To Be Young, Queer, Black, and Muslim: Vanessa Taylor On The Future of Black Muslim Liberation & The Bond of Belonging
Writer and activist Vanessa Taylor. Photo Credit: Bobby Rogers.
By Jaimee A. Swift
When it comes to the future of Black liberation, writer and activist Vanessa Taylor (she/her/they/them) wants you to know that Black Muslims will be there. In catalyzing and curating spaces of Belonging for Black queer and transgender Muslims, specifically, she also wants you to know that they too, have always been here––and they have something to say and more importantly, are here to stay.
Vanessa Taylor’s interview is a part of ‘Voices in Movement’ December 2019 theme, ‘On Belonging.’ To read the descriptor of ‘On Belonging’, please click here.
Vanessa Taylor is ahead of her/their time and ahead of time. The 24-year old writer from Minneapolis, Minnesota––the “Black Midwest”––who now resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, seems to be blessed with this immense and keen capability to envision the radical possibilities and imaginations of glory, joy, and victory for Black people––even if the collective, individual, and even future circumstances seem bleak. And even when the bleakness of present circumstances do not make room for her/them individually to Belong, or excludes the very ones she/they is/are advocating for and in community with, Taylor uses the power of the pen to forge a formidable pathway; a pathway that not only reinforces her/their existence but the existence, perspectives, and resistance of others who too, are often excluded from conversations on Black liberation and Black futures.
A self-described “Black Muslim Futurist”, Taylor, a Queer Black Muslim woman, is not only writing herself/themself into present realities, she is also writing Black Muslims into the future and beyond. Taylor sees Black Muslims in the future and she/they do not care if you don’t––just know they are going to be there, they are presently here, and they are here to stay.
With her/their journalistic arts and works having been published in an array of outlets including Teen Vogue, The Intercept, Wear Your Voice, and her/their essays and fiction having appeared in Catapult, Barren Magazine, and Belt Magazine, Taylor is the Editor-in-Chief of the Drinking Gourd, a “Black literary magazine that provides nuanced depictions of the Black Muslim Diaspora through various forms of media, including but not limited to: visual art, poems, non-fiction, and fiction.” With a specific focus on Black queer and transgender Muslims, Taylor’s work, once again, is ensuring that in the fight for Black liberation, no one gets left behind.
I spoke with Taylor about how she/they have found Belonging in and with themselves; her/their upbringing in the Black Midwest; the political and artistic impetus behind the Drinking Gourd; and what brings her/them joy these days.
In your beautiful piece, “Unfertile Ground”, you write:
“I’ve come to find that people are obsessed with the Midwest as fertile ground—old family farms, those dusty red barns leaning up against the horizon; crops arching up towards the sun, whose presence is fleeting. The lakes, they might reason. All that water makes for good growing. But I don’t know that fertile ground people imagine. I know the Minnesota of jagged rocks and outcrops, spaces of land where we were not meant to exist and found ourselves anyway. I know ugly flowers and the hands roughened enough to love them tenderly, the melancholy of bodies in transit. I know the secrets, the landscape that Toni Morrison articulates in novels like Beloved, Sula, and The Bluest Eye. I know the Black Midwest.”
While many have sought to erase or overlook the formidable Black roots in the Midwest, how did you create a sense of Belonging, in spite of erasure, while you were in Minneapolis? In the Black Midwest?
Vanessa Taylor (VT): “I think a big part of it for me, when coming to understand the Black Midwest, and also coming to understand my place and role within it, was kind of coming to accept that this place is where you are from. I think a big part of erasure is that you are never really sure of actually having roots there but I had to reflect within myself that I am from there. My grandmother is from Georgia and my grandfather is from Mississippi, on my dad’s side. But on my mom’s side, which is white, they are from Duluth, Minnesota, and my dad was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. Either way, the point being is that I am pretty far removed from people who are not from Minnesota or people in the Midwest, generally. So, it was accepting that Minnesota has shaped me and to identify the ways in which it has. It can be little things –– how I pronounce words; how I speak; the phrases I choose to use; and how I behave.”
“For me, a sense of belonging came by the act of taking home by force through activism, organizing, conversion, and writing.”
“Once you start to accept that, it is a little easier to start figuring out ways to make space for yourself. A big part of [trying to make space for yourself] in the Midwest is knowing what it has to offer you. The Black spaces I find in Minnesota are not going to look like what people might think of as Black spaces in Philadelphia or New York. We are a completely different city and have different environments and issues we are dealing with. What many people complain about in Minneapolis is that it can feel “cliquey” because it is such a small group of Black people there because it is a predominantly white city. For me, I created a sense of belonging through organizing and activism, converting to Islam, and getting involved with what other Black Muslims were doing in Minneapolis, which made me feel really at home. For me, a sense of belonging came by the act of taking home by force through activism, organizing, conversion, and writing.”
