Black Futurism, Wynwood Walls, and WikiPortraits at SXSW
Why we love Nisi Shawl, Street Murals, and Creative Commons photographs
Hello Writing Atlas community!
We’re back to you with our third newsletter, and with it, new curations, new stories, and new travel adventures from our Writing Atlas team. This week, we’re writing to you from sunny Miami, Florida, where our intrepid explorers braved the influencers and tourists to visit the must-visit Wynwood Walls, an outdoor Instagram-friendly art installation area featuring street murals by artists from all over the world. The Wynwood Walls were created in 2009 as a conscious effort to draw more pedestrian foot traffic. Gentrification ensued (however you feel about that), and its influence bled outward to the whole neighborhood, as street art covered sidewalks and walls, and storefronts embraced zany color all around the actual museum.
Just as vibrant as these walls is our third curation which comes from Cameron Woods, who is currently an assistant in Voiceover at WME, and longtime Writing Atlas community member. Based in LA, Cameron is interested in issues of environmental justice and loves kimchi stew with pineapples in them (photo below!). He also attended Chinese school for a brief period in his childhood. Fun fact: one time he rode in a blimp, but he has very few memories of the event. Maybe he didn’t ride in that blimp. Who knows. Anyway, read below for Cameron’s thrilling, jam-packed exploration of science fiction, reparations, and the struggle for a just future.
Black People Exist in the Future! By Cameron Woods
I don’t find it surprising that it took me reading science fiction short stories to find imaginings of reparations for black people in the U.S. Don’t get me wrong, I had an absolute ball tearing through 2043: A Merman I Should Turn to Be expertly crafted by author Nisi Shawl. This story follows Darden and Katherina, a young black couple leaving life on the surface world behind to become “mers” through a government reparations program. Part of the program includes experimental surgery that alters their bodies to be able to survive underwater. The story immediately makes a reader wonder, “would I go mer?” Shawl goes crazy on the world building too. The first chapter (no spoilerino) isn’t even about the protagonists. You read text from the confirmation page as if you answered my previous question in the affirmative and decided to go mer. Every other chapter in the story is like this, a bit of information from the periphery that shapes the world our hero’s are wading through. Surprise surprise, though, not everyone is very stoked about black people getting handouts from the government, even if they do come with a set of gills. White supremacist groups are doing whatever they can to stir fear and stop this migration of African-descended peoples.
It’s easy to find the link from this story to Nalo Hopkinson’s “Clap Back”, another take on settling the racial score in America. Clap Back trades government programs in, but keeps to nanotechnology. Told from the perspective of two different black women, the main thrust of the story follows an artist named Wenda unveiling her latest work. Her piece combines the black traditional spiritual practice of Voodoo with nanotechnology. If you’re not already excited about this one, you might want to check your pulse. This artist collects racist knick knacks found in vintage stores and uses her nano-voodoo that brings these chockees to LIFE. I’ll let you read the rest, because there are some interesting twists that happen in the story.
Finally, we come to a complicated one. Zimmer Land. I wish this was in reference to Hans, but unfortunately this is a post about race. Zimmer Land, written by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, takes a wild approach to racial reckoning. No nanobots this round, but what we do get is a Theme Park where mostly white guests can visit and pay money to be put into heightened racial scenarios like terrorist threats, or confronting suspicious figures in a fake neighborhood equipped with guns that shoot rubber bullets. Let your imagination fill in some of the blanks on this one because if you’re starting to squint your eyes like “wtf” then you’re on the right track. We follow a young black man that works at this theme park, mainly in the latter situation I described. Day in and day out, he clocks in, puts on a suit that allows him to take more than a few punches and projectiles, and greets guest after guest. Guests that have paid hard earned cash to play out scenarios that usually end with them shooting our protagonist and feeling a hero. Call it a No-Escape room. Somehow-even-more-twisted-Black Mirror. BLACK Black Mirror, okay, I'll stop. I promise. It’s a wild concept. And it’s played out in a grounded way in this world. People protest this place like crazy, but our protagonist, he needs the cash. And he believes that maybe there’s a way to use this park and its twisted logic to actually get through to the people that show up and choose to “kill” him day in and day out. It also doesn’t really help that his boss is a prick who his girlfriend left him for. There’s a lot weighing on this young man’s mind.
These stories really gave me two important notions about reparations that I wish for more artists to explore. The first is that it’s a thin line between reparations and revenge. Which is it that we as black people (I’m black also if that wasn’t made clear somewhere), really want? Do we really aim for the 40 acres and a mule? Or maybe I just want my lick back! Author Kimberly Jones famously said of the 2020 uprising, “Be glad that Black people are seeking justice and not revenge.” What does this mean in 2024? What does justice really mean in a world still haunted by more than a few -isms? Can we really seek justice in a world still so disconnected from the land, that still aims to put profit over people, where a new highway seems a better call than resurrecting community spaces? Do we want to be “successful” in this kind of world?
