Be Home Soon

ZENAT wears her own top, sweater and pants PH5, shoes PALOMA WOOL, jewelry JARDIM, nails ALEX SMITH 

Zenat Begum

The opening of Playground Coffee Shop coincided with the 2016 presidential election, a seismic shift in culture, but the roots and origin of my community space were always rooted in change and towards building an equitable future. This has never been a one-man show— quite the contrary, it’s been women-led—and mutual aid is the nucleus of Playground’s work.

The importance of reading and access to literacy has been paramount in our programming. Leaders within the space like FARIHA RÓISĺN, who brings about change through her poems on trauma and womanhood, fosters collective healing in our communities—especially our queer Muslim kinfolk in South Asia.

Through supporting and collaborating with NAYA SAMUEL and ASHA MAURA at music platform and direct-action group CORPUS, we’ve helped organize demonstrations and distributed thousands of PPE kits during the global pandemic. We also invited our community to join our co-led book club, Burning World, to
dive into radical texts by BIPOC writers in an act of resistance and intellectual warfare.

Playground has always had a mission to feed our at-need neighborhoods with healthy and nutritious foods to bring about food sovereignty in an urban landscape. KIA DAMON, a force in the culinary world bringing visibility to Black femme cooks, uses food to disrupt the industry’s outdated systems and invites the community along to explore her roots through taste. She has helped us educate and feed our neighborhood through our Community Dinner and Eats programs.

Our Radio station, Playground Radio, has had the distinct pleasure of working and collaborating with SIENNA FEKETE, a sonic curator, engineer and producer centering the work and perspectives of womxn of color in sound. Together, we launched an independent music platform to amplify local artists, musicians
and other creatives.

ELLE CLAY is a humorist, media host and founder of WILD CHILD NYC, a Brooklyn-based production company specializing in experimental
storytelling. Clay is dedicated to crafting and illuminating marginalized narratives.

Empowering people through digital archiving, creative technologist, LIZETTE AYALA, centers resistance work. She explores data within the internet’s infrastructure, advocating and arming marginalized communities with digital agency and literacy as tools to ensure they are not further stratified or exploited in the digital realm.

And of course, we’d be nothing without the extraordinary vision and creative eye of our dear friend and collaborator, photographer NATALIA MANTINI, who captures all her subjects with great tenderness and care.

Mathematically, the whole is equal to the sum of its parts, neither more nor less. In the same way, my work and vision at Playground would be nothing without the support of these women I’ve come to call my chosen family.

Fariha Róisín

ZENAT BEGUM— Transformative justice and transient are just some words I would use to describe the work that you do; but also physically too, coming from a different place in the world, how are you able to set these needs and desires and opportunities to help influence the work that you do?

FARIHA RÓISÍN— I have a love/hate relationship with New York, because as you know, on some level, I understand the function of this city and our global landscape, and everyone wants to be in New York. New York is an epicenter of the American mythology. This was a financial building point for the American empire, so to me, you can’t look outside of that. It is this important genesis for so much of capitalism as well, and how we engage with one another is very rooted in this landscape of New York. I think that’s beautiful and profound. All of those things from something like Metropolitan in the thirties and forties—all these films that came from New York, and even something as iconic as Friends and the motif of Washington Square—that’s how I consume New York. I think that’s how a lot of people who are not from here do—so many of us are transplants—and I think what drew us to the city is that idea, that magic, that mystery, that belief that if we can make it here, we can make it anywhere. I love all of those things about New York, and yet I contend with what that comes with it as well, which is a lack of care, concern, true community, and a lack of really wanting to be here for each other. Because that’s what you need when you’re ambitious, and yet nobody talks about that. I think what my work is attempting to fill is that space of creating an awareness and an understanding of how we start to come together. How do we start to really move with each other so that we are actively working towards the same destination? And for me, something like abolition—which is a motif that comes up a lot in my work—if we need to move towards abolition, I’m trying to think about all the roadblocks, and all the building blocks too, of actually trying to get there. Because abolition, or living peacefully with one another, just in a corny sense—actually having hope, true hope, requires so much more connectivity than I think we’re aware of.

I think I’ve really understood that my place in this world is not to make work that other people are making, but to really re-envision the work that needs to be made, and to make that work. As two Bangladeshi queer people, two people that are really trying to think about all of the intricacies of our identities and trying to merge those two as well, to me, just being who I am without any pretense is a lot of the work, as well. It’s trying to show that you can be whoever you want to be, and it doesn’t have to be this fake performative version of who you are.

ZB— My authentic self is what will heal me, as well as my community. As you mentioned, New York is one of those places where we don’t have adequate systems that help people and vulnerable folks. For someone who has resources like you and myself, but also as two Bangladeshi queers who haven’t had spaces to feel like they’ve been held, how do you advocate for those spaces, and why?

FR— I’ve been working on the internet for a really long time. I’ve been in the public eye since I was 22, when Two Brown Girls came out, and that accelerated it because it actually wasn’t really that exciting—it came with so much critique. It was really right at the beginning of the internet where, especially as a South Asian Brown person and that liminal space that identity occupies, to me, we don’t know what South Asians are. We do not know what Bangladeshis are. People are just like, ‘Right. South Asia, India. Cool.’ But there’s no nuance. And also, nobody understands what kind of exotification happens in that process of somebody trying to understand you, and trying to put you within their context—never trying to understand you within your own context. Because I had to deal with that so early on, and also I think primarily being a very, emotionally-attuned person, what that led to was a lot of silencing of myself. Being on the internet and just feeling like, ‘Okay, I can’t actually say what I need to say, or there is no space for me to actually tell my truth.’ I also think I just have the brain of a critic. I challenged myself and I questioned myself and I started to be like, ‘Wait, hang on a second. But you have a perspective, you have an opinion.’ I’m not doing it for the immediacy of fame. I’m doing it for something that’s larger and systemic and institutional. It’s about really changing the grooves and the patterns in the ways in which we engage in society. So, to me, I think nobody’s opened the door for me. I’ve literally kicked down every single fucking door that I’ve ever gone through.

ZB— The canon of your work doesn’t necessarily just affect people who are fond of you and your fans, but also the people who are in your immediate life, and even
so many other people—it gives them strength. In your practice, how do you feel like you worked with your resources and your tools to help you survive? Is it even a survival tool anymore?

FR— I feel like my work is the thing that consistently buoys me from the tide. It helps me understand the ocean and the waves and the gravity of the push and pull of life. I had a really fucked up life. I grew up in extremely difficult circumstances. I’m an incest survivor. Those things are really deep and really painful, and they’re really generational and very ancestral. What we’re both tapping into is that this is why it’s just all the more necessary, because sexual abuse and sexual exploitation happens so much in our cultures. And yet there’s this guise of Muslimness or faith being the thing that kind of protects everybody when it doesn’t protect anybody. Not from this. A lot of people write in and will be like, ‘You’re so brave.’ And I understand that it feels that way. But for me,I would die. Literally, to me, every day is not choosing to die. It really is. That’s how close it is to me at all times. I think I have the veneer of groundedness. Underneath all of that is a deep pain and deep desire to understand and locate it without trying to do what I see a lot of people doing, which is playing into the victim. I just don’t want to be like everybody else. I don’t want to just linger on the trauma. I want to move past it. I want to look at it and move through it—that’s the work. That’s the vehicle of the work. I see it as a sort of very energetic alchemy. People say that healing isn’t intellectual, and I think that when I started writing about self-care, there was no self-care column in the New York Times. Nobody knew what the fuck this shit was, and that’s been me throughout my entire life. It’s doing shit where everyone’s like, ‘What?’ And then five years later, it’s the thing. So, I think instead of being bitter about that shit, I’m naming it now. I’m like, ‘No, you don’t get to invisibilize me in this experience. You can agree or not, but I’m going to tell you what I know about myself.’ So, trying to have an intellectual discourse, which is not lingering on the pain, but really talking about how we can make this infrastructure of healing so we can all understand how to move through it. I think someone like Susan Sontag, and all the greats like Audre Lorde, June Jordan—they were all writing about pain, about illness, in ways that are really interesting and challenging, because they were talking about society, as well. And that’s what I’m really trying to tap into, that kind of lineage of writing.

