I Wrote a Book. Here's Why.
Our responsibility as global citizens is to reimagine the world we wish to live in.
I’ve had to make room for so many things. For people, for my experiences, for my pain, for my grief, for my pleasure. And in making that space I had to learn and unlearn so many things about myself that I thought to be true. Those things range from my views on masculinity to my views of my sexuality; sex and partnership and friendship and family and art. It has forced me to look deeply at who I am, who I choose to be, what I choose to do, and who I want to be moving forward.
When people ask me what my strategy is, I tell them, truth. Not as in the truth, per se, but my strategy is to lean into the truth or whatever the moment calls for. I didn’t plan on writing what I’m writing right now. I was writing author letters to bookstores and this felt like an appropriate time to share my thoughts around not just the book, but for what I believe to be our collective responsibility when it comes to our liberation and the art we use to help get us there.
The reasons why I wrote a book feel vast. And at times paramount. And at times it doesn’t feel like it matters. I’m not exactly sure why I wrote a book. I wrote two books before the book that hopefully you will have in your hands on June 4. Both of those books were essentially books of poetry and affirmations. This book that I’m working on or rather working through or maybe even the book that is working through me, is a collection of essays. I’ve called them a mix of memoir and pop culture critique. Which is also in its essence, a microscopic view into hip-hop and culture, which is inherently Black culture.
While writing this book, I have had to transmit my vulnerability, my softness, my rage, my trauma, my joy, and my flaws, onto pages upon pages upon pages of language I have no control over. This means that you, the reader, will take that language and interpret it as you see fit, based on several different circumstances: your biases, your prejudices, your trauma, maybe even your history or knowledge of me, or an experience or idea you may have of me. That is all going to affect how you read this book, how you engage with this book, and how you will engage with me after reading this book. Even the idea of saying “a book” is a privilege that not many have the opportunity to experience. I do not take that lightly at all. That is a weight that I bear diligently, carefully, and intentionally. Mainly because I am aware that this weight is not only my own to bear. It is a collective weight. A communal weight. Because what we are carrying is not only the weight of the moment but the weight of time, the waiting we have endured for this moment to occur. That is because so many of our elders and ancestors have had to bear this weight before us, and that weight has been carried into our genes and into this journey we now find ourselves on, which is why this notion of collective responsibility is so important.
When I talk about collective responsibility, what I am talking about is the debt that we have all accrued that requires us to be beholden to each other in an effort to find liberation for ourselves. A liberation that is not necessitated by any official or government, but a liberation that will be led and come from the people, by the people themselves. That task at times may seem perplexing, complex, and even insurmountable. But it is the task we have been given. And so because of that, there is an awareness that is required for us to move in ways that can recognize every single one of our humanities, all co-existing together, while simultaneously being called to hold space for the collective. This is no different than what our ancestors have done before us. With the advent of technology, social media, of the countless streams of distractions that continue to enable capitalism to rear its ugly head in almost everything that we do, we are being pushed closer and closer to a community of consumers. But true community cannot survive in a state of consumption. We need each other. And honestly, I need you.
This book goes nowhere if people don’t buy it. If people are not talking about it. If people are not sharing their thoughts and thinking about it. This is an interesting paradigm to have to sit with because I, as the writer, am asking you, as the reader, to purchase a thing. To buy into this idea that buying this product will somehow, in some way, make your life better. And I cannot promise that. Nor can I guarantee that. But what I can promise is that by reading this book, you will become a bit more vulnerable too. My hope is that any and everything I write pushes you to explore the inner workings of your being. Because that work is the real work. That work is going to get us free. Because we can point our fingers at any system—capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy—all the systems that essentially dictate or at least try to dictate how we get to show up in the world. But more often than not the oppression we experience happens in microdoses, right? It is how we engage with the barista, our local post office worker, our bodega owner, our neighbors; the way we feel entitled to each other’s time, to each other’s energy. The way we use the hierarchy of labels to dictate who gets our love and attention and who doesn’t.
I want us to write more books. I want us to make more art. I want us to write the poems, to sing the songs, to make up the dances, to come together to figure out ways to reimagine new ways of being with each other. Books are one way to do that. The other way to do that. Figure out what feels best for you, whichever way fits the moment at hand that feels aligned and congruent with who you are, where you want to be, and where you think we can be, together.
This world is madness. And I’m not saying that my book is the balm for that. No, what I’m saying is we are the balm for that. And by showing up for ourselves, in small ways, what we’re doing is showing up for each other. My book is my small way of doing that for me. My hope is, that by reading my book you’ll be encouraged to start doing more of that for yourself, and in turn, doing more of that for each other.
And that responsibility is ours.
*Pre-orders for Joél Leon’s Everything and Nothing At Once: A Black Man’s Reimagined Soundtrack For the Future are now available. Shop independent. Shop local.*
https://bookshop.org/p/books/everything-and-nothing-at-once-a-black-man-s-reimagined-soundtrack-for-the-future-joel-leon/20604139