Hey Homegoings Fam.

I'm Myra Flynn, creator of Homegoings, the Vermont Public Podcast, featuring candid conversations about race with artists of color.

The artists I interview are so prolific and so talented that for a second year in a row we've staged a live performance with them for a heartfelt night of music, dancing, storytelling and poetry.

How are you supposed to explain that you tunnel through the dark five days a week to hunch over a desk downtown, just knowing that everything you want is in one of them buildings, just sitting on the other side of a white man's, “Yes ”?

In the Homegoings tradition, we topped off the evening with a Q&A session: vulnerability personified.

This is Homegoings.

Welcome home.

A heads-up, Saidu speaks about suicide in this episode.

So take good care while listening and stick around for some resources at the end in case you are struggling, too.

Saidu is someone I like to call a kindred spirit because he's another artist first, Black podcaster.

We know what it's like to work in this mercurial field and as Saidu has put it before, to see what it's like when the very window that's opened for us is closing at the same time.

He's a poet.

He's a co-creator of the podcast Resistance, which was on Spotify and Gimlet for years about people refusing to accept things the way that they are.

Please welcome Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr. (applause) I was selling merch earlier and people kept coming up to me being like, You're one of the performers, are you nervous?

And I was like, Absolutely not, because y'all are so inviting.

Like, this is the second time I've been up here.

And every time I come up here, people are like, Oh my God.

Like, thanks for coming.

Like, we love everything you do and please move here.

And I'm like... And I'm like, okay, but I'm not nervous is what I'm trying to say.

I really feel like y'all are such a inviting and loving community.

Y'all are super nice.

Y'all are super polite, and that's great.

And I love that.

Sometimes I feel like politeness and niceness can get in the way of community.

Where I come from, in the Black community, in the African community, I'm African.

So I'm from Freetown, Sierra Leone.

I was born there, raised there, moved to America when I was eight years old, came to Virginia.

I lived in Virginia for a while.

Now I live in Brooklyn, New York, but in Africa and in the Black tradition, when we are in community with each other and we are speaking and we're talking like it's not a one way street.

I'm not just up here like, da da da da.

You're just like, you know, like it's very much, it's a a call and response.

It's a communal thing.

So that said, if you hear something that I say that you like, I want you to go and do this after me, after I want you to go, damn.

Can you all do that with me one time?

Damn.

Or, or, or, or I like that, I like that.

Okay, yall can do a little bit better than that that was kind of or if you don't want to go too far, you know, baby steps one at a time, one step at a time.

You can do a little, mmmmmm.

Can I get a communal, mmmmmmm?

One, two, three.

Mmm, I appreciate that.

I appreciate that, yes.

So I expect to hear a lot of that.

But if we dont agree with you we gotta go, well.

There you go, well, that's another good one.

I love that one, too.

I love that one, too.

Oh, Matthew, Matthew Evan Taylor everybody!

He's going to join me up here for a couple of poems.

Know I started writing poetry in college.

I didn't really know what I was doing.

The first poem I wrote was about a girl that I saw at the elevator door.

It was really bad.

It was called the girl that I saw at the elevator door.

It was embarrassing, but, like, I don't know.

I liked it.

I like doing it.

And I just kept doing it.

And like after like the fourth or fifth time, I was like really getting into it.

And I was watching a bunch of poets on YouTube and there's this poet named Aja Monet, and she had this, this really beautiful poem.

And I wanted to write a poem just like that.

And it's a poem about what I had earned up until that point.

So I wrote this poem called The Little I've Learned.

I know great clouds move in at night and I feel most alone in the dark I know the moon is the loneliest thing in the sky I know I learn best from observing I know elementary school and neglectful teachers I know how to make do with what I have how construction paper can double as a blade how I called my first attempt at ending my life a paper cut I know white girls with maize hair and bright skin who taught me that my Black was bad but I know the afro is strong and Black skin is far from brittle I know black don't crack and I can't remember where I heard that I know today my friends and I are a little different and some still see women as food but I learned about rape culture from a collection of stardust disguised as a human who occasionally identifies as a boy with an eye I know gender vaginas, bodies and penises don't define you I know we are all just temporary beings ready to see who will cry when we leave I know dust is where we came from and it's where we shall return I know somewhere in Sierra Leone is a grave holding the dust of children I know they are my family I know rebels who gave guns to those children to kill for diamonds I know there must be mines somewhere in America the way our boys kill each other I know this country kills culture and calls it assimilation and I find it hard to remember home some days and the closest I've gotten is saying my name in the mirror the right way I know I've shelved my country in my Facebook profile, Twitter, bio and back pocket I know it's the closest cloak I reach for my identity crisis I know my little sister was born cloakless, naked, American, fatherless.

