Breaking Banh Mi with Jā. R. Macki
Poetry, Religion, A Mother's Gift, Queer Blackness and Thumb-Sucking
Randy:
Randy:
Hi everyone. So today I'm with Jā R Macki. She is the author of Linus Baby (Pie Child Press 2023). Her essays and digital collages have appeared in midnight & indigo, Skink Beat Review, The Spectacle, Red Noise Collective, and forthcoming in Rip Rap. She lives in the Chicagoland area and holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
First of all, Jā, I just want to say thank you so much for being on my newsletter. I have known you for the last several years we've worked together. We've been in the storytelling scene, I have watched you perform your work, specifically in poetry, and other genres. It's good to have you on and thank you so much. How are you doing today?
Jā:
I am doing really well. And I'm happy to be here. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm sorry, my cat has jumped on my back, and then has decided to take over. All right. But yes, how are you?
Randy:
I'm doing wonderful. And I know that cats are always a pleasant interruption, and during interviews. So yes, absolutely. I welcome that. So the first question that I have in mind is what was a particular moment in your life that drew you to poetry?
Jā:
Gosh, I want to go back. I want to go back to the sixth grade, which would be the first poem that was published, it was a little grade school thing. There's a funny story behind that, but I really think the poetry awakening happened in gosh, I think it happened in like 2008, or 2009. So what was happening around that time, I was trying to make an attempt to stop smoking. Maybe that's not even the entry. But that's part of the story. What the real story of that was, I got baptized. I did not choose, so to speak, to become baptized, like I was just attending church, with my mother, who had recently re-dedicated herself to Christ, she was raised Catholic and converted to Baptist. And, you know, I was just going to church with my mom, and you don’t want her to attend church by herself. Every Sunday after church, there's this thing on the screen that says “Jesus is waiting for you.” You kind of look at it and I'm like, I don't know, for some reason, it kind of peered into my heart, like, oh, maybe. And so I thought, “Oh, I like this church”, maybe I'll join it one day, but not making a definitive decision. There was a first Sunday service that I attended. And I remember that day, the drummer of the band was like, I was really beating the drums. While I was walking behind the pews to make my way around to my seat, we usually sat a couple rows from the pulpit. Something I had an experience. And it's very important that I to the story, that I expressed this because I never needed to be convinced as far as being a believer. But I didn't know how people joined church and that decision was made for me. I felt something come over me while I was sitting next to my mother, and it was very strong and it was one of those situations where I could not speak. This is the portion of the service where they're opening the doors to the church, and they're trying to see who wants to come and get baptized or join church today, or what have you. So I'm saying the strength of the first Sunday. Something was happening to me. I know at the time I was under a lot of stress personally and professionally. And I felt myself move, I tapped my mother's shoulder. I put my finger to my lips. I exited the row and I walked down to the center, row, center pew, front pew, where people go, when they're ready to join church. My understanding of what was happening as I'm sitting on the Pew crying at this point, my understanding of what happened is that my mother came running from the pew after me. To be with me in that moment, what I did not know is that my mother didn't baptize me because she wanted me to choose God for myself. And so that's why I guess that's what happened. As a result of that experience, I started to get into my prayer life, and that prayer life activity looked like coming home from work. And before I greet my partner, I go into the room, and I spend like an hour or whatever, reading my Bible and trying to study it and think about what I took from it. I'm telling you this, because this entry of starting my prayer life had me asking questions because I felt lost. I didn't know what it was that I do good. I didn't know what I was meant to be. Whatever my talents were, my mother always told me that everyone's born with a gift. And I remember being in my living room by myself and asking God to please show me what it is that I was meant to do in my life. Because I'm lost. And I don't like coming, going to work and coming home and watching TV and repeating that cycle. I needed something else. Because I was losing in that cycle. And what came back to me was, I said, whatever it is, I will pursue it, and how I will never let it go. And the thing that came back was writing.
