I had the pleasure of being the +1 at The Black Archives Bijlmer Book Club, where we read Travis Alabanza’s None of the Above. Meredith and Wally were excellent hosts, and I loved meeting new people with similar interests.
I had strong feelings about Alabanza’s insistence that this work “feels like theory”, in response to it being marketed as a memoir. Calling Get Out a comedy diminishes the value of Black storytelling in horror narratives. But calling it a documentary is just as ineffective. “Feels like theory” very much sits in that spectrum, for me.
I enjoyed the lively conversation my strong feelings sparked about respectability and Black works, and was surprised the lyrical essay appears to be such an unknown genre when I offered it.
The first and last photos were taken by Wouter Pocornie.