Black to the Future

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

We're excited to present Black Creatives Aotearoa’s (BCA) first printed zine, a collection of Black literature and artwork that highlights our diverse and nuanced interpretations. Inspired by our community's creativity, we aimed to explore and promote a deeper understanding of the Black experience with an eye to the future.

The ‘Black to the Future’ theme supports our freedom of expression, and encompasses a variety of personal experiences and reflections. Curating this zine, we focused on highlighting our diversity, while respecting a collective creative vision. Our contributors each have their own personal perspectives on Blackness

Each piece intersects and diverges along themes of identity, time, the environment, and Black Joy. These universal themes can strengthen links and create empowering spaces within our communities. We hope the content draws readers in and inspires them to create their own work Understanding Black experiences in new ways and contexts matters more now than ever.

Aotearoa's connection to the land and nature stems from its Mana Whenua and Te Ao Māori Recognizing the intricate relationship between Blackness and indigeneity is essential to understanding what it means to be Black in Aotearoa. Our contributors explored their connection to themselves, the land, and time in inspiring ways We hope the zine will resonate with future generations helping us envision a better future where Black lives genuinely matter.

Our art moves us beyond our pain and trauma towards love, laughter, and joy. As a collective, we extend our gratitude to all creatives for their courage, vulnerability, and willingness to share their unique expressions of Blackness.

We received the stewardship of these pieces with honor and empathy and hold our contributors close to our hearts and minds. We're grateful for BCA, Ellen Melville Centre, and Auckland CBD Library for supporting this initiative Thank you to all our funders, you make community endeavors like this possible.

We hope you enjoy our voices, visuals and stories as much as we enjoyed bringing them together.

Acacia Cochise and Bareeka Vrede || Black to the Future Zine

Fathom

by Nancy Howie

2 3 - 4 5 6 7 8 - 9 10 - 11

My Daughter’s Skin

by Jane Benny Kelly

A Missionary Falls in Love with a Coloniser

by

Takunda Muzondiwa

Itsy Bitsy Spider

by Mwangileni Kampanga

Un-named, 2023

by Bareeka Vrede

the consciousness of a black woman by

DK Verrian

Citrus Women

by Grace Bentley-Tsibuah

Indelible Impression

by Acacia Cochise

18 - 19 20 - 21 22 23

Isis by

Mary Adeosun

A New Dawn-Reflections on the Zombie War by

Edward Ennion-Dickison

Black Imagined Future

by Daisy Remington

Africa and Environmental Ethics by

Justin Sobion

Q Letter to Us by

Phodiso Dintwe

Fade to Black. A Barbershop Story by Ladi Ajayi

Black Joy by Diana

Simumpande

Founders Statement and Thank You's

Black Creatives Aotearoa

To find out more about the contributors and other BCA initiatives, visit blackcreativesaotearoacom

Afrotearoa, 2023

Fathom (Nancy Howie)

As a woman of Pākehā and Afro-Caribbean descent, it can be difficult to locate an identity within the confines of these markers This piece seeks to celebrate the dichotomy

My Daughter's Skin

Jane Benney Kelly

My daughter’s skin may be the lightest yet, but she is still black. She is the future, carrying with her, her ancestors and her ancestors who are my ancestors and my mother’s ancestors and so on and so forth it goes and so on it will go until the end amen.

When I was very small, they would assume my black mother was the Maid

My black mother with her straight nose. My black mother with her light skinned grandmother. (The blood was mixed there but they did not say it and they will not say it but they all knew it but nobody proved it, but we all know it, now)

When I was small, but bigger than then, they would ask the light bright child with the bouncy tight curls why she spoke with a British accent and how she got her tan She would reply “Honestly, I have no idea what you’re talking about” Because indeed, how does a small pre-pubescent child in a new country explain to her white Jewish classmates that her parents were different colours and those colours made her skin HER skin and that she spoke that way because when she was taught English with the slippery soap slide of mother tongue scrubbed from her lips all she was left with was the taste of tea and the Queens staccato.

my mother wondered if that was the end of the black line. She probably thought my joining of a(nother) white man would dilute the black

Like one part vinegar to two parts water to wash away the stain.

She did not know like we know now that future versions of herself and myself and my daughter retain that bloodline. The blackest blacks may fade in the wash but they’re still... well, black. Still separated into two piles in the laundry room of segregation.

My daughter’s skin pale against mine. Her dark brown eyes almond mirrors of mine. Her ovaries already carrying her children, her Grandchildren.