ZB— We all have fears associated with pain, and I get scared sometimes because I want to be able to engage with my community but also take care of myself. Self-care is something that we’re not at all privileged to participate in. What do we do for people who are quite literally surviving just like us but don’t have resources? What is, overall, something that you think you, as a writer, want to have an impact on for people who heal through your work?

FR— Doing medicine work and sitting with Ayahuasca and being in communities where there’s so little about ego and so much about death, and having to engage with the self with, again, no pretense and no understanding of, ‘I am like this, this is my identity.’ You just simply are a person, and that has really helped me
understand that I want this work to be an act of service primarily, and I think that’s what it really is doing. It’s allowing people to build their own fortress of healing, and having a blueprint and a roadmap to do that. When Like A Bird came out last year, I talked to Zeba [Blay], and one of the things that came out was that I want that book to be a toolkit for anybody who is a survivor of rape, because when I was growing up, I didn’t have anything. I didn’t even have anything five years ago. It’s the belief that what I’m doing—the corny thing that even if it helps one person, and I know it’s helping multiple people—that’s all I could ever ask for. I see that every single time I have a book event or people write to me. I see that impact and that, to me, is really along the lines of the legacy I want to leave—of just people feeling more liberated and free and honest and aligned with their real true selves because they read my work.

ZB— I appreciate the extensive resource- sharing and building you have committed to distributing. It just makes it so much easier to know that someone like you is able to explain complexities of trauma in a profound way. But the ways that I’ve been able to heal myself, and the ways you’ve been able to heal yourself through your work is the ultimate goal. How do you think the world, has changed as a result of your work?

FR— It’s beautiful. A couple of weeks ago I went into McNally Jackson with Angela [Dimayuga] and there was the AAPI section, and within that AAPI section, there was no South Asian person that was in the pile of books. It’s a very interesting tension and negotiation of being like, ‘Okay, so clearly my impact is felt, but my work is, again, not being recognized.’ Yet, even though that’s a reality for me, simultaneously it’s like, I see it in the ways in which young people engage with my work or the screenshots that people take of How to Cure A Ghost. I mean, that to me is just still mind blowing, honestly—that people are reading these poems, they are feeling these poems, and that years later, I’m still being affected by my own poems too.

I’m extremely embarrassed by my own work. I remember Zadie Smith saying that she never reads her work from five years ago because the idea is that you’re always evolving. It’s really, really hard for me to think that I have any worthiness when all I was told as a child was that I had none. That is something I don’t think people understand that I’m really building. This is really, truthfully an honest journey of a person’s real life and trajectory towards a fulfilled life. I think that the times I feel the most seen is when somebody can identify that back to me. It’s as simple as you saying, ‘Hey, your work...’—anybody saying that is just, like... it’s lifeblood. iIt’s the kind of affirming-ness that doesn’t exist enough in society. Real, true, affirmation.

ZB— When I did my interview with Studio Ānanda [a wellness archive and arts centered project to facilitate global healing outside of the parameters of the wellness industrial complex] last year, that was one of the first interviews where I felt like someone had actually seen me and helped me navigate imposter syndrome. So, as a person with so much influence, where do you look for influence and inspiration?

FR— Studio Ānanda was created with the belief that we needed to have interesting, foundational conversations in the wellness industry. And even if it’s as simple as asking you, ‘Hey, let’s talk about imposter syndrome as you are becoming this activist.’ Your interview was really important for us because I don’t think anybody considers or questions or asks the person in the limelight, or in that moment of being seen, like, ‘What does it feel like to be doing this work?’ Nobody asked me when Like A Bird came out, ‘What does it feel like to birth a book that you’ve been writing for 18 years?’ I knew that I thought that if I was a white man and wrote that book, I would’ve probably won a Pulitzer or some shit, and that’s a real thing. But for me, I think kindness really, really motivates me and immediately inspires me, because as a child growing up in a lot of confinement—because I wasn’t allowed out— the internet became a place of safety for me and it became a place of discovery, of pushing boundaries. That is how I see myself as a thinker and as an educator. I’m just around people that are always going to inspire me.

But outside of that, the thing that makes me want to be better is, when I see true generosity and kindness in people’s hearts. That sense of vulnerability in a world that’s so dangerous and unsafe, that belief—that’s what I have. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and throughout my twenties, I felt like that was embarrassing. I felt like that was not working out for me, or like I had to dull or unbolden myself, or get hardened. But after I started doing medicine work, I actually realized that what I really need is boundaries, and what I really need is to keep the heart open. That sensitivity is what I think is so raw, and we need more of that right now—we don’t need more critique. We don’t need more canceling. We don’t need more opposition. We need people to understand one another at a very core and integral level. And that’s what I’m trying to fight for. That’s what really excites me about the future. That’s what, to me, abolition is: the belief that we, as a humanity, can actually become who we want to be. And how do we get there? That is where all the gems lie for me.

Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about the Indigenous ideology of sacred reciprocity, understanding that we are part of this network and that there is no division between the land and the people. If we understand that we owe the land so much, we understand that we owe each other so much, as well—that we owe ourselves so much. I feel that we’re in this together and it’s very rare for me to have this friendship, like the one I have with you—I don’t think I’ve ever had it with a Bangladeshi person before. We need to protect ourselves and we need to protect that heart, that core heart, and remember that that is the thing that should always drive us.

NAYA wears her own dress OTTOLINGER 

Naya Samuel

ZENAT BEGUM— In organizing with CORPUS Family, that has not only the tiers of being able to organize through a community framework, but also through music, y’all have been really integral in the ways that y’all have facilitated workshop hours for people, giving people space, but also just letting folks be within the surroundings with you guys. I think that every time I’ve gone to a CORPUS meeting, any time I’ve gone to your space, it literally comes to me that like, I’ve been missing this my whole life. My upbringing was so important to me because I realized a lot of resources that I didn’t have are the resources that I’m now putting forth for my future. So, as a New Yorker—and as a person who lives in New York—how do you perceive the cultural landscape in the city and what do you perceive as the needs and opportunities? And how does that influence the work that you do? Do you feel it necessarily fills a void?

