Yale Writers Spotlight Series

Ashia Ajani

TD 2019

TOC Blurb: Read the first Yale Writers Spotlight on Ashia Ajani, TD ’19, with a poem from her new chapbook and an interview about Black women writers, radical love, and writing close to the earth.

“I’m not just writing about a lover as a person but also love as earth, as community, as family.” — Ashia Ajani

YH: In a whole bunch of poems and in your dedication, you write about the older women of color — aunts, mothers, grandmothers — in your community. How do you feel that they fit into your work?

AA: I think foremost what I try to do in my writing and my activism too is honor women and femme-presenting people because I think we’re some of the most vulnerable populations in this earth. Even coming from an environmental connection just thinking about the connection women and femme people have to earth and to land is really important so I try to mimic that a little bit to honor that. I was raised by women. My grandmother raised me til I was 8 years old. My aunties are very important to me and my life even though we don’t live together. I’m just kind of in awe of what Black women are capable of.

YH: You mentioned the connection between women and femme presenting people and the earth. Can you talk a little more about how you think about that in your writing?

AA: There’s a poem that I’ve never performed on this campus where I talk about how I think my ancestors are the first environmentalists, and what climate change is going to do to women specifically, in terms of how it affects reproduction, how gardening, and agriculture, were seen as a feminine thing, how producing things out of earth is almost like having a child. Thinking about the ways that Native tradition–my family is Taino–fosters earthly knowledge. Indigenous people all over the world have a very concerted relationship with the earth, in terms of how we have to steward it, how we have to love it, and that brings up questions like, what does home mean? What does it mean to be mixed race?

YH: Many of the poems in this collection are, in some sense, about a lover. In the poem “We Bleed Like Mango,” you write: “every love poem I have written has been/ One of regret.” what do you mean by that? What role do you think love poems play for you?

AA: I was very much against writing love poems up until like probably freshman year of college because I thought there was much more “important” stuff to say in a poem. But then I met Alysia Harris and she mainly writes love poems. She’s a Black, very southern artist who does not really confine to slam, her stuff is very much written and spoken word but she doesn’t confine to any time limit and you really feel like you’re in a story when she writes. In love poems, there’s such a radical sentiment behind that, in ways of loving fiercely. And there’s a way I experience love, as a queer person, as a person of color, that’s politicized in a way that’s different from how my peers experience love. I think sometimes I’m not just writing about a lover as a person but also love as earth, as community, as family.

YH: You were talking about the way that loving could be a political act. How and when do you think about politics and politicization in relation to your work?

AA: I recently read Black Dove by Ana Castillo and she writes about her brownness, her queerness, being a mom, femininity. This has been wracking my brain for the past week because she very much said “I’m writing as a poet not as a politician,” which I don’t think diminishes the political nature of art but I think it makes a very important distinction. My politics are very ingrained in my art I think you kind of glean where I stand… but most of all, as corny as it sounds, I believe in love and I believe in community. When you find your people you want to care for them as much as it can — I think that often takes a political tone especially in the era we are living in.

YH: What do you hope people will take away from the collection?

AA: I really want people to reevaluate how they love people and what that love is rooted in. I want to provide a source of healing. I really want people to respect women of color…This was such a painful thing to write sometimes, and you don’t know who’s going through it when — you gotta just check in with people.

YH: Anything else you want to add?

AA: I’m so sensitive about my work. I don’t know if you know the Erykah Badu performance I’m an artist and I’m sensitive about my shit. I don’t trust my writing a lot of the time. I don’t feel comfortable sharing — which is funny being in a spoken word group [WORD Performance Poets]. The thing that propelled me to share this was that I was going through a deep amount of healing sophomore year. Part of the thing that helped heal me was writing — this [the chapbook] came out of it.

Ashia Ajani is selling her chapbook “We Bleed Like Mango” for $10. You can contact her at ashia.ajani@yale.edu if you want a copy.

Two Little Birds

I saw two little birds today

I did, I did

Both brown and sweet as you and me

Do you think they are in love?

Do you think she binds her little bird beak

For him

Do you think she calls him angelito

When they are alone

Kisses peach blossoms

In the crook of his little bird neck

Do you think they hold little bird hands

When they are sad

When it rains

When the sun is the ripest shade

Of orange

Do you think he sings a little bird song

In the cove of her little bird ear

I think all our melodies are played out

My dear

Little bird

Do you think we exist

Outside of ourselves?

I do, I do

Illustration by Julia Hedges