyes of the few students in the hall looking at her, some only spare a glance while others stop in their tracts. Some of the latter are staring so intently that she certain they know who she is. However, the feeling of people watching her is one she hasn’t quite grown used to. Her fathers’ parties were mainly private with nobles that knew her and when they were public, she would rarely be out with her family. Her father said that this was to protect her from the judgmental eyes of news reporters hoping to get any ounce of information out of the young royal, and that once she was thirteen, she could choose to join them if she wanted. She’s just now starting to resent her father for not getting her used to feeling of what feels like a hundred pairs of eyes staring into your soul. But she knows she’s being irrational, most of the students think she’s just a transfer student getting a tour and those that do know won’t do anything. At most they might tell the whole school but hopefully word will take a while to travel to class 151, but she can’t shake the slight sinking feeling in her stomach. She tries her best to not let her nervousness show. Fancypants doesn’t comment nor does Brickland so she thinks it’s working.

As Brickland is explaining the history of a statue she sees a boy, clearly in distress, being dragged into a different room by two older students. Curiosity gets the better of her, and she leaves Fancypants and Brickland to go into this room. “I- I don’t want any trouble issue guys, I already gave you two my allowance for this week!” said the younger boy, “Yeah well someone lost that money in a bet so need more, plus its your fault. Berry here decided to bet all that money on your buddy Mooringtons tournament winning last week but because you messed it up, we lost our money!” said one of the older boys. Huh so this boy was on Moorington’s tourmate team, and is betting even allowed at this school? Well, shes deescalated conflicts in her governing simulations and between Lance and some of the squirebots so hopefully this shouldn’t be that different. “Hey what are you two doing?” She yelled, hoping to intimidate the two older boys “Who the hell are you? And what the heck are doing here, this is a private conversation!” said, who she assumes is, Berry. So, she failed at intimidation, “What I’m doing is stopping this ‘conversation’ from escalating any future, you two are clearly harassing that boy!” The said boy in question had an expression of…. shock? Why was he looking at her like that, she’s helping him! “Buzz of girl, this doesn’t concern you” Replied the unnamed boy, so they are going to be rude about this? Time to play the royalty card “It does concern me; do you know who I am? I’m the Princess of this country, any conflict between its citizens is my concern and I certainly won’t sit back and let you harass this poor boy!” She yelled it all the confidence a twelve-year-old could muster. As soon as she said that the two boys burst out in laughter “Princess?! Do you seriously believe us to believe that bullshit?! If the Princess was here the school would be preparing for weeks to show off every part of the school!” Said one of the boys, she honestly didn’t care which one it was. While it’s true that there would usually a grand celebration if a member of the royal family were to arrive at the Knights Academy, she had Fancypants specifically tell Swordmore Brickland to not tell anyone, she also had that message sent twenty minutes before they she got on the Holorail. She was honestly tired of these boys, who they think they are harassing an underclassman and then having the nerve to say it’s none of business when she intervened.

Almost on que Fancypants showed up behind her “Princess Macy, it is very rude to leave a tour befo- what is going on here?” She turned to face the two boys seeing their faces that were once filled amusement now being taken by what seemed to fear. She knew why, Fancypants had a distinct voice and build to distinguish him from other squirebots, there’s no denying that was the royal family’s squirebot. Brickland who followed behind Fancypants almost yelled out “Berry and Alex! How many times do I have to tell you to leave Jestro alone?! The both of you to detention now!!” Jestro, so that’s this boy’s name thought Macy. Alex and Berry left with annoyed faces, not even needing to ask where ‘detention’ is.

“I apologize that you had to see that Princess, unfortunately some of our worse students don’t seem to comprehend that bullying is strictly forbidden at The Knights Academy. I assure you that I will have a conversation with those boys’ parents.” Brickland assured, however Macy wasn’t really listening. She slowly walked up to the boy, Jestro she now knows, and asked “Are you okay?” Since the moment she first intervened that look on his face hadn’t changed, was he scared of her? “I-I- I’m fine, t-thank you. No one beside Clay really does that…” So those boys weren’t lying, this boy is really ‘buddies’ with Moorington. “It’s nothing, those two were being very rude. No one at an academy like this should act that way, it’s very shameful!” “Heh you kinda sound like Clay” This is the third time she has heard that name, it seems she can’t escape that name. Brickland interrupted their conversation with a fake cough “Anyways Jestro why aren’t you in class?” he asked. “O-oh um no one fixed my schedule remember, I don’t really have a class for second period. I had a meeting with you about this last week…” Brickland just looked at the boy with a face that Macy would call disapproving, but that can’t be right, this doesn't seem like Jestros fault so why does Sir Brickland face look almost annoyed? “That’s right, well we can talk about this later right now I need finish giving the Princess the tour, you are dismissed Jestro.” Brickland and Fancypants were about to leave before Macy spoke up

“Sir Brickland if it is not a problem with you, Jestro could join the tour. He doesn’t seem to have a class right now and it could be a good learning experience to learn more about the academy’s history, ah that’s if he wants to!” As Macy turned back to Jestro, she saw that face of shock again only this time it’s understandable to her, getting invited to join a member of the royal family is a great honor regardless of what the activity is, and she barely knew this boy. Yet she couldn’t leave this boy to wait in this empty classroom until his next class so why not have him join her? Brickland turned his face to Jestro “Well, Jestro, do you want to join us?” Jestro seemed to be too shocked to speak for a second but eventually responded, “Ah- Yes of course! Uh its- uh an honor to go on this tour with you princess” he gave a quick bow, and it was clear he was nervous. “Please call me Macy. We are friends now, right?” She doesn’t know why she said that it was just something that happened in the moment. While it’s true she came to the academy to observe other children her age she didn’t expect to be asking someone if they are friends with her. Maybe part of her wanted to make a friend. “O-oh okay um thank you again Macy” Jestro said, it seemed a bit of his nervousness had faded. Macy could feel herself smiling to that response before Brickland spoke “Well time to head back to our tour, this statue as I was saying….”

As Macy and Jestro listened and followed Brickland for the rest of the tour, Macy couldn’t stop the smile forming on her face. She had made her first friend, while she didn’t know much about friendship, she made a vow to always be there for Jestro and maybe they would make a bond that would last a lifetime.

As Macy was being overrun with monster on every side, she caught a glimpse of Jestro. He had a cruel smile on his face, laughing along with that damn cloud. She felt noting but hatred for him now.

#nexo knights #nexo knights rewrite #lego nexo knights #macy halbert #macy halbert nexo knights #jestro #jestro nexo knights #clay moorington #clay moorington nexo knights #i mean hes not in the story but his name is said like 4 times

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littlequeenies · 1 year

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Jane Asher: ‘What scares me about getting older? Becoming irritating to other people’

Rosanna GreenstreetSat 6 May 2023 09.30 BST

Born in London, Jane Asher, 77, had her first role at five, in the 1952 film Mandy. She went on to appear in Alfie in 1966 and Deep End in 1970, and her extensive stage credits include The Importance of Being Earnest at the Rose in Kingston and An American in Paris at London’s Dominion theatre. She stars in Somerset Maugham’s The Circle at Richmond’s Orange Tree theatre until 17 June. She has three children with the illustrator Gerald Scarfe and lives in West Sussex.

When were you happiest? The early family skiing holidays – before I’d broken an ankle and Gerald had torn a ligament – were just wonderful.

What is your greatest fear? I’ve always been frightened of the dark. I sometimes wonder whether it stems from being away filming from the age of five. I can remember being devastatingly homesick and having a little nightlight I used to look at to reassure myself things were all right.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Minding not being liked.

What is the trait you most deplore in others? Mental cruelty.

What was your most embarrassing moment? When I was a teenager, I laughed at a joke I didn’t understand. Whoever told the joke turned to me and said, “What are you laughing at?” Of course I didn’t know and he obviously knew I didn’t know. It was excruciating.

What is your most treasured possession? A model of a lion that my elder son, Alexander, who is now in his 40s and an artist, made for me at school.

What was the best kiss of your life? When I was on location in France, making a film called The Greengage Summer when I was 13, I was kissed by a local boy called Jean Jacques and I can still remember the thrill.

Which phrases do you most overuse? “It’s a nightmare.”

Which living person do you most admire, and why? The amazing women standing up against the Taliban.

Who is your celebrity crush? Harrison Ford at the time of The Fugitive. He was perfection.

What do you most dislike about your appearance? There are a million things but, when you’ve got two arms and two legs and you can see and hear, I think you should be happy with what you’ve got.

What scares you about getting older? Becoming irritating to other people. I don’t want to be a know-all granny or down with the kids.

Which book are you ashamed not to have read? A La Recherche du Temps Perdu by Marcel Proust – you feel you should give it a go, but I haven’t.

What was the last lie you told? “That was absolutely delicious,” when I went for a meal with friends.

What is your guiltiest pleasure? Eating condensed milk out of the tin.

What is the worst job you’ve done? Doing an episode of Doctors was a bit of a nadir.

What has been your biggest disappointment? Fine dining when it goes wrong.

How would you like to be remembered? If my children remember me as fondly as I remember my mum, that would be a treat.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you? Not to take anything for granted.

What happens when we die? I don’t know about my soul, but my brain will be on a shelf in the Parkinson’s UK Brain Bank.

