Creating a Culture of Change: The Power of Words

On July 14, 2020, Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, Arab American National Museum, and National Network for Arab American Communities (NNAAC) co-hosted the second conversation of Creating a Culture of Change: A Series of Conversations on Race and Community Building.

This conversation focused on The Power of Words, and was moderated by Al-Bustan's Executive Director Hazami Sayed. The guest presenters were Vashti Dubois - Founder/Director of The Colored Girls Museum; Ladan Osman - poet, writer, filmmaker; and Moustafa Bayoumi - author and journalist. We’re so grateful to our guest presenters for their time, insights, and years of artistic practice. They showed us ways to continue learning, to listen to the stories of others, and to tell our own stories with authenticity and courage.

A full recording of the event can be viewed below:

Vashti Dubois’ spoke of the importances of "owning the spaces we're in when it's difficult to own the life and bodies we live in."  Her desire to create The Colored Girls Museum stemmed from the need for a place to see herself, when she couldn’t in mainstream museums. She spoke of the importance of being able to own the spaces you are in, away from the gaze of what the world ascribes to you. Dubois explained that for many who visit, The Colored Girls Museum functions as a “choreography of private healing”, because as Dubois shared many times there’s an expectation that Black communities share their emotions publicly and are then not able to grieve privately. Believing that art has the power to be diagnostic and medicinal, she works on putting the “‘cure’ back in curatorial”.

Ladan Osman spoke about the importance of language in her work and the need to write poems in her own way, defiantly rejecting what others expect of her.  Osman identifies as being a third culture kid, expressing that she doesn’t feel part of either her parent’s country (Somalia) or the United States, but rather both and neither. She reflected on the difficult concepts of being a citizen, resident, an alien citizen and the relationship of these categories to ideas of statehood and borders, all of which she sees through an amalgamation of anti-racist and post-colonial lenses. For immigrants, Osman admits this process of understanding your relationship to the world is made all the more difficult by these structural and historical legacies. “I started to feel like something inside me was missing. I wasn’t ready for that level of intimate violence… A being with an undeveloped myth that came from definitions of the self that come from the state.”  She read three of her poems: Parable for Refugees, (from Exiles of Eden, 2019), and Words We Lost in the Water and Trouble (from The Kitchen Dweller's Testimony, 2015). The latter poem revolves around English interpretations of what Somali words sound like to Osman, and how she believes language is viewed as a measure of an immigrant’s character and respectability, “that there is something nefarious about broken English.” Osman went on to unpack the ways society links a person’s English fluency to their status while acknowledging that she too is affected and her artistic practice is a process of change itself.

Moustafa Bayoumi spoke of the need to tell the stories that we want  told in our own way, and the importance of ownership and authorship when telling those stories. He said “the art of telling stories is inherently a political act” that “has within it the promise that we can leave our own lives to briefly enter the life of someone else, to show that others can live full lives.” There is always a need for storytelling for the marginalized but this is especially true when specific times create an urgent need to do so. Bayoumi highlighted the experience American Arabs and Muslims faced post-9/11 and how “prejudices and stereotypes were blooming.”  His book How Does it Feel to be a Problem? (published in 2008) was inspired by W.E.B. Dubois’ book The Souls of the Black Folk. “Freedom in the United States begins with African Americans and their struggles.” He continued this idea by bringing up that Blackness and Islam are now and always have been interconnected in the United States, and the importance of acknowledging that there are Black Arab Americans and Black Arabs in every Arab country. Bayoumi quoted African American author Toni Morrison “Assimilation in American should not be on the backs of Black people”, urging the audience to begin acknowledging that America was built on the backs of African Americans and not to associate freedom with European settler-colonialism. He brought attention to the systems that perpetuate racism, and the ways that they pit marginalized groups against each other through policing tactics such as nuisance abatement laws – third party policing that pressures “middlemen minorities” to have invasive surveillance in their stores. He put out a call directed to the audience saying, “We should be working towards a place where policing is not on the forefront, but care is on the forefront”, seeking a way we can encompass mutual aid.

All three presenters connected their thoughts and work based on experiences of alienation in their lives. Bayoumi said, “alienation leads to the need to find the community outside of these official venues”. Followed by Dubois sharing, “in order to be universal, you need to be specific”, indicating that everyone can relate to the experience of being othered or outside of something.

The presenters agreed on the necessity of everyone telling their story as they would want them to be told because it is the entry point to understanding and connection. Home, community, neighborhood, and families and how we come to see these things in ourselves and the people we are connected to is part of the ongoing process of change.