I know the type of men who will see her 13 as sustenance I know how to fight I know how to fight I know how to fight And being the older brother means God sent me to light from the darkness first so I could show her the way I know the devil enters your mouth when you're angry and we say things we don't mean wishing we could take them back I know every breath is precious and I don't carry my inhaler I know I breathe easier lying next to a warm body I know I still translate everything I hear and speak and I still don't understand love I know Bob Marley tried to teach me through a boombox in a living room in Freetown, Sierra Leone and vibrations that positive can't be contained I think we all just want someone to be vulnerable with and not be judged for it Like I know when I was 13 I loved watching the Sex and the City marathons I know a lot of people don't think so, but Sarah Jessica Parker could still get it I know I know how hard it is to let go of boyhood fantasies I know how hard it is to let go, how life is holding tight the people you care for I know my mother once told me death is like rain it falls on everyone's doorstep I know the irony of her death how my hands failed to grip water how easily my knees bent when we heard the bad news I know my mother was my favorite poet I know she's on a cloud somewhere tonight keeping me company, clapping and happy thunder at the little I've learned and the celestial I have yet to know (applause) I try to go back at least once a year to Sierra Leone, but because I'm physically away from home for so long, I always feel like a disconnect between sort of like my my source, like where I come from, where I was born and where I'm at now.

So I do things to like take me back there to transport me back home.

So I listen to a lot of afrobeats I listen to a lot of aman piano like anything African music like I love and I love to dance.

So I'll listen to it and be dancing in my room.

Ill go to a party and I'll be dancing to it and it just, I just feel free and I just feel like myself again.

Then there was this show on Netflix called Young, Famous and African or something like that.

And I loved that show and I loved it so much because it was showing like Africa in like this really beautiful way.

It was a reality show and it had all the regular, messy trappings of a reality show, but it also had a lot of heart and the characters were so like deep, they were just drop gems.

And I was like, Yes, this is this is what reality show should be like.

This is, So I do stuff like that.

I do things that just, like, remind me of who I am.

I've lived in New York for like eight years now, going on nine.

Has anybody in here been or lived in New York for a little while?

Brooklyn?

Yeah, y'all lived?

It was great, right?

It was fun, but, like, it was also hell, right?

Like New York is, like, so fast paced.

It feels like everything is happening all at once.

Like, I honestly don't even know where my twenties went.

It just sort of, like, happened.

And then I'm like, now I feel like I'm on the other side of something, right?

And so I've been thinking a lot about that.

I've been thinking a lot about, like how New York has changed me and how and what I what I went searching for in New York.

Right?

Because it's a big it's a big city.

It's it's bright lights.

It's the place everybody goes to achieve their dreams and do what they want to do.

And and I wanted to capture that somehow.

And I wanted to capture that in a way that felt honest to me and in a way that felt kind of fun as well.

So I wrote this I wrote this poem about just like what what it was like for me moving there in my early twenties.

It's a lot.

That's the only way I can I can put it because New York, like when you move there, it's at any point in time in history past, present or future, it's a risk.

It's a risk you take traveling there without a plan, but you're 21.

