Check out more from Read Me, our queer literature column, here.
“i tell you this:” Danez Smith writes in Homie. “i let blue eyes dress me in guilt/walked around stores convinced the very skin of my palm was stolen. what good has it brought...so many white people are alive/because we know how to control ourselves.” In Homie (out January 21 from Graywolf Press), the nonbinary poet’s third collection, they remain hyper-vigilant to the scrutiny imposed upon Black queer folks in a world of unsparing whiteness. Writing through that scrutiny, however, Smith finds release and, ultimately, an undoing of shame.
Smith, the author of chapbooks [Insert] Boy and Don’t Call Us Dead (a finalist for the National Book Award in 2017), has roots in spoken word poetry, and their voice reflects the strength through which they deliver the gospel. Much of Smith’s genius is their ability to work across vernaculars; from the ancestral rhythm of spoken word to the terrain of the page, they flirt with language with ease. They gracefully juxtapose Lil Wayne lyrics (“Lost some real niggas I knew from a long time ago/But heaven or hell I’m hopin’ they be where I’mma go”) with Ilya Kamisky lyricism (“yes, each man is a tower of birds, I write my friends/into earth, into earth, into earth”), always toeing the line between a good read and a good dose of love. The world will humble you, but Homie is a testament to the capacity of tenderness to transform the human spirit into something multifaceted.
These poems also explore the space between the human and the divine — “let even my hair get wet/& rise out the water Hood Venus,” they write — and blur the line between the two. In so doing, Smith interrogates our own imperfect holiness, one we must nevertheless learn to wear with pride: Where there is Black rage, there is also Black joy, Black pain, Black ugliness, and Black prestige. Yet navigating the complexity of Blackness is but one goal of Homie. Intersecting this search are Smith’s experiences of queerness, which are inextricably linked to both care and harm as they reflect on the loss of a dear friend, a loss that gave way to the collection itself.
At its most vulnerable, Homie is a book hellbent on envisioning a world where queer Black joy exists not as a release but as a constant reality, while still recognizing the current state of affairs. Shame, for Smith, is no longer an option. “i come from sharecroppers who come from slaves who do not come from kings,” they write, “sometimes i pay the weed man before i pay the light bill.” Imperfection may be our birthright, but it is only by accepting who and where we came from that we might begin to love ourselves.
One of the great things about 2020 so far is the release of Homie. Is there anything significant about the timing?
Um… not to me! 2020 is a year that was going to happen. I’ve worn glasses since I was seven, so I guess I’ve never been concerned with 20/20 vision. I think the world has always been a mess no matter where you look throughout history. It’s always in a state of chaos, and paradise or dystopia or utopia for different folks at any given time. So I don’t think that’s something we’ve newly arrived at in 2020.
I think that it marks something for our Americanness. America was also going through a lot the last time we were in the 20s. We can remember 100 years ago, when America was entering wars, going through economic depressions, when people were still questioning who has the right to be an American — who deserves to have a lush life in this land, right? So here we are in the twenties again, and it’s like, what has America learned? The only thing that is a wink to 2020 is that the first poem in the book is called “my president.”
The book has two titles — Homie and My Nig. Why the separation? Having Homie as the primary title seems almost to cater towards the feelings of white folks.
Well, I don’t know if it is [just] white folks; for me it is any non-Black person. I think in the spectrum of who my niggas are — well, it does include a few whites — a few well-tested, tried and true ones, but there are also a lot of non-Black people of color that are loved upon. So I think the title “Homie” is sort of a stutter-step. There was another world where I was like: “I’m ‘bout to call this book My Niggas and Graywolf is going to do what the hell I say!” Then I said, “Well what does that do? Do I want to do the Nas thing and just call my album the N-word? And does that disinvite my people who are not even okay with that word?” Black folks differ about that word anyways. I don’t want the spectacle of “my nig” to be put on my book with this bright ass cover to undermine what I’m really trying to say, which is about tenderness. “Homie” to me is still a tender word. And “my nig” then is saying, “thank you all for showing up.” There’s another kind of engagement in the realm of who understands what it means to be somebody’s nig, and understand what it is to have a nig. And that’s something that I’m trying to acknowledge: there are these different levels of intimacy.
