ISSUE
01
Project Statement The idea for this story project jumped into existence during an evening work commute, nearly two years ago. A few years prior, I'd conducted an interview with Miss Jack Davey, lead singer of the (awesome) L.A.-based duo, J*Davey. When asked about black music’s blurred lines, she told me that, “in junior high, when all my friends were listening to R. Kelly, I was secretly hiding away listening to Nevermind by Nirvana. That was my own little private joy. My friends would be like, ‘you listen to Led Zeppelin?!’” That single statement brought forth memories of my own experience as a teen secretly harboring rock music fascinations. That night, I set out to bring this commonality to life, creating a compilation of short stories that gave other women the space to share about growing up as the black girl who just never quite fit in. This project has stopped, started, shifted, and morphed more times than I can count, but has always been a passion and a labor of love. It’s honest, it’s eccentric, and it’s called Oddflower. Thank you to every writer who contributed her truth, and for the artists who helped make these stories shine. Thank you Miss Jack Davey, and thank you to every black girl and woman who creates and exists beyond the boundaries.
t heoddf l owers.com © COPYRIGHT 2014
Black Girl Gone Country
4
Ashley M. Young
To Be Black and Different (2bb&D)
8
Andrea Graham
Come Out to Play
From Floating to Flying
Who Am I?
radio flyer
10 Yewande Omotoso 13 Shane’a Thomas 15 Whitney Greer 18 G.M. JONES
EDITED BY: Andrea Boston // Co-Edited by Candice Watkins Designed by: Jazminia C. Griffith PHOTO credit, cover: E.MICHELLE
b ack girl country iI
feel
lucky
tonight
gone
by Ashley M. young
“She’s a wild one with an angel’s face, she’s a woman-child in a state of grace.” - FAITH HILL, “WILD ONE”
“We got two lives—one we’re given and the other one we make.” - MARY CHAPIN CARPENTER, “THE HARD WAY”
4
I outed myself as a country music listener when I was in 4th grade.
On Come On,” Chapin’s music became the soundtrack to my childhood.
I was sitting at my desk doing the morning warm-up next to my best friend Sumon, a girl who I thought was definitely too cool to be my friend. She was a pretty brown girl with silky hair who wore FUBU and listened to Juvenile, LL Cool J, Puff Daddy, and Biggie—all rappers whose albums hit it big in 1997. I must have been completely sidetracked by my worksheet because as I circled the answers, I started singing the theme song to our local area country music station: “98.7 WMZQ.”
During the tough times—my mother’s divorce and frequent bouts with depression—we sang Chapin’s words like a mother-daughter battle cry. Every morning, I’d listen to my mother’s voice, learn the lyrics, and sing along. It was a way of connecting without speaking and a way of learning without traditional lessons; the things my mother couldn’t explain to me, she taught me through song. I learned how hard the divorce had been for her when she belted out the notes to “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her,” a song about lovers separating:
Until that point, I had kept my country music listening a secret from my best friend, cautious not to sing any Shania Twain in public and even more careful to conceal the covers of my CD’s in my Discman. I knew if I had been outed, I’d endure endless ridicule from my peer group, or even worse, some bizarre listening/hazing ritual that my friends thought would convince me to listen to rap and R&B. I knew the first thing people would say to me: Black girls don’t listen to country music. I had heard it said before and the last thing I wanted was yet another reason for everyone to call me a white girl.
“ She packs his suitcase, she sits and waits, With no expression, upon her face When she was thirty-six, she met him at their door She said,‘I’m sorry, but I don’t love you anymore.’”
Sumon lifted her head from her worksheet and looked at me in shock. “Isn’t that a country music station?” she asked. I was definitely caught, so I tried as best as I could to cover my ass.
I learned that love was a funny, fragile thing and that it was somehow worth feeling brokenhearted. My mother built herself up with song when the world felt at its darkest and loneliest.
