The Gutta is Beautiful: Aesthetics, Politics, the Pocket and the Pole

The Gutta is Beautiful: Aesthetics, Politics, the Pocket and the Pole

An Interview with Nina Angela Mercer, Interviewed by Ebony Noelle Golden for “In The Peoples’ Hand Zine”

“Gutta Beautiful” dismantles some of the dangerous binaries that exist in our minds and our lives. We look at so much through a very Western lens, philosophically speaking; it informs how we walk in the world. So there’s the "good" and the "bad," and if there’s some "bad" in the "good," it can’t possibly be "good" anymore. That confuses us. Ultimately, one cannot embrace the process of healing without accepting, recognizing, and celebrating that which is imperfect and how we often fall short of our most idealized (and sanctioned) ways of being. I am hoping to explore and cause a rupture inside this intimate and communal dysfunction.

-Nina Angela Mercer

IPH: Our readers may be more familiar with the ghetto or the hood. The gutta, as you explore it, seems to locate a more specific space. Potentially, the ghetto is the liminal space, or threshold, that introduces the audience to the gutta as a space or consciousness. Can you talk more the space of the gutta?

NAM: It’s interesting that you mention that because I have been having that conversation with so many people. Sometimes when elders say the name of the play, they say Ghetto Beautiful instead of "Gutta Beautiful." I am always quick to correct this error, because there is a difference between the “gutta” and the “ghetto”. The history of the term "ghetto" has really been thrown to the wayside in our community. We use "ghetto" to represent a type of behavior or circumstance that is often overtly stereotypical. In actuality, a ghetto is a community of people . Sometimes, residents of the "ghetto" have been forcibly placed in psychological