Edition 7: Reimagining Creativity in Academia
This edition explores the intersection of race, creativity, and academia. While these fields are often viewed separately, we recognize the deep well of creativity dominant within academic spaces. We have invited students to share their experiences, stories, and reflections on how creativity shapes their identity within the Oxford community.
Isabella Soremi
‘Why I Write’
poetry is the music of my inner monologue
the soundtrack of my sorrows, because a pretty pen to paper cures the dark cloud when the sun doesn’t come out tomorrow
…and her son doesn’t call back tomorrow
my poetry stops me from punching walls
because when I'm downcast and my heart’s only direction is to cause a scene, commas cut through climaxes
better than scissors cut through photographs,
hours of venting doesn’t compare to my problems paraphrased into paragraphs
and what’s more violent than a volta?
like you’ve never been struck by a dramatic change of tone?
from hearing them moan, to “leave me alone”, texts reading ‘pick up the phone’ to ‘caller unknown’…
my stanzas mask situationships like ITV masks their singers,
so you can click to the cadence of my crashout and look into my eyes,
have myself revealed to you inside and out but let me keep my disguise,
because words are my drug, and my poetry is attesting,
the only difference between me and an addict are the lines we choose to invest in
so poetry is the penny when I'm not proud of my thoughts,
and my notes app is the court room,
pentameter is my permission to punish even when we’re civil,
because forgiveness has yet to develop in my darkroom
and it’s the natural law of the notes app to address everything without repentance
yet it is only in poetic form i can articulate my feelings into more than a sentence
verses are my voice stolen from my conscience you receive in exchange,
so when the cost of silence is too high, and I’ve given too much of myself to the world,
poetry gives me change.
Solademi Oduyoye
Afro-Optimism?
“The negro is the injured individual; he is robbed of his liberty, and, with that, of every thing that can render a rational existence desirable. He is denied all the advantages of education, condemned to the vilest ignorance, lest, by becoming informed, he should discover and seek to remove the cause of all his unmerited misfortunes. He cannot marry, and is thereby not merely tempted, but in a manner compelled, to form the loosest and most disgusting connections”
Thomas Cooper, ‘Facts illustrative of the condition of negro slaves in jamaica 1824’, p13
What a quote. If I hadn’t put the provenance there, you probably wouldn’t have been able to guess where and when this was written. You probably would’ve nodded your head saying “Damn…” at its incisive words but “I hear it though” on its verisimilitude. You probably would’ve thought about the state of the Black community in the USA or the UK. You definitely wouldn’t have thought that that passage was referring to slaves, in Jamaica, over 200 years ago. You might’ve thought these things regardless of whether I put the provenance up. In some sense, you are completely justified in thinking so (I’ll explain why soon). If you’re wondering who Thomas Cooper is, thinking you’ve missed on another underrated Black abolitionist intellectual, you couldn’t be more wrong. I thought the same thing a while ago. It was late 2024 and I was skimming through primary sources that I could cram into my extended essay for ‘Race, Sex and Medicine in the Early Atlantic World’ and I stumbled upon Mr. Cooper. Thomas Cooper (to the best of my knowledge, since there are at least 3 roughly in the same period so this is who I’m fairly confident it is) was an Anglo-American economist, political philosopher and most importantly, a slave owner and ardent defender of the institution of slavery. Oh, he was also an Oxford man (matriculating at Univ but failing to graduate for refusing the religious test, supposedly). Let’s focus on the latter bit - Cooper was a slave owner. He wrote this out of the paternalist concern to improve enslaved conditions through religious education and moral improvement. Why are the words of a slave-owner so enduring or more correctly, why do they appear to be?
Indeed, there is a verisimilitude to the atemporality of Black suffering, which is to say, in academic jargon, that it appears to be true that Black people have always been going through it. I take ‘Black’ to mean all African descended people, everywhere, keeping it as fluid as possible by the way. The world seems to be soaked and marinated in anti-Blackness, you only need to look. I’m hesitant to list examples of anti-Blackness and institutional racism, discrimination, inequality because that would both belie and betray their importance but you don’t even have to look that hard. But, for those reading who, somehow, have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about and would like to research and read, look at: the disparities in healthcare and particularly, maternal mortality rates, mass incarceration, global police brutality, colorism, the Windrush scandal in the UK, the practice of redlining, apartheid, Jim Crow, the Transatlantic slave trade, and the continuing colonial exploitation of Africa to name a few. The world is rife with the suffering of Black people and in some cases, constructed upon it. Some historians and philosophers posit different reasons (please bear with me, I’ll get to my actual point soon). My favourite is: that the ‘discovery’ (for lack of a better word) of Black people by the rest of the world constituted something close to a meta-aporia, a conundrum or state of puzzlement about the self. Non-African people didn’t know quite what to do with us in the nicest way possible. Our skin complexions, hair etc were sites of fascination and fear. In 1739, the Academie royale des sciences de Bordeaux asked a pivotal question: “What is the physical cause of the negroes' color, of the quality of their hair, and of the degeneration of one and the other?”. Hundreds of essays from throughout Europe came with hundreds of varying answers from biblical polygenesis (that Black people were descendants of Cain and were therefore, cursed with black skin), to environmental and climatological (the Sun is why Black people are black) and more. The answers to this essay question are an entirely separate can of worms that are unfortunately relevant in the ways Black people are seen but you can look at those in your own time. Afropessimism by Frank B. Wilderson III is an amazing book that presents a critical framework that examines the ongoing effects of racism, colonialism and enslavement on Black people today. It is a bleak but enchanting read (I recommend it highly). How do we cure Black people of the conditions people like Cooper have assigned us? Wilderson says ‘the end of the world’... I loved Afro-Pessimism and I welcome the dismantling of the systems of oppression but in all honesty, I’m anxious for Wilderson’s apocalypse. It’s getting dark out here.
