Prince Shakur is a queer, Jamaican-American author, freelance journalist, videomaker, and NY Times recognized organizer. His writings range from op-eds in Teen Vogue to features on the violent impacts of policing and cultural essays that delve into black icons, like Bob Marley or Huey Newton. In 2017, his video series, Two Woke Minds, earned him the Rising Star Grant from GLAAD. As an organizer, he brought Black Lives Matter to his university campus, did migrant caravan support work, and was a lead organizer with Black Queer and Intersectional Collective in Columbus, OH.
Q&A
Give us a brief synopsis about this piece.
This chapter is near the end of my memoir and centers around the 2006 triple murder that happened in Jamaica that involved two of my uncles. Essentially, this piece is about arriving to an understanding of the longstanding grief about their murders and confronting what can be learned from their passing. This piece and the whole book tried to answer the question for me, “What is the other side of grief?”
What inspired you to write it?
At some point after the murder of Michael Brown and getting into my writing career, I realized how important the political memoir is in black literature for me. I read so many that moved me and realized that black people deserve to verbalize the edges of the world that white supremacy, capitalism, and love can bring us to.
A lot of my family history has been shrouded in history or stigma – my biological father’s murder, drug dealing in my family, the trauma of immigrating to the US. This book felt like a way to wade through so much of that, to make sense of the absence of men in my life swallowed up by the carceral system; all while confronting how I’ve come to love myself as a queer, Jamaican person, and believer of black liberation. To me, this piece and this book are just one of the many stories of young, queer black people that deserve to exist in this world.
Tell us about your journey as a writer.
I started writing when I was 12 as a way to make sense of being queer and having a stepfather in prison. I went to Kenyon Young Writer’s Workshop when I was in high school and got really into writing novels and online fan fiction. I went on to study Creative Writing at Ohio University and graduated in 2015. After traveling and working various odd jobs, I started freelance writing in 2017 while kind of stranded in South Korea. Since 2017, I’ve written for Teen Vogue, AfroPunk, Vice, Level Magazine, and more on queer culture, film, black iconography and revolution, and the impacts of policing on black communities. Right now, I’m finishing a novel, experiencing the submissions process for this memoir, and am dabbling into screenwriting.
Is there someone whose writing style influences you?
The most evident and close to my heart is James Baldwin. I started reading his work when I was fired from a job in Seattle and it inspired me to go to France for the first time in 2016. Since then, I’ve reread his works, studied, and have written about him/his praxis is a continuous source of hope.
In terms of other black writers, I really dig Hanif Abdurraqib’s work and see it as a powerful model for how black people can unpack and contextualize our cultural practices. In preparation for writing this memoir, I read a lot of black memoirs. Some of my favorites were Heavy by Kiese Laymon, The Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward, Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph, and the classic, Assata by Assata Shakur. Harmony Holiday is also a writer I follow and respect a lot.
Are there books you return to when thinking about craft?
One book that really got me thinking about craft in the past year or so was MEANDER SPIRAL EXPLODE: DESIGN AND PATTERN IN NARRATIVE by Jane Allison.
What does it mean to be a writer during a global crisis? Has your writing life or your work been affected or influenced by the events of 2020?
Almost seems like an unanswerable question, but I think it’s what every person has faced since the pandemic, which is, “how to do we be human in a world on fire, a world that is seemingly frozen in time” and for black people, queer people, indigenous people, and so many marginalized people, this is both a moment of crisis and acknowledgment of what’s already been here. In the past year or so, there have been days where I didn’t dare write because I’d been attacked by police at a protest earlier that day. There were also days where the words flew out of me.
It’s a mixed bag, but I think writing can both be therapy and painful. It’s a matter of navigating what it feels like when you’re writing based on what’s happening outside and inside of your heart.
What advice would you give aspiring writers?
Fall in love with the process. Steal away stories for yourself. Dedicate yourself to the part that is creative and daring and exciting. If you create rituals to center yourself in that part of the process, the business and professional parts will follow.
And find community. Join online groups. Apply to things and write what you want to see in the world. Writing is not an easy path, but it’s a humbling one, especially when you’re black.
In Exodus: an unamerican memoir
By Prince Shakur
An excerpt
My uncles exist in the foggy eye of my childhood’s memory. I knew they liked Red Stripe beer and Peter Tosh. Derrick’s wedding photos adorned our family’s living room in Cleveland. Senel and Derrick hugged my mother with force, and were of the few people that could tease her to the point of laughter. When I read “no angels,” I thought of my mother’s scream and how the church couldn’t even attempt to contain it. My mother’s scream makes me think of America, Jamaica, and what the world creates for people to be born into, live through, and die in. Just as Assata Shakur noted that revolutionaries do not fall from the moon, I say that my uncles were born as demons ripping into the world.
In a country like Jamaica, how does the labeling of men, like my uncles, as “no angels” minimize the structural, political, and patriarchal violence that molded them? When the living or dead become objectively criminal, we neglect to examine how Babylon and the forces of Western society have succeeded or failed in creating outlaws and revolutionaries. A just society empowers people to oppose the institutions that have failed or exploited them with the help of education, and resources. An unjust society pulls the wool over our eyes, profits off of our misery, enables institutions to disenfranchise us, and uses our death to further a narrative that justifies more control. The men of my family and of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora are products of masculinities crafted by an unjust society. They lived and died in a world that could have saved them, but didn’t. They are survived by many people who struggle to make sense of their violence.