#Jane Asher #2023 Jane #Article #The Guardian #Jane article #actress #author #boutique owner #activist #model #cook #muse #2020s Jane #2023 #2020s #interview #quotes

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laciere · 11 days

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Interview with Stephanie Byrd: by Terri Jewell

(Originally published in Does Your Mama Know? An Anthology of Black Lesbian Coming Out Stories, ed. Lisa C. Moore, published by RedBone press 1997. Transcribed by @laciere (typos my own).)

[Stephanie Byrd is a Black lesbian feminist poet, writer, critic, community activist. Her works include two books of poetry; critical essays in Greenwood Press’ Bibliography of Contemporary Lesbian Literature (1993) and Lesbian Review of Books (1995); listing in Black Lesbians: An annotated Bibliography by J. R. Roberts (1981); mentioned in Ann Allen Shockley’s essay, “The Black Lesbian in American Literature: An Overview” (1979) and Black Women and the Sexual Mountain by Calvin Hernton (1988). Her poetry has appeared in The American Voice, Kenyon Review, Conditions and Sinister Wisdom. Her books have been reviewed by many publications.]

STEPHANIE BYRD: I was born in 1950 on July 10th in Richmond, Indiana. My family has lived in or around Richmond since the War of 1812, perhaps before then. Part of them came from Boston, Massachusetts, because the Northwest Territory was free territory and they did not wish to become enslaved again. Other members of my family escaped from slavery in the South and came to Indiana, where small Black settlements had sprung up. These are the people that I came from.

I was a Latin major at Ball State University from 1968-69 and was an anti-war activist from 1968-73. I met some civil rights activists during that period who were doing work in Cairo, Illinois. The Black community in Cairo was boycotting the white businesses because of their refusal to hire Blacks. The white community was responding by driving through the Black community at night and shooting through people’s windows, so after dark people would turn out the lights and sit on the floor. I met a man who was doing some fund-raising at Indiana University in Bloomington and became involved with gathering canned goods and clothing to offset “The Wolf” in Cairo until the problem could be resolved.

TERRI JEWELL: Were you a lesbian then?

BYRD: Yes. When I was about 6 or 7, one of the neighbors called me a lesbian. I went to my grandmother and asked her about it and she told me that being a lesbian was about loving women, women loving women.

JEWELL: Your grandmother told you that?!!

Byrd: Yes. My grandmother Byrd. And that it was all right to be a lesbian if I really loved someone. And since I was in love with my little next door neighbor, I went out and told everyone that we were lesbians. My mother was furious and I think that was the first time I heard about lesbians. The second time, I was 12 and I was asked to put down on a sheet of paper what my goals in life were. I was in seventh grade at Hibbard Elementary/Junior High School. I had put down that my goals were to be a brain surgeon, a lawyer, and a lesbian. I was sent to the office. I realized when I was sent down to the office that something was terribly wrong even though I was only 12, and they said, “Well, do you know what a lesbian?” And I said, “It’s a person who lives on the isle of lesbos,” because I had looked it up in the dictionary. They me go, feeling secure that i really didn’t know what I was talking about. It’s funny that about a year later I was sent to the office again for being a Communist.

JEWELL: A Communist?

BYRD: Yes, because I asked for the Communist Manifesto at the school library so we could compare it to the Declaration of Independence.

When I was about 17, I realized that there was something wrong with being a lesbian socially.I tried to become straight and hooked up with this guy who turned out to be gay. By the time I was 19, I realized that none of this was working, so I just went back to being a lesbian again. It was very hard, though, because at 19 you’re kind of a sexual libertine. You’re not straight, you’re not gay. You’re just in heat. Being a lesbian was just the best and easiest way for me to be.

JEWELL: When did you start writing?

BYRD: When I was 17, in the summer. I had actually started writing before then during that school year and had written some short stories and some poetry. When I graduated from high school, I started writing poetry seriously and actually had a contest with my little gay boyfriend. We would write a book of poetry a month and that summer I produced three books of poetry, all of which I burned.

JEWELL: Why?

BYRD: I have destroyed my work in the past. I’d say, all together, four books of poetry. I have a tendency to lose control of my temper and as a result, my reason. I would burn my work as a cleansing act. A ritual.

JEWELL: You don’t consider the act of writing a cleansing? A ritual?

BYRD: Writing can be cleansing, but there have been times in my life when even the writing is not enough to cleanse.

JEWELL: So, writing is not always enough to cleanse what?

BYRD: Oh, I call them “the Terrors.” They are anxieties and fears that somehow combine into a feeling so large they seem to consume me from the inside out. I think some actress in a Neil Simon play once called the “Read Meanies.”

JEWELL: What has survived of your writing?

BYRD: There is a book of poetry called 25 Years of Malcontent which is now out of print. When I finished 25 Years of Malcontent, it was the result of serious years of serious writing, the last three of which I wrote every day for at least two hours a day, sometimes eight, depending on whether or not I was employed. I t was released in 1976 and published by Good Gay Poets in Boston. As with most first works by a writer, it’s somewhat autobiographical, describing things and events that I observed or was involved in. There is one poem there about a man who died in a house. He wasn’t found until much later and his cats had tried to chew through the door to get to him to eat him because they hadn’t been fed. And there is a poem about a white suffragette I had met in Texas. She was a wonderful, wonderful woman well into her 60s. This was in 1972. She told me to be true to my roots. The advice that she gave me was very good advice. The whole time I was in Boston, I don’t think I ever really convinced myself that I was anything but a Black woman from Indiana.

JEWELL: When did you first go to Boston?

BYRD: It was 1973.

JEWELL: Were you aware of the Combahee River Collective?

BYRD: In 1974, the women who eventually evolved into the Combahee River Collective were the National Black Feminist Organization of which I was a member. We used to meet as a support group at the Women’s Center in Cambridge. We would talk about a number of things. Barbara Smith was there and she developed guidelines on how we were to support each other. It was very like consciousness-raising. I remember the group being an open group and a lot of women coming who were straight and battered. They were Black women. Some of them were successful, some of them were very poor, some of them were working-class women. There were incidents where outsiders would come and discover that there were Black lesbians there and they would flip out with a great deal of hysteria and arguing and name-calling. And those were the early meetings. But the thing i remember is these women coming who had been so battered in their lives that there was something disturbing about them and a support group wasn’t going to do it for them. I heard someone say recently that one of the best cures for mental illness for Black people is Black culture and I wanted the group to be more committed to the creation and preservation of Black women’s culture. But that was really difficult to do with the Combahee River Collective because the group soon was not all Black. And the support group was very committed to combating racism and sexism and antisemitism and class oppression, so many minority women had to be included. At that time, I had a great deal of difficulty synthesizing the presence and the issues of the minority women who were not Black into the issues that involved me. I was something of a Black separatist, I suppose.

JEWELL: In reading their statement, the group was against separatism and wanted to work with Black men.

BYRD: Well, I never heard them say anything about working with any men when I was in the group. They talked about working with white women. [In attempting to address] all the other concerns [of Koreans, Hispanics, Jews, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc.] just turned into a wave that seemed to obliterate what I was hoping would become a Black feminist support group. And as Black feminists, in retrospect, I realize now that I was hoping that we could do something to address the needs of some of these women who were coming to us who had been stabbed or shot or beaten and threatened and didn’t know how to leave their husbands or didn’t know how to address life without a man. These women needed a separatist environment in which to heal. Maybe later on, this whole multi-ethnic feminist vanguard could include them, but for then and for now, too, it doesn’t. It does not address the needs of these Black women.

JEWELL: I agree. So, why do you think that is, even though we are well-versed in the problems that we have? And I’m not living on either the East or the West coasts, but in the Midwest. You know the gaps HERE. In your opinion, why are we Black women so afraid of having our own groups and projects exclusively? We always talk about how nice it is to be among ourselves with our own language and our own ways of doing and seeing things but we just don’t do it. Even the Combahee River Statement says, “We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us.” Yet, we are constantly getting away from that.

BYRD: Oh, it’s much easier to address everyone else’s needs rather than your own. You know that from dealing with your own problems. It is much easier to go out and find someone else who has a bigger problem or a different problem and work on their problem for them than to deal with your own mess. And essentially, that’s what we have been doing all along historically. We think we CAN’T do it by ourselves. And the reason why we can’t do it by ourselves is because “they” will annihilate us. We have to get away from this paranoia.

JEWELL: How long were you with this group?

BYRD: Oh, until about 1976.

JEWELL: So, it did not start out being a Black lesbian group?

BYRD: Oh, no, no, no.

JEWELL: Or did it start out being a Black lesbian group but no one was saying this so just more women would want to be involved without stigma?

BYRD: When the group started, there were only three of us, including myself, who said they were lesbians. Only three of us announced that we were lesbians during the first night of the group. The other women introduced themselves by talking about where they went to graduate school and what their interests were, etc., but no one else said they were lesbians. After several months, though, some of the other women came out.

JEWELL: What made you leave the group?

BYRD: I Was heavily into my poetry, doing a lot of writing and readings. And I wanted to do more cultural things. I read all over Boston: University of Massachusetts, Boston; Faneuil Hall, which is the Town Hall in Boston. In 1976 I decided I couldn’t maintain the separatist pose any longer, that I would have to become involved in the Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement.

JEWELL: Why couldn’t you maintain a separatist stance?