NAYA SAMUEL— The structural inequality in this city is fucked, especially in how it disproportionately affects Black femmes. I want to be able to sound optimistic and I want to be able to sound like I know something better is coming, but when all of these different oppressions are intersecting, it’s really hard. That’s what motivates me, because I have no choice. Everything that I see happening to my sisters across the city, across the world, affects me. It affects my mental health, my spiritual health and physical health. [Last summer], watching the world care about Black people, and Black people dying suddenly was a surreal position to be in, because I wanted to know, ‘Where were all of y’all before last summer...?’ I think of the past year as a year of death. I don’t only mean that negatively, because death naturally leads to more life and rebirth and the endings of things. But in a really real way, some of us lost family out of nowhere this past year. We lost friends. Our people lost people. How do you climb out of so much death? My answer is, I don’t know. I don’t even know how to sum it up. I’m still in it.

ZB— We saw this huge flight migration of white people leaving the city to leave it to the Black and Brown people who have lived here the whole time to fend for themselves. So, who does structural inequality really affect?

NS—Us. I thought I had come to a place that was further away from the pain structural inequality causes, but the hurt is important. It’s what allowed us to keep going and keep walking in the pouring rain, during our march for Black women last summer, Uprising. The march was co-organized by a lot of really talented and smart Black women who held it the fuck down, and CORPUS Family, Playground Coffee Shop, Public Assistants, Bring Brooklyn Black and Guanabana. The time that led up to having that march is what might be considered an initial step towards healing for a lot of us. That was also when Public Assistants started, which is a Black resistance media hub that’s pro-queer, pro-trans, pro-everything, that I also do work with. They were making banners for different protests that were happening. They let us use their space as a hub for gathering, for mourning, for being together, for making signs, for arguing, for not speaking, for sitting next to each other in silence. That space became spiritual... It became everything. I was able to channel that chaotic energy of last summer with the support of my people around me, and especially my
CORPUS family, who were uplifting me. I had almost every single thing in my personal life go completely left, so to have a carved out space and to know what we were working towards was everything—that we were working towards this day and this day is going to do this. Even in the creation of that day, to be so specific with the guidelines, and how white people should be acting in that space, should they choose to be a part of that space, was so freeing. The performers, the speakers, the survivors who spoke... It was amazing. It’s a weird thing to talk about individually because it is such a labor of love for so many Black women and so many organizing groups who were involved.

ZB— Last year, when we had that preliminary meeting at Public Assistants, it was my first time being introduced to all of those individuals doing the work. So, in terms of collective organizing, what do you think is important and crucial? And how do you hold accountability in that community when you are all coming together?

NS— We definitely look at revolutionary, non-hierarchical models in our daily work with CORPUS Family. We try to reflect that in everything—and even in the community guidelines that we’ve made for different events and initiatives—it’s the only way we can approach it. Me and my friends, we live, work and hang out together. It can be really heavy work, communicating and checking in on your people personally, like, ‘Are we weird right now?’ Just me and you, because we can’t really do genuine things if we’re not solid at the base. And before all that, individually you have to be solid on your own or you can’t do anything. If you don’t love yourself right now, that’s okay, because it can be really hard to love yourself. Especially if the world is telling you not to. I don’t judge anyone who doesn’t feel that way. I get it. But do listen to and try to check that voice and know that it’s not a sustainable model for survival. You have more work to do.

ZB— It’s all connected. And I think that’s the most important part: that when you’re able to recognize grievances in your own community and within yourself, you’re able to heal yourself, right? Healing is such an interesting word and a dichotomy—like, who gets to heal and who gets to afford to heal? CORPUS piloted a residency program to be able to lend services to artists. And I think this is what we’re talking about—resource distribution is, ‘Whatever you need, I got you.’ And that’s why we started the Burning World Book Club in conjunction with Playground Annex—the impact is insurmountable. To genuinely participate in non-academic discourse, we started educating ourselves in non-traditional ways. What do you feel you would love to see more of? And obviously this is an educational and a collective reading approach to our community. So, why do you think it’s important to learn together, deconstruct perspectives and think critically?

NS— I love to be able to talk about something else. When it’s a fiction book, something that’s not real, not this world—that’s my favorite, that’s a release. Like when we read My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola—that was my favorite because it was just an unreal kind of world. At the same time, it was engaging with the spirit world, and our histories, and that is a completely real part of my own Trinidadian culture. Our spirits are completely real and present. I really appreciate having that space because I also don’t know that I would be reading this many books, and definitely not with my extended community. I love reading and I read, but I don’t think I would read this much. I think you get some of the best ideas, and you get to some of the furthest places when you think, ‘How am I going to facilitate a conversation about this? I know this just blew my whole shit up, but how am I going to give it up to other people and still let them come to their own place, but also be like, ‘But y’all, wasn’t this crazy?’’ And I think of that dichotomy in community and in organizing spaces—that feeling of, ‘Okay, how do we do the thing that we want to do? How do we reach the goal that we have, and also make sure that all of the voices in this space are heard, but most importantly, the most quieted and
overlooked voices?’

ZB— The Burning World Book Club has held me accountable to read, which is an act of liberation, but we also know reading comes with a lot of academic hurdles, as if we need certain qualifications to be seen as legitimate.

NS— Why do we doubt ourselves so much? I mean, it’s a question that answers itself. I know why I can doubt myself so much. The world has told me I should, treated me as such, and paid me as such. I was talking to my dad on the phone, and I’ve been so stressed about money. He doesn’t even know all this, he just heard my voice and he was like, ‘Whatever it is, whatever it is that’s heavy on you right now, try to release it, because it doesn’t serve you to let it just weigh.’ He was like, ‘I don’t know, just don’t let it get you, whatever it is.’ How did he know? He knows because he knows! And maybe those are the spaces that we create, and that’s how we hold each other, when we do come together and gather and read or organize. That’s how I feel with my CORPUS Family, my Public Assistants family, my family family.—spaces where we can just be goofy and stupid and get shit done, and take each other seriously, and look each other in the eyes and tell each other how we are making each other feel, and hopefully make each other feel really, really good. And when we don’t make each other feel really good, to be able to be in that moment and then move. Because we love each other and that’s all we have. Working together to build and change models and structures so that they serve us— especially Black femmes, because we have no choice. We can identify the bullshit very quickly. We have a radar, and it’s all very easy to clock. It’s a built-in super power that I have, that my mother and all my aunties and sisters have. It can be heavy, but I’m just grateful for that power. I’m grateful for my family, and for my ancestors, recent and long gone, who keep me covered. I feel like, with that much power— you can try every single day, but ultimately, you can’t touch me. I’m covered. You can’t touch me.

ASHA wears her own dress JACQUEMUS 

Asha Maura

ZENAT BEGUM— As an artist manager, you are constantly changing the narrative of your industry, and as a woman, you are challenging corporate structures to ensure the best experience for your client community and creative colleagues. How do you discern and identify worthwhile opportunities in this adapting landscape? How does that influence your work?

ASHA MAURA— I mean, the cultural landscape of New York has always been amazing—that’s what makes it New York, and that’s what makes it so desired. My family is from here, I was born in the Bronx, but I grew up in Las Vegas. Our family moved back seven years ago, and it really feels like we’re home. So, I feel like I have a bit of a different perception of it than people that are from here. And I felt like coming in, it was really important to listen to the people that are from here. If I wanted to be involved at all in any sort of cultural movement, it had to be about the people that are from here. So, I think after this year, it’s been really interesting to see who stayed committed to the movement of the culture of New York and what that really meant. The city shifted from being a ‘cool’ cultural hub of parties and scenes, to being a place that was even more difficult to comfortably and safely live. It had nothing to do with being cool anymore—it became about taking care of each other.

