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'Close your eyes — make the white gaze disappear.'
What is it like to be black and joyful, without submitting to the white gaze? This question, and its answer, is at the core of Black Imagination, a dynamic collection curated by artist and poet Natasha Marin.
Born from a series of exhibitions and fuelled by the power of social media (#blackimagination), the collection includes work from a range of voices who offer up powerful individual visions of happiness and safety, rituals and healing. Black Imagination presents an opportunity to understand the joy of blackness without the lens of whiteness.
'Witnessing is sacred work too. Seeing ourselves as whole and healthy is an act of pure rebellion in a world so titillated by our constant subjugation,' reflects viral curator Natasha Marin, on Black Imagination. This dynamic collection of Black voices works like an incantation of origin, healing, and imagination. Born from a series of conceptual art exhibitions, the perspectives gathered here are no where near monochromatic. 'Craving nuance over stereotype, we sought out black children, black youth, LGBTQ+ black folks, unsheltered black folks, incarcerated black folks, neurodivergent black folks, as well as differently-abled black folks.' Each insists on their own variance and challenges every reader to witness for themselves that Black Lives (and Imaginations) Matter.
Editor: Natasha Marin (Foreword by Steven Dunn)
Paperback Published August 2020 216 pages
'Our bodies and actions are under external control, but the well-spring of rebellion is our own imagination. In Black Imagination, Natasha Marin shows us how to free our imagining — as a first step toward freeing ourselves.' — Gloria Steinem
'Black Imagination is somehow as innovatively utopic as it is sincerely soulful. I've never felt the physical feeling of pages melting in my hands or chapters folding themselves into squadrons of black airplanes flying to freedom because I've never experienced an art object like Black Imagination. It is exquisite art in action.' — Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
'Black Imagination required Natasha Marin to curate as a curate in the medieval sense — a spiritual guide that cares for souls...We are challenged to move beyond the abject, beyond pure pessimism, on the wings of a different criticality...'visioning a world where none is lonely, none hunted, alien'.' —Christian Campbell, author of Running the Dusk
'Defiantly hopeful...think Soul Train Line, think The Stroll, think the joyous striving with language for the possibilities of safety and hope.' — Kwame Dawes, author of Nebraska
'A powerful testament to the richness and resilience of Black interiority, Black Imagination reminds each and every one of us of our truest story: 'Despite and beyond time, I am.' — Lauren K. Alleyne, author of Honeyfish
'Black Imagination reveals itself at times as a baptism, a confessional, a communion, and a coronation. This really isn't a book. It's more like a rosary or a mandala. Which is to say, this is a holy thing. Handle it with reverence. Read it out loud like a prayer.' — Mike Gaston, CUT founder