Black Women Writing: A conversation with two Shenandoah Editors

DW McKinney: Let’s start off with an easy question. Why did you submit to this anthology?

Moriah Katz: I wanted to be part of a conversation that celebrates Black women’s dynamism. There’s a huge market in contemporary media for so-called “Black stories” that end up being more concerned with racism than actual Black people. This anthology presented a valuable opportunity to combat that flattening. I’ll always want to be part of a literary legacy that loves, celebrates, and expands the schema of who we are and who we are allowed to be.

DWM: Yes, so often we’re only asked for our stories when they center racism and trauma instead of the fullness of ourselves. That literary legacy you mentioned is why I wanted to be part of the anthology too. In my graduate cultural courses, Black scholars and Black-centered cultural analysis were given the least amount of space, but I remember how much I yearned to be part of the conversations that those scholars were having, how much I wanted to contribute to them.

MK: So glad you’re contributing, truly! The discourse needs us.

How did you know that the piece you sent in was the one you wanted to submit to the anthology?

DWM: That’s a long story! I wanted to write something about Black women and our bodies. I wasn’t sure what it was going to be. I initially considered writing something brand new, but at the same time that submissions were open, I was having issues with an online publication site that I had written work for, for years. I discovered that quite a few of my articles had been removed from the site altogether, or my byline had been removed, or my byline had been replaced and credit had been attributed to a white editor. All of these articles were about Black womanhood or Black community issues.

One of the articles that I wrote was about the racism and discrimination I had experienced during my first pregnancy. I knew that article fit multiple themes for the anthology. I also had good conversations with Black women who related to the article after its publication. So I knew that it was important beyond me. I knew that people needed to read it. It was one essay of mine that I truly believed needed to be archived.

One of the things I struggled with though, before even choosing the piece I submitted, was narrowing down a topic. I saw the submissions prompt and there were so many suggested topics that I wanted to contribute to. So much that I felt needed to be discussed about Black womanhood. Sometimes it feels like there’s so much to discuss about us and not enough space. You know what I mean?

MK: That flagrant anti-blackness is disgusting. I’m sorry you had to deal with those fools, and I’m glad you’re no longer with them. This is exactly why we need more literary spaces that celebrate Black authors! Mamas, Martyrs, and Jezebels couldn’t be more timely.

Were you able to get those bylines and pieces restored?

DWM: I was able to get a few restored, but in the process of reclaiming the others, the publication shuttered. I still feel some kind of way because the website remains and those pieces are still available with incorrect attribution, but I honestly take joy in its closure.

MK: Your feelings around having more words than there are spaces for them is so valid. What you said makes me think of that bell hooks quote:

“No Black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much’.”

We’re backfilling the massive void white supremacy continues to burn into collective consciousness. And we only have one short human lifetime to do it?!? While surviving misogynoir?!

Truly so grateful that you’re here, you’re safe, and you’re writing.

DWM: Thank you for that bell hooks quote. You both arrived right on time. I often wrestle with the tension between writing about Blackness and writing around Blackness, if that makes sense. It’s like writing about nature and writing about being Black in nature, but you quickly realize that, for me at least, they are one and the same. But since that man took office again, I just don’t care to address that tension anymore. I’ve realized, similar to hooks’s quote, that we can’t write too much about Blackness and, honestly, we need more of it because this administration has proven that they’ll erase anything and everything that doesn’t fit a particular tradition or history. So why not just make it that much more difficult for them? We should be burying them with our words, with our art.

MK: As you should! I will happily roast marshmallows on that dumpster fire of an institution with you :)

I feel you about writing around that dividing line. It’s a blurry one. The eyes we see the world with are the only ones we have. It’s also tricky, because whiteness posits itself as the default, the objective and natural center of our reality. So any time you try to deviate from that norm, you get accused of not writing for a “universal audience,” which is crazy because every member of our society is complicit in maintaining the systems that are killing Black people. So, shouldn’t we all face that truth together? When we write about ourselves, aren’t we giving our readers—irrespective of race—a golden opportunity to face themselves?

I guess that’s the scary part for the white supremacists out there; our truth implicates them in atrocity.

To that point, hell yes, we’ll keep writing about Us! There can’t never be enough truth in print.

DWM: I’m curious, if you could curate your own anthology about Black womanhood, or about Black culture, what would that look like for you?