ZB— So, how do you navigate that? In conversations with you, I have learned that out of fear-based anxiety comes essential navigation tools in order to thoughtfully maneuver in our kind of work. How do you feel now about the spaces that you have been a part of? How do you prioritize safety and work towards creating safe spaces?

AM— I’m going on nine years working with all different types of artists and being on the road. I’m 28 now, so when I started I was a kid, but I was firm in my beliefs that I’m going to do it and I will be heard. Being a young woman in the room, I was often confronted with pushback and pressure. So, I just want other young women to feel like they can say what the they have to say and be listened to by a room full of men, or be completely put on a platform by a hardcore group of three boys, three men. It’s really empowering to show that there’s different people and different ways of going about things and that that can be right. You don’t have to do it the way other people tell you to do it, or the way that the industry tells you to do it. You can do it your way, and it might take longer, and you might not get all the lit sponsorships and stuff like that, but you feel better about it in the end.

ZB— How do you deal with people not necessarily giving you the space to be creative or be at your best in terms of your creative capacity?

AM— At this point, I just refuse to deal with it or even care anymore. It’s draining to consistently be told no, considering the time, labor, energy and effort that we’ve put into this. You just have to keep going, you have to keep pushing to do the work your way, despite the obstacles that arise. It always takes a long time. When I was
young, I had an internship as a photographer and it turned into my first job. They told me that a business takes at least five years to become successful. In anything that you do, just give it time. Give it five years. So, I’ve lived with that my whole career, thinking like, ‘Oh, I still have three more years that I have to put in,’ or like, ‘Oh, it’s too new. It’s too soon.’ And I think that anything good takes a long time, and takes a lot of effort. So, I would just tell people to work hard for a long time, even if you’re tired.

ZB— How do you think CORPUS has become stronger through its impact and mission?

AM— When I came in, our crew was a bunch of boys and that was cool, but it had the potential to be more than just a crew of kids hanging out. We could come together and do something, like make music, instead of just getting into trouble. The idea of working in a collective and a thriving creative space with a group of people was empowering—I knew I wouldn’t be able to find joy in working alone. As friends, it became so important to identify all of our individual voices within our team and extend that voice to advocating for our respective communities. Everyone is so different—we’re all from a variety of backgrounds and places—so when we come together as a team, it’s created this incredible world of people and a great dynamic. The most fulfilling thing about being in CORPUS is watching everyone work together to build something that is so beautiful and so open to all these perspectives and ideas. And, you know, we get into a lot of fights because we’re always like, ‘It has to be like this,’ or ‘It should be like this,’ or ‘It should be like that,’ but I think that’s amazing. Conflict is important for resolution and it gets us to such a stronger place where we’ve talked about it all by the time we bring it to anybody else. So, I just love everybody.

ZB— We shouldn’t regard presenting grievances as an issue or problem. It’s more just about, ‘Okay, how do we work past this and grow as creative partners?’ Communication is so important and a key aspect in how spaces function healthily. If you’re not using your words to describe how you’re feeling, or outlining necessary emotional and professional boundaries, then you’re not effectively using the full scope of your voice to have the best impact on the culture you’re trying to create. I always bring it back to thisbecause it’s so true: women are spiritual healers and caretakers. Whether or not you have the privilege of discourse or the language to even talk about it, the experience alone is so healing, but it also preserves a story in this narrative. And I feel like there is a synthesis of programming between CORPUS and Playground, in terms of addressing the many issues affecting our communities. What or who are your biggest inspirations and influences? What do you hope to offer to future generations of women who want to be in the same field as you?

AM— I’ve always had such a hard time with questions like this because I’m just such a do-er. So, experientially speaking, I’ve learned to advocate and utilize resources to uplift other people. I am very aware of my privilege, where I stand in the world, and how people might perceive me. So, I’m always going to use that privilege to uplift my brothers and sisters that may not have that accessibility.

ZB— Right, radical acts of kindness—it doesn’t always look like joining marches on the street. It can be just as radical to uplift your friends and create these cycles of care. Like supporting friends on Bandcamp Fridays, or when we were at the height of the pandemic, distributing stimulus checks amongst us so we could all ensure our survival in a kind of grassroots mutual aid way. It’s about requited love, and it’s essential to highlight the ways in which our community has integrated these behaviors into our work. As companies ‘pivot’ to performative ‘diversity and inclusion’ practices, they often miss the mark on hiring opportunities. They chronically fail and refuse to hire BIPOC people, when it’s really not that hard. So, we often become the best examples of how hiring structures can genuinely be more inclusive and forward-thinking.

AM— If this is our community, and we talk about how much we love them, we have to support them in other ways, and we have to figure out what that looks like. It could be the ‘smallest’ thing, like using our platform to support independent, local artists, or making sure that there’s as many women and femmes on the lineup, as there are men at every show. These small actions that we’re doing behind the scenes can be instrumental to supporting someone’s career and wellbeing.

KIA wears her own top GANNI, skirt PH5

Kia Damon

ZENAT BEGUM— As a former Florida resident and a new New Yorker, your perception of food is quite complex. I think about how different New York would have looked if you weren’t here these last few years, and I honor that very much, because I know it’s been a challenge. Now that we can look back and reflect on our pre-pandemic lives, how do you now perceive the evolution of the cultural landscape of New York?

KIA DAMON— Everything was super fast and without sustenance, and now everything around me feels so much more intentional. With my mental health and COVID-19, all of that, of course, has been really difficult. But it feels like everything in the world, and in our cultural landscape in New York, feels much more constructive because we kind of collectively realized that this shit means nothing.

Globally, we experienced a pandemic together... I feel like if you’re not changed by that, then I don’t know, I don’t see it for you. And then with the food world, I see more people saying ‘Fuck it,’ really, and just stepping into their own power— whether that’s with community pop-ups, feeding their friends, having romantic picnics, or maybe opening their own restaurants and re-imagining a new culture of food. It’s really beautiful. I don’t know if this sounds silly, but in New York years, I feel like I’m old now. I don’t have to overextend myself anymore to merely survive. That was a difficult time I was living in, and it made sense for that world. But now, as I take a step back, I can prioritize more community-oriented aspects of food and cooking. I can also pass off opportunities to chefs who amplify radical structures that are so necessary in this climate.

ZB— Finding yourself and voice in this revolution is sacred. Coming to New York and becoming the head of a restaurant in Chinatown is no easy feat. You’re a chef but also a storyteller communicating your narrative about culinary survival. How do you engage people through your story?

KD— I think it’s important, because when I was in my late teens to early twenties, I was looking for a story like mine. I was looking for validation of my dreams and goals. Once I did thorough research to track down people to look up to, I was able to discover so many Black women in food—past and present—and especially within food activism and community-rooted movements, like cooking to sustain protesters. That isn’t necessarily new, but I just feel like with my particular story and what I’m trying to say, that there could always be more of this. There could be more stories, more publicly accessible anecdotes and figures—not just ones that I have to go hunting for deep in the archives. There should be more stories about Black, queer, femme women who are self-taught cooks paving their own way and doing it on their terms. It’s important to tell my story so that it can be heard by other Black women and not something they have to go searching for. There is no shortage of inspiration for white people. But Black women have to go looking for representation. There are people who write whole books and spend years identifying people of color throughout history who were underrated icons in their field. I want to add to those stories so that we can have a surplus of information—so that young Black women don’t have to search so hard to find people to look up to in this century. So that they will see plenty of examples of people that look like them actively doing this work right now—and not a handful of rare cases from 50 or 100 years ago.