And I started writing poems. In my living room, we lived in Berwyn at the time. I started scribbling down things on the page, all these very fragile poems, and thoughts. And things started to happen. And things have been happening ever since then, to give you an idea, I live in a courtyard building. And there's a storefront how courtyard buildings kind of are. And a new business opens in that building. My partner told me that I should call down there because they had a sign in the window saying that they were going to be doing open mics. I call that number. And I speak to the lady that owns the business. The show is called The Show Until. And it wasn't she basically created for herself in an art venue, where there could be music and poetry happening. So from that prayer, I was able to reconnect with my interest in poetry. And as I continue to try to feed that, I connect with this person. And that's when I read my first poem out loud for an audience at that venue. And along the way, just all of these very neat things that felt especially for me, were happening in my life. In 2011, I go to my first poetry. It's the poetry fest at the Harold Washington Library. That's the year Nikki Giovanni was the keynote speaker. I bought her book. And the significance of this is that going there on that day happens to be the day of my first publishing. I was so afraid to go in there and get the book that my work was in, I sent my mother to get it. And the gentleman who published the magazine said some glowing things about me to her, which right now, knowing that she's passed on is super special to me, because someone got to say something very good about her kid to her. So after having this experience at the Harold Washington library, I get to meet Nikki Giovanni, take a picture with her, and I take home a signed copy of her collected works of poetry. This is the time when I'm trying to stop smoking. So instead of going outside to smoke a cigarette on break, I would take Nikki Giovanni's collected words of poetry with me. And I would read it on break to not smoke. And I started to find that I really liked Nikki Giovanni as a poet. Matter of fact, she is my top poet. She's not taught in a lot in school. I don't understand that. But that is what kind of how all of this started. It kind of started with faith. I hope I'm answering correctly but yeah…
Randy:
Thank you for sharing. And thank you for sharing the arrival of you being introduced into poetry to your life experiences. Who are your influences as a poet and you mentioned Nikki Giovanni is one of them?
Jā:
Aside from Nikki Giovanni, I like Rita Dove. So Nikki Giovanni Rita Dove, I like Andrea Gibson. She's a, she's got a great spoken word type situation with her. Those are some of the main entrance. Charles Bukowski. That's going to be that's like the wildcard that's in my list of poets because he's very, I don't know, I think he's got a cult following. He's like a dirty old man (laugh). So here's a dirty old man, and I have this lesbian and I have these two powerful Black women and put all those ideas together. And I mean, I like a lot of other classic things. I'm looking at all my books. I have to say, modern poets right now contemporary, like, it's poppin right now. The person who has my heart is Morgan Parker. Poetry is super important to writing in general. That's, that's just my opinion.
Randy:
What do you like to express in your poetry?
Jā:
You know, I saw something that really encapsulates it like perfectly. But I'll give it a shot. What do I like to write about in poetry? Feeling. The thing that came to me is that regardless of what it is that I'm writing in poetry, I think that what I'm doing most is trying to capture my feelings.
The quote I saw today was from Eudora Welty. We're writing about an experience that we confront and experience and like translated through art, I'm loosely stating their quote. But that really kind of hit me. I'm confronting my experiences and resolving them through art.
Randy:
Your mom passed away suddenly, a decade ago, in your work, you have often referenced and honored her. What can you share about the impact that your mom has on you both as a writer and on a personal level?
Jā:
As a writer, my mother is the reason why I am Jā R. Macki. She called out this name. When I was eight or nine years old. I went to my first Writers Conference at that age, as well. When we came home, she kind of hung her head around my bedroom doorway and was kinda like “You’re gonna be a writer! Hey, you know what, you should name yourself Ja R Mack.” Just like that. And I mean, this is kind of an inside joke, but I'm okay with sharing this. Some folks may not take it as a joke, but my mother raised me mostly by herself. And I have my father's last name. So she was like because I don't want her dad to get all the credit (laughs).
Since it's been, it'll be 11 years this year that she's been gone. And in that time I have been spending it doesn't even feel like it's on purpose. It's just natural because I just wish I could talk to her every day. So I feel like I've just been putting up monuments in my life, for her, I want whatever's happened happening for her to always be remembered in it. Because these are other things I want her to do, I want us to like experience together and for us to see. You know? Yeah. So as a writer, she gave me my name. I think I was very much opposed to having to change my name on my writing for a while, because I at the time, I was even like, what? And I'm eight or nine. I'm like, “Ma'am, what are you talking about? My name is Jasminum McMullen. And I'm gonna, you know, whatever. But I never forgot it. And it's kind of like when I buy books, sometimes I'll buy a book in advance of actually meeting it. It's like, she gave me something early on before I could understand it. I did it. I didn't understand where that would fit into my life. I got to a point in wanting to remember her and do my very best because I've heard that it made sense to use that name on the Linus Baby project and now I'm just using it.