You're one of them cocky transplants from a small planet no one's ever heard of youre one of them immigrants who crash landed in a cul de sac somewhere far, far away from home And you've been called an alien in every other solar system you've sought asylum you managed to carve an ID out of Nike SBs and Lupe Fiasco albums you're a boy with a name no one would care to pronounce, much less know but you knew it was never going to be Miami, L.A. or Connecticut (laughter) your dreams would only be possible up there a new metropolis And sure, there are horror stories of cities like that the streets occupied by tweaks and suited zombies the apartment's filthy with roommates and rude roaches the twisted faces marching towards a future that barely pays rent the overwhelming stench of wealth rising up all around you it's it's all bad gravity up there, they say but knowing you, animated by doubt, propelled by prove it maybe it's the African in your blood, maybe it's your gut but you go, your voice a fresh cut to duffel bags and that smile your mother gave you it's all you packed, before takeoff you whisper a promise to your reflection on the launch pad I'm going to take that city having no clue what was waiting for you on the other side you, you glide across galaxies for years to get here and you finally spot New Metropolis on the block horizon stiletto skyscrapers posing with their technological face you glide close to row after row of windows glowing gold like the city's only got eyes for you and the sight of Metropolis at night is an answer it's a yes so dazzling it makes all your red flags disintegrate into rumor it's the kind of dreamy silhouette that makes you forget all sense the kind of bright magic that turns all men like you into moths and those lights would look so good on you and you start thinking to yourself that maybe one day I'll glide across these skies to brunch on Sundays with my besties like Carrie Bradshaw (laughter) or, or maybe I'll find a stage that loves the color of all my stories, like Jerry Seinfeld or maybe maybe they'll even learn how to pronounce my name too here you're not even asking for it all at once just a chance to land somewhere, a small place to nest enough money in your pocket to keep a baddys jagged breath pressed against your ear on Friday nights and oh, my God, how good it would have felt to arrive to a big soundtrack, like, like juicy or something or get money, anything old school and reckless but what you get is the hissing of sirens the, the hissing of sewers the three am alarms, the tin can conductors voice over speakers, the, the landlords knock on the first of the month and every week your little sister is sending you holograms and she is so proud of her big brother for leaving she thinks the sky of you She asks, How are you?

How is it up there?

And you go, it's good it's everything I've ever wanted and she goes, it's good it's everything I've ever wanted she's like, be honest How is it up there?

Honest, honest suddenly your mouth becomes a black hole because you would rather write her an ode for this city because how are you supposed to explain to her about this one time when you got so stressed out you buried your head into your backpack and cried on the two train as two niggas break danced in front of you for a change and all you could do was laugh how you supposed to tell her about the six months of nights you spent on strangers beds, cramped couches and and dusty attics how are you supposed to explain that you tunnel through the dark five days a week to hunch over a desk downtown just knowing that everything you want is in one of them buildings just sitting on the other side of a white man's “Yes ” how are you supposed to say I feel like a glitch in the city, sis and every time I open my eyes, I want to beg my dreams for forgiveness and I'm starting to forget what my own voice sounds like and I'm, I'm sorry I'm sorry for everything that I have not brought back home yet and still, I want to stay still here Still here, still here even on the days the heat sizzles me dizzy with loneliness and I I get home to sweep my cat and mop my sink and open my medicine cabinet to find myself something to eat even when I lose myself and my senses to the rat race here still I want to stay and I can almost hear the city laugh when I complain like that because for a thousand years I know its seen a thousand of me and it knows exactly who I am I'm a transplant I mean, bless me with rent control and laundry in the basement bless me with a roommate who pays her rent on time bless me with neighbors who know my name beneath the clouds Miss Shirly, her 98 year old smile bless me with all the moments I linger a while in the hallway because the Caribbean woman next door is cooking something that reminds me so much of my mother's hands on Sundays and still every morning I wake up and I stand on the steps of the home this city made for me and I don't say thank you I ask for more (applause) Hi, Im Colin Duclaux.

I live in Brookfield and I know not all of you are from Vermont.

I love living here, but one of the things that I really don't like and for my kids is how incredibly white it is.

And I would love to encourage more bipoc people to come here.

And it's a, it's a big question, I know.

But I'm just curious, like, what, what can be done that would would make it more inviting place?

I think my answer is pretty simple.

It's money.

It's funny, but it's true because people of color talk Black people talk to other Black people.

Immigrants talk to other immigrants, right?

Like, when people moved to America, to Ellis Island or whatever, or when immigrants come over to America and settle somewhere, they tell other immigrants that it's safe here.