I don’t take my platform for granted. I don’t take my story for granted. It truly humbles me when people reach out to tell me that my story has helped them in some way, that they want to work with me, or they’re inspired by my journey. But also, at the end of the day, I’m human, and it can be scary to see myself from the other side as someone to be put on a pedestal. With my story, I also try to be transparent around my mental health, about the struggles I’ve dealt with, about the low moments that weren’t as cute, or times where I felt I really couldn’t deliver, you know? And there’s a lot of pressure, because people expect a certain output from me. There’s a lack of grace when it comes to treating Black women who are visible and in leadership positions— that’s a heavy crown to wear. But I know that I’m doing it for a reason, and if that ultimately leads to other people realizing that they can do it too, then it’s totally worth it to me.

ZB— In grounding ourselves, our stories become more intentional, especially when you are on a pedestal at the behest of others. However, learning to shift and pivot is also important for survival. Speaking on your experience managing restaurants, to being a head chef, to now spearheading your own non-profit coworking space, why do you think New York needs a program like Kia Feeds The People?

KD— People are fucking hungry, to be frank. People are fucking hungry. They needed sustenance then, they need it now, and they’ll always need it. Hunger is an ongoing system of abuse, and I feel like advocating for mutual aid and food distribution is no longer as stigmatized or seen as negatively radical. People are now like, ‘Oh, that’s so radical. Wow, free food?’ I mean, look at Oakland and the Black Panther Party with their free lunch program—how the FBI went through such great lengths to erase them, confiscating food meant for children and pissing on it. So, I think now it feels much more collaborative—there’s more support and solidarity with this movement. You know like when people adopt dogs and they say, ‘Who saved who, am I right?’ I feel just like that about Kia Feeds The People, because as much as it’s something that New York needs because people always need it, I feel like it was also something that I needed to do. It keeps me centered. It brings me back to the root of why I love food, why I love cooking, and why I love the hospitality industry—because it is an industry in service to others. And my mother raised me as such, to be in service to others—and not in a demeaning way like Black people or Black women have historically been pushed into—but in a way that fulfills me to know that I’m making an impact on somebody’s life. Humanizing people and seeing them with dignity and integrity in order to de-stigmatize food or housing insecurity. I hate that people have been conditioned to think of hunger as something shameful. And this judgement goes all the way back to school lunches, where if you didn’t have money on your lunch card—why the fuck are we even paying money to eat at school?—they would publicly take away your lunch in front of your peers and give you, like, a cold cheese sandwich. It’s degrading and dehumanizing for a child.

During the pandemic, I remember being asked to cook for people, cook on IG Live, cook for an event, entertain people—people who have never had to think about hunger, never had to think about how they will buy groceries, who go about their lives and never even have to cook at home if they don’t feel like it. And now I have to entertain said folks that have never used their kitchen before, or they’re devastated by not being able to dine out at restaurants anymore. And I’m like, ‘What the fuck?’ Like, this isn’t what I worked so hard for. I didn’t do it to entertain people. Like, I’m not a monkey, I’m not a performer. What about the service workers who are depending on restaurant tips and family meals as their one substantial meal for the day? Or mothers and parents whose kids can’t go to school and that’s how their kids eat? I had to think about my life and identity as a chef, and I was like, without restaurants, without gigs, who am I? What am I doing? And if you can’t cook unless you’re cooking for wealthy or affluent circles, or in nightlife scenes or whatever, then you have to really reevaluate where the root of your desire to be in service comes from—is it in service to yourself? Is it in service of awards? Or is it in service of people—real people—who need to eat and don’t give a damn about a restaurant? New York is a very difficult place to survive, but also a very rewarding place, so I think doing the KFTP project here in New York, it did something great for my mind and my spirit. I feel so honored to be able to do this work as a transplant in New York. I want to earn my keep.

ZB— And now we’re trying to think about how to properly take care of ourselves before we take care of others. What does that look like for you? How do you make time for yourself other than resting on your couch right now with your new kitten?

KD— I practice saying no a lot. I learned how to say no to myself first, so that I can easily say no to other people. Like ‘Kia, you’re not going to take on this job. No, Kia, you can’t,’ you know? So, I became more comfortable saying it out loud. I also like to turn my phone off a lot. As someone who is very visible on the internet and social media, that can make people assume that you’re easily accessible. But that’s not the case, so I turn my phone off. I love airplane mode. I love a do-not-disturb mode. I just cut contact off because if I don’t, I struggle with my boundaries around not responding to everything. I try to have peaceful mornings where I will go maybe, like, two to three hours without speaking if I don’t have to. I’ll pay attention to my cats, I’ll move slowly, I’ll come back inside of myself. For Black and Brown femmes especially, there are a lot of entitled opinions from external people projected onto us that creates internalized doubts about what we’re doing, or how we
should be acting. There’s so much pressure displaced onto us and it’s hard not to get sucked into that, because it’s ingrained in me to give until I don’t have to bend. But it’s like, for what? For people who won’t do the same—and not that they don’t care about me, but because they value themselves and want to take care of themselves. So, why should I not do the same?

I also try to work smarter, not harder. I only have this one body, and I want this body to feel joy and pleasure. That is an incredibly radical thing. I want to have peace in my body, I want to not be so out of it and unbalanced that I’m eating like shit. That’s me being outside of my body, not honoring this being that I’m given. If I don’t pay attention to my needs and put that into practice, the work will stop. One day, either physically or mentally, I will not be able to do it any more. So, I try to be very aggressive about that in my mind, and even say it out loud sometimes even if it’s dramatic, because it’s true. This world will take you out if you check out. And I do understand needing to check out—mental health, I get it. But I do really try to persevere in a world that’s constantly like: work and die, be of service and die, or just kill me for being Black, or beat me up for being a woman or a femme or for being queer—all these ways that I could go out, I really try to at least be kind to myself and give myself the space to thrive.

Sienna Fekete

ZENAT BEGUM— This last year has been difficult to process for many because New York is still kind of operating at a fraction of its former self. New York sadly became a place that a lot of people with no real roots here didn’t want to be in anymore. And that created a sense of frustration within our community, because we knew New York wasn’t ‘dead.’ It was just that a lot of opportunists who came here pre-pandemic didn’t necessarily know what to make of it anymore when the city wasn’t serving them financially. New Yorkers are not people who just live here—we’re people who have an impact here. Although our stories constantly go underrepresented or unseen, our experiences define New York. The creative landscape of New York has consistently been challenged. How do you see the culture of the city now?

SIENNA FEKETE— You’re not wrong that a lot of people have left, but those who stayed are really about it. It’s saddening how so many businesses have closed, and it will be interesting to see in this next chapter what is going to change... What places are going to be open? What will come about in direct response to what the community needs now? Whether that’s more grocery stores or whatever that looks like for the city, I hope to see more of it. On principle, I always support friends’ businesses, like Playground and Sincerely, Tommy. We have to examine what is in our immediate orbit and how we can put our money to good use in our community. We’re all at a point of ‘Fuck capitalism,’ and are reflecting on how we work, how we make our money, and what we invest in. I’m seeing this play out in the energy of this New York summer. It’s absolutely so palpable. You see nutcrackers on the street, people out in Fort Greene Park and parties are happening again. I feel like the sacred New York spirit is back. People are smiling and dancing, and that brings me a lot of joy to see.