MK: Ooh, that’s a good question. I think I’d create a mixed media anthology. I’m talking textiles, collage, sculpture, poetry, essays. All of it. And the theme would be The Black Interior, as in Elizabeth Alexander’s book of essays. I’d want it to serve as a reminder of that secret, beautiful place that no amount of state violence can take away from us. Who are we when we are safe? What are our wildest dreams? Our little quirks? I want to know.

What would yours be?

DWM: Damn, that sounds like it would be a powerful anthology. Let’s push that out into the universe. Let’s manifest that for you! It also reminds me of the book Black Futures. Have you heard of it? It came out in 2020, of course, and it’s an archive by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham that includes essays, media screenshots, art, letters, oral histories, and so much more. It’s beautiful.

Thinking about it, I can’t settle on just one anthology idea. I would love to edit an anthology about our childhood joys. I think so fondly about the days when we just ate hot chips, drank Sprite, and played touch football in the parking lot. Or when we’d just go! Just wander and be and get into trouble or just talk about nothing and everything. But I also would love to edit one about our Black mental health because, even though we are having more of those conversations in our community, so many of us, especially our elders, still think admitting “we ain’t right” or that we even have nerve pills or whatever is some sort of disrespect or admitting a failure of our parents and family.

MK: Yes, it’s exactly in that vein! Somewhere between that book and The Black Book by Toni Morrison. I like projects that force you to grapple with them via form and content. Confrontation as invitation and all that.

I would LOVE to see your childhood joy anthology come to life. Our youngest selves are where our power comes from. We knew things back then we’re trying to rediscover now!

And yes, I know a lot of elders who could benefit from an anthology on Black mental health geared toward their generation. Who are looking for it whether they realize it or not.

I wonder after reading your essay again: if you could go back in time, what advice would you have for the you you were when you were having your first child?

DWM: Oh I would definitely tell myself to listen to my body more, my spirit. I would listen to myself to find out what I needed and not conform to what other people believed was right. The first time I was pregnant, people had so much “advice.” There was a lot that I ignored, but there was a lot I internalized because I just didn’t have pre-established guideposts. So I was surrounded by women who had four or more kids or nannied for years, and they were telling me, “This is how it should be.” In that situation, you just assume they know what they’re talking about, right?

I’m sure there was some advice-giving in my second pregnancy, but I don’t remember it as sharply because I just wasn’t paying attention to it in the way that I was the first time. But with my first child, I got caught up in a lot of over-spiritualization of the birthing experience and let other people’s ideas about what a “legitimate” birthing experience was influence whether I had a “natural birth,” which is a harmful construct, as opposed to a C-section. I would encourage myself to be more empowered. A lot of my empowerment came at the eleventh hour. I fired my midwife days before my birth because I finally listened to my body and the discomfort I was feeling around her and her proposed birthing plan. I found my voice after the racism I experienced during delivery, but that helped me post-delivery, because the nurses were problematic too, and with my second pregnancy.

Black and brown women have to do a lot of unlearning about what maternal health and care looks like for us in this country because the dominant systems of care don’t often include our cultural experiences and are created to punish or diminish or ignore us.

MK: I can imagine it feels rather disorienting to have so many people assume your experience for you. I’m glad you found your power, though I’m sad and frustrated you had to use it.

DWM: I loved your essay in the anthology. My mind buzzed with so many things that I identified with and appreciated as someone who once lived in southeast LA as a child, and as a mother, full stop, but also as a mother to two biracial girls. I’m curious about the complexities you had to wrestle with in writing your essay. Was there anything that gave you pause while writing it?

MK: Thank you! I had a similar resonance with your piece. It made me think of my mother and her experience of having me. We’ve had pretty interesting conversations because of your essay.

That piece was a rough one. It felt like if I couldn’t write it, I’d never be able to write anything else. It was the bridge from my adolescent life to my adult one.

It was hard to look all those feelings in the face. I understood them, but I’d never spoken or written about them before, even in private. I grappled with whether or not I’d ever actually show that piece to my mother. Not necessarily because of how it would affect her, but because of how it likely wouldn’t. What if she read it and her behavior or thinking didn’t change? Could I recover from that kind of blow?

The answer ended up being yes, of course, but ooh wee was it a journey to get there!