As a Queer Black Muslim woman, how do you find Belonging in a world that attempts to tell you that you are not ‘Black enough’, ‘Woman enough’, ‘Queer enough’, or ‘Muslim enough?’ When did you come to the point that in spite of what others think, you are simply enough?
VT: “When I converted, I was lucky because I was surrounded by Black Queer Muslims. For me, that made it a little easier because I didn’t have these questions about whether I fit into Islam or whether I could be in Islam because I already saw people living this. I already had examples and people to turn to if I came across information, quotes, articles, or any person that tried to tell me I did not fit there. I think a big part of it too was that I came from a community organizing background. I have always been a bit defiant and very much the type of person that if you try to tell me to do something, I probably won’t do it or if you tell me I cannot do something, I am going to try and do it anyway.
“When I converted to Islam, I was looking at Black Muslim liberation theology and how Black Muslims have been using Islam to articulate freedom, liberation, and creating communities and homes for themselves. I was blessed because the practice of creating and doing for yourself was already ingrained in the culture I was converting into.”
“When people tell me that I cannot be all these things –– that I cannot be Black, Queer, and Muslim –– for me, this prompts the question, ‘who is your group?’ If I see people doing it and living it, that means it can be done. When I converted to Islam, particularly, I was looking at Black Muslim liberation theology and how Black Muslims have been using Islam to articulate freedom, liberation, and creating communities and homes for themselves. I was blessed because the practice of creating and doing for yourself was already ingrained in the culture I was converting into. Being Black and being Muslim was such a big help for me in navigating all of this, and also having the legacy of Black American Muslim communities and the Black Queer Muslims that I already knew.”
As a Black American Muslim, have you ever felt that you did not belong because other Muslims have not or do not considered you to be a “true” or “authentic” practicioner of Islam?
VT: “Yes, this has definitely happened to me. I also think the additional layer of being a convert because there is a process of Black American Muslims and their history being delegitimized. I do not politically align with the Nation of Islam and that is what people tend to think I am associated with when they I say I am Muslim. Then they will say, ‘Well, the Nation is not really Muslim, so you can’t be Muslim.’ Nevermind that I am not Nation –– it is just the underlying assumption that if you are a Black American and you are Muslim, you have to be from one of these institutions. As I said before, It is also the additional layer of being a convert. When people come and say to you, ‘Well, you are not Muslim enough’, generally people I know will fall back and can say they were born into Islam. I was not. And because of this, my Islam is always up for questioning. If people see me not practicing the way they think practice should look like and if they have assumptions about Black American Muslims, all of this exacerbates issues and concerns for people who have converted to the religion. One time, I was in Minneapolis waiting for the bus and I had an Ethiopian Muslim come up to me and ask me to recite Surah Al-Fatiha. People will also assume that I converted in jail or in prison and I have not been in prison. Even in those moments where I am questioning things and I am feeling down, I am not going to turn away from my faith because someone else tells me I am supposed to.”
How do you define Belonging and what does Belonging mean to you?
VT: “Whenever I think of belonging, I always think of the activism spaces I started in and these small bonds you start to form for yourself. I think it is being intentional in who you are with and around and who you choose to be involved with. It is also about who you are putting energy into because that energy will return right back. It is also about time and who you are sharing things with. In Minneapolis, I was homeless for a period of time and I was with friends and we were all couch hopping together. There were people within the activist community that were giving us a place to stay and we would help each other with food. If I had money, I would pay for someone else to eat because I knew when they had money, I wouldn’t need to ask them to help me out. It was small things. It was knowing that I was going to be taken care of that I belonged somewhere.”
“Whenever I think of belonging, I always think of the activism spaces I started in and these small bonds you start to form for yourself.”
What was the impetus of and to creating The Drinking Gourd? Why is it so imperative for there to be a specific focus on Black Muslims in the Diaspora, especially Black queer and transgender Muslims?
VT: “I had the idea to create a Black Muslim literary magazine for a few years. Honestly, the reason I created it this year was that during Ramadan, there was a bunch of controversial stuff surrounding MuslimGirl.com, and there is exploitation of writers, writers not being paid, and just general problems with the site that people have known about but was kept behind-the-scenes. This site already has issues with anti-Blackness –– a lot of these sites do. I know that Black Muslims deserve better. I have the capacity and now I have the skillset to do something about it. So, I was blessed to be able to turn to a group of people and assemble a team who worked really hard over the summer to bring this to life. I started this project during Ramadan, which was May, and we launched in October. The reason I focused on Black Muslims is because it is the community I am from, it is the community I work with, and it is the community that I see getting the least amount of resources.”
