THE FESTIVAL THAT SHOWED ME THE POWER of BELONGING

Zakiya Dalila Harris, author of The Other Black Girl

I don’t belong here. The words flickered in my brain as I eyed the other folks waiting in the long line that snaked around Brooklyn’s Commodore Barry Park. Like me, they were itching to get through security so they could link up with their friends, imbibe some summer drinks and dance to live music. Unlike me, their outfits were far more bohemian. I eyed my own cold-shoulder blouse regretfully. It was my first time attending Afropunk. While I’d read that the annual outdoor festival celebrated Black artists throughout the diaspora, including musicians, designers and dancers, I hadn’t gotten the memo about painting my teeny-weeny

’fro with pastels or showing off generous portions of skin. I wished I’d worn a crop top on that particularly sticky August day, and wished even more that I’d met up with my friends beforehand. Many of them were just in Brooklyn for the weekend; our mini college reunion would fly by in the blink of an eye. We should’ve all been waiting in line together, taking selfies, catching up on each other’s lives and soaking up all the Black joy that Afropunk had promised us.

And, by the time the festival rolled around, I needed that joy. Badly. Because while many other areas of my life were on the up in 2016 – I’d just started my dream job in publishing, finished my creative writing masters and even started dating a new guy – my soul was in serious need of soothing. Just the previous month, I’d seen what had happened to Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana. The pain I felt from those deaths, and so much other violent racism in the months and years before that, had started to chip away at my soul day after day. While I’d gotten the ‘race talk’ as a kid, nothing could have possibly prepared 23-year-old me for the anguish I’d been feeling and, at times, the hopelessness.

So when the long line finally spilled me into the eclectic crowd of Afropunkers, out went my nerves and in came a nourishing, soulful surge of Black life. Everywhere I looked, strangers were complimenting each other’s outfits, rubbing elbows on the main lawn without complaint and gushing to each other about their love for Janelle Monae in the queue for the toilets. Strangers became kinfolk, if only for the weekend.

Blogging and losing myself in writers such as Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin and W E B Du Bois in the comfort of my tiny bedroom helped me process what I saw in the news.

But sometimes, that’s not enough. Sometimes you just need to remind yourself of the beauty in merely existing. To turn off your brain and shake it out to George Clinton in a sea of other Black strangers who have experienced the same kind of pain, and crave the same kind of release. To soak up every drop of joy that living in The Now has to offer, because no one knows what lives in The Later. And soak it up, I did.

The Other Black Girl is out now