ZB— A lot of collective organizing lacks intentionality, and that’s why I love the work that you do, individually and with CHROMA, because you are a storyteller and your medium is very near and dear to my heart. I started in radio right after college, and while I was at 8Ball, you were at Know Wave. These spaces were not necessarily made for us, but they helped us see the groundwork needed to establish our future radical practices. You have a platform that engages and empowers Brown and Black femmes. Fighting against institutions is not what we’re trying to do—we just need to be seen and that means advocating for ourselves. What are the stories that you hope to tell, and being alongside so many New Yorkers, why do you think your stories are important to retell? What’s the significance and purpose of documenting these experiences?

SF— There has been a surge in internet radio and podcasts. Given the circumstances of last year, people are recording remotely from their apartments and closets as a form of creative expression. However, my form of storytelling has manifested itself in an alternative way this past year. I submitted my project, the Community Cookbook, to my graduate program with support from my friends, Rin [Kim Ni] and Lizette [Ayala], who helped me actualize the project from a Google Doc into a physical resource. It became a tool that I, as a new chef, would use to share and learn recipes and anecdotes from my peers. The familial, cultural and ancestral anthological process of this project created closeness with people, despite not sharing physical space during isolated periods.

ZB— The Community Cookbook is beautifully woven like a quilt, composed of friends’ illustrations, writings and creative crafts. Similarly, CHROMA functions within this structure of community building. How do women get involved in these types of day to day processes of creating and amplifying our voices, in a space that still suppresses us?

SF— Yeah, CHROMA is a huge part of my coming of age in New York and getting to know myself and learn about my creativity. Meeting Ladin [Awad] and June [Canedo de Souza], it just happened so organically—Ladin and I met at The New School, June I met a bit later. CHROMA is a space to connect, collaborate, network and facilitate projects to our liking and discretion. Whether it’s archival work or a Climate Crisis Incubator, we intend to meet at the intersection of radical work by Black and Brown Femmes.

ZB— There must have been a synthesis of ideology for you guys to create CHROMA, a collaborative language that you were like, ‘CHROMA is going to fill a void, this platform is going to achieve this by...’ But what were the challenges of creating CHROMA and solidifying those ideas?

SF— I have learned so many skills about financial literacy and production from Ladin and June. Collective organizing has served as a learning tool for adulthood, knowing how to work, communicate, disagree and create solutions in order to learn from those I am in scholarship and business with.

ZB— In communion is where we learn the most about ourselves. That is what shapes our entire view of creating the spaces that we do, because we want to be able to be influenced, but also to have influence, right? And I always bring it back to our educators, teachers, mentors—the people who inspire us—and Sienna, you have a mother who is an artist by trade. How do you think having an artist mother has shaped your experience of being a creative yourself and telling the stories of other artists?

SF— I was raised by a single mother who’s a dancer and naturally very creative. I was traveling a lot as a kid—we would be in Paris, Senegal, Scotland, Portugal—it was very much just part of my life, being part of the dance troupe. My mom’s best friend, my god-mom, Jawole [Willa Jo Zollar], has a historic Black, African and modern dance company called Urban Bush Women. Getting to witness their world as choreographers, as creators, as Black women who are in leadership roles in creative spheres really planted a seed in me like, ‘I’m ready to step into this power.’ They’ve been such positive role models for me in wanting to embrace the arts, to be a leader in supporting my community—and to always make room for dancing.

ZB— That’s why I love collaborating with you and working with you. It’s a complete honor to be able to have you in my life and to think about how much joy you’ve brought into other spaces. You are advocating for a world that doesn’t exist, and I’m sure one day when we get what we are trying to make, we’re going to be like, ‘Hey, remember when we didn’t have all these things and now we do?’ What does the future of curating and producing look like for you?

SF— Better leadership. And when I say that, I mean women of color in positions of power who are able to make big scale change—‘big boss moves.’ More community spaces, film centers, radio programming, hopefully all publicly-funded so people can access them at their creative disposal. I feel hopeful about the future. Especially from what I hear in my conversations with Gen Z-ers on my block and my neighbor Penny, who is in her eighties. Encouraging intergenerational dialogue allows us to continue to learn from each other. We can’t lose that sense of courage and our passion to try new things. I, myself, have to practice that and remind myself every day to get out of my comfort zone. But also, it’s okay to fail because you’ll always learn from that experience and be empowered to move forward to other opportunities with confidence.

Elle Clay

ZENAT BEGUM— As a producer of many projects and an integral force behind many of the amazing things that have come about in the last five years of my life, I want to share this space with you. And as a person who’s now living in a different city, 3,000 miles away on the opposite side of the country, how do you perceive the current cultural environment in New York?

ELLE CLAY— You like to say a lot about me, but our relationship has also given me a lot as well. And really just been important and essential to how I create, how I think and how I consider I don’t know, I guess clout, for lack of a better word; or work rooted in social media. A lot of what I’m seeing from New York to LA, or even
Atlanta, is that people are getting to the root of things—to the real, true motivations of what they want. And I think that’s why a lot of people have decided to pivot in their careers. I’ve had a lot of conversations, specifically with women, about pursuing their passions. So, that is what I’m seeing. And also at the same time, them forming the work lends motivation to a lot of the things that I’m doing too.

ZB— Essentially, it becomes our survival. And I want to make sure that my work is very rooted in that, because Playground saved my life. You have created some great, successful podcasts, whether through Sports Bra, or the 306 LATE series—which are actually some of the ways that I met you—and those projects are very DIY. A lot of your work is rooted in multimedia and has been presented in many different mediums. What challenges do you face in being able to express yourself through media?

EC— I guess this really started, or where there is a trail—or receipts, as people call it now—in audio. And I think that audio work was something that didn’t feel so cumbersome, like camerawork. I didn’t feel as drawn to using a camera as far as being a photographer or videographer, DP or director. Audio is something for me that I can control with my voice, and figuring out how to control that device was really easy, but also, I wanted to talk to people anyway. So, the microphone literally led me to the people. I used to be running around Downtown with a recorder, talking to people and interviewing them. And that was easy because it was, between the
process and the finished product, such a short turnaround. The chain of command was really intimate because it was just me, the recorder and my longtime friend as the engineer. So, it felt like something I could handle and consistently turn out.

I also never really wanted to work in audio. I think audio drives me as far as being a space for oration and storytelling, which is something I’m really motivated by—sharing stories. But I never really wanted to be a podcaster—it was something I fell into that made sense at the time, and it felt manageable and accessible. But initially, podcasting and starting Sports Bra really was very haphazard. I think I actually lied on the first contract I got. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got a podcast company!’ I had done maybe two episodes of Sports Bra and I met someone and they were like, ‘We’re looking for someone to produce this thing,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I have a company.’ I did not have a company. So, I had to scramble to form one and get a logo and a letterhead to pitch and get this contract. But I did it, and it was really amazing and challenging. As I decided I wanted to professionally share stories and devote time to storytelling, I let myself be led by the potential of story to communicate. And however it came to me, that’s just how I wanted to share it. When I met you, I had an animated series online, I was reading in your shop, and I think, honestly, meeting you watered that plant a little bit. Because when I saw you, I literally saw a story. I walked into your shop, saw you, your sisters and your dad, and I was like, ‘Ain’t nobody else seeing this? This is a sitcom!’ Like, three Brown sisters, first gen Bangladeshi- Americans running a coffee shop—it’s a perfect story. So I think, how I was working on something when I met you—it’s almost like A&R, which is about recognizing talent, or scouts recognizing ballers—I was literally guided by the story. So, when I encountered a story, I stopped and put my other story on hold. I really just tell stories for myself, honestly.