BYRD: Actually, I found that despite what the Combahee River Collective said about separatism, they were very anti-male. Most of the women I knew there did not like men and made no pretense of acting like they liked me or wanted to do anything to help men. I had met a lot of Black gay men who had been decent to me and had been brotherly. I felt the least I could do was return in kind. So I became more involved in the Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement but always, ALWAYS my focus was on US as Black people. Not just as Black women but as Black people. And in writing my poetry, because I am a Black woman, I was creating Black women’s culture. And those things were becoming clearer and clearer to me as i grew older. And I didn’t need a large support group to give me an identity. My identity was growing out of MY growing as a Black woman artist and creating Black women’s art. And as a Black person who has a Black father and Black male cousins and Black uncles and a Black grandfather, I had a duty to protect their rights as Black people. The only way I could do that, because I couldn’t do it within the homophobic Black community, was to do it with the Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement.

JEWELL: You were on television and the radio?

BYRD: In 1977, I was a guest on a Black cultural TV program called Mzizi Roots. This was an Emmy award-winning program in Boston. I appeared on the segment called “Gay Rights–Whose Rights?” and the host was Sarah Ann shaw. The other two guests were a Black psychologist and a Black gay male activist.We discussed the presence of Black lesbians and gays in the Black community and the legitimacy of claims made by gay and lesbian activist groups for human rights. I also did radio programs. I did one called Coming Out and that was in 1974. I was asked a whole bunch of questions about Black lesbianism. This was on PBS. Then I did another radio program, Out of the Closet, in 1978. By then, I was reading poetry on the air. I had a small group starting with two women and ending up as a five-piece band, called Hermanas. They used to accompany my poetry with music. They were with me until 1982. Then, in 1984 I did a whole one-hour show on MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] radio called Musically Speaking, which was nothing but poetry and music. I also read for Rock Against Sexism, which was the name of a group of punk rockers in 1984. That was at the Massachusetts College of Art. I read in New York for the Open Line Poetry Series at Washington Square Church in 1983; in Newburyport, MA; all over Cambridge. I was very, very active.

JEWELL: Tell me about your second book.

BYRD: My second book is self-published, A Distant Footstep On The PLain. It was the late 1970s. I had been asked to read some poetry at International Women’s Day at Cambridge’s YWCA. I read a poem called “On Black Women Dying.” It deals with Black women I have known who have died and the Black women who were murdered in Boston whose murders were never solved. It was a kind of a serial killing. I read this poem with the accompaniment of music. That’s where Hermanas made their first appearance. It was a conga and a guitar. After that, I got telephone calls to do it again, so we got together and we performed more.

…in the fall of 1978

the Klan began

its “open recruitment”

in Boston City schools

and it was 1955

that a team of white professionals

interviewed colored children

from the Wayne County school system

as to whether their mammas and daddies

was for integration

or segregation

well, what i’m trying to get at

is that in the last 30 odd years

of my life span

there has occurred

a series of events

which have culminated

in the death and near dying

of Black women

across the continent of Amerika… In 1979 I became unemployed, so I had more time to write. I was moving furniture and doing odd jobs around the city. It was a tough period in my life. I was hungry a lot.

JEWELL: So, how did you self-publish your second book, A Distant Foostep On The Plain?

BYRD: I was working on the Boston and Maine Railroad at the time I finished my second book and i couldn’t find a publisher for it. I self-published my book in 1983. I went to the printers and did a cost comparison. I had a friend who was a typographer and she worked on my manuscript. She gave me the negative for my book so I could get it published. She did this work for free. We took it to a local, small neighborhood newspaper that donated their space and we laid out the book in 24 hours. And then we drove it to the printer’s, it went to press, and a week later I went back and picked up three creates of it. It cost me $600 for 600 copies.

JEWELL: Why the title A Distant Footstep On The Plain? BYRD: I am from Indiana. In a sense, it is my being true to my roots. It is a reaffirmation of who I am and where I’m from. A distant footstep on the plain. That’s what i was at one time.

I have a manuscript in the works now. It’s tentatively entitled In The house of Coppers. I feel good about this work. It feels better than the second book. It’s a different kind of work, probably closer to the first work. Maybe it’s a new threshold for me.

JEWELL: Which writers do you enjoy?

BYRD: Bessie Head, a South African, and hers Serowe: Village of the Rainwind and Collector of Treasures. I’m very fond of Samuel Delaney, the Black science fiction writer, and Octavia Butler, another Black science fiction writer. I dream of Toni Morrison and I like Gloria Naylor a lot. They are superior writers. There are a lot of African writers that I like: Ferdinand Oyono, who wrote The Old Man And The Medal; Yambo Ologuem, who wrote Bound To Violence; Mariama Ba, who was a very fine writer. I also enjoy Simone Schwarz-Bart, a Caribbean writer who wrote The Bridge of Beyond and the poetry of Marilyn Hacker and William Carlos William and Nicolas Guillén. I also have to give a nod to Sexton and Plath, though their work doesn’t interest me as much as it did when I was in my 20s.

#stephanie byrd #terri jewell #does your mama know #reading log #combahee river collective #lgbt history

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decapitatedtea · 7 months

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When I turned 16 for some reason I started meeting people more often both hetero and same gender affectionate. But when it came to Bible talk hetero folk didn't identify that it was African related and same gender folk didn't identify that there were men who were same gender preferenced they felt excluded.

If you know anything bout society especially before female mortal mankind arrived it was nothing but men. Some of them were same gender choosing and of course some didnt. In tribes it's not abnormal it's thought of as a problem for colonial people because they are usually in the astral plane. Through forgein-Cation learn that males who atmre like the male in beauty and the beast are only female preferenced. They never learn that because Eve came of a male that it is going to be a difference in their taste and preference. It's called taboo. Tribal people would usually be the first to hear of it.

Since we are tribal people in a colonial setting we without grace and mercy learn colonial only male female as if we are formed from two separate stone. But remember logic is going to be made evident in biology function of the body. Did you know female birds don't have menopause neither sharks, dogs, ants, worms, centipedes.... The only female to experience it is the one formed of a man.

Go figure trust the source and stop identifying with forms of beings that you are not formed the same as. Easy isn't it. They come around me talking and they burning people something is supposed to happen after Beyoncé concert tonight... Something bout going to NY since I never made it up there wasn't supposed to. They opted to go when I was 10 supernaturally fucking up my opportunity so they changed my goals back to the area I was to be born in San Francisco Bay Area so Vallejo is where I went literally. What ever they did in NY was there stick. I wasn't born to follow these Caucasian people. I stayed true to what I came to do.

Hell they were told in Richmond VA after they got busted that she was not born on the Atlantic coast and that she had to return to the Richmond she was born in. I knew she was born San Francisco Bay Area Richmond possibly... Didn't understand why they thought they were in charge and since they choose her it meant take your ass to Richmond, CA San Francisco Bay Area... They couldn't choose both of us. But of course they Caucasian and the facts they are going to find out removes them from existence. Oh well boss pay the cost leave my family out of those cost.

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tellllaura · 9 months

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Marriages a 100 years before

In this essay I aim to look at the debate; was love and happiness an important part of marriage and childhood in 16th and 17th century. I intend to look at both sides of the argument before making a decision on how true the statement is. As we know there were many marriages that did not work out in the two centuries but there were also a few that did, so let’s take a closer look.

Marriage in the 16th and 17th centuries was full of abuse and children. The real debate is whether people married and had babies for the sake of it or because they truly loved each other. Some people married strictly out of love and devotion like in source 8, the story of Lucy Hutchinson, as she tells us her husband showed love and devotion towards her and even when she turned old he supported her and loved her.

This marriage was one of the ones that I think was based on love but there are not may more that did not. An example of not loving marriages was one of Duke of Richmond, he did not arrange a marriage because of love but to sort a gambling dept and they were only 3-6 years old which I think is way too young to have feelings for anyone! Also King Charles didn’t marry because of devotion and love but to help his business and for political reasons. If I was a young woman living in the 16th and 17th century I would want to keep the family going but I wouldn’t want to be abused by my husband because no one would be able to do anything or help me as it was legal then. Men were in charge! Although, people in the two centuries usually had longer marriages then now-a-days, this was because divorce was very, very uncommon then even if men could sell their wives and kick them out if they were trouble some. Children were extremely common in 16th and 17th centuries and it was not unusual for families to have more than 7 children. Even though not all children were treated properly like sir Simmonds. When born he was given away to a nanny, then once older he was put in the care of his grandparents and his mother and father didn’t visit at all. Maybe this was a reason for adults that had been abused when younger to create homes for abandoned and not loved children, as Thomas Coram did. Some families really cared, like in the family portrait of source 2 (not know who), they painted in skulls to represent their unfortunately dead children. I think this is nice because it shows that the family respects them and hadn’t forgotten. Over all I think that marriages were not based on love or happiness because there are many sources that show adults and children being abused and only 2 or 3 that actually married out of true devotion. I wouldn’t want to be living in the 16th or 17th century because the chances of me having a loving husband are quite slim and I wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t love me. I think Lucy Hutchinson was the only story where the marriage worked out, although she might have been telling a fib. There is no evidence to support her story. I also think that the law should have been different, that husbands could not be allowed to abuse their wives.

