The Frangipani Journal: Newsletter 001
Who was prepared for this?
A few days before the death of renowned poet, Nikki Giovanni, I read her interview in “black women writers at work” by Claudia Tate. I do this thing where I turn to black women’s art to fix me, to be a blanket, my personal tiger balm for all ailments. After a chaotic year that roasted my nervous system, I traveled to my home town in need of comfort, I ate cupious amounts of odara and read literature by black women authors. As I settled into what I hoped would be an uneventful end of the year, Nikki Giovanni’s words pushed me off the cliff I had camped on for too long. She said,
“You know people write me and say, what should I write about? How the hell should I know what one should write about?. Nobody’s going to tell me what to write about because it’s about me dancing naked on that floor. And if I’m going to be cold, it’s going to be because I decided to dance there. And if you don’t like to dance, go home. It’s that simple”.
Ladies, gentlemen, everyone in between and outside the gender binary. This was how I stopped procastinating a newletter I have been wanting to write for a while. I love to dance, so I’m staying on the dance floor. My life is a constant trial, like a headless chicken running around to find what feels good, what feels like me. The Frangipani Journal is a documentation of that dance. A witness of my life as Siki N. Soberetonari, an Ijaw/Igbo woman, a reluctant Toronto gyal and a writer.
I love language and literature, I love art and rain, and walking barefoot on grass. I am occasionally funny with the social battery of an old hermit and this could go anywhere. Welcome to The Frangipani Journal.
Lately…
I’ve been reading “Roman Stories” by Jhumpa Lahiri, playing with watercolour and smiling a lot.