ZB— Do you feel like your message is received?

EC— When I started my Sports Bra podcast— nobody really acknowledged the possibilities that exist at the intersection of sports and sport culture. There were all these basketball pages about like throwback hoops, and all of these pages celebrating old bygone basketball legends. There were all these young women starting to play basketball. So, I do think that my work has helped change that space for the better; it’s gotten to a point where there are so many women in leagues and with opportunities that I didn’t feel like I needed to be in that space anymore. I do think Sports Bra in part helped to give women a space to shine, and once I helped open that door, I’ve been able to talk to all these women who are in the WNBA. I always thought women who played basketball were so cool.

ZB— You recently produced an animated short film called Mornings With My Good Sis Blackbird, a story that emerged as a conversation that you had with a blackbird in your mother’s backyard a few days after George Floyd was murdered. How did this animated short become a vehicle to deliver your sentiments?

EC— I think with Mornings With My Good Sis Blackbird, it really was just a response. After George Floyd, I saw across my friend groups, everybody really trying to scramble to figure out what they could do and figure out how to do it. We already had a lot of energy because of COVID, being in lockdown and being quarantined. People then started protesting and it was like, ‘Well, if you’re not comfortable or feel safe protesting, how do we protest in other ways? What are the different methods of resistance?’ I’m not a person who is typically outspoken in the traditional sense of using my platform to promote information—that’s just not who I am. Everybody had this collective response—it was just all these things happening that made it feel like we were being taken back in time.

That day I went outside of my mom’s house, I was having coffee, and this bird came up to the tree. This bird was going crazy, it was a blackbird, and it was just like, metaphorically as Black living species, there was an immense sadness across the board. I was like, ‘Well, even the Black animals are sad, even the Black bird is upset.’ There was like an eye to eye moment, and I took that sadness to my collaborators. I took that to my sister and rapper, Rah Rah Gabor, and I took that to my brother Hassan, who is a producer. I took it to Mike McGraw, my animator. And as four Black people, we all wanted to do something. We all wanted to say something. And
we all brought our energies and our collective sadness, or melancholy, confusion, hurt, pain, sorrow—we all brought it to this project. It’s just a real, visceral reaction. And that’s not something I planned to do, because that’s not really how I express myself, but Blackbird was just like a pure expression of how I was feeling in that moment, and how I continue to feel. Black death hasn’t stopped at the hands of the state, and the world is still experiencing a monumental level of crises. So, that’s what we explored in the animated short.

ZB— Often I forget to pour back into myself? So what is something that you feel is important to say to future generations that want to dive into similar work?

EC— I grew up playing basketball. I played from when I was small until I graduated from high school, so I’m used to being a teammate. I used to want to collaborate with anyone, but I think as you get older, you understand that chemistry really is a big part of collaborating and creating. So, in the last few years, I’m always down to facilitate and help almost anyone I know who I can tell has good intentions. But I think when it comes to a real collaborator, and somebody who I want to work with on a regular basis, and see and grow together, it’s important to make sure that the people you work with, are aligned with you in a lot of ways. You gotta be aligned,
understand the common goal, and also be open and transparent about your capacity to constructively contribute to a project. Make sure you get registered, trademarked, all those things, and just value yourself more than anything—value yourself and don’t give up so willingly, because people will try to take advantage of you and your mind and what you can create. We literally are seeing that with the TikTok protestors—the Black creators on TikTok who are currently protesting because people aren’t crediting them and their work. Protect your energy, spirit and most importantly, yourself. Don’t be scared to say no if something doesn’t feel right to you. Follow your intuition. Be really bold.

ZB— What is the legacy you want to leave behind?

EC— I have a lot of family. I have a lot of nieces and nephews, and I want to leave behind a desire for curiosity. I come from a small town, and even with technology, there’s still kind of this invisible ceiling, where people either don’t aspire to think beyond what’s there or to leave and explore other environments. So, I think in the hearts of my nieces and nephews, I want to leave them with curiosity and interest. I want them to have curious minds and to question things, because that’s how you learn and that’s how you grow in the world. I had a real vision. And I think that’ll be displayed within the work that I leave behind— whether it’s an animated series, a short film, feature film, a sitcom, a nut milk ice cream I’m working on, or organizations I have been aligned with. I want to leave behind a body of work that people can see themselves in. Where they can see that, ‘She was always herself—her authentic self.’ I know my kindergarten teacher who works with my oldest sister in Alabama, she’s a librarian now—but if I went to my kindergarten teacher, I’d want her to say, ‘Oh you haven’t changed.’ I’ve always been myself, because I think there’s also a playfulness and a spirit from childhood that you should carry with you into adulthood as a light that doesn’t burn out. ‘Elle was always herself.’

Lizette Ayala

ZENAT BEGUM— This year was difficult for obvious reasons, but also, it brought forth so many structural inequalities, racial inequalities, and this is something that I feel like we are combating in our work. As a person who is rather new to this city, how do you perceive the cultural landscape of New York?

LIZETTE AYALA— I was born and raised in the deep south, in Dallas, Texas—you know, always triple D! So, I think I come from that perspective, and coming to New York, sometimes I realize that people up north have a very distinct version of the south in their heads. I find a lot of times that I have to combat that, because I was born there. Of course, there are some of the things about the south that people think are true, and to a certain extent they are, but the south is so much more than that in terms of creativity and culture and food and experiences; but I think sometimes people forget that and it gets overshadowed. I think there are a lot of people who are coming from the south up here and really trying to make their mark in different places, and really spinning what we were brought up on and bringing it to New York and trying to meld that. So, that’s always been something that’s been super important to me: bringing that aspect of my community to New York.

ZB— There isn’t this pipeline of advocacy for people who’ve moved for different reasons to the city. I think about a lot of the time how our mediums have changed in trying to tell those stories. So, how does your medium engage in those kinds of behavioral, systematic needs?

LA— Honestly, when I first got to New York, I came to Parsons—that’s where I went to school. I actually was not doing what I’m doing now, I was just doing communication design, and I took a wearables class where I was like, ‘Oh my God, this shit is intense. I love it.’ I just kind of dove head first into it. In those foundational classes, I saw a lot of that divide. I had a lot of white teachers, a lot of male teachers, and I think I was bringing concepts to the table that they didn’t necessarily understand, and they didn’t really know how to guide me on. So, I kind of was just like, ‘Okay, I’m going to do what I’m doing for me and for people that look like me, and I’m just going to do what I want within it.’ Something really big is, I didn’t really see a lot of people that looked like me or looked like you in those rooms, and so I was like, ‘No, I think we deserve space here and we deserve to take up space here, so I’m going to do it, because I don’t see anybody else doing it, and it has to start somewhere.’ So, I think that’s really where I come from— not seeing a lot of myself in those rooms and wanting to open up space for not only myself,
but for people like us and people who don’t really get a lot of say in those spaces. There’s a lot of levels to it. A lot of it is very racist, but it’s technology, so it’s not racist in a way that’s right in your face. It’s structural, so it’s embedded. It’s written into the very laws and DNA.