(Laura Batic, 12 years, yr7)

#Laura Batic writing #telllaura #Laura Batic #laurabatic

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correspondencearchive · 1 year

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29. Dana Davenport & LaRissa Rogers

Dana Davenport and LaRissa Rogers discuss their experiences as Black and Korean artists and how their research and life experiences have led them to work with specific materials, motifs, and ideas. They discuss their work through the framework of family history, belonging, and Black-Asian futurity/solidarity.

Dana Davenport (DD): Hi LaRissa! I'm so excited to chat with you about our practices, expressions of identity, and interconnected histories. I came across your work a few months back while doom scrolling on Instagram. Unlike most days, I can say it was productive as it brought me to your work. I was thrilled to come across another Black and Korean artist working within similar mediums (sculpture, performance, and video). I was equally as excited simply to meet another Black and Korean person. I asked our mutual friend, TJ, to introduce us and now here we are. As I began to dive deeper into your work, I discovered so many throughlines in how you utilize the body, draw from familial history, and use specific materials to dissect identity. Perhaps, as a place to start off, can you talk a bit about your relationship to the materials that you're currently working with?

LaRissa Rogers (LR): Hi Dana! I am very excited you extended the opportunity for this correspondence. Similarly, I found your work doomscrolling on Instagram a few years back, and I was immediately a fan. It was exciting to see someone working through their identity, familial history, and materiality as a Black and Korean femme. Then a few years later, I received a lovely email from TJ, mentioning you were in LA and introduced us! It was such a great surprise, and I am so excited to start this relationship and pick your brain! Haha.

For me, material history is the easiest way to dissect and draw parallels to identity formation and larger narratives around diaspora, migration, belonging, violence, labor, care, etc... At the moment, I am working with porcelain, sugar, and soil. I began working with soil in 2019, almost as a default. I had just finished a project, “We’ve Always Been Here, Like Hydrogen, Like Oxygen,” which was a performance on the Richmond slave trail. The performance consisted of me washing my body with oranges as a ritual of self-care. At the time, the BLM uprisings were happening, Breonna Taylor was assassinated, AAPI hate was high, and I was paralyzed by the similarities in the political landscape of LA in 1992 and the current times. For me, oranges were a direct link to the Latasha Harlins murder and the erasure/silencing of Black women and girls. But, this case is very layered and complex. It's about anti-blackness, fear of others, misinterpretation, the legacy of slavery and policing, the corrupt judicial system..and I could go on. But, essentially, we have to look at this event holistically and consider all of the ways internal and external anti-blackness showed itself in violent ways. I wanted to use the Richmond slave trail and the African burial grounds to think through how we are implicated through landscape and history. It was also important for me to link temporalities and draw out similarities between these three moments in time. This performance was an outcry, an attempt at asking: “what does it mean for Black women and girls to be protected and cared for?” The title of the piece stems from a Dionne Brand quote, when the descendants of enslaved people meet their ancestors in a slave castle – where the ancestors say in awe: “you are still alive, like hydrogen, like oxygen.”

LaRissa Rogers, We've Always Been Here, Like Hydrogen, Like Oxygen, 2020. Double channel video Installation, 7min 22sec. Installed at Resurrection Lutheran Church, Richmond, VA.In Light 2020: Safety and Accountability. Photo Courtesy of 1708 Gallery. Photo by David Hale.

LR: This work leads me to work with soil. I was in online grad school at the time and had just moved back to Virginia (where I was born and raised) and did not have a studio. So, naturally, the landscape became that for me. As we already know, Virginia is a fraught place. I lived in Richmond for several years while attending undergraduate school and stayed a bit after. But, I was born and raised in Charlottesville, VA. Reading the news one day, I encountered this article about Pen Park. I grew up going to this park when I was young. My mom would take me to play at this park while we waited for my brother to get out of school. My father golfs there as well. But, Pen Park used to be an antebellum plantation. At Pen Park, there is a golf course, and on the golf course, there are unmarked slave graves. This place is not acknowledged. Around this time, I was also thinking heavily about monuments. The confederate monuments in Richmond were getting pulled down, and it seemed like every major city around the world was having conversations about their relevance and relationship to collective memory.

In Christina Sharpe’s In The Wake, On Blackness and Being, she speaks about residence time. She describes the residence of sodium held within the body being 260 million years, in relation to the enslaved Africans who were thrown, jumped, or dumped in the ocean during the middle passage. This residence time allows one to begin to think through the terms in which we understand the conditions of Black suffering. In contrast to water, the body takes approximately 200 years to return to dust when buried in the ground. As the nutrients of the body disintegrate back into the earth, how can thinking through residence time in the soil help us understand what it means for Black people to suffer when suffering is the ground?

Given how closely Black people are indexed to death, soil also holds the capacity to speak to regeneration. Historically, it is a place of Black resilience and possibility through geophagy, slave gardens, revolts, and the migration of African plants and foods to the Americas by way of women smuggling seeds in their hair during the middle passage. Soil is a living archive and speaks to the nonlinear nature of time. Saidiya Hartman’s theory of temporal entanglement questions how we narrate historical time when thinking about the afterlife of slavery. She calls us to examine the intersections where the past, the present, and the future, are not discretely cut off from one another, but rather, we live in the simultaneity of that entanglement. The ephemeral nature in which many traditions, stories, and ways of knowing are preserved in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities becomes visible in intangible ways due to colonization. Methods of remembering that cannot be held but are protected through and within the people themselves.

Using this as a framework, I did a few projects with soil, Virginia soil, and soil from different locations with historical relevance. You can see my attention to soil in the works “Ode to soil” “A Poetic of Living” and “On Belonging: The Space In Between.” As a material, soil does a lot for me.

LaRissa Rogers, A Poetic of Living, 2021. installation, Dimensions Variable, Soil from Pen Park and Farmington Country Club, Celosia, Fungus, Oxygen, Light, Care. Photos courtesy of Welcome Gallery. Photos taken by Stacey Evans.

LR: I am also working with porcelain and sugar. I began researching sugar after my project with oranges in 2019. We are all familiar with the sugar trade and its relationship to the transatlantic slave trade in the Americas and Global South. But I am also interested in how sugar functions today within the US context. It disproportionately affects Black and Brown communities – operating similarly to that of the plantation system. My family has a history of diabetes and sugar-related complications. Alternatively and historically, sugar is a commodity that has connected all four continents. The first significant wave of Korean laborers worked in the sugar plantations in Hawaii. There is also an expansive history of coolie workers and indentured servitude related to sugar in the US. In the 18th and 19th centuries, sugar pastillage was used by European royalty to create table displays for admiration, then consumed at the end of the night. The sugar sculptures became a status symbol often, displaying racialized and exoticized images. With the decline in sugar’s value and the impossibility to preserve the sugar sculptures for long stints of time, sugar pastillage was substituted for porcelain. This porcelain is commonly coveted within upper-class white homes as "fine china.”

Right now I am delving deeply into Anne Cheng’s work around ornamentalism. In yellow feminist theory, the Asiatic subject becomes ornament. Whereas in Black feminist theory, the Black body is bare life, these relationships are important to me and start to touch on the complexities of my afro-asian identity and how I experience violence navigating within a world that prioritizes skin. Thinking through these two materials and their relationship to the body, the mouth, the act of hunger, the ornament – become what Anne Cheng describes as the divergence between Black flesh and Yellow ornament. Using the scars from being whipped on Sethe's back in Toni Morrison’s Beloved as an example, Anne Cheng articulated that the flesh that passed through objecthood needs ‘ornament’ to get back to itself.” This is where ornamentation, particularly the chinoiserie pattern I am researching right now becomes a nuanced symbol and not just a decoration. There are moments when the wound needs ornament – we see this a lot in Black material culture through the use of gold, chains,” swag” –but there are also many times when the wound and the ornament cannot be compared.

The chinoiserie pattern, which the blue willow pattern stems from, was something I grew up around. My mom is Korean, born in Seoul. She was a war baby and orphan brought to the US by a Black soldier stationed in Seoul during the Vietnam war. It is crucial to realize the complexity of her story on a macro and micro level. Her story is a byproduct of US imperialism in Korea, GI babies, and the beginning of Korea's large adoption project that set legislation in place to rid the country of “unpure” Koreans. At this time, there was also sanctioned prostitution of Korean women for the American military resulting in a wave of Korean mothers and American fathers, who eventually moved to the US.

For my mom, once brought to the US at age four, her adoption requirements were never fulfilled, so she remains stateless. She was raised by my grandfather's mother in a poor Black household in Madison, VA. My father, a Black man, was similarly raised in a very poor neighborhood in Newport News, VA. Growing up, my mom decorated the house in this blue and white greenware. I was unaware of the history of blue and white greenware or chinoiserie, but I was always curious about this decision. I read it as a representation of a heritage or place (Korea) that she no longer had access to. My new body of work delves into this pattern, chinoiserie -- a pattern adopted by the Europeans as an idyllic and exoticized interpretation of Asian people and life. I am interested in its relationship to diasporic distance, belonging, and everyday violence that upholds white supremacy. I am also interested in this conversation surrounding the influences, perceptions, and interpretations one performs in the creation of self. The way this pattern, a distant interpretation, a fantasy of others, became removed from its violent history within the home, assumed, and merged with a Black interior aesthetic to create a new language – one that exists in the in-between, the liminal.

