New Chapters - Literally and Figuratively

Beyond the Book: We're in Paris!

After three long years of work, I turned in my book last week! I thought for sure that after all of this time, I would feel celebratory. I don’t know how many times I said to myself, “When the book is done I’ll nap for a thousand years,” “When the book is done I’ll start that new hobby” “When the book is done I’ll be a social human again…” There were so many things I was going to do when the book was done.

But the morning after I turned it in, I woke up and immediately felt bad for not going to my office to work on the book. “What are you doing sleeping in? YOU HAVE A BOOK DUE.” My brain was immediately saying. “What are you doing goofing off on the internet? YOU HAVE A BOOK DUE!” All day - all week - this voice just stayed hating in the back of my head. Ruining any planned relief or joy. This book has been such a constant part of my everyday life, I kind of miss it. It’s kind of like being pregnant. That last month feels like a thousand years and you JUST WANT THAT BABY TO BE OUT. But then it’s out and you don’t have this squirmy little being rolling around inside of you (you instead have a squirming, shitting little being squirming around outside of you - which in this metaphor would be book tour) and you look down at your stomach and a little voice says, “put it back in there.” Except I don’t even have the book baby yet - it’s in this weird limbo of copyedits and pre-production. So I’m just wandering around with this book belly (trust me, if you’ve written a book before you know that this metaphor still works) and no baby to show for it.

My partner and I are spending the month in Paris. (My younger son and his best friend are here with us for the first week and when they aren’t actively trying to annoy us, they are acting like we are the most uncool roommates ever and refusing to acknowledge our presence outside of our ability to buy them cereal). We arrived two days ago. This is part of our long-term future plans of one day living in a space without the particularly violent anti-Blackness of the U.S. and the U.K.. We are trying to figure out if we can be adults together in a new space and make friends and all these other things that we really haven’t had time for in recent years.

We are both in transition right now. I’m finishing up this book that has been a part of my life for the last three years. This is a book that has changed me personally and professionally in so many ways and I’m not sure what comes next, but it whatever it is, it will be different. And my partner is leaving his job at KEXP after six years there and over three years as a morning radio host and associate music director to move on to a whole new avenue of work. It is an exciting time for us both and it is also easy to feel like we’ve jumped into an abyss. So this trip to Paris, planned months ago, has become even more important in that it’s catapulted us into a way of being that is giving us the space to reset and prepare for whatever comes next.

I may not have turned into the uber-relaxed version of myself that I thought I would become upon turning in my book, but also that voice telling me that I need to be working on the book has quieted down. I’ve been too busy figuring out how to navigate a new neighborhood and a significant language barrier. I’ve been taking walks and seeing sights. I’ve been trying to use a French word or two without feeling like an incompetent dork.

I have written before about how necessary it is as a Black American to be able to leave the United States for a while. To get away from a place that wants us dead. And to be able to leave is a privilege that I do not take lightly. I’m not looking over my shoulder here. I’m not having to scan every room I enter to try to guess at my safety. This is a reality that I couldn’t have imagined for myself a decade ago.

But this is not to say that there is no racism in France, or even that there is no anti-Black racism in France. There is quite a lot, and it is devastatingly violent, as it is everywhere else. It is just different than in the U.S., and it has different targets. Right now, in Paris as a Black American, I have a chance to breathe a little more freely. But others do not.

A few days before we arrived here, a 17 year old French-Algerian child was shot and killed by police officers just outside of Paris. Nahel M. was unarmed and killed for trying to avoid a traffic stop. Protests have erupted throughout the Paris area in outrage for this senseless and indefensible killing. But the support for the killer cop has also been large. The GoFundMe for the cop who shot Nahel currently has raised over 1 million euros, and GoFundMe has refused to shut down the fundraiser even though it is clearly in violation of its own policies.

Image Description: A photograph of a mural on a wall in Paris that says “Justice pour Nahel”

Last night Gabriel and I had a chance to meet up with a group of French writers and journalists of color. It was a lively and enlightening conversation. We talked, of course, about race and racism in Europe and the U.S. The perceptions that we hold of each other’s country’s status on racial politics is so interesting. One of the writers that I was speaking with said that much of their idea of how we discuss race in the U.S. is gleaned from Netflix shows and movies. They had been left with the impression that we all have sophisticated vocabularies around race and racism. That we are all having enlightened discussion and that everybody is comfortable discussing race. They figured that we had settled on the basics around race and racism, and were now working towards solutions.

There was really no idea about how many people and entities in the US are violently opposed to any acknowledgement of racism in our society. There was no discussion about the rise of book bans and anti-”CRT” laws in multiple states. They had no real idea of how increasingly unsafe the U.S. has become for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ people and disabled people in recent years.

And of course U.S. media doesn’t give two shits about the racial politics of European countries. I had begun to see, in my trips to France and Italy this past year and in the controversy over my canceled trip to Germany last year, how many European countries have built in systemic barriers to any comprehensive analysis of racial realities in their societies. But this conversation helped me see how much deeper the problem goes. There are rules and laws against gathering a lot of the racial demographic data that make understanding - say - the unemployment rate, income rate, or arrest rate of Black, Arab, or Roma people in France nearly impossible. It is considered racist to have discussions about how the systems here impact populations of color. It is considered racist here to even want to gather in non-white spaces or to create spaces geared toward the safety of populations of color. Groups that have tried to do so have often been labeled as “separatist” and have faced government intervention. It is, in effect, gaslighting by law.

It is an interesting space to be in. It was a conversation that I felt so privileged to be able to engage in. We shared, we commiserated, we laughed and bonded. The writers we met up with were generous with their time and their trust. And as we closed out the restaurant at midnight, it felt like a very perfect way to begin our month in Paris.

Gabriel and I with the lovely group of writers and artists we met.