Black Joy Art

 Friend: I'm sick of all these stories about blk pain. What about stories about blk joy?

You can't have an honest story about joy until you've dealt with the trauma. To demand blk storytellers just start pumping out stories of blk ppl living fabulous, carefree, love-filled "Crazy Rich Asian" lives amidst all that's going on is ridiculous. It is overly simplistic to tell people dealing with 300 yrs of slavery, followed by 100 yrs of Jim Crow, followed by 60 yrs of the incarceration complex to just 'shake off those shackles and dance, negro. Dance faster!' We live among the caskets of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and the bare minimum awakening of 'white allies.'

"The 40 Year Old Version" wouldn't have been great unless it first began with all the shit Radha had to overcome. The difference between great art and a forced smile of pretending everything is great is the difference between therapy and strained positivity. It is the difference between healing and stuffing down the pain. It is difference between Jill Scott's first and second album (oops).

I've met far too many blk artists trying to live 'golden' while sitting in the toilet bowl of reality. It is laughable, it is schizophrenic, it is dishonest. And it makes for terrible 'joy art' like those tacky paintings of tangerine sunsets that you see in cheap motels. Bad joy art is more painful and dehumanizing than therapeutic rebirth. Stop denying the catharsis necessary to reach joy. We have to go through it, acknowledge the reality, and then transform it.  

Blk storytellers aren't butlers or maids who are here to clean up the blood on the floor, spray some perfume to hide the smell of burning flesh, and hide the nooses hanging from the ceiling...with a fake smile. If you want that 'real real art' you have to deal with the 'real reality.' We are living in the middle of a reckoning...and real artists are wrestling with this era in our plays, movies, music, and stories.