For me, the liminal is parallel to notions of authenticity when working with this pattern and being mixed-raced. One should always question their perceptions of purity and outside influences of authenticity. Where does culture begin? With the start of global trade in the 18th century and the rise of capitalism — cultural symbols and objects were constantly being assumed, consumed, merged, adopted, and recontextualized. It’s a violent process. But, in specific situations, this cannibalization or hybrid transformation impacts intersecting identities and allows the violent collision to become something greater than just the violence—especially for those who have been exiled. Edward Glisssant calls this “opacity” – or a lack of transparency for and toward the other– that can “coexist and converge weaving fabrics.” He states that “To understand this truly, one must focus on the texture of the weave and not on the nature of the components.” For me, opacity has become a strategy for engaging cultural multiplicity and diasporic imagery of resistance and power. Opacity allows you to be fully seen without being owned. It allows you to occupy spaces you may not be seen as a member of. Opacity and what Fred Moten coins as “fugitivity”-- “a desire for and a spirit of escape and transgression of the proper and the proposed…a desire for the outside, for a playing or being outside, an outlaw edge proper to the now always already improper voice or instrument”-- creates portals for seeing and being seen.

Also, a fun fact, the chinoiserie pattern was used by the founding fathers (Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, etc..) to reinforce symbols of enlightenment that uphold race within architecture commonly found in Virginia...

But, I am curious and would like to ask the same question. What materials are you working with right now, and how does your background inform those decisions?

Dana Davenport, Dana’s Beauty Supply ~and relaxation space~ (detail of family photo) , 2021,  Installation at Recess Art , Photography by Mary Kang

DD: Wow, thank you for so eloquently sharing your relationship to the materials you’ve been working with. Your use of material and the histories that they hold really resonate with me. As you know, I was born in Newport News, Virginia and raised in Seoul, South Korea. Although Virginia is not a place that I’ve spent much time in, much of my dad’s family is scattered throughout the Virginia area so it’s where we meet for family reunions and such. As a kid, I went through many different phases. One of those phases was an obsession with America (and therefore Virginia) and claiming my Americanness to my friends who also went to school on the military base in Seoul. It sounds silly to want to “prove” your Americanness while literally going to school on an American military base. But, you know how kids can be. They’ll find anything to pick on someone about. Haha. What I didn’t know or understand at that time is how fraught of a place Virginia was and still is. The way that Virginia existed in my mind as a place that validated my belonging even though I was thousands of miles away, versus the reality that even if I lived there, there would be a constant battle for the contributions of my ancestors to be acknowledged, was definitely a plot twist for me and something that I’d become more exposed to as I’d visit more frequently over the years in middle and high school. There is something eerie about being in Virginia, walking on the land, yearning to connect with ancestors, cultures, histories, and languages that have been buried in the soil. When I feel this yearningness, it’s humbling to remember that these histories exist through and within me.

I didn’t know that the first significant wave of Korean laborers worked on plantations in Hawaii! This is really interesting to hear, as my partner and I visited a friend in Hawaii a few months back and didn’t know much about the migration of Koreans (and other Asian folks) to the islands.

I’m really interested to learn more about your exploration of chinoiserie patterns. I see your use of it in Licked Until Your Tongue Rubbed Raw, 2022 and in On Belonging: The Space In Between, 2021. Are you creating the chinoiserie patterns yourself? It is quite interesting how this pattern has shape shifted and been adopted into Black interior aesthetics. I’m intrigued by aesthetics that seem to exist in between and thinking of ways that we can create visual languages around Black and Asian experience, solidarity, and futurity. For the past several years, I’ve been working with synthetic hair and hair care products as a material that binds Black Americans and Korean Americans through the beauty supply industry, an industry that we know is overwhelmingly Korean-owned with a primarily Black consumer base. Prior to this, I was doing a lot of performance work but became weary of having to rely on the presence of my physical body in my work in order to discuss not only the tensions that I felt in being a Black and Korean woman but also everyone else's interpretations and projections of the conflicts between Black and Asian communities. It was a lot to carry. After a particularly uncomfortable performance at a “prestigious” space with a nearly all white, generationally rich audience, I took a step back from performance. At that time, I simply didn’t know how to continue doing that work in a way that was also protective of my body and my experiences. So, in saying that, I was seeking out a material that could serve as a proxy for my body. I began to think deeper about hair care and the experience in obtaining these materials. When I first moved to NY from Korea after graduating high school, I remember being baffled after walking into a beauty supply store and seeing that the folks behind the counter were Korean. This was odd, as there are basically no beauty supply stores that cater to Black hair in Korea, and there wasn’t really any talk of how this industry in the US is dominated by Koreans. I started to experiment with speaking a little Korean here and there and it would not only confuse the Korean employees and store owners, but it’d severely improve the treatment that I received. I’m talking, free samples, the works! It was an uncomfortable reality of privileges that I hold. Disclaimer: I don’t speak Korean fluently so it took some courage and pepping myself up to actually speak Korean in public. All of this being said, I became obsessed with hair, hair care, and the beauty supply as a space to be reimagined where we can have critical dialogue around our collective history while envisioning Black and Asian futurity. In this reimagining, I return to the past and think about other businesses that are Asian-owned, in Black and Brown neighborhoods and how they are some of the few spaces where Black and Asian folks may find themselves intermingling. I think about the murder of Latasha Harlins. I think about my mom’s friend who’s worked at a beauty supply store for more than 20 years in Virginia (my mom and her friend are both Korean). I also think about early Chinese immigrants that opened grocery stores that served former slaves. They were successful because they offered goods at lower prices compared to plantation commissaries that inflated their prices to keep former slaves in perpetual debt. And of course, I consider the ways in which The National Housing Act of 1934 made it nearly impossible for Black folks to start businesses within their own communities.

Dana Davenport, Dana’s Beauty Supply ~and relaxation space~ , 2021,  Installation at Recess Art,  Photography by Mary Kang

DD: You studied Painting and Printmaking in undergrad at VCU and are now at UCLA in New Genres. Can you talk a bit about your journey from painting and printmaking to sculpture, performance and video?

LR: Thank you for your openness and criticality in articulating the tensions that arose from your experience, material practice, and journey as an artist. I resonated with many things you said and even found myself getting out of my chair and snapping my fingers in agreement because of it. Haha.

Firstly, when you were talking about your experience growing up in Seoul on a military base and feeling the need as a child to prove your Americaness – your virginianess -- was something I connected to. In my case, because I was born and raised in Charlottesville, it was not necessarily my Americaness I felt the need to prove, but my Asianness. I went to a predominantly white, upper-class private school, and I distinctly remember this moment on the playground when I was asked by a white classmate “What are you?” At this moment, I already knew I was different. I was one of maybe three Black kids in my grade for many years, but as a child, I had recognized the cultural currency my mom held as a Korean woman that my dad did not as a Black man. At that moment, I felt the need to legitimize my Assianness because I thought it would give me some sort of advantage. I longed to be accepted and included by my peers. There was always a feeling of not being accepted by the Black community or the Korean community. This was for a lot of reasons. My mom's relationship with her motherland was severed. Her connection to Korea and any sort of Korean roots is fragmented. Mine even more so. I did not grow up around other Koreans. My body also gets read as Black in the US. My Blackness has been prioritized because it has been perceived as more of a threat. How do we begin to talk about psychological violence? How do we begin to talk about these entangled and complex realities and relationships between Black and Asian futurity? How can we talk about belonging and arrival in the context of Black and Brown worldmaking? What are the tensions between belonging and fugitivity? Beauty and horror? Opacity and transparency?

Right now, I’m really sitting with Saidiya Hartman's offerings around monstrous beauty.

I say this and also recognize the privilege and complexities I hold being mixed-race.

I love your work and how you use the body as a material. Not just physical body, but hair as body. You asked about my relationship to the medium, particularly studying painting and printmaking and working primarily in sculpture and installation now. My journey was very similar to yours in a sense. In high school, I began to consider art as a career, and my introduction was primarily through painting. I fell in love with oil paint. The layering of color and texture, the manipulation, and the capacity for a single brush stroke to encompass expression and emotion. I went into undergrad knowing I wanted to be a painter. After the first year, that reassurance shifted. I took a time-based media class, and I was not great at making videos– but I did one performance, and something clicked. Through movement, material, place, and sound, I was able to tap into a sensory experience that felt more true to the emotion and criticality I was attempting to create in figurative painting. In the last two years of undergraduate school, I didn’t make a single painting. I began to work with hair and created a series of videos, sculptures, and performances that tried to pull out some of these tensions I felt navigating my identity.

I continued to make videos after undergrad, but I didn’t consider myself a sculptor at the time. It wasn't until after I graduated that I found object making through installation. Painting was such a distant memory at that point. Another reason I didn’t continue with painting is that I felt it was not able to do what I needed it to do. It couldn’t tell the story I was trying to convey, and the history of the medium is so fraught. I didn’t want to contend with it.

I then moved into performance. In the work with oranges, I was thinking of my body as orange. But, as I continued to perform, I would similarly get triggered. Especially performing to predominantly white audiences. This felt unsafe for my body and experiences. It got so exhausting that at one point in “My body is the architecture of my Every Ancestor,” (performed a few days after the Atlanta spa shooting) I performed inside the gallery through their “storefront window” making the audience watch the performance outside. I then pushed back the audience even further — to the sidewalk— to view the performance. I was trying to create distance, some sort of mediation of the violence of the audience, their gaze, and their interpretations of my body. I felt like an open wound, especially after my first year of graduate school. I felt vulnerable and constantly oozing…constantly being split open. Looking back, this is the moment I subconsciously turned to material as a stand-in for my body. A proxy that could be read in relationship to, but without my physical presence. This also allowed for larger narratives and histories to merge into the work.