The science then is clear The future is present, and it was and still is, and still will be, black.

A Missionary Falls in Love with a Coloniser

Takunda Muzondiwa

The year is 1888

In the Republic of Zimbabwe

Where a missionary Falls in love with a coloniser

So, they bind themselves in holy matrimony

Vowing to evangelise a colonial testimony

To leave this motherland baptised neck-deep in holy water

And I wonder

If their first daughter is Black Queer

And Christian

What values will they teach her to stand on?

Which parts of herself will they teach her to spit damnation on?

And they say love is blind

So when this little girl

Decides to paint on the walls for the first time

I imagine they’ll make a woman out of her

Tell her

Get on her knees and getting to scrubbing

Tell her to turn all that Picasso into peroxide

Erase all that colour

Until those four walls looks like milk

And I suppose it’s funny

How white reflects all colours

Scattering them to places they can no longer be seen

Be remembered

While black absorbs all colours

Like they are something to be held close

To be ashamed of

To be afraid of

Because when you are made a target for both who you love

And where you come from

The body

Turns into a minefield of dichotomies

How can you learn to love your body

When it is housing something so desperate to kill you?

For Queer Black girls

Whose Blackness

Has grown so dark it is the very thing that haunts them

We suckle on prayers now

Cry hallowed be His name

And hollowed be our souls

Reaching arms to a Father in heaven

Knees broken over the altar while we pray to be altered

Hailing to a white Saviour

Blue-eyed and fair-skinned

He preaches sculpt a temple from body

We were racialised and it was legitimised

By a white man’s self-glorifying gospel

Before God, these arms lift themselves on high

What do Black hands know

But to be raised in the air?

Be it on the cross

Or the borders of Matebele

We have always so peaceful in our surrender

Before being

Captured and conquered

If Jesus had two fathers

And we are made in His image

Will they crucify us too?

Hang us up like billboards

And call it renaissance art

Because making profits off Black livelihoods is a historical pastime

We are tired of hacking off pieces of ourselves

To give to you like communion bread

Black Queer

And Christian

We are tired of building bodies into apologies

Binding bibles in our skin

Breathing incense and coughing up our spines

All marrow and cartilage

Used to build these pews

Our christenings begin in the womb

So when a coloniser falls in love with a missionary

And their children are birthed from rupturing waters

It’s no wonder

The original values of the motherland start drowning

Belief systems abandoned in ruin

Now the riches of Zimbabwe

That once belonged in the hands of a black pot

Lay shipwrecked somewhere

Beyond a rainbow

Itsy Bitsy Spider Mwangileni Kampanga

10:35pm It's late.

I dry my muddy shoes on mum’s repurposed doormat, and search my inconveniently small handbag for house keys that I swear I had.

“Hey mum! Odi! What’s for dinner?” I ask, now entering the kitchen after my silent battle with the front door Mum is making herself dinner I’m surprised to see she’s still in her office attire too, wearing a black dress that hugs her small frame She looks at me and smiles softly It’s the kind of smile that greets me warmly but is also born of my mother’s particular brand of disapproval “Abeni, where have you been sweetie?” She says, shaking her head. “You know it’s a weeknight…” she trails off, her voice gives away her slight fatigue. Fatigue from the day or from me? It's difficult to tell, but I can't bring myself to respond. Mum turns to look at me as I rest my laptop bag against the coffee table before reclining on her lush suede couch. Feet up, of course, on the armrest towards the kitchen. I close my eyes and inhale, listening to the clunky rattling of pots and pans, as mum picks out her favourite cookware She continually chooses to use the same dented pot to cook nshima, our national dish, her comfort food I don't care for it Not the pot, but for nshima The carb-rich meal has a silky and smooth texture You eat the glorified porridge with an assortment of condiments like relish and vegetables but to me it has a gritty, grainy consistency so I haven't had nshima for years.