“When it comes to lack of resources, I am speaking to how Black Muslims deal with anti-Blackness in Muslim spaces and in Black spaces, they must contend with Islamophobia and the erasure of Black Muslims in that space, which continues double marginalization and invisibility that can do a lot of harm. ”
“When it comes to lack of resources, I am speaking to how Black Muslims deal with anti-Blackness in Muslim spaces and in Black spaces, they must contend with Islamophobia and the erasure of Black Muslims in that space, which continues double marginalization and invisibility that can do a lot of harm. I wanted to create a space where Black Muslims can explore, speak, be ourselves, and push boundaries, and have controversial thoughts and takes in this space. We specifically mention queer and trans Muslims because a lot of spaces don’t. To have something be vocal and to be very clear on your position––that is a choice that platforms need to start making. I wanted that to be a priority for us. I did not want anyone to have to email us and wonder, ‘Can I be here and can I contribute because I am queer or trans?”
Vanessa Taylor. Photo Credit: Bobby Rogers.
What stereotypes are you over about Black Muslims?
VT: “I am certainly over the idea we do not exist. [Laughs] I am also over 9/11 as the sole analysis on Islamophobia and surveillance. I think when you start to connect anti-Blackness and the history of enslaved African Muslims to what is going on now, you will actually get a richer, deeper, and better discussion of Islamophobia and how it manifests today. I am tired of people assuming I converted to Islam in jail. I am not saying there is anything wrong with that history –– converting in jail –– but again, it speaks to the default assumption of Black people that you have been in jail and you have been in prison, and that is the only way Black Americans can become Muslim. If you are actually talking about the Muslims who converted in jail and in prison, I want people to actually start engaging with that history as it is and to start showing it some respect. Black Muslims in prison have gone through a lot. There are many ways the state and the system have tried to stifle them. This is a discussion and topic I hope I can dive deeper into in the future.”
What gives you joy as of right now?
VT: “I am looking at my cat and so I do have to say that I have always been an animal person. I had two dogs and I would show them at the North American Dog Agility Trials, which is not the nerdiest thing about me. [Laughs] For a long time, I wanted to be a dog trainer or an animal behaviorist. So, having animals in my life, really do bring me a lot of joy. It is nice to have something to care for, especially in the moments when you don’t care to be around or alive and gives you that push because, ‘Well, I have to get out of bed because I have to feed the cat.’ And feeding the cat and seeing him chilling makes me happy because I know I did my job. Besides the cat, I also enjoy being able to share my writing and being able to complete things. I do not only write when I get positive feedback or anything like that. So much of the writing I do is about communities that are not really being talked about and when they are talked about, it is just surface and shallow, and doing a disservice more than anything. It is really important that when I put my writing out, I can get feedback from people and I get to hear people talking about how they are engaging with the articles. Even if they have questions, those questions make me think about what I can do with them in the future. And of course, family because I am so family oriented. Moving away from Minneapolis has been hard just because I am so used to being around them.”
You define yourself as a “Black Muslim Futurist.” In the future, in Afro-Futuristic radical transformation and liberation, where do you want Black Muslims to be centered?
VT: “I really vibe with Afro-Futurism in my work. However, the one thing I notice with Afro-Futurism is it does not seem to know how to engage with Black Muslims or any Black people outside of Christianity. There are many systemic issues with that. With Christian hegemony, the issues of Islamophobia, and other structural issues, if we have visions of futurism that do not know how to engage Black Muslims in and out of these structural issues, that means inevitably there are some people who are not going to make it to the future. I want to see Black Muslims there. I want to see people standing beside us.”
“With Christian hegemony, the issues of Islamophobia, and other structural issues, if we don’t have visions of futurism that do not know how to engage Black Muslims in and out of these structural issues, that means inevitably there are some people who are not going to make it to the future.”
“I want to see people start truly engaging with what they have been taught through white supremacy about Black Muslims and Islam. For Black Muslims, I really want to see us and the art we create. I want to see that art there and broadcasted. There is such a rich and long history of Black Muslims in the arts. There are important traditions that we have created for ourselves and I want to start seeing them more. I want to get them out of small, niche community circles and if people want their work to be seen and heard on a larger scale, I want those opportunities to be available to them.”
What does a ‘Black Woman Radical’ mean to you?
VT: “To me, a ‘Black Woman Radical’ looks like and means somebody who is fighting and trying to achieve liberation for everybody. So that means understanding the positions that you hold and how that may bring harm. It looks like being able to admit that with the excess of guilt that comes along with it. It also looks like a person who isn’t going to abandon someone because doing so will get them ahead faster, but it looks like someone who is actually invested in their community and wants to bring their community ahead. They don’t believe in a token, individualized idea of where only one Black person or one Black woman can make it. We all are going to make it.”
To read more about Taylor’s work, please visit here.
To support and read The Drinking Gourd, please visit here.
You can follow Vanessa Taylor on Twitter at @BaconTribe.