Akwaeke Emezi

Did you ever watch the Alexander McQueen documentary? There’s a
quote that Jahra pulled from it and shared: I didn’t care about what people
thought of me and I didn’t care what I thought of myself. Okay, we’ve heard
the first part before, but fuck, that second part? To not care what you think
of yourself? You and I talk often about making unleashed work—like what
you’ve done with Vagabonds!—about writing without any censorship,
writing the way we think, not translating it for the humans or the West or
the white people, not worrying if it fits form, if it has precedent, if we’ll be
able to make a living from it, just writing because these stories, these
words, are the truest things we know. And McQueen was here talking about
removing not just the collar other people put on him, but, more important,
the collar he put on himself! It blows my mind—to free yourself from
yourself, to hear the voice in your head saying all the things it’s been
conditioned to say, and then to ignore it and make the work anyway? I love
this idea so much—especially because it doesn’t demand that you not think
things of yourself. You can think whatever you want, just don’t care about
it. That’s wild. That’s some next-level magic.