Considering your use of the words “nig,” “homie,” “boy,” and even “blood,” what does the reclamation of these words give to you? What can that reclamation mean for Black folks?
For me, the reclamation of language is straight up one of my favorite forms of power: the power to decide what your language is and what your language does. It makes me feel like a poet, it makes me feel human, it makes me feel Black [laughs]. I grew up around [the word] nigga; I don’t feel like I ever had to reclaim it. Then there are the words I feel like I grew into, like in the poem “my bitch.” To reclaim “bitch” and “faggot”? That’s a tie. That took community. That took me finding folks who made that language feel right on me. And even just finding myself more. And honestly I love that word — “faggot.” Though to be real, sometimes I feel more tension around that word in queer communities than I do with the n-word in Black communities, at least in terms of who in the community chooses to use it. But I feel like, to be a capital-F Faggot: fuck it. It hits every area of the book. In doing away with shame, it means embracing the word.
This collection seems like a giant “fuck you” to shame — the shame that is imposed on queer people, on Black people, etc. Could you explain how shame has either guided or informed your writing process?
Yaasss! I think shame is actually a common theme for me; it unites these first three books of mine. As a 30-year-old saying some things to my younger self, a little bit of shame does the body good [laughs]. Shame was a place where many of my lessons came from, and so part of the great freedom of my adult life has been doing away with shame little by little and sometimes abundantly at a time. Even when I don’t feel bright and alive… like, I want to be shamelessly depressed! I want to be shamelessly Black, gay, unapologetically neurodivergent, you know? If there is one tool people can cull from my poems, it’s that shame is one of the best unburdenings you can do. At this point, I’ve been a faggot for a real long time and I don’t know nothing else to do! It is how I’m going to get the living done.
This is an intensely spiritual collection. How has your spirituality evolved over the years leading up to your writing Homie?
I’ve always said I can locate the seed of what makes me love poetry in the church. When I was younger, I wanted to be a pastor, and I was enthralled by my childhood pastor’s sermons. And when I first saw spoken word poetry, it made sense to me, because I had grew up with church. There reached a point where I would point my gameboy down and actually listen. And it was because it was poetry. I loved the fact that this man could say a thing about another thing and my mother would just faint. Even the way I talk about God now is often the language I learned. Maybe it’s a little bit more expansive than the Christian idea, but Jesus still feels like a word to me.
In this collection you mention all of this hood knowledge, generational knowledge, new knowledge. Why do Black words matter, and why does our knowledge matter?
Okay, Imma step up onto like a hotep pedestal for a sec [laughs]. Lemme put on my hotep hat, my lil hotep shawl, you know. If human life started in Africa, then that means the first motherfucka' to think was Black. So! We are the oldest knowledge. Okay, I’m taking off my hotep hat now. On some real, Black people’s words and knowledge have always mattered throughout history. Western civilization, which likes to think of itself as the baddest bitch, would be nothing without the things and the people and the resources it stole from Africa. Nothing! Absolutely nothing. Everything that we stand upon, and the way that we have built ourselves was through Black bodies and Black minds. So we built this shit. Literally. Even through the pillaging of Africa, and the horrors committed throughout the Caribbean and Southern America, and Canada, even through all that, Black people have remained and persisted and set the standard. We are the flyest: we have written the best, sung the best, we’ve done it! We’re beautiful. You wish you could be us. We. Built. This. Shit!
Being Black is one of the best joys of my life. I can’t imagine being shit else and I don’t want to! You can be Black in this world and feel shattered and feel weathered. I know that my Black is strong. I look at Black people and I am amazed. That’s why Black words matter: we are it. This world changes when Black knowledge, queer knowledge, women’s knowledge come together and do not try to please or replicate the knowledges that have ruined the land. I think that is the hope of Homie, even though it isn’t said explicitly: that love, with a lot of other hard conversations, will call on people who need to link up and love each other and the next day will come.
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