Imperfect Black Characters

The current Conquer dedication.

When I first began reading books for leisure one of my biggest pet peeves were characters who already had it all figured out. When the characters I read about made mistakes, they had the superhuman ability to figure out what to do by the next few minutes or hours. As a black person these characters I was reading about weren’t even Black and the characters that were Black were half-assed shadows for the White main characters benefit. By default, that meant perfection. More often than not there’s no space for us to be flawed in a White person’s story.

When we do see Black Women and Black girls in media, we see them in one of two ways. They’re either perfect or they’re perfectly flawed. Not too often do I see Black people equated with the capability of possessing imperfections. There’s no blood splatter in Black wounds, there’s only perfect drips of it painted into rounded droplets.

 We have to bleed perfect. We have to hurt perfect. We have to heal perfect.

Though none of these things are perfect.

The dedication in the screenshot was made from this sentiment. When I wrote Conquer, one of the many themes I kept in mind was healing and hurting. I say things like “sometimes they take actions backed by emotions instead of thought”. They may run into chaos with a half assed plan because of it. This is one of those moments where my book reflects myself, but in a reversal mirror.

I need to plan everything. I don’t like taking leaps into things I didn’t plan for 3-5 business days before. Writing and planning to publish Conquer is the closest I have got to a leap of faith. That’s the closest I’ve gotten to a reckless and spontaneous jump off a cliff because I was shoved off of it. Ask me five years ago if I would be an aspiring author. I would’ve laughed and asked why but here I am typing a blog post.

I didn’t process the possibility that there are stories about Black girls who can’t do sh*t right. Before 2020 I didn’t know there were books with Black girls that looked like me on the cover. So, as I read these books and watched these characters fight their imperfections yet inevitably fall into them (as a humans do sometimes) made me realize something.

We don’t just need more Black stories we need Black stories of Black humanity. We need stories with Black girls who don’t wanna shoulder the burdens of the people around them. We need stories about Black girls who make silly mistakes, Black girls who forget silly sh*t like washing a dish. Black people who make bad decisions. Black people who need help and silence themselves from asking. Black people who will straight up say that they can’t do something. Black people who cry a lot and black people who are too scared to cry and callous themselves to it. I wanna see dreamy black people, cynical black people, empathetic black people, angry black people, happy black people, sad black people, people-pleasing black people, fed up Black people, easy going Black people. I want all of it.

So, I wrote as much as I could, for such an infinite demographic called Blackness. You could look into Blackness as you would look into space, in our darkskin lies stories of many kinds. It’s not fair that we have to pick one type to live by because people can’t make space for something that fills, filled, and is filling all the space to begin with. Whether folks want to admit it or not Blackness is easily the farthest opposite of a monolith. The irony is that so many try to make it seem so.

I have five perspectives in Conquer because I wanted a story where we get to see all kinds of Black people be people. I wanted different kinds of Black families and different opinions. I wanted them to all handle their brokenness in similar and different ways. I wanted them to argue but I wanted them to communicate. I don’t like seeing Black people hurt but I wanted to show that they do. I wanted to show imperfect healing in Black people because healing is not linear perfection. I wanted them to make mistakes, think through them and apologize. I want them to hide their tears but work through that later because let’s be for real this sh*t ain’t easy and that’s ok.

Its ok.

It’s ok that we are not ok.  

That’s not an excuse to not try to be better because the point of this is to allow room for growth but allow room for growth.

I wanted to continue to humanize broken Black people. Because we exist and there’s nothing perfect about our wounds. Our hurts bleed messy, and it takes up space just like everyone else.

When we exist with flaws it’s too much, it’s too loud, it’s disappointing, it’s too attention grabbing, it’s just attention seeking, its odd, its erratic, it’s dangerous, its risky, it’s irresponsible, it’s silly, its dramatic, its bold, its daring, it’s too real to be a black experience. God forbid a Black person needs a crutch or a shoulder to lean on to compensate for tired or broken legs. It takes up too much space, when we exist in our fullness but, how sufforcating is that? What good change comes from losing air in a cramped box? So, in that case I said:

Tag along… or move out my way.