Darden and Katherina found love, and seek opportunity with their newfound, government cheese. I feel like them quite often, desiring an escape, a chance to leave the world of the surface behind. But who’s going to follow me there? Is escape even possible? The second thing this makes me ponder is perhaps reparations truly lives only in our minds. I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to put a dollar amount on the pain and suffering of my ancestors, let alone that of my own experience as a young black man in America. Yet I clock in and clock out trying to be a good citizen and do my best to change the minds of others like the young man in Zimmer Land.
Perhaps it’s enough for me to assimilate to the system and do what I can to change it from the inside. I’ll work, maybe earn enough to retire, and put on a brave face for my children as I tell them to take it on the chin and work hard and maybe they’ll too get to participate as a worth citizen in the land of the free and home of the brave. Truthfully, I am finding more solace in Wenda’s journey. I don’t plan on doing things on any government’s terms. I am comforted by the legacy of my ancestors and the promise of what new technologies and ideas exist in my present reality. Like Wenda, I will do my best to create my own type of reparational alchemy, blending old and new to just get us somewhere different.
Cameron Woods
Writer and curator
Cameron’s Wikipedia Page to Note: Fainting goat
I first learned about Myotonia Congenita or “fainting goat syndrome” on an episode of Mythbusters I watched when I was fifteen years old. Simply put, if you scare one of these goats bad enough (Kari, the host, went so far as to flash them), they will literally short circuit and pass out. I worry about these goats very often in my every day life. I hope they’re okay :(.
Cameron’s Favorite Emoji: 🤺🤺🤺
I was a fencer for 10 years! I love that this emoji exists :) i was an epee fencer and these are sabre’s (booo) so hopefully someday we can fix this diversity issue 😛
Cameron’s Kimchi Stew With Pineapple 🍍
Adding pineapples to kimchi stew is a secret recipe learned from the good folks from Writing Atlas at Sundance. (Also known as, “What do we do with all our leftovers?”)
P.S. We were wracking our brains on the romanized spelling of “kimchi” versus “kim chee” (what was originally drafted above). With some of us having backgrounds in editing, we chased down the following style guide on … Facebook?
Cameron’s Plug for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Go watch (or hopefully) rewatch the absolutely gorgeous and exhilarating Across the Spider-Verse animated masterpiece while it’s still on Netflix (it arrived in October for U.S. subscribers). I love all the inventive ways the production team crafted and blended 2D and 3D technologies to create the final masterpiece. The creativity continues, however, as Sony has been working on new lighting techniques to enhance the color and overall look of the film in theaters and on many more films to come. Last year at a screening at the Academy Museum, they showed off a 15-minute clip of a remastered version, using these new techniques—and they somehow made an almost perfect movie, even better.
Other Items That Bring Us Joy in the Writing Atlas World
A WikiPortrait Studio at SXSW
If you know anyone going to SXSW, we are helping with a WikiPortraits Studio at 811 Congress where people can get Creative Commons-licensed photos taken for Wikipedia and Wikicommons! Our friends did something similar at Sundance, and photos can be seen here and here. More info can be found on WikiPortraits.org.
Fiocchi di Pera! Pear and Taleggio
One of our favorites pasta dishes is sold in downtown Miami at Fratelli Milano, called fiocchi di pera. It’s filled with pear, taleggio cheese, and mixed with a sage butter sauce. The little pasta purses are pillowy with a distinct flavor combo. We’ve never encountered this exact dish anywhere else. Quick searches on the Internet reveal variations, including ones with gorgonzola cheese. No visit to Miami is complete for us without getting a dish (even if takeout at a a hotel). Totally worth a stop in downtown Miami if you pass through.
And this week found three of our stuffed animals together: Hubba Bubba (a worldly hippo who now has an asking price of $225-$375 on eBay), Benjamin (a plague doctor in stuffie form, owned by the designed of the WikiPortraits logo), and Toby (a triceratops won from a claw machine by aforementioned designer).
If you’ve made it this far, thank you again for joining us on yet another weekly newsletter/adventure odyssey! We’re proud to have released our first few newsletters consistently, and happy to see the signups grow. If you would like to curate stories, or share quirky photos, foods and stuffed animals with the community, please let us know by leaving a comment or otherwise reaching out to us! As always, keep visiting our Writing Atlas homepage as we work to update it!
Sincerely,
Your Writing Atlas team