As I continue to make performance and work that is non-archival in nature, I ask myself, what does it mean to build a practice that resists collectability/ownership and demands extensive care for its upkeep? As an ethos, how can I resist the market as a place of only transaction?

Going back to your question surrounding chinoiserie. I am starting to create the patterns myself. In "On Belonging" and "Licked Until Your Tongue Rubbed Raw '' I had not started to create my patterns yet. At the time, I was still grappling with the dissemination of these patterns. For my mom, it was less about the particular landscape within the pattern but more about the blue, white, and porcelain combination. You can now see within an American interior aesthetic, blue and white has become an interior decorating staple. The blue and white pattern has been adopted by many different cultures around the world. The interpretations, redactions, translations, adoptions, and reinterpretations don’t stop haha. This was intriguing to me because this pattern is synonymous with the colonial project. At that moment in time, I wanted this aspect of the work to be digested. The everydayness of this violence within this pattern. I was using generic interpretations of the chinoiserie to talk about the interpretation of the interpretation. The didactic. The performance of it. But now, I am less interested in that and more interested in how the pattern can be flipped or incorporated into my myth-making to generate something else. Similar to how I witnessed the pattern functioning in my home - a place of a combined Black and Korean interior aesthetic (though blue and white stems from a Chinese tradition). I am currently meditating on the beauty my mom has created through proximity of objects within the home. The rituals she has implemented so our family can begin to mend generational ruptures. For her, these mendings happen with food, and at the table. A type of physical and emotional nourishment that can happen in the home. This ability to mend and create beauty out of the monstrous, out of violence— it is a superpower. It is the Black radical tradition. It is the in-between. It is in the liminal. It is neither here nor there. It is the place where entanglement creates new futurities. It is everything all at once.

I am also curious about the aesthetic merging that happens in your work. Especially the chandeliers and Synthetic hair. Can you talk more about why the chandelier and how you landed on that form/object?

Also, in your works ``Much Love” and “experiments for relaxation” you’re working with multiple notions of care. How are you thinking through the registers of care that are required to nurture a critical dialogue surrounding Black and Asian futurities and solidarity? More specifically, What care is required to nurture yourself, your history, and your family's story? How are you thinking through care, and how do photography and family archives aid in telling this story?

Dana Davenport, 흑인 (heugin)-black person,  2017,  Performance at Watermill Center,  Duration: 2hrs,  Photography by Maria Baranova

DD: Ahhh, that very familiar feeling of wanting/needing to prove your Asianness. It’s wild that even at a young age, we unconsciously understand privilege and where one is situated within that system. While I was obsessed with America for a bit, that phase was short lived. My desire to “prove” my Asianness is unfortunately something that has taken much longer to shake off. In a lot of ways, my art practice played a huge role in that process. It provided me an unrestricted space to express all of the messy, contradicting, and nonlinear feelings that I was moving through. Initially, it was a lot of bottled up anger, a desire to be embraced by Korean culture while simultaneously resisting it in fear of rejection. This is most clearly articulated in my performance piece “흑인 (heugin)-black person”. In this performance, I write the word 흑인 repeatedly on a blank canvas on the floor. Gradually, the task became more aggressive resulting in exhaustion, examining the arduous notion of performing identity. Have you found that your relationship to Korea/Koreaness has shifted over time? And if so, what was influenced these shifts?

While our experiences differ in ways, I’ve arrived at similar questions. “How do we begin to talk about these entangled and complex realities and relationships between Black and Asian futurity?” I definitely don’t have an answer but something that I think about a lot is where are Black and Asian folks are interacting the most and under what conditions? I feel as though, within America, store owner/customer settings are the most common spaces in which Black and Asian folks gather. Commonly, Asian-owned shops in Black neighborhoods. So, that’s where I’ve started and how I arrived at the beauty supply as a space to be reimagined. I didn’t know that you worked with hair in the past! I’d love to see some of that work. I’m really fascinasted by your research around chinoiserie patterns, as it’s something that I’ve seen in so many places in totally different contexts but never stopped to think about how it lived between these spaces (I also never actually knew what the pattern was called). I always viewed it as an “Asian-coded” artistic style (often seen on vases and such) but then would also see as a wallpaper in some preserved colonial mansion in Virginia and not think twice about the overlap between the two. This pattern is truly a chameleon! I love how you are thinking about the next lifeform of this pattern, how it can shape shift to reflect a new culture, a combined cultural aesthetic, how it can be flipped as a tool to mend wounds. As you said, it is our superpower to mend and create beauty out of the violence we and our ancestors have endured. When I began working with hair, I started with simple domestic objects. A vase, slippers, rug, etc. I wasn’t really sure why, I was just drawn to it. As someone who studied Photography in undergrad, I hadn’t really considered myself a “maker” and definitely didn’t have the tools at that time to create the sculptures that I’d envisioned. Out of the many ideas that I’d jot down (and often talk myself out of trying) creating a chandelier was one that stuck. In the Summer of 2018, a family friend, Dan, offered to teach me how to weld. That changed the game for me as far as the tools that I had to create. Initially, I was drawn to the chandeliers because of their ability to elevate a material that, when worn and activated by Black folks, is criticized as ghetto, cheap, fake, and unprofessional. As I’d hang them within my studio and home, incorporate them in installations, and hang them in gallery spaces, they began to take on a protective role, setting the tone for whatever room their in and requiring that viewers look up at them with appreciation and awe.

Dana Davenport, Box Braid Chandelier #3, 블랙파워 (beullaegpawo)-Black Power, 2021, 30in x 25in, Steel, plastic beads, modeling clay, synthetic hair from Hair Style 21 (Online)

DD: Years ago, I created a piece titled “Questions Not To Ask The Artist”. It was a large piece of wood (the size of a door) that listed several things I was simply tired of being asked by viewers of my work and visitors to my studio. I was at the ChaNorth residency at the time and I placed it right in the entry way to my studio. It served as a sort of agreement between myself and viewers entering my space. I find that the chandeliers function in a similar way. In “Experiments for ~Relaxation” which was performed at Gibney Dance (New York, NY)I was processing alternative ways of performing that weren’t focused on the production of labor. I wanted to push myself to explore what relaxation could look like for me. What does rest look like for bodies that look like mine? How do we achieve mental and physical relaxation? The creation of this piece was chaotic. I found that it was actually quite difficult for me to achieve a state of relaxation. This pursuit, the awkwardness of it became part of the piece. “Much Love” was a really beautiful collaboration with Jazmine Hayes at Swivel Gallery (Brooklyn, NY). Together, we created a space that spoke to restorative practices of protection and care, transforming the gallery into what felt like a domestic space. Reminiscent of your grandmothers home with pink painted walls and red carpet. A space where you were protected, where you could release, where we honored ancestral practices. The back room served as a meditation and alter space, calling forth generational repose and threading together themes of love, labor, ritual, self-care, and communal care. We interspersed our family photos and hung them throughout the space, connecting our families and our histories. Photography and family archives are really how we mark our time in this world, how we claim that we are here. We exist. It allows us to write our own narratives and have some aspect of control over how we are represented. Family albums impact the way that we connect with the memories that we hold and how we tell stories and pass them down. My mom always made it a point to ensure that we took a lot of family photos. Unfortunately, there are only two photos that my mom has from her childhood. When she was young, her home caught fire and with it went whatever photos her family had (which probably wasn’t many to begin with). On the contrary, my dad’s family has a huge archive of photos. I recently inherited a box full of them and have had so much fun flipping through, reading all the hand written notes, and asking my reletatives who certain people are. From that box, I found a photo of my mother, sister, and a few other family members, sitting on a brown couch at my grandparents house. It had to be from 1993 or so. The carpet in the room was a dark red was nearly identical to the carpet in the “Much Love” exhibition. That was a real treat to come across. I think that to be in solidarity with eachother we must first see eachother. Literally, seeing eachother in space and metaphorically seeing eachother within ourselves, within our histories, and as living, breathing, feeling individuals. It’s important to understand how the past factors into our realities in the present but it’s equally as important to dream of our futures. Care is conveyed when we hold ourselves accountable. When we place trust in eachother. When we can share space. For the past few years, language has played a large role in how I nurture myself and my own familial history. After years of feeling embarrassed for having lived in Korea for so long and not speaking Korean, I finally started taking Korean classes. I resisted for many many years, as I’d convinced myself that learning the language meant I was surrendering in some ways. Surrendering to a culture that rejected me and my Blackness. Honestly, I just had to get over that and understand that I can show up for myself by allowing myself the freedom to learn, to recontextualize, and to grow in this way. I’d like to ask you the same question. It feels like a beautiful note to come to a close on. How are you thinking through methods of care as a tool to nurture critical dialogue around Black and Asian futurity and solidarity? What care is required to nurture yourself, your history, and your familial lineage? And how does photo documentation and family archiving contribute to these forms of storytelling?

LaRissa Rogers, My Body Is The Architecture of My Every Ancestor, 2021. Performance, 1 hr 15 min. Performed at the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative. Photos taken by Chan Williams.

