"Gathering What is Left": A Conversation with Ariana Brown

Abstract

In her collection of poetry, We Are Owed., Ariana Brown asks the reader to develop a Black consciousness by rejecting U.S., Chicano, mestizo, and Mexican nationalism in order to confront anti-Black erasure and empire-building. Brown “maps” not only the racialized, but also the gendered and sexualized experiences of Afro-Mexicans in the diaspora. In this conversation, Brown highlights the necessity to consider everyday life as a space that is rife with historical, political, and cultural information. Brown builds upon Dionne Brand’s concept of “gathering what is left,” that is, making community and archive through imagining not only what might have been, but also through concrete practices in the here-and-now to not only build new strategies for resistance and refusal, but also to forge a future of care, love, pleasure, and joy—to make the world anew.