Randy:
Thank you for sharing the genesis of your name and you know for honoring your mom in such a beautiful profound way and and I'm really you know, thankful to see what it has given you. Recently you created and self-published Linus Baby, I'd like for you to take us into the thought process of creating Linus Baby.
Jā:
Okay, so you the idea, this, this shit was supposed to this show was a joke at first, like I was, you know, you say idea. You're really like joking, but you're not really taking it seriously. I was talking to some friends. Somehow thumb sucking came up. I guess at some point, when I get very comfortable around people. I feel like it's safe for me to suck my thumb. And so I think I was doing it while we were on a zoom call with me and this group of writer friends. And the topic came up and I was just like, oh, I probably should write an essay about that. And then I kind of follow that line of thought to see what could come of it. What would that even look like? I'm also thinking about everybody's favorite. Everybody's favorite quotable. One of everybody's favorite Toni Morrison quotables about if there's a book that you want to write, it's not out there. And then it's, you know, you got to make it you got to make that book. So, I also like, be doing differentiate. So I'm like, I started to do some research. What are their books out here about them sucking and they're all bad. They're all bad, and they're all geared towards parents breaking their children. So I'm having that experience myself. As someone who sucks her thumb, especially as someone who sucks her thumb as an adult, you sometimes feel like you're the only person that's doing it. I know. In the past, I have searched the Internet, Facebook looking for groups of adults who suck their thumbs to be social with. I just somehow in my mind, imagine that there's a bunch of thumb-sucking adults somewhere that I'm supposed to be interacting thing with, and I did find a page, but it was it was a dead page like, some people have responded, and then nothing. And then I started seeing internet research where it's like people that suck their thumbs typically hide it so that the possibility that there are more thumbs up or just because then there's a possibility there are more thumbs up because then we know. After all, people hide it. It's supposed to be like a shameful practice. And so that's what started me feeling rebellious and that added more energy to the project because I don't feel like being myself is something that should come with shame. I think what I have been doing, leading up to writing this project has, I've been pushing down the fact that people do not like to see this happening in public unless you're a child and during a certain period of being a child. And I felt like maybe that was wrong. My mother never pressured me to stop sucking my thumb, she kind of encouraged it. But my mother and father were not like that with me. When I was with other adults, sometimes that would come up. And so I felt like writing this project was my response for all the years in which I either had to hide who I was to be social or for people to like me.
People were giving me that care, before I actually had an opportunity to care about what people thought about me. So on top of shame, sometimes those interactions kind of create a bit of paranoia. Now it's like, “Oh, are they looking at my teeth?” So I wrote this book, to say, as much as I needed to say about how sacred it is to be your yourself, to be how you were meant to be, especially on this topic. My mother told me, I suck my thumb in the womb, and I'm sure a lot of babies are with their thumb in their mouth, in the womb. But just knowing that information about myself before consciousness, lets me know that maybe there wasn't anything wrong with that activity. Because before I had consciousness, I was doing it.
Like before I could speak or take a breath. That sucking my thumb actually is my way of breathing. That's how I take a breath. And it helps me in so many ways, which I explained in the book.
But yeah, I just wanted to say, you're all wrong. And so are all these publishers that publish these books about breaking children of a habit, we put that language on kids. And that's an energy because you are treating a child like they're going through a 12-step program, when they're just being a child. So do you put that type of energy into your child? How does it show up later in their life? I'm not saying that using that addiction-type language around a child could create an alcoholic, but we should be mindful of the language we use around children. And we should let them be themselves.
Randy:
That's an interesting (take) which actually brings me to Pride Month which is underway. Yeah, I think about queerness and I know that you as a queer woman. That was also something that I'm sure factors into writing Linus Baby when you think about rebellion, thinking about having to question the way society portrays queer blackness, and other intersectionalities. I think thumb-sucking, parallels to other intersectionalities with queerness with Black identity with other intersectionalities and how we as a society are being trained to think a certain way about ourselves with our identities. I wonder if there's anything that comes up for you, with your own intersectionality and how you express that in your work.