Ergo, I would like to posit an idea that you might find beneficial to carry: your joy is revolutionary. Your education, laughter and family and history and futures are revolutionary. In a world that has predisposed us to suffering, through the manifestation of racist and colonial ideas, denigrating us as inferior and incapable, the fact that you are here, now, reading this, is rebellion. The creeping lurch of fascism in the West continually threatens to bolster these ideas though, and knowing this, there isn’t enough being done. Du Bois’ ‘Talented Tenth’ isn’t enough. The privileges we have and the rooms we are in can facilitate the alleviation of Black suffering and misfortune. Higher Black Oxbridge admissions means little if the Black maternal mortality rate is as high as it is, if the exclusion rate for young Black boys is still disproportionately high, if discrimination in the streets, workplace and media increase. The times are uncertain but I believe we all have a part to play in healing and strengthening our communities. Through our access and outreach, our thought, our art, our ventures and invention, our collaboration and our communities. This is my Afro-Optimism and hopefully, yours too.
Rebecca Amonoo-Neizer
A Set of Poems
White or Black?
When I was little, my sister once asked me,
If I had a choice, would I be “White or Black?”
I thought about it, with my small, naïve brain,
And I said confidently, “White!”
She laughed and asked, “Why?”
After all these years, it hasn’t left my mind,
That one moment in time,
When my idea of race was so
Distorted and unrefined.
(I question even now how I could live in a world
Where I wasn't proud of being Black,
Where being Black represented something that I lack.)
And I said— thinking I was quite a genius,
“Well, I'd have privilege, better healthcare,
Higher likelihood of a good career,
I’d care for my hair with ease,
I’d be smiled at by strangers on the street,
Being stopped by the police
Would cease to be my greatest fear…”
But I should've asked myself, “Why?”
Why is it that, to me,
White people seemed to have it easier,
And what’s that go to do with the colour of their skin?
Why did my sister get mocked for being fat,
Whilst White actresses were adored for being thin?
Why did so many of my people struggle
To get enough food on their plate?
Then get shouted at when they were late
To work, because they're working double shifts,
To escape this financial abyss,
Created by those who are higher than us,
You know, the ones at the top that don’t care about us,
Why don’t they want to acknowledge the power of White?
Why don’t they want to acknowledge the power of, “Why?”
Because to ask is to know,
To know is to say no
To a world where Black equals darkness,
And White equals light,
To create a world where a little girl like me
Believes that her future is bright,
Who she is,
And who she will be,
Isn’t defined by the colour of her skin,
Whether she’s thick or thin,
Where that little girl is infinitely proud
Of the body that she’s in.
Homecoming
Cocoa butter kisses from my mother
Melt softly in my heart like marshmallow fluff,
But they don’t settle in my stomach, no,
They rise up slowly in my throat,
I would scream in anguish but I choke—
Because no words could possibly explain
The feeling of her being a world away.
One world away, one call away, one text away.
But grainy pixels on a screen
Hide the scent of her olive oil sheen,
And a frame can’t contain
Her glass-shattering smile,
Her pearly teeth displaying
The richest laugh I’ve heard in a while,
Her radiant warmth sets my heart on fire,
To be held in her arms is my greatest desire.
Yet I cannot embrace my mother
Without the sunflower oil from the pot
Burning my weak wrist, I hiss
As it splatters like her tears
That I haven’t seen in years,
Because she’s never really here,
She’s always just one call away.
I hiss because I never really learned
How to cook (it’s not the same in the recipe book),
I wonder if I should lower the heat
But that won’t calm the bubbles of anxiety
Brewing in me,
I’m her youngest daughter,
This should all come naturally.
But am I willing to pay the price of a mother’s sacrifice?
Breaking her back and bending her knees
For children who don’t recognise her pleas
To be looked after too.
She’ll never bring herself to tell you.
Instead, she’ll stir the tomato stew,
Watch it overflow and spew
Out of her pulsing heart
Her thick blood flows dark,
But she’ll mop it with Dettol,
Before you get back from school,
So she can muster a sad smile,
And murmur, “I’m so proud of you.”
And I know,
You think you’re doing your best,
You’re passing every exam and test,
But your grades will never show
That you’re failing the one in front of you.
The cocoa beans she’s grown
Have rotted between her teeth,
But she’ll weed between your cracks
And continue to feed and water you.
How will you see her rivers of tears run brown
When you choose to bathe where the water is clear?
Don’t you see her muscles ache from selling fruit on her head?
But you choose to buy from the supermarket instead.
She harvests the cocoa beans just for your benefit,
Only for you to spit it out and call her bitter.
She morphs herself to be more appeasing to you,
But you’re adamant on having nothing to do with her.
For how long will you run from your roots?
For how long will you spit out the dirt that nourished you?
For how long will you reject the burning sun that gave you food?
When will you come back to the one that loves you?
People may push and shove,
Tell you to go back where you came from,
But your mother’s arms are strong enough,
Don’t be afraid of not fitting in, my love.
When you feel the bass in her music,
When you taste the flavour in her food,
Know that what I say is true,
A mother’s arms were made to hold you.