Zahra Gordon

This blog has been down for a while now and that is something I’ve been meaning to blog about. Especially, while I was reading Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s latest work, Americanah, in June. Yes, I read it in June and I had the idea for a blog then and I just couldn’t/didn’t get it out. 

*possible spoiler* In Americanah, the main character Ifemelu blogs about race in America. She’s a Nigerian immigrant who spends about a decade in the US then returns home. Back in Nigeria, the questions becomes, can I blog about race in Nigeria? And it wasn’t even just race, but the whole notion of social commentary. Was there a Nigerian market for it? 

Blogging wasn’t the only thing that endeared me to the character, but reading about Ifemelu’s life made think a lot about mine. Quite honestly, I felt like Adichie was writing about my life and it was scary and heart-warming in the same instance.    

I first started blogging in the summer of 2009, shortly after returning to the US from a 6-month study abroad stint in South Africa. My stay in South Africa was an emotional roller coaster and eye-opening to say the least. I became more than aware of the fact that apartheid was no where near over. The details of my stay and the racism I personally experienced there could fill a blog post or two (or a series) on its own. However, the ways those experiences influenced my blogging is most important here. 

Before going to South Africa, I had already considered myself as someone who was politically/socially conscious. Also, I already considered myself a poet/writer. When I came back from South Africa, I started volunteering with an organization called Friends of the Congo because I believed that I needed to do something, to be actively involved in making the world the place I envisioned. I had already begun to work in student movements while in South Africa and this was a continuation of that. Part of my work with Friends of the Congo was to blog for their site and I was encouraged to blog on my own as well. This is when my blog was born. 

I felt my words could be my continuing contribution to various movements for social justice. Well, I’m not sure if that’s what I’ve really continued to do, per se, but I have continued to blog. The blog was somewhat down in 2010, but re-surged in 2011 and 2012. At one point the blog description for Zee Speaks was “An Anti-Master Narrative” Some people got it and others were like, “Huh?” I asked someone what they thought about it once and that person in turn asked me, “What do you blog about?” I said, “I basically just write about things affecting black people and give my opinion sometimes.” The new and current description – “People, politics and prose on black cultural and social issues” – was born from that conversation. 

For me, the blog now is still what it was in the beginning. Every time I see a magazine or newspaper article or blog post that reinforces negative stereotypes about black people or experience some sort of discrimination or just get fired up in general about all the work that needs to be done to redress isms (racism, colonialism, imperialism, sexism, etc) I’m thankful for a space to blog about it, to participate in the conversation and in the figuring out of, what next? How can we change/fight this? And I want to continue to do so. 

I haven’t actively blogged in more than a year. Part of the reason for that is full-time employment that drained my creative energy. I am still working full-time, but I’m pushing myself to work for me as well and even more so. Like Ifemelu, I also wasn’t sure what the position on blackness was in T&T where I’m now located, and I toyed with the idea of changing the blog’s direction. If I wanted people in T&T to read, would speaking about issues of race turn them off? Was I too American in scope? These were questions I asked myself. (There was also the question of narcissism. Was this blog an exercise in narcissism? I didn’t want that.) 

To me, most indicators are that people do not want to talk about race and racism in any constructive manner in this country. They also don’t want to talk about the lasting legacies of oppression. I feel like the conversation is so necessary and pertinent, like it informs our lives in so many subtle ways we’re not always aware of. But as I continue to work full-time, continue to experience isms first hand (such as the capitalism which positions me on a plantation-model work space with low pay and even lower social rewards), I am reclaiming the blog space and working towards once again re-envisioning the world. I am thinking about the ways in which I can use my words and the little knowledge I have to make a contribution to change – and that is not only through the blog, but through my interaction with life.