Jā:
When I am writing, I want to be myself the most, or I am myself the most when I am writing and because I am queer, I guess what ends up happening is that I started seeing all the way. Like I think all of those things are important because I think so including thumb-sucking including Blackness, specifically Black queerness and Christianity, those, you know, all of those things are important.
They're important to giving an audience much of a picture of like, of who I am. And I feel like each pocket of those things in each section is important in the writing because somebody I'm hoping wants to see writing from a Black queer thumb-sucking person and that maybe by going way out in left field with the dome second and trying to incorporate that into you know, whatever the literary journey is going to be for me, that maybe it will change somebody's mind next time they see someone selling me a gun maybe it won't be so serious, or maybe it's not super serious to anybody else. But you know, I only have a Black experience so I don't know maybe it's not super serious for anybody else but it seemed at the time when I was growing up that it was a very serious thing outside of my parents.
I think the queerness….we're all queer (laughs). That's the other part somebody's not telling the truth. Not saying nine and this is not like you know, I think the queerness we're all we're that's the other part somebody's not telling the truth. Not saying it’s not specifically pointed in sexuality but everybody's got something that makes them unique, that makes them authentic and some people are going to choose to downplay that, some people will choose to embrace it and I want to be the person that chooses to embrace those identities because if I'm not embracing those identities then what am I like seriously? Maybe that's where some of the rebellion comes from too. Yeah, I feel like I identifying different ways in which we are queer opens space for other people to step in.
Randy:
In times of civil unrest, how can writing be instrument been instrumental tool for liberation work?
Jā:
I think in terms of civil unrest, writing, I think that's when when writers go to work, right? Writers, we're always writing about different topics, but I feel like when there's civil unrest, it touches something that's beneath the layers of our everyday life. Something that is it. I don't think it touches our heart, but it touches something deep within that causes us to respond with the type of fervor that we would have for a topic of civil unrest.
I think it's also a vehicle for change. change without it being the change itself, because we can write about how we want something to be different. But we also have to take action and writing is an action. So for writers, I think sometimes I feel like, Oh man, like with the Breanna Taylor, like, what am I doing? I'm not a marcher? I don't typically go to protests. I think this is actually reminded me of I think, Morgan Parker was talking about this specifically which is probably why it's coming to my mind. But that makes the most sense. I don't typically do those sorts of things. But I raised my pen as a voice in protest and I used to think that that was a small contribution. But when I think about all of the writing that I've been in contact with. That's exactly what was happening. We are responding to civil unrest, through writing, or we choose not to respond to civil unrest, and we do something else. But I think writing in a time of civil unrest is important to society because the literature that we produce, will tell the next generation, what was going on at the time. So we need documentaries, we need people to do that work.
Randy:
That's very powerful. And what would you say to young writers or people who are starting writing?
Jā:
I'm gonna have some young writers soon. People who are just starting writing, I would say it's a beautiful challenge. It's a beautiful challenge. And the challenges are the ones you create. So that means that they are the ones you can overcome.
I would also say Be honest. Don't try to be someone else. That there is room in literature for your voice, use Roman literature for your topics.
And you are powerful enough to pursue the things you want to pursue and create opportunities for yourself.
Randy:
What other writings or projects are you currently working on?
Jā:
Okay, so there's a sneak project on the low. It's like a quick jab in a dark project that I'm like, gonna run in real quick effects and stuff, shake my shoulders and get out of it. And then there's a long-form project that is close to my heart. Oh I can tell you this. The short jab project is focused on becoming queer, or the queer awakening of my younger self. It's a memoir. The piece that's the longer form project is also a memoir but it is focused on the passing of my mother. And y'all to get that when the heart is done.
Randy:
I can't wait to hear when it comes out. And thank you so much for sharing all of this. And last question. If you had to talk to yourself 10 plus years ago, what would you say to that person?
Jā:
Stay in there baby. Stay in there. Keep your faith because at the end of the day is gonna get you through and keep you centered when everything is (chaotic). I’ll also say you’re a bad B!!! (laughs)
Randy:
Thank you so much for sharing that, and I can't wait for the next part of your journey and what that's going to look like. So thank you so much for your time and thank you for doing this.
Jā:
Thank you for inviting me!
To order Linus Baby, please visit here