We haven't been back to Zambia for years. I’d like to go back, I think, but I’m not convinced. I quickly brush away that creeping thought. It emerged like a spider. But just before the spider has the chance to make itself at home in my discomfort, I hear an indistinct murmur of voices The chatter draws me back into our living room To my surprise, the TV is on and mum is fixated on the news, her abandoned dinner plate on her lap I strain my neck to view the broadcast, although it’s nothing that concerns me “We’ve made everything so much easier for you, baby,” she starts off, and I already know where she’s heading: back to her future. The future she would’ve had if she had the opportunities I currently have. I give her a moment. Mum launches into her nostalgic fantasy. Take off! “Firstly,” she continues, but I’ve already switched off. I know we are fighting different battles. She can see hers, however I can only feel mine. That same tiny spider extends its tiny feathered leg into my consciousness * Its sticky web stifles me and I realise I haven’t spoken since I arrived home Zsófi, bless them, said you can hold both fear and love at the same time Does mum know? Not that a mother should know She has too much onher plate

* Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, the author uses the extended metaphoric symbolism of a moth which is described to be resting on little twin Rahel Ipe’s heart

Un-named, 2023

Bareeka Vrede

“[Red lipstick was] associated with this mysterious, frightening femininity”

Rachel Felder, Red Lipstick: An Ode to a Beauty Icon

the consciousness of a black woman

i.

i was originally going to call this poem “the triple consciousness of the Black woman” but i.

i realised there are more than three. and i.

i made a conscious choice to live this way and i.

i made the conscious choice to exist in bold, in italics and underlined. but i.

i must still stay lower case. and i

i must still stay holier than thou, though more naïve than the oppressor. but i.

i can’t put a name to it yet. the consciousness of a black woman i am. her.

i. am them we. are. free. We.

Citrus Women Grace Bentley-Tsibuah

You can live your whole life as a woman of citrus

You’re kind

You’re calm

And quite often a witness

To terrible crimes

From terrible minds

From the back of the party

To the middle of a piece rind

You found on the ground

When they were questioning your sanity

You sit in the air just waiting for gravity

To bring you back down

You swim but don’t drown

You’re black may be brown

You're not sure anymore

Eyes watching elephants on a safari tour

But your home now

Or so they said

You’re world would change and

You would sleep different

But with the same head

Same eyes

Same teeth

Same mouth

Same red

To return to a home you have never been before is a funny notion You are to know everything and nothing at the same time.

So you bucket the boots you have bought for yourself

The earth is yellow red and you step on it

The sounds are loud and the colours are bright

Even in the middle of the night.

You try to sleep but you can’t

You have entered the work that has been waiting for

You and you have already wasted so much time.

They say you will feel at home when you return

And a part of you does but the other half yearns

For the calm of the bay

A swifts brush of a tree

And a slice of cold orange

At fifteen past three

But you brought your own boots

And it's time to grow up

Indelible Impression Acacia Cochise

He always says goodbye the same way, “ even though there was tragedy in our disconnection, thank you for changing my life”

She wonders, “what do I get out of this, when my love of you only gifts me grief and loneliness?”

It began here:

In the ritual of our riddle, I lingered too long in inadequacies in order to become an antidote to your fears and reduced myself to asking simple questions so I could work the easiest pieces of my experience into yours

I played pretend in houses that were not mine and found the trick of how to excel in schools that resembled my father’s prison The key is, start behaving like an inmate It’s also the trap

You thought that because you disinterred me from deep within the earth, and marked me on the map with a headstone carved with black lines

You’d be able to hold me

You called me mother, child, teacher, lover and then thief when I refused your fantasy

You made boundaries and marked me, named be, but also gave me anonymity: Black Girl, Brown Girl, Woman of Colour, Exotic and BIPoC–do you really know who you left behind?

I had to make deals with my body, trade my eloquence for brute struggle, and transmute my intimacy into fodder for the republic. You denied me entry into the smallest spaces, pronouncing, “my child, there is no place for you”.

I am a child no more. And even when I was one, I was never your child, just an infantilization of your fear of the other.

You accused me of anger, and you weren’t wrong, just predictable in the way you reacted to your own displacement when you found out we lead different lies. In your life, there were places

I couldn’t go, and there were spaces

I wouldn’t take you

Because of how and why we ‘saw’ each other;

Every day I mourn the lives of those unexplored characters as the silent narrator, Living with the history beside the possibilities, Now you too know the things I’ve always known. The absence of sound and being ‘less’.

Newfound understanding released you, and isolated me. I love you, and you only saw me because I showed you how to look.

It ends here:

Every day I leave a flower for us upon the grave of what we could have never understood alone but whose reflection we managed to glimpse over and over in our liminal, elemental reality

I am the words that unmake and remake myself: I am not alone. I am learning and unlearning as part of a much bigger wholeness, the mystery of a deeper love. “I am my own indelible impression; and I will not forget.”

