In the FPP Interview with Apogee Executive Editor Alexandra Watson, who recently won the PEN/Nora Magid Award for Editing, she tells us about “going downtown” to 125th Street as a child, what it means to lose but also create space for activist-minded writers of color, and more. Come to Silvana on Sunday, April 28th to hear Watson read with Chaya Bhuvaneswar, Jericho Brown, Veronica Liu, Holly Masturzo, and Willie Perdomo. Admission is free. See you at 6pm!
You’ve written about the power of “activist-minded writers and publications who dare to engage identity and social justice through art.” What is the impact you’ve witnessed? What are you personally experiencing? In the 20th century, publications like Opportunity and The Crisis gave voice to black writers who’d been neglected by mainstream publishing. Opportunity is long gone, as is the literature section of The Crisis. Even though I wasn’t around during those times, I feel the loss. And I feel responsible for centering the work, narratives, and perspectives of writers of color, especially those who may not have access to the mainstream literary world. People often ask whether works need to be explicitly political, or explicitly about identity, in order to be published in Apogee. I think that our words and the way we choose to arrange them always gets filtered through identity. The work in Apogee might make that filter more apparent–because the experience of identity is often closer to the surface for writers “on the margins.” Since Apogee started, I sense more of a willingness to engage with that art that makes the lens of identity more visible. That visibility can help us relate to one another in ways that timelines and biographies don’t. Personally, engaging with art–especially the art curated outside of the mainstream–has made me more aware of the many prisms of difference through which we come to language, and more aware of the ways that oppression operates.
Tell us about your Harlem(s). When do you remember first knowing Harlem? I remember walking down 125th Street with my daddy, trying to keep up with his long strides.125th was the farthest south we usually went when I’d visit NYC–he called 125th Street “downtown.” He’d let me sniff and pick out the incense I liked best. Recordings of Malcolm X’s speeches blaring from boomboxes. I remember noticing that I was the lightest-skinned person I could see! This was before the condos and long before Whole Foods.
When do you feel most “we”? When do you feel most “I”? I feel most “we” Thanksgiving, in an overly-heated apartment in the Bronx, with family, with the Classic R&B music channel on, and my aunts have had one too many Korbel mimosas, and one of the men is telling one of the women to fix him a plate, and someone brings out the photo album. I feel most “I” when I’m transferring at Times Square during rush hour.
Who are writers that we should be reading right now? Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Chester Himes, Jean Toomer. Always!