Wars continue in Sudan and Gaza, where the pending threat of deadly famines looms with seemingly little end in sight. The Ukrainian conflict also endures. Amidst all this, Trump is the next US President, and the populist right is making waves in Europe and other parts of the world. With this issue, we wade through the heaviness, danger, and confusion of these times and sit with rage. And by rage, we don’t mean selfish, narcissistic rage focused on the plight of the individual to the exclusion of our community. We’re focused on the collective. For Audre Lorde’s words in her 1981 keynote address at the National Women’s Studies Annual Conference still ring true: ‘Anger is the grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change’. And my, what there is to change.
Four short years after Black Lives Matter and we’re seemingly taking several steps back and we’re bracing for further backlash. We’re disillusioned by the lip service that was paid to diversity and inclusion without really addressing the foundations that created different types of global inequities in the first place. And we’re horrified by the lack of global attention on Sudan’s war. All the while, 25 million people in the country need humanitarian aid and 8.5 million people are facing a looming famine with at least 755,000 people facing ‘catastrophe’. While it’s anything but a competition, global attention continues to focus on the Ukraine war to the frequent exclusion of others. For all the talk of Black lives ‘mattering’ the international community’s inaction speaks to the emptiness of the sentiment. And even amidst the broader global context that fuels rage and continued injustice, we also speak of the rage that comes from the related alienation of being in professional spaces – be that in creative industries or academia – that continue to marginalise.
Even with all there is to be angry about, rage remains a taboo word and emotion in the Black diaspora. As we all know, the stereotype of the threatening, violent, Black man or angry Black woman is readily deployed to silence and persecute us. Nor are these fears unfounded or imagined; it is likely that many potential sponsors for this issue declined to support us given the fear of being associated with its theme. And through a lifetime of these kinds of experiences, we’ve also painfully learned that leaning into whiteness and attempting to cocoon ourselves from exclusion through capitalist impulses and luxury goods will not protect us.
Even as anger is what the philosopher Amia Srinivasan rightly identifies as a ‘fitting response to the state of the world; we instead draw upon the strength of various contributors in this issue to illustrate how community is the way forward. The issue’s opening section is ‘The Case for Rage’ in which the artist King Cobra walks us through the past with her work on the corporeal dimensions of history and the pain that has so often been inflicted upon Black bodies. Cobra refuses to embrace ‘progress’ without an acknowledgment of the horrors that have been imposed upon so many. The photographer Clifford Prince King then helps clear our palates and gives us a fashion spread on ‘Facing Fury’ in Côte d’Ivoire. The section concludes with an essay by the Atlanta-based writer Jasmine Amussen who takes us through her neighbourhood and traces the spokes of creativity and hope that emerge out of the city’s carceral and capitalist violence.
In ‘Burning Down the House’ our investigation into rage continues with an essay by the pathbreaking artist Kara Walker who shares a furyfilled text on Trump’s rise. Kara’s essay is accompanied by a selection of works that point to the racial backlash that partially emerged from the hope-filled Obama presidency that Trump capitalised on to fuel the perceived grievances that continue to support his political ascendance. But as she also reminds us, so much of this has to do with the slavery based coercive labour practices that continue to haunt the US and the rest of the world. In ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’, Jebi Labembika’s photo essay takes us through the world of homoeroticised Black cowboys parading in a kind of masculine drag. These ideas continue in a photo essay on ‘Palavar’.
The issue’s third section, ‘The Aptness of Anger’ draws from the Srinivasan’s academic article by the same name. Much as she asks, the section delves into the question of ‘what ought a victim of injustice do when her anger would worsen her situation but nonetheless be a fitting response to the state of the world?’. The section therefore opens with a conversation with Dozie Kanu who examines artistic liberation and the power of the everyday. The artist and muse MJ Harper then generously provides us with an essay that draws strength from seminal Black artists and thinkers of the 1960s and explores how grace can become a kind of ‘weaponised glamour’. Just as the lyrics in Lauryn Hill’s unreleased track ‘Black Rage’ so elegantly captures: ‘when the dogs bite, when the beatings, when I’m feeling sad, I simply remember all these kinds of things, and then I don’t fear so bad’. These themes continue in the poem ‘A Blurred Fluxx’ and are further explored in Sammy Loren and Ellington Wells’ short screenplay ‘Salt’, that takes the mythical tale of Medea and updates it to our racially tense present.
The final section ‘Transforming Collective Rage’ examines the significance of community as the empowering salve to rage and which is needed to generate mass change. Sean Bankhead takes us from the church to the club to the music video in a jubilant and defiant conversation with Miss Jason. The historic Nigerian recording artists the Lijadu Sisters are highlighted in a touching essay by Funmi Lijadu. And the issue fittingly closes on a conversation with Dauan Jacari, discussing the post-African American paradise that embraces the tensions in our diasporic differences to build something new and wonderfully inclusive.
As our contributors and the issue’s various inspirations remind us, rage is necessary. To forge a new light during what may be some of the darkest of times in our lives (so far), we take solace in the community that now exists, and which is built upon that of the many thinkers and artists that came before us. Boy.Brother.Friend is proud to carry this legacy forward and we hope you’ll join us as we navigate new ways forward.