“Yeah, I think so. I must have heard it surfing through the stations,” I said, barely looking at her.
During her recovery from the loss of her marriage, she taught me about love and passion. In those days, she yearned for it badly, suddenly becoming a single mother left to raise me on her own. I’d bounce around the living room on Saturday mornings, our boom box blasting Chapin’s “Passionate Kisses” on repeat while my mother attempted breakfast in the kitchen. It was a song about wanting and deserving and I was learning that a woman had a right to her own primal urges. My mother smiled and let me sing my favorite lines on my own:
I’d saved myself for an instant, but it wasn’t long before people learned that not only did I listen to country music, I loved country music. My mother raised me on country. When I was old enough to ask her why, she told me it was because country music had no profanity, was easy to sing along with, and always managed to tell a story—even if that story was about losing a tractor, a dog, or a woman. My mother loved to sing and from the time I could speak, the two of us always sang country music together. I was five when she introduced me to Mary Chapin Carpenter, a stocky blonde woman whose fusion of folk and country still resonate with me. From the first day my mother popped in the cassette tape “Come
“ Do I want too much, am I going overboard 5
to want that touch? Shout it out to the night Give me what I deserve, cause it’s my right Shouldn't I have this Shouldn't I have this Shouldn't I have this all of this and passionate kisses from you.” When I was six, my mother took me to my first Chapin concert. She told me we’d have to sing along quietly as not to disturb the other audience members. But I didn’t know how to sing softly. We sang so loud and so long, that my throat hurt. I stood on my chair to get the best view of Chapin’s band and sang “I Feel Lucky” at the top of my lungs. Everyone around me couldn’t help but laugh at the tiny, giddy black girl, singing the lyrics to a song about smoking, betting, and cat-calling. I barely understood the words but loved the thought of feeling like a sexy woman on the prowl, so I shamelessly belted out my favorite part:
“ I feel lucky, oh oh oh, I feel lucky yeah Hey Dwight, hey Lyle, boys you don’t have to fight Hot dog, I feel lucky tonight I feel lucky, brrr, I feel lucky yeah Think I’ll flip a coin, I’m a winner either way Mmmmm, I feel lucky today.” Chapin was teaching me that music could get me through anything and so was my mother. I was too young to know that her sadness was deeper than my parents’ separation. It stemmed from years of ups and downs—a relentless
battle with bipolar disorder. But when Chapin played, my mother always calmed, sang, smiled, and retreated to the stories country told. The women in country were helping my mother get through the day and they were ushering me through puberty, recovery, and times of mourning. When my grandmother died from a lengthy battle with cancer, my mother and I held each other and turned to songs for comfort. We listened to Chapin’s “In My Heaven,” imagining a place where my grandmother could rest and find peace in another life. Through the tears, we found solace and comfort in the words:
“Nothing shatters nothing breaks Nothing hurts and nothing aches We’ve got ourselves one helluva place In my heaven.” In mourning, I found Lori McKenna, a Boston folk singer whose voice echoed in my head, haunted with a southern twang. Her songs were the only sounds that conjured up clear images of my grandmother healthy in her house in Ahoskie, North Carolina, watering her flower beds, sorting books in her living room library, and standing in her country kitchen frying thin apple slices to accompany cheese toast, eggs, and bacon. My heart ached when my grandmother died from cancer, but I wrapped myself in Lori McKenna’s voice and learned to pace my panicked breathing and heavy tears to her music. When it came time for me to choose colleges, I dreamed of rural land, quiet pastures, and panoramic landscapes—a quiet background that I was sure would aid me through hours of endless studies. I found that place in the Dixie Chicks’ lyrics, a fierce all-female band wielding violins, fiddles, guitars, and voices that put rock into country. On my early morning drives to high school during my senior year, I sang “Wide Open Spaces,” desperate to get out of my suburban town and desperate to be on my own. I’d grip the steering wheel tight driving into the sunset as I sang out the words:
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