LR: You begin your response by asking if my relationship with Korea/Koreaness has shifted over time, and I think it has. The work is a direct timeline of that shift. The Latasha Harlins case was my first stepping stone. The interaction between Soon Ja Du and Latasha Harlins speaks right to your articulation of what solidarity requires– for us to see each other individually and collectively within shared experiences and histories. Within Latasha Harlins’s and Soon Ja Du's interaction, there were fundamental misinterpretations of the “other,” and those misinterpretations are based on our system that can only survive by pinning us against one another. In “We’ve Always been here, Like Hydrogen, Like Oxygen” I directly speak to this in some of the text overlaid in the video which reads, “you and I are connected.” When I wrote it, I was thinking of Latasha Harlins but also Soon Ja Du. This conundrum reminds me of a quote I read from Scott Kurashige that states: "The 'model minority' stereotype isn't meant to define Asian Americans. Rather, it's meant to define African Americans as deficient and inferior to white people by using Asian Americans as a proxy...It was never an accurate portrayal of Asian Americans." Though I had discomfort, sometimes anger, a deep sense of loss, and a longing to be more connected to my Koreanness I needed to recognize within myself why I felt tension and separation. I use my art as a way to heal and as a means of owning my Koreanness while acknowledging my positionality within it as someone distant from the place and culture. Coming to terms with this was something I had to get over and required me to be soft with myself. But care is hard! Often we forget that. Care is a lot of work. Sitting within the pain, within the hold – as Christina Sharpe would say is not pleasant work. That is what I am trying to do with my work. It is also how my relationship with my Koreanness shifted. I am no longer preoccupied with proving my Koreanness, legitimizing it, or ignoring it, which I did for many years. Embracing and attempting to learn my history and heritage-- one I also feel does not fully embrace me at times– is an attempt to understand my mother's experience, my experience, my father's experience, and the histories of entangled experiences. It is not an either-or. It is a both and. A hybrid approach that has allowed me to reject categorization and politics of authenticity that felt restricting and violent.

It's interesting to hear you speak on the few images your mother has of her childhood because similarly my mother only has a couple of images left from when she was a child in Korea. Her father discarded most of them when she was young. Alternatively, my grandmother on my mom's side made many photo albums. When she died, the photo albums were gifted to us. In my last year of undergraduate school, I remember going through all of the photos for the first time. I would ask my mom about members of the family that I could not identify. This was a way to connect to my family and the family my mom adopted into. My grandma also loved embroidery, and every so often when I was going through the box of photographs I would find notes on the back of images, and embroidered handkerchiefs with quotes or rhymes. It was really surprising for me to discover these notes because I would never classify my grandmother as a jokester. But, a lot of the images had inside jokes written on the back of them. It was an entirely new way I understood my grandmother. By 2019 my grandmother had passed away, but I had a show “Invisible Weight” where I used her embroidered handkerchiefs as a mode of rememory and collaboration.

My great-grandmother was also a great archivist, though many family photographs were lost in a house fire.

Growing up, my mother was very good at documenting our lives. My siblings and I have a “life book” that tells our childhood story until high school. Many photos in my “life book” show up in my “Brown Paper Bag Series” from 2019. This book includes adoption photographs, songs, family vacations, holidays, and images of loved ones. Looking back, this was another present my mother gifted the family as a healing mechanism. She continued a labor of care that women in my family had done for generations. She made sure we documented our lives so we could feel seen and know where we came from. How does one memorialize the everyday? I would argue, through family archives – visual and embodied.

Solidarity requires grace. I have eight siblings, and most of them are adopted. Despite adoption, my family is close. Our home was also a foster home for many years. People cycled through, all of who came with their own “baggage.” I learned at a very young age that communing with people from different experiences and backgrounds requires empathy and grace. Grace for others, and yourself. Grace softens. Grace allows us to listen and hear, to nurture and understand. Grace creates space for everyone's story, history, and experience. In order to create new futures we need to acknowledge the past is not the past and difference is inevitable. Yet, through acknowledgment and accountability, new ways of being can emerge. In the words of my mother, care and repair requires one to "die to self."

Dana Davenport (b.1994) is a Korean and Black American interdisciplinary artist raised in Seoul, South Korea. She is currently based between Los Angeles and New York City. Her work shifts between installation, sculpture, video, and performance. Davenport's work has been shown throughout the United States and internationally including Gibney Dance, New York, NY; Watermill Center, Water Mill, NY; NYU Skirball, New York, NY; Brown University, Providence, RI; Swivel Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Cultural Center Recoleta, Buenos Aires, AR; and Seventh Gallery, Melbourne, AUS, to name a few. Davenport is currently a 2023 Center For Craft Fellow and Bandung (MoCADA + A4) Artist Resident. She was selected for the Recess Session Residency in 2021, and received the 2018 Chashama ChaNorth Fellowship. She co-organized Free Space, month-long programming at Miranda Kuo Gallery in 2018, and is the founder of Dana’s Beauty Supply.

www.danadav.com @dana_dav

LaRissa Rogers (b. 1996) is a Black and Korean antidisciplinary artist raised in Ruckersville, VA. She is currently based between Virginia and Los Angeles. She holds a BFA in Painting and Printmaking and BIS in International Fashion Buying from Virginia Commonwealth University. Rogers has exhibited and performed in institutions such as Frieze Seoul (Korea), Documenta 15 (Germany), Fields Projects (NY), 1708 Gallery (VA), Second Street Gallery (VA), Black Ground (Colombia), W Doha (Qatar), The Fronte Arte Cultura (CA), LACE (CA), Grand Central Art Center (CA), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (VA) among others. She received the Visual Arts fellowship at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2022) and the Black Artists and Designers Guild Creative Futures Grant (2022). Rogers attended the BEMIS Center of Contemporary Art Residency (2022), Black Spatial Relics Residency (2022), and SOMA (2019), among others. Rogers is currently pursuing her MFA in New Genres at the University of California Los Angeles.

www.larissamrogers.com @larissa_rogers

#larissarogers #danadavenport #correspondencearchive

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ancoh · 2 years

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5/1/22 fieldwork

For this week’s fieldwork, we were instructed to interview an immigrant. I interviewed a friend of a friend and her mom. She is 20 and her mom is 40. Born in Ivory Coast to parents who were from Liberia and Ghana. Her and her mom came to Richmond, Va in 2004 through a refugee camp in Africa. They both let me know that one of the biggest barriers they faced were a culture shock, however they made sure to keep the traditions alive while living here. She also mentioned a more recent barrier was applying to college because her parents did not attend college so she relied on others around her when she needed help. The most difficult part for the both of them was definitely leaving behind family. The mother daughter duo mentioned most times they do regret making such a big decision but are more than grateful for the opportunity. Despite the subtle waves of regret they feel like they made the right decision, and are still getting the hang of things but are in fact still killing the game! A bonus question was what was the most surprising to them once arriving, they states airplanes! She remembers peeing on herself on the plane because her mom didn't know where to find the bathroom and she was only 2!

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kemetic-dreams · 2 years

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freeman his entire life, Hiram Rhodes Revels was the first African American to serve in the U.S. Congress. With his moderate political orientation and oratorical skills honed from years as a preacher, Revels filled a vacant seat in the United States Senate in 1870. Just before the Senate agreed to admit a African man to its ranks on February 25, Republican Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts sized up the importance of the moment: “All men are created equal, says the great Declaration,” Sumner roared, “and now a great act attests this verity. Today we make the Declaration a reality…. The Declaration was only half established by Independence. The greatest duty remained behind. In assuring the equal rights of all we complete the work.”1

Hiram Rhodes Revels was born to free parents in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on September 27, 1827. His father worked as a Baptist preacher, and his mother was of Scottish descent. He claimed his ancestors “as far back as my knowledge extends, were free,” and, in addition to his Scottish background, he was rumored to be of mixed African and Croatan Indian lineage.2 In an era when educating black children was illegal in North Carolina, Revels attended a school taught by a free black woman and worked a few years as a barber. In 1844, he moved north to complete his education. Revels attended the Beech Grove Quaker Seminary in Liberty, Indiana, and the Darke County Seminary for African students, in Ohio. In 1845, Revels was ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. His first pastorate was likely in Richmond, Indiana, where he was elected an elder to the AME Indiana Conference in 1849.3 In the early 1850s, Revels married Phoebe A. Bass, a free black woman from Ohio, and they had six daughters.4

Revels traveled throughout the country, carrying out religious work and educating fellow African Americans in Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Although Missouri forbade free blacks to live in the state for fear they would instigate uprisings, Revels took a pastorate at an AME Church in St. Louis in 1853, noting that the law was “seldom enforced.” However, Revels later revealed he had to be careful because of restrictions on his movements. “I sedulously refrained from doing anything that would incite slaves to run away from their masters,” he recalled. “It being understood that my object was to preach the gospel to them, and improve their moral and spiritual condition even slave holders were tolerant of me.”5 Despite his cautiousness, Revels was imprisoned for preaching to the African community in 1854. Upon his release, he accepted a position with the Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland, working alongside his brother, Willis Revels, also an AME pastor. Hiram Revels was the principal of a black school in Baltimore and subsequently attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, on a scholarship from 1855 to 1857. He was one of the few African men in the United States with at least some college education.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Revels helped recruit two African regiments from Maryland. In 1862, when African soldiers were permitted to fight, he served as the chaplain for a African regiment in campaigns in Vicksburg and Jackson, Mississippi. In 1863, Revels returned to St. Louis, where he established a freedmen’s school. At the end of hostilities, Revels served in a church in Leavenworth, Kansas. While traveling in Kansas, Revels and his family were asked to sit in the smoking car rather than the car for first–class ticket holders. Revels protested that the language in the smoking car was too coarse for his wife and children, and the conductor finally relented. Revels served in churches in Louisville, Kentucky, and New Orleans, Louisiana, before settling in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1866.

