Queer Questions is a series of short Q&A’s with writers featured in The Black Futurist Projects: New Queer Black reading and performance on July 6th. Check out the Facebook event page for more info and to RSVP.
Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene is an Ijaw and Urhobo Nigerian dyke performance activist, poet, dancer, writer, actress and video artist who was born with a mouth full of dynamite and sugarcane. Etaghene is a mixed-media visual artist who has produced four solo art exhibitions. She uses her poetry to chisel a verbal sculpture of her soul for listeners while addressing social and political issues. Etaghene has toured nationally and performed in over 30 U.S. cities. She was interviewed by and was a contributing writer to “None on Record: Stories of Queer Africa,” a sound documentary project that collects the stories of LGBTI Africans from the African continent and the diaspora.
In May 2012, Etaghene founded Sugarcane, an LGBTQ of color writing workshop based in the principles of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People. Through her project, “Kitchen Poems,” she curates events that blend Nigerian and African diasporic foods with various forms of art. “GUAVA,” her second one-woman show, is a multi-media performance that seamlessly blends Nigerian dyke holy texts, poems, dreams, heartbeats & dance while candidly exploring queer African sexuality and the multiple ways immigrants and children of immigrants create home. @myloveisaverb
What are you working on now and how does your work tie into your views on culture, community, sexuality and identity?
All my work deals with culture, community, sexuality and identity because those are all part of my breath, heartbeats and story. I create art in relation to my communities and amongst community; my identity frames the gaze from which I view and interpret the world; my sexuality and culture are as much a part of me as my eye color and the rhythm of my hips. All these things are working in me, all the time, creating the polyrhythmic symphony that is who I am and the work I render.
Currently, Im fundraising to self-publish my first novel, For Sizakele which is a soul-stirring, lyrically beautiful novel that addresses queer African gender, transcontinental identity, inter-partner violence and how we love as the ultimate illuminator of who we are. I dont own any novels about Queer African women and thats why I wrote one, so we could all have one. If you want to contribute to funding the independent publication of my book, please visit the campaign and spread the word: http://igg.me/at/ForSizakele/x/280350
I first found your work through a writing workshop you run based on June Jordan’s Poetry for the People framework. Can you talk about the workshop and the process you use?
I founded the Sugarcane Writing Workshop for LGBTQ People Of Color because I believe in creating space for folks to make the art that saves their lives and empowers them. Over the course of 8 week-workshop, we dive into a uniquely-designed curriculum and our workshop culminates in a showcase performance in the community. Sugarcane is a beautiful space where LGBTQ People Of Color can tell their stories with vigorous intensity and candor because we need that, in a world trying to bleach us of our rainbow spirits and melanin, we very much need that. We all have the right to spaces that make us blissful with the magic of our own truths.
What are your thoughts on how sexuality, race and gender intersect, specifically as it relates to queerness in the African Diaspora?
Wow, thats a ginormous question. As a Nigerian dyke artist and as a transcontinental being, my work and art are grounded in making room for myself to exist and breathe and sparkle. Unfortunately, when people talk about the African Diaspora, usually they mean Black Americans and not the entirety of Africans in the Diaspora. By virtue of my complicated life and existence, I embody the overlapping and intersection of multiple realities and identities. My story makes room for complicated realitiesme as a Nigerian who lives in Oakland, was born in Syracuse, NY, who does not identify as American and is a New Yorker for lifeHOLLA. Furthermore, my work makes room for African Queer issues, stories, aesthetics, language and storytelling. My work makes room for ALL of me, and in doing so makes room for the stories of so many Queer Africans whose stories and existence are ignored, over-simplified and/or misrepresented.
What’s your vision of the black future? From an artistic, social and cultural standpoint?
I dont know the future. I dont even fully know now. None of us do and we are always (hopefully) perpetually learning, growing, giving, evolving, becoming ourselves. To speak for my own Black Future, I will continue doing what I do nowmaking fierce fuschia art with turquoise fire and ocean spirit. Translation? I will keep representin that Nigerian Dyke Realness to the FULLEST. And then some.