These are the words that have set me free, by those who came before and those that will come after me.

Isis

Mary Adeosun

I was inspired by the head-dress that is worn and depicted on the Ancient Kemetic goddess Aset or Isis. I created a crown like shape on Jana's head due to my love for sculptural hair art and we went to a neighbouring park, walked around and captured her during sunset hour. Blackness transcends time. The fact that we can take inspiration from mythologies born in 2350–c 2100 BCE or even prior to that and thread her hair, which Nigerians have also used for years, and create sculptures from that is beautiful to me.

Hair Art is a way to validate the identity of black women. Having the crown of their head being transformed into literal sculptures or shapes they desire allows them to be connected so deeply with themselves.

Credits:

Muse / Model: Jana Rageh

Creative Direction/ Photography/ Hair Art: Mary Adeosun

Location: Potters Park, Mount Eden

A New Dawn-Reflections on the Zombie War Edward Ennion-Dickison

The tall spire of the Christchurch Cathedral fails to cast a shadow in the midday sun I am meeting Eric Dixey, about his research for Christchurch Museum’s oral archive of the Zombie War He arrives slightly late, and apologetic Standing at six foot five; he is dressed for the heat, in a white short sleeved shirt and blue striped shorts. His accent is a blend of West Otago, where he grew up and the Caribbeantinged London accent of his family.

What I find most fascinating is hearing how people rationalised the Zombie War. Not the pop culture ones, “The undead are divine retribution” or “humankind is a parasite, Mother Nature has decided to wipe out” I try to dig into what ideas people clung to that kept them going

I remember talking to one of the other parents at my daughter’s school She had tried to germinate an avocado pit just as the outbreak began in Palmerston North As everything fell apart, she was determined to keep that plant alive and took it with her when she set out for the Wairarapa safe zone. She kept it alive for the entire war. Through disease, food shortages, and zombie attacks. She said that the day she planted it in a community plot, not too far from here, it was like that chapter of her life had finally concluded. She could commit wholeheartedly to living in the present.

She asked me what had kept me going when the undead flooded the streets, when I lost contact with my partner and my family It’s strange, before the war I had such a horrified fascination of zombies I used to get sleep paralysis in the form of a recurring zombie nightmare I would lie in bed, frozen with the fear that the faintest sound might give me away. Yet when this nightmare became reality I didn’t freeze, I pushed on.

Why did you?

During my teens, I was hit with the radical pro-black lightning bolt of Malcolm X. It's like a mixed kid awakening, a rite of passage At uni, I was fascinated with black nationalist movements includingthe 5% Nation of Gods and Earths I remember reading a book by the RZA from Wu-Tang and he was talking about the Night of the Living Dead and zombies as a metaphor for mental enslavement “ I’m definitely no five-percenter but something about that metaphor just clicked into my relationship to zombies. When the dead upended our lives, it was a quote that pushed me on, “After the black man survives--he fights off destruction through the whole movie--a white man kills him.”

When life became a horror movie, I could not let myself become a cliche. I look at my daughter and I think I understand why my grandparents left Jamaica and fought for a life in England They survived, I survived It's time to live After the black man survives, he fights off destruction through the whole movie he sits in the summer haze and braids his daughter’s hair

Imagined Black Future Daisy Remington

The future is so often depicted devoid of natural surrounds. Landscapes of deserts or stark cityscapes A time where no plants grow, nothing of the wildness that is part of our natural world.

Nature has been pillaged to the point of extinction and only the colonial humans have survived Like trees and grass, We do not belong

This is not my future.

My future belongs to forest and meadow, to hill and valley, to mountain and stream. Our future belongs to the very things that support our existence in reciprocity

Instinctually we know, all that we need to feed ourselves mind, body and soul is all around us. We only need to look

The resources of our lives grow beside us

We come together, in relationship, we grow beside the tree. Community is shaped with all living things.

Our lives are an ecosystem feeding into all that surrounds us

Our future has returned to a time when our understanding of the land is as deep as our understanding of ourselves as a part of the great whole

Nature is written in our DNA like the stars written in the sky Moving from East to west the story of our people displaced.

We came from the land, taken from the land and forced to work the land. Turning us against ourselves as we

turned away from the earth

Yet our destiny is to return, for our future is nothing without our past. Our lineage does not break no matter the attempts to hide our history

Our bodies our the soil, our minds are the seeds, our tears the ocean. We breathe the air and we warm ourselves by the fire.