There's opportunities here, there's, there's a community investing in us here.

Come, like, we can build something here, right?

And to that end, like I've talked to Black people who live here and that's not really what I hear.

Like, I don't hear that the Black folks who live here are already being supported, Right?

I don't hear that the folks who have already been brave enough to make a life for themselves here have been supported, funded, respected in a way that makes them want to stay.

So why would I move here if they are having a hard time here?

You know what I'm saying?

Like, it, money!

Give people money and funding to be here to build a life for themselves and their families.

And you'll see a flourish in the community here.

This stuff is not free.

This work isn't free.

And we've been doing too much labor for free for too long.

(applause) My last poem is very special to me.

I wrote about my little sister.

When I was 14, I lost my mother to breast cancer when I was 17, I lost my father.

I was so grateful, I was so grateful to have a little sister.

I was so grateful to have someone, someone there And but I was so lost.

I didn't know what, I didn't know what to do.

I didn't, I didn't know how to care for her, how to be there for her, how to raise her, to be a man for her.

You know?

And so I went on Google and I just did a kind of bunch of research.

I didn't know what I would say to her when she got her period.

I didn't even, I didnt know how to do any of it.

So I was like Googling different things, trying to learn more.

And the thing is, my relationship to my little sister, it's not like I don't want to be up here, I don't want to misrepresent it and act like we have like, this really, like, we have a great relationship.

Like it's, it's we have a bond.

But we dont like, you know, we're not like talking all the time, you know, I'm saying, like, we're not like, super, super, not like we're not like best friends, but we're like, we have a soul connection, right?

So I've never like, read this poem to her, but she's seen it and she understands it and she loves it, but this poem was my way to kind of say the things to her that I didn't feel like I had the ability to say because we didn't have that kind of relationship back then.

And so, yeah, this is the gift for your 13th birthday.

When I was 13 the first thing I wish someone told me about is puberty the lies I would tell to hang out with my friends you know, the constant urge to scream at our mother, then realizing that she's African and our people don't play that this, this slow unraveling of angst will seem like forever the body will change for me it was older and for you there will be blood and I don't know much about bleeding to transform anew and I'm sure it's not the same but I know even caterpillars digest their bodies to change into something more beautiful I know the boys in your class aren't so stupid anymore so when you begin to mistake the wings in your stomach for love don't boys trap things with wings in jars your flight does not belong to them this is your ascent into a fierce monarch of a Black woman always beware the Ides of March and May and August and every day because men will attempt to dethrone you from womanhood know that your name is the strongest armor against the blade of bitch and that the best assassins often pose as good guys like Trojans, like Brutus do not open for them open your Bible, baptize yourself in Scripture you know, when our parents passed and grief washed over me like a flood I looked up and I saw the brightest smile on your face a rainbow I knew you were the Lord's promise to never downpour death on our family again when friends speak of their mothers and fathers do not attempt to bargain with God do not taint your nightly prayers with envy your hands were meant for holier things like making a good cup of tea for aunts and uncles guardians for good reason they are skilled in the miracle of African storytelling how they bring a mother back from the dead over a steaming cup of Lipton on a Sunday afternoon praise them (speaking Krio) (speaking Krio) you are from Sierra Leone the land of the Lioness Mountains I want to speak of how your beauty is valued treasured something in the name of blood diamonds but I have seen how many of our people died in the name of such elegance how machetes to the wrist gave them eternal writer's block when I was a child, I escaped the war but as you were born it stopped your birth was the last blood spilled before a peace treaty it was our father, kneeling like a soldier surrendering his arms for you you were born with American papers use them to write stories of Sierra Leone hold a pen in the same way child soldiers held guns for revolution and when you return home and they ask if you have anything to declare, say your life your blood your breath, because their peace is your birthright they will know you as the first exhale after destruction unwrap the gift of flight, shake the ash from your wings and show them the beauty in uprise, rise up rise up to your throne you matriarch you monarch, fly Thank you so much.

(applause) Thanks so much for joining us.

If you want to continue to be a part of the Homegoings family, stay in touch at homegoings.co and subscribe to the Homegoings podcast wherever you listen.

Take good care.