LINDA

I can see my Blackness existing as a force, a power, dangerous to some
AND LIBERATING TO OTHERS.
LINDA

I can see my blackness existing as a force, a power, dangerous to some and liberating to others. Even as I come in contact with myself I realize that being black in Iowa is being multifaceted. It’s complicated. It’s a spectrum. My blackness in Iowa is a spectrum. Having to navigate different institutions I come into contact with can alter how I carry my blackness. In free and brave spaces, poetry slams or my work with RunDSM is very different than how I need to affirm my blackness in a meeting with Governor Reynolds or predominantly white institutions. As I continue to discover these intersections and realize the ways in which I exist in different spaces, it makes me reflect on my identity as a black woman — just as generations of black women have had to do before me.

I’ve come to realize that black women in my family have always existed in these rural places and historically in times when blackness was seen as a servitude to whiteness. At times, this was terrorizing. My great-grandmother shared with me her distaste for whiteness, having grown up in rural Kansas as the only black family. Her son was lynched and tragic brutal violence was placed on my family. But I also had another side to reflect upon. My first experience with whiteness was from my dad’s mother. Born in Florida, she was a very gentle woman and showed me how whiteness wasn’t always evil.

Understanding my heritage is a journey and a process. I’m not just seeking who my ancestors were, where they came from or even the years they were born, but also trying to know them energetically, in an elemental way. I’m tracing their contributions to this world and what they created for themselves. My mom created goals for her educational career after the Army, balancing family life alongside it all. My dad owns his own business, envisioning what can be from the foundational bones of the homes he builds and flips. My grandmother is a healer at Broadlawns, a caretaker with her hands. My grandmother created incredible fiber art for her community. For my aunt Louise, it was her ability to turn threads into treasure. It was her journals from the last three months of her life. And actually, it was her death that created something in me. Witnessing my mother go through that loss, changed the way I navigated the world. That trauma, that transition, really helped me identify creation in itself. It created an urgency for creation that my soul was drawn to — this knowing that when I’m called to create, I have to get something out. I have to push creative content out of my body whether a billion people see it or nobody sees it.

As for me, I am a healer. I am a creator. An elder sibling. As a first born human to a unit that we call a family. I would like to say I’m balanced, but the balance comes within moderation. I am love, as power and as a force. I am a black woman, a black fem, a black human, an Afro human. A light worker. An activist. An abolitionist. A revolutionary. I’ll even say an extraterrestrial because sometimes I really don’t fit in with humans. I describe myself as human. As art. As existence. Existing. As energy. As grateful.