Before the Civil War, fewer than 1,000 free African Mississippians had access to a basic education. Thus, leadership from freedmen such as Revels became vital to the Republican Party for rallying the new electorate in the postwar years.7 It was through his work in education that Revels became involved in politics, taking his first elected position as a Natchez alderman in 1868. He entered politics reluctantly, fearing racial friction and interference with his religious work, but he quickly won over blacks and whites with his moderate and compassionate political opinions. In 1869, encouraged to run by a friend, future Representative John Roy Lynch, Revels won a seat in the Mississippi state senate.8 Under the newly installed Reconstruction government, Revels was one of more than 30 African Americans among the state’s 140 legislators.9 Upon his election, he wrote a friend in Leavenworth, Kansas: “We are in the midst of an exciting canvass…. I am working very hard in politics as well as in other matters. We are determined that Mississippi shall be settled on a basis of justice and political and legal equality.”10 A little–known politician, Revels attracted the attention of fellow legislators when he gave a moving prayer on the opening day of the session.

The primary task of the newly elected state senate was to fill U.S. Senate seats. In 1861, Democrat Albert Brown and future Confederate President Jefferson Davis both vacated Mississippi’s U.S. Senate seats when the state seceded from the Union.11 When their terms expired in 1865 and 1863, respectively, their seats were not filled and remained vacant. In 1870, the new Mississippi state legislature wished to elect a African man to fill the remainder of one term, due to expire in 1871 for the seat once held by Brown, but was determined to fill the other unexpired term, ending in 1875, with a white candidate.12 African legislators agreed to the deal, believing, as Revels recalled, that an election of one of their own would “be a weakening blow against color line prejudice.” The Democratic minority also endorsed the plan, hoping a African Senator would “seriously damage the Republican Party.”13 After three days and seven ballots, on January 20, 1870, the Mississippi state legislature voted 85 to 15 to seat Hiram Revels in Brown’s former seat. They chose Union General Adelbert Ames to fill Davis’s former seat.

Revels arrived in Washington at the end of January 1870, but could not present his credentials until Mississippi was readmitted to the United States on February 23. Senate Republicans sought to swear in Revels immediately afterwards, but Senate Democrats were determined to block the effort. Led by Senator Garrett Davis of Kentucky and Senator Willard Saulsbury of Delaware, the Democrats claimed Revels’s election was null and void, arguing that Mississippi was under military rule and lacked a civil government to confirm his election. Others claimed Revels was not a U.S. citizen until the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868 and was therefore ineligible to become a U.S. Senator. Senate Republicans rallied to his defense. Though Revels would not fill Davis’s seat, the symbolism of a African man’s admission to the Senate after the departure of the former President of the Confederacy was not lost on Radical Republicans. Nevada Senator James Nye underlined the significance of this event: “[Jefferson Davis] went out to establish a government whose cornerstone should be the oppression and perpetual enslavement of a race because their skin differed in color from his,” Nye declared. “Sir, what a magnificent spectacle of retributive justice is witnessed here today! In the place of that proud, defiant man, who marched out to trample under foot the Constitution and the laws of the country he had sworn to support, comes back one of that humble race whom he would have enslaved forever to take and occupy his seat upon this floor.”14 On the afternoon of February 25, the Senate voted 48 to 8 to seat Revels, who subsequently received assignments to the Committee on Education and Labor and the Committee on the District of Columbia.

Although Revels viewed himself as “a representative of the State, irrespective of color,” he also represented freedmen and, as such, received petitions from African men and women from all states.15 His sense that he represented his entire race was evident in his maiden speech, in which he spoke in favor of reinstating black legislators forced from office in Georgia. In April 1868, Georgia voters had ratified the state’s constitution, enfranchising African Americans and thus, under the terms of Congressional Reconstruction, taking a necessary step toward the state’s re–admission to the Union. In the same election, Georgians sent 29 black legislators to the state house of representatives and three to the state senate. Yet, when the legislature met in July, moderate white Republicans joined Democrats in both chambers to unseat the black members, arguing that the state constitution did not permit black officeholders. Spurred to action, black Georgians appealed to Congress for federal intervention before Georgia was readmitted to the Union. On March 16, 1870, before a packed chamber and a gallery filled with black men and women, Revels argued that the North and the Republican Party owed Georgian black legislators their support: “I remarked that I rose to plead for protection for the defenseless race that now send their delegation to the seat of Government to sue for that which this Congress alone can secure to them. And here let me say further, that the people of the North owe to the colored race a deep obligation that is no easy matter to fulfill.”16 In his speech, Revels professed his loyalty to and faith in the Republican Party, claiming, “the Republican party is not inflamed, as some would … have the country believe, against the white population of the South. Its borders are wide enough for all truly loyal men to find within them some peace and repose from the din and discord of angry faction.”17 The Georgia legislature eventually agreed to a congressional mandate reinstating the legislators as a requirement for re–entry into the Union in July 1870.18

Revels also favored universal amnesty for former Confederates, requiring only their sworn loyalty to the Union. “I am in favor of removing the disabilities of those upon whom they are imposed in the South, just as fast as they give evidence of having become loyal and being loyal,” Revels declared. “If you can find one man in the South who gives evidence that he is a loyal man, and gives that evidence in the fact that he has ceased to denounce the laws of Congress as unconstitutional, has ceased to oppose them, and respects them and favors the carrying of them out, I am in favor of removing his disabilities.”19 Revels’s support for the bill, which eventually passed, solidified his reputation as a political moderate.

Although Revels sided with Radical Republicans in opposing Ohio Senator Allen Thurman’s amendment perpetuating segregated schools in the District of Columbia, his views on social integration of blacks and whites were less sanguine than those of his colleagues. Revels clearly rejected legal separation of the races, believing it led to animosity between blacks and whites, but he did not view forced social mixing as desirable or necessary. He cited mixed–race churches in northern cities, where a congregation would worship together on Sundays but part ways for the remainder of the week. In one of his most gripping floor speeches, he said: “I find that the prejudice in this country to color is very great, and I sometimes fear that it is on the increase…. If the nation should take a step for the encouragement of this prejudice against the colored race, can they have any grounds upon which to predicate a hope that Heaven will smile upon them and prosper them?”20 As a former teacher, Revels appreciated the need to educate freed slaves, claiming, “The colored race can be built up and assisted … in acquiring property, in becoming intelligent, valuable, useful citizens, without one hair upon the head of any white man being harmed.”21 Revels believed the abolition of segregation statutes would result in less prejudice, saying, “Let lawmakers cease to make the difference, let school trustees and school boards cease to make the difference, and the people will soon forget.”22

With mixed results, Revels also promoted Black Americans’ civil rights by less conventional means. In May 1870, he startled the military establishment when he nominated black candidate Michael Howard to the U.S. Army Military Academy at West Point, long a bastion of southern white gentlemen. Revels knew Howard’s parents, former slaves, and Howard’s father had served in the state legislature. Critics claimed Revels callously and publicly humiliated the youth, who had little formal education and was not admitted to West Point, and supporters claimed the school administration’s prejudice had blocked Howard’s entrance.23 Additionally, Revels successfully appealed to the War Department on behalf of black mechanics from Baltimore who were barred from working at the U.S. Navy Yard in early 1871, an accomplishment he recalled with great pride. 24

After the expiration of his Senate term on March 3, 1871, Revels declined several patronage positions, offered by President Ulysses S. Grant at the recommendation of Senators Oliver Morton of Indiana and Zachariah Chandler of Michigan. He returned to Mississippi to become the first president of Alcorn University (formerly Oakland College), named for his political ally Governor James Alcorn. Located in Rodney, Mississippi, Alcorn University was the first land–grant school in the United States for black students.25 Revels took a leave of absence in 1873 to serve as Mississippi’s interim secretary of state after the sudden death of his friend James Lynch. During this period, Revels grew more critical of the corruption in the Republican Party, and he resigned from his position at Alcorn in 1874 to avoid being removed by his political rival and former Senate colleague, then–Mississippi Governor Adelbert Ames. Revels returned to the ministry, taking a pastorate at a church in Holly Springs, Mississippi. In the violent and controversial 1875 election campaign, he supported several Democrats. In 1876, when a U.S. Senate select committee questioned him about the well–documented fraud and violence in the previous year’s election, Revels testified that to the best of his knowledge, conditions had been relatively peaceful and he was unaware of any widespread violence. His statement was met with skepticism by many Mississippi black voters. Revels returned to his former position as president of Alcorn University in July 1876. He also edited the Southwestern Christian Advocate newspaper, the official organ of the AME Church. Revels retired in 1882 and returned to his former church in Holly Springs. He remained active in the religious community, teaching theology at Shaw University (later Rust College) in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and serving as the AME’s district superintendent. He died of a paralytic stroke in Aberdeen, Mississippi, on January 16, 1901, while attending a religious conference

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