I first got interested in the internet specifically and how that is just allocated to you based on the money that you have and the neighborhood that you live in. I was like, ‘Damn, this shit is really racist,’ and then I opened it up to a bunch of stuff like algorithms and policing. When I really dove into that. I was like, ‘Wow,’ because I think all of the inequalities that we see in the physical world are amplified in the digital world without people knowing it, because not everyone knows how to go about AI or something, and you don’t need to. You really shouldn’t have to. But you also shouldn’t be worried about yourself in those spaces. So, I think that was one place that I came from—realizing that it’s dangerous, in a way. I think a lot of people don’t know any better, and they don’t know any better because they don’t have access to any of it. That’s really the standpoint that I came to when I was like, ‘I want to share my knowledge with people, and I also want to open up spaces for people to be able to build things and feel comfortable in this space.’
 

ZB— Yeah. I also think digital spaces are an extension of physical spaces, right? Like, we created this digital realm because there are hurdles such as land acquisition, being able to pay rent—monetary things that are kind of standing in the way of being able to gather in a space. In creating these spaces, we are essentially able to fill the gap in resource distribution. What are your inspirations in creating Solace, your digital healing network, and what are your hopes with the platform?

LA— My inspirations are really through my experiences. Growing up, I witnessed a lot of people, personally and interpersonally, who really could have benefited from the resources that we have on Solace. That was one of the foundational conversations that Natalia [Mantini] and I had when we met—that we both felt it on a personal level, and just seeing the people that we love, for lack of a better word, go through it when they didn’t have to. A lot of times when people look for those resources, it can be really isolating, and it’s very institutional, and it doesn’t feel like someone is there to help you. You’re overwhelmed and you’re looking for this all on your own, and in creating [Solace], we were very delicate in the way that we approached it, because we didn’t want people to feel isolated in coming into that space. We really wanted people to feel like if you have a need, we’re here for you, we hear you, we see you, and we feel you, above all. We want you to feel that and feel like you can come to this space and it’s open, and you can share whatever you’re feeling, regardless of what it is. We really talked about how in our personal communities that’s really stigmatized, and that’s something that we want to change and not entertain anymore. We’re at a place in the digital world, and just in society, where we should be able to look at each other and walk up to each other and be like, ‘I’m not okay,’ or, ‘This is what I need.’ Then somebody should be like, ‘Okay, I got you. Here’s where you can go.’ It shouldn’t be a conversation where people shun you. I think those conversations should be had with empathy and understanding first and
foremost. That’s definitely my hope with Solace: that we start to create those conversations, and our communities start to look internally, and are like, ‘Okay, what is the better way that we can go about this? Not just for myself, but for the people around me, for the longevity of our people.’

ZB— What are the forms of survival patterns that you feel like your parents have passed down to you? Things that you’ve learned in the defense of being in the crossfire in arguments with your siblings, your parents, or whatever it is. And ultimately, as a Tejana and a woman of color from El Salvador, how do you apply those lessons into your own life, and how do you see the manifestation of your survival tactics play out in the life that you have now?

LA— I was raised in the south by immigrant women, so that is always at the forefront of whatever I’m doing. Specifically, my grandmother—she is the strongest person I know. She has survived a civil war, crossed the border twice, never learned how to read, or write, and this is what I carry with me every day. I was just back in Texas and I visited her, and I spent a lot of time with her, and just looking at her, she still works. But she inspires me in that sense that she’s like, ‘No, I’m going to do it. Regardless if it’s already here or people are telling me I can’t do it, I’m going to do it.’ My mom is much the same—she definitely verges on the side of tough love, which I think I need as a person. She was always like, ‘No, you can never give up. You have to persevere.’ She was always instilling in me to have a lot of heart. She’s like, ‘You might want to do some stuff when you’re growing up, and if you feel like you want to do it, do it, even if the world is against you.’ And I think in creating
Solace and some of the other stuff I do, I have had moments where I’ve been really scared, and I’ve been really, really terrified because I couldn’t necessarily go to someone and be like, ‘I’m creating this. How do I do it?’ I couldn’t go to my mom and be like, ‘This is what I want to do. How do I make this happen?’ So, I really had to just be like, ‘No, I want to bring this into the world because the world needs it, and the people that I love need it, and I’m just going to do it.’ There’s trials and tribulations within that, but I think they have definitely passed down to me the feeling that this world is intense, and any way that you can alleviate yourself from that, do it, and do it with purpose, and do it with intention, and do it for the people that you love. At the end of the day, that’s that.

ZB— The thing that you brought up is intentionality and also just being able to fear... It’s because indecision puts us in places of desperation. Our stories are about women making strides in their community, but also being influential in ways that are not commodifiable, not conventional.

LA— One thing I always think about when I’m working with other people and we’re building something—it’s really that sentiment that I grew up with, that my mom passed on to me and just everyone that I knew growing up—is being able to look at somebody and be like, ‘I got you, regardless of where we go on the journey. I mean, it could be a rollercoaster, whether it’s good or bad, but I got you at the end of the day, and I’m going to hold you down through that.’ That’s really my outlook. I hope that what I’m making makes people feel like that in the digital space. Like, ‘I really got you. I’m thinking of you.’ I’m taking the algorithms and everything else
into account, but I’m also taking into account our experiences as people, and how you can go through things and how you can transform through those digital spaces, or transform those digital spaces. My motto is love, labor and lastly, logic—that has always been the journey for me, and making sure that my people feel like they’re
taken care of, whether that be in the physical or the digital world, and really just opening up the digital world for people like us. We’re here. We’re not going anywhere. So, why not make these digital spaces catered to us and our people? That’s a legacy that I want to leave: that when you see something or you’re in a system where you feel like it could do better, or could be made better for yourself or for people of color or people in need, do that. Radicalize it. It’s not going to be beautiful all the time, and the process isn’t smooth—I will say that. It can involve a lot of pain and it can involve a lot of work, but it’s all going to be worth it in the end. Just doing that for each other and having each other’s backs more than anything is so important.

ZB— I think a lot of the time, I get scared because I am like, ‘I have a larger mission. I don’t really know what to do, and I’m scared. How do I make this happen?’ I know that in the work that you do, you’re obviously able to organize and create a cohesive system to make sure that things like these exist and are able to sustain themselves... How do you think the world we live in now has changed as a result of your work?

LA— I think one thing that my work has done is maybe teach people to look at the digital world a little bit differently. If you think about it, the internet was really made 15 years ago. It wasn’t that long ago. Everything that it is now was decided then by people who really weren’t thinking of longevity, and the people like us who have to interact with it and be a part of it on a daily basis. One thing that my work brings to the table is that we can stir this up. We can make this work for us, and we don’t have to necessarily be okay with the way things are. We can change it. If we want to create space, if we want to open up space—however we want to do that—we can do it, and we will do it, because that is our right in having access to the internet and access to these digital spaces. They are a replication of our physical ones, as you said. So, if we’re going to go into them, why not make them a little bit more bearable for us or someone who we love, or someone in our community? That’s really
what I think my work brings to the table—the fact that we’re going to radicalize this. And it might not be graceful all the time, but we’re going to do it, and we’re going to do it with intention, because we see something bigger not only for ourselves, but for everyone that we love and all of our communities.