Shop Issue 9 at
shop.boybrotherfriend.com
Wars continue in Sudan and Gaza, where the pending threat of deadly famines looms with seemingly little end in sight. The Ukrainian conflict also endures. Amidst all this, Trump is the next US President, and the populist right is making waves in Europe and other parts of the world. With this issue, we wade through the heaviness, danger, and confusion of these times and sit with rage. And by rage, we don’t mean selfish, narcissistic rage focused on the plight of the individual to the exclusion of our community. We’re focused on the collective. For Audre Lorde’s words in her 1981 keynote address at the National Women’s Studies Annual Conference still ring true: ‘Anger is the grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change’. And my, what there is to change.
Four short years after Black Lives Matter and we’re seemingly taking several steps back and we’re bracing for further backlash. We’re disillusioned by the lip service that was paid to diversity and inclusion without really addressing the foundations that created different types of global inequities in the first place. And we’re horrified by the lack of global attention on Sudan’s war. All the while, 25 million people in the country need humanitarian aid and 8.5 million people are facing a looming famine with at least 755,000 people facing ‘catastrophe’. While it’s anything but a competition, global attention continues to focus on the Ukraine war to the frequent exclusion of others. For all the talk of Black lives ‘mattering’ the international community’s inaction speaks to the emptiness of the sentiment. And even amidst the broader global context that fuels rage and continued injustice, we also speak of the rage that comes from the related alienation of being in professional spaces – be that in creative industries or academia – that continue to marginalise.
Even with all there is to be angry about, rage remains a taboo word and emotion in the Black diaspora. As we all know, the stereotype of the threatening, violent, Black man or angry Black woman is readily deployed to silence and persecute us. Nor are these fears unfounded or imagined; it is likely that many potential sponsors for this issue declined to support us given the fear of being associated with its theme. And through a lifetime of these kinds of experiences, we’ve also painfully learned that leaning into whiteness and attempting to cocoon ourselves from exclusion through capitalist impulses and luxury goods will not protect us.
Even as anger is what the philosopher Amia Srinivasan rightly identifies as a ‘fitting response to the state of the world; we instead draw upon the strength of various contributors in this issue to illustrate how community is the way forward. The issue’s opening section is ‘The Case for Rage’ in which the artist King Cobra walks us through the past with her work on the corporeal dimensions of history and the pain that has so often been inflicted upon Black bodies. Cobra refuses to embrace ‘progress’ without an acknowledgment of the horrors that have been imposed upon so many. The photographer Clifford Prince King then helps clear our palates and gives us a fashion spread on ‘Facing Fury’ in Côte d’Ivoire. The section concludes with an essay by the Atlanta-based writer Jasmine Amussen who takes us through her neighbourhood and traces the spokes of creativity and hope that emerge out of the city’s carceral and capitalist violence.
In ‘Burning Down the House’ our investigation into rage continues with an essay by the pathbreaking artist Kara Walker who shares a furyfilled text on Trump’s rise. Kara’s essay is accompanied by a selection of works that point to the racial backlash that partially emerged from the hope-filled Obama presidency that Trump capitalised on to fuel the perceived grievances that continue to support his political ascendance. But as she also reminds us, so much of this has to do with the slavery based coercive labour practices that continue to haunt the US and the rest of the world. In ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’, Jebi Labembika’s photo essay takes us through the world of homoeroticised Black cowboys parading in a kind of masculine drag. These ideas continue in a photo essay on ‘Palavar’.
The issue’s third section, ‘The Aptness of Anger’ draws from the Srinivasan’s academic article by the same name. Much as she asks, the section delves into the question of ‘what ought a victim of injustice do when her anger would worsen her situation but nonetheless be a fitting response to the state of the world?’. The section therefore opens with a conversation with Dozie Kanu who examines artistic liberation and the power of the everyday. The artist and muse MJ Harper then generously provides us with an essay that draws strength from seminal Black artists and thinkers of the 1960s and explores how grace can become a kind of ‘weaponised glamour’. Just as the lyrics in Lauryn Hill’s unreleased track ‘Black Rage’ so elegantly captures: ‘when the dogs bite, when the beatings, when I’m feeling sad, I simply remember all these kinds of things, and then I don’t fear so bad’. These themes continue in the poem ‘A Blurred Fluxx’ and are further explored in Sammy Loren and Ellington Wells’ short screenplay ‘Salt’, that takes the mythical tale of Medea and updates it to our racially tense present.
The final section ‘Transforming Collective Rage’ examines the significance of community as the empowering salve to rage and which is needed to generate mass change. Sean Bankhead takes us from the church to the club to the music video in a jubilant and defiant conversation with Miss Jason. The historic Nigerian recording artists the Lijadu Sisters are highlighted in a touching essay by Funmi Lijadu. And the issue fittingly closes on a conversation with Dauan Jacari, discussing the post-African American paradise that embraces the tensions in our diasporic differences to build something new and wonderfully inclusive.
As our contributors and the issue’s various inspirations remind us, rage is necessary. To forge a new light during what may be some of the darkest of times in our lives (so far), we take solace in the community that now exists, and which is built upon that of the many thinkers and artists that came before us. Boy.Brother.Friend is proud to carry this legacy forward and we hope you’ll join us as we navigate new ways forward.
Shop Issue 9 at
shop.boybrotherfriend.com
