The Gaze Runner

For a time, all my writing reflected my exposure to the world through television. I remember writing a love story featuring myself and a Caucasian young man I had a crush on, in which I replaced myself with an alternative auburn-haired-hazel-eyed young lady. The only way I knew to create stories that I found attractive (because the television showed me that they were attractive) was to replace what I considered boring African narratives with exciting western tales of romance. Up until this point, all I had were the eyes in my head to view the world I grew up in. A dusty world of noise, sweat, matatus, matooke and tropical heat had no place on the table of literature. And then I left home.

During my first few weeks in South Africa I experienced an interesting shift from ‘student’ to ‘international student’; I was suddenly exotic and soon became giddy on the fumes of my newly found special-ness. Friendships were formed with complete strangers who listened with renewed vigor when they discovered I was from Uganda; they gave me new eyes through which I began to view and experience the reality of my heritage. I simultaneously became one of the few authorities on the ‘African Experience’, and a destination for information from well-meaning enthusiasts who admittedly knew a lot more about my home than I could ever hope to.

The anthropological gaze of my peers and professors was a hydrogen balloon that buoyed me out of the stratosphere of their lived experience, into a space of external, privileged, and yet limited perception. I wasn’t necessarily expected to produce work that resonated with the sounds of my motherland, but rather felt that it was my personal obligation as an emissary. With family exhortations to “do us proud” ringing in my head, I inherited the responsibility to tell stories which would effectively compress the what it meant to be Ugandan into bite-sized pieces. The gaze morphed into an internalized panopticon which compelled me to hold myself responsible as the brand ambassador for my home. The “…burden of expectation…” did not come from without but from within, originating from the desire to remain atop the high cloud of exoticism. This could only be achieved by pretending to be a master of the quite frankly amorphous and ever-changing dark matter of my culture. Where else could I fit in this new terrain? Would it ever be possible to fit neatly within the slots of recognition as “part of” and not “other”? Or was ethnic responsibility and representation my only survival tactic within this framework?

I began to write short plays based on experiences from home, and they sucked. There was no honesty in the work, only a desire to sufficiently pull the wool over the eyes of those who thought I knew what I was talking about.

Meanwhile, my love for words grew and I explored this muscle by writing various pieces about more light-skinned people doing fancy light-skinned things – because this is what truly excited me! A childhood full of The Powerpuff Girls and forbidden soap operas dictated that I cast this gaze upon my experience. I became fiercely protective of my home and its people because they stood as a bastion of ‘reality’ in a world of tall tales. This wasn’t a place of bondage, but a place of selective freedom. From this standpoint, I effectively believed that I had one foot rooted deeply in the culture I could not fully identify with, and one in the brand-new world I was desperate to assimilate myself into. The anthropological gaze was not an outward infliction that restricted my artistic pursuits, but rather a function that had been a part of my growth and existence for as long as I could remember. The gaze was a maze that functioned as a conduit through which I explored my identity, and it therefore did not surprise me whenever I was faced with challenges. Because this is simply the way it was.

I don’t remember when I first heard of Lupita Nyong’o, but I do recall watching her speech on Black Beauty at the Essence’s seventh annual Black Women In Hollywood event. Turns out I was not the only one in the maze.

Her words were deeply felt. They sunk to the heart of the structure and began to knead the foundations loose. She was my Alek Wek moment. Of course, I had seen other women of color on the television and in literature (Shout out to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Toni Morrison, Angela Bassett, Sanyu Kisaka.) but never with this measure of girlish, runny-nose-honesty. The women I had seen were made of steel; their faces were carefully arranged, and their manner carefully chosen. They were tried and tested soldiers who had weathered the gaze as a storm they confronted daily and had finally adapted to in order to survive. Lupita came at it with a child-like innocence that revealed a welcome softness without compromising her credibility.

Credibility: the quality of being trusted and believed in. The reason why I believe establishments such as the Ma-Yi writer’s lab are in such desperate need, is that they give writers of color the gift of credibility. Yes, you can write about what excites you. Yes, your stories are valid even if they are not about your people. Yes, we believe in your time-travelling fantasies. Yes, your vision is attainable.

In closing, I remember a conversation I had with a Human Recourse PhD student about the nation of Uganda. He vibrated with convicted determination about his vision for his homeland and spoke at great length about the critical need for role models. When he discovered that I am pursuing a MFA in Acting he remarked that I was lucky to have had someone to look up to, saying something along the lines of “Kids in my village don’t have no role models…you become your own hero.”

The most crippling effect of the anthropological gaze is its ability to align and seal the creative fates of potential role models and the people they could inspire. This is why the Ma-Yi writers lab is absolutely necessary; they lead artists out of the maze, arm them with credibility and point them in the direction of unfettered creativity.

Sources:

Maze-Brain Picture