Migrations

A solitude wrapped in the shoreline and water as far as your eyesight reaches, I often think of how my family chose to stay and not go any further. My maternal side made their way to Milwaukee during the great migration. Some of us stopped in Louisville, in Indianapolis. I wonder what their journeys were like coming from Sea Island and Gainesville, Georgia. What did they think as the landscape changed and became flat? Did they marvel at the mountains as they came and then disappeared from view? What did they think of the sporadic bodies of water… all the things they never saw before? I know all of the reasons for their migration. But I often wonder why, why out of all of the places in the Northern United States did we end up here in Milwaukee?

My knowledge of the great migration came from my obsession with the Harlem Renaissance. My first love: Langston Hughes, Queen of my Heart: Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and all of the greats. I found pride in Black literary creatives during some Black History Month, on the Northside of Milwaukee, at Congress Elementary School, in the second grade class of a teacher who hated my guts. That’s another story, but she did, however, also introduce me to poetry. I found joy and familiarity in the dialects of Hughes' and Hurston’s work. Even though I could see it for myself, I found the proof of my beauty in the lines of their poems.

Black people are a storied people everywhere we’re from. I used to wish I was in Harlem because I saw their creative example in books and also wished that I could have seen their greatness unfold. I grew to realize my family’s story and migration is just as great. My grandmother was so talented. Her creativity may not have been documented in books, but it is documented in my deoxyribonucleic acid and memory. She could sew, knit, crochet. I had custom clothes and dolls, and all the things to make sure that I, too, would be an artist, a creative, a writer. My grandfather was the best storyteller. His stories mixed with some truths and a lot of imagination – fiction, not quite lies. My Milwaukee childhood was a joyful one. I was given space and time to think, to be creative, to play freely. I would pretend to be sick (not quite a lie) from school in second grade, choosing instead to type on my typewriter on my wooden, flip top desk, next to my bunny bank. I would write stories and make books, fully equipt with illustrations. In high school, I wrote poetry – secretly – too shy to share.

Metaphorical migrations have occurred since then: Worked in banking. Mind-numbing boredom. A photo and poem of Langston Hughes side by side with the poem Dream Deferred. Me deciding not to have a dream deferred. Associate degree from MATC in Education. My first published poem. Dual Bachelors in Literary and Critical Studies and Curriculum and Instruction. My first published academic article. Teaching. Dual Masters in Creative Writing and Curriculum and Instruction. Then rocking at teaching. Burnout. Mind-numbing boredom. Me deciding not to have a dream deferred.

I wound up on the shore of Genre: Urban Arts and dazzling, sporadically-placed opportunities. Our first tagline was “A magazine for creatives who don’t mind cuss words & dialect.” I wanted to cue to my city folk who bustled and rumbled in highly concentrated concrete areas that everything doesn’t have to be pretty and respectable. I wanted to cue that graffiti is just as valuable as the Mona Lisa. That the creativity that occurred out of struggle and that truly unfolded an aspect of our innate humanity was just as important, if not more so, than the art in the museums created by privileged folks. I knew that I was privileged to say that I had been published by Routledge and that there were so many people more talented than myself who would never be given that chance. Because of this, I spent my time finding them and began to publish their works. Genre came together with echoes of Toni Morrison’s voice in my head saying, “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” and with the spirit and energy of The Crisis magazine (1910), created by W.E.B. Du Bois.

And since then, more migrations have occurred. We have published the work of over 2,500 creatives in print and online. Besides my children, Genre is my greatest accomplishment and has a mind of its own. We have expanded to a place that is indescribable. I have taken to saying I work in the creative realm. Other creatives will understand that it can be hard sometimes to explain exactly what all we do. Between 2017 and 2019 (the November before the pandemic), Genre: Urban Arts held art exhibitions and performance events in Milwaukee, Chicago, New York, and Jersey City. We used these shows to bring together our community surrounding the release of our four publications. Genre: Urban Arts, Femme Literati: Mixtape, House, and BLACKOUT. We’ve gotten to teach with the ACLU and other organizations, with our workshops centered on art, writing, and social justice. We have created the Revolutionary Art and Culture Residency in which BIPOC writers and content makers focus on art and culture from a non-white perspective. With this work, we have interviewed Black Milwaukeans featured in Derrick Adams’ mural “Our Time Together” and become the soundscape for the piece at the Milwaukee Art Museum. We represent artists. We’ve done a lot. I’ve learned a lot.

Like my ancestors who traveled from so many different places in West Africa and those who traveled from Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee to Milwaukee, I, too, have traveled time and space and joy, passing through places I have never seen before, marveling at things my own mind couldn’t even story up and ending on shores all over this world. I carry them with me, in my very makeup, and never far from my thoughts and gratitude. People often ask me why, why out of all of the places in the world that I could be and why out of all the places that I have visited, why do I come back to Milwaukee? I explain that I can never be too far from water. I tell them about Milwaukee, my home, a sometimes solitude wrapped in a shoreline that has water further than your eyesight can reach.

In anticipation of the opening of ​our new space in September 2024, we ​invited active participants and longtime contributors to the artistic communities in Wisconsin to write about the cultural context of this region​. While we recognize​d the impossibility of capturing ​this state in its entirety through this one endeavour, ​the goal was to gather a range of perspectives to provide a fuller and more complex understanding of the artistic production of this ​region. ​We welcomed thoughtful, critical pieces that allow readers to see the artistic milieu, or t​his place, in a new light, reflections on ​Wisconsin's histories that have defined its present, or future-facing pieces that guide us towards new directions.​