Africa and Environmental Ethics Justin Sobion

Children get your culture…. And don’t stay there and gesture – Bob

Marley

As a descendant from the continent of Africa I admit that sometimes I get distracted – or better yet – d r o w n e d o u t by the din of the outside world. The Western media, the wasteful consumption nor do my German Adidas footwear reflect anything of my cultural lineage. A prominent political theorist described “sovereignty” as closet-Eurocentric since the concepts of “sovereignty” and “territorial borders” are premised on the Peace of Westphalia, 1648 Later, during the Berlin Conference (1884-1885), the African continent was divided into colonial sovereign outposts. Today Africa could never be 55 sovereign states. Africa is one mighty continent! We should never bow to divide and rule.

As a continent, African philosophy has much to offer in terms of how to live sustainably The myopic culture of the “Wild Wild West” only teaches us to pump, process, consume, waste, and repeat This culture is not concerned about the welfare of the Earth and future generations. Why care when you have oil lining the pockets of your trousers, staining your fine linen socks? Our ancestors have taught us that land cannot be owned and that it belongs to the community, which comprises past, present, and future generations Dig deep into the African roots and culture and you will find environmental ethics – rules on how to care and nurture planet Earth. As the aphorism goes –

we do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, We borrow it for our children.

A Letter to Us

Phodiso Dintwe

Dumelang bagaetsho, My grandmother had told stories of her travels, but I had only thought them half true.

When I first encountered Naledi, I was in a state of despair. Despite the declaration of equality at birth, few lived in dignity, and many more were denied it I found myself one of the many, where my family was once one of the few.

I had written an apology letter to my family, and with a dagger I was heading to the man who had taken everything from us when I met Naledi. She was my age and just as angry as I was, but her anger didn't consume her She offered me water and shared a quick story. Naledi was the third child of the Tsodilo Hills family. The one rarely talked about. She arrived under the moonlight on the calmest of summer nights, riding on a bolt of lightning. The Tswana often say the stars are those unwilling to be born On that night, she finally chose to experience life as humans do And so she was called Naledi, a star

I was deeply curious but thanked her and went on my way. Time passed and I couldn't stop thinking about her. Nevertheless, I had a mission to accomplish. I wondered if she would ever speak to me again if she saw blood on my hands

When I looked back, she waved from a distance, but then suddenly appeared in front of me. She spoke of my name, which I had changed.. “The kids called you hurtful names that didn’t belong to you. How did you respond?” My voice cracked, “Um, I told them my name is Mmoloki” She says, “Right ‘One who saves’ And what do they call you now?” I fell silent for a moment, “ They call me Max”

“Max was never meant to exist, and once he did he was always going to die. In the first, one dies. In the other, many die and many more suffer.”

She smiled, “I am not asking you to shoulder the weight of the world I observed the world before it was split into three Before the one they call The First, carved out living terms for the so-called Second, and Third. Over many lifetimes I watched cities, kingdoms and empires rise and fall. Just as human life... Everything serves its purpose. You cannot shoulder the world, it would indeed crush you. While the weight may not be the fault of all, to bear it certainly is the responsibility With that dagger, there's death in one world In another, many die and many more suffer as a consequence. I ask that you live out who and what you are, Mmoloki. ‘One who saves.’” She then vanished. Left me alone with my own thoughts.

On the back of the letter I had written to my family, I now write this to you May we all live out who and what we are, Bantu.

Sincerely,

Mmoloki

Fade to Black. A Barbershop Story

Ladi Ajayi

Kwame, a master barber from Kumasi,Ghana, watched Tunde sweep the hair on the floor. The young Nigerian approached every task with such focus. He had been impressed with the 15-year-old when he walked into his barbershop on Karangahape Road in 2004 looking for a haircut. The man sitting in the chair in front of Kwame glanced over at Tunde as well “Dokita!” He bellowed. “I hope you always impress the bosses when you become a doctor.”

As the conversation erupted around him on what you needed to become a doctor and whether institutional and systemic issues made it possible for a black immigrant to achieve this dream, Tunde swept up the last of the hair

α

As the 2035 Big Gay Out parade filed past Kwame’s shop, participants called out and floated over on gravity disks to hug him. He was a K-road fixture and had created a sense of community for Afro-kiwis in the barbershop, the restaurant next door and the Kente fabric shop Businesses all owned by Kwame

A dark-skinned boy with soft black bouncy curls and an aquiline nose that betrayed his Fiji-Indian and Italian ancestry ran out of the crowd towards him.

“Baba Ghana!”

Kwame felt a surge of emotion wash over him as the 9-year-old hugged him tight “Femi! I’m not as young as I used to be o!”

“My dad says you’re a new man after your surgery.” Femi replied.

“Yes, he is.”

Kwame looked up at Femi’s Dad, Tunde as he presented his left wrist to the personal robotic assistant hovering mid-air next to Kwame The robot pinged twice and intoned, “Dr Babatunde Adeyi, Consultant Head of surgery Auckland Hospital Access authorized.”

Kwame looked amused as Tunde checked his progress since his hip replacement “Enough of that now,” Kwame waved Tunde off his robot. “Let’s get this young man a haircut”

∞

As Tunde’s travel pod descended to street-level, he glanced at the hologram of his granddaughter. He tapped his ear to cut off analysis of the current 2065 election on his internal audio device. He wasn’t comfortable with the chip in his ear, but it was a requirement to continue practicing medicine after his 70th birthday They didn’t let him cut anyone these days The androids were better at that He didn’t see his granddaughter as often as he would like. Femi and his husband were always off on location around the world.

Whenever they made it back to town, Tunde always made sure to take his granddaughter to Kwame’s barbershop. The shop was a symbol of the enduring power of a community space, where people could come together to share ideas, comfort each other, network, and of course, to cut their hair

Tunde waved to Femi and his granddaughter as Kwame’s voice boomed a welcome in the familiar Ghanaian accent. Kwame passed away years ago. But the A.I. that ran the shop was based on his brainwaves and memories. To Tunde, it felt like coming home

Black Joy Diana Simumpande

Black joy is the heartbeat and pulse of our survival. Black joy is a celebration of life. A testament to the resilience of our souls. It's a reminder that we are still here, rising above it all

1. Michel Baudouin, “For me, black joy is being accepted for who I am. I see heaps of black people achieving what they want to do and being supported inside and outside the community. It’s cool to see them achieving everything they set out to do”

2. Tyler Trench,"Black joy to me represents pride. Complete pride in my skin and my blackness."

3 Christabel Sikireta, "When I think about black joy, I think about complete freedom

Founders Statement

Dione Joseph

Black to the Future has been a project that reflects a massive undertaking by our community Spearheaded by Bareeka Vrede and Acacia Cochise this compilation signals a distinctive marker in our emergence as a literary and artistic community dedicated to developing voice, space and representation for our people. When you hold this beautiful expression of creativity and expression in your hands, a tangible symbol of being here, now and present I also invite you to imagine an Aotearoa where all bodies, but specifically Indigenous, Black, Brown bodies are respected and celebrated If the future is in our hands, right now in this moment, you too are cradling this precious microcosm of our community. Enjoy, reflect and connect with us as we embark on our journeys to grow and support our community of Afro-Kiwis in Aotearoa.

Thank You’s

BCA are grateful to all the different individuals and organizations who have supported us with zine We wish to thank our funders, Auckland Council and Ministry of Ethnic Communities for their support, our incredible community of contributors, our production team including our graphic and web designer Anabel Fernandez Santana, production coordinator Layla Pitt and marketing lead Ladi Ajayi. We also want to thank all our partners, children, friends and those who have contributed in a myriad of ways to support us doing this creative mahi and ensure its excellence at all levels. Finally, to our co-editors and projects leads, Bareeka Vrede and Acacia Cochise thank you for stepping up and stepping out to lead this seminal piece of work for our community.

BLACK CREATIVES AOTEAROA

Black Creatives Aotearoa (BCA) was founded in 2018 and over the past five years has seen exponential growth. Our community of over 600 members reflect incredible skill and talent, huge cultural knowledge and formidable presence. Our mission is to contribute to a transformational future where our members and their communities are given the resources, time and support to make their dreams, aspirations and their deeply audacious goals a reality right here in Aotearoa New Zealand. We are committed to manifesting this future by creating and working together with partners, sponsors and allies to develop the necessary new infrastructure for success This includes increasing the capacity and capability for our members in ways that are healthy, meaningful and relevant to us; making resources available and accessible to those in our community; and finally prioritizing people, relationships and sustainability. BCA aims to support Black people through giving their voices respect and creating safe spaces to affirm and celebrate their culture Our zine is one of the first printed collections of Black Literature in Aotearoa that is dedicated to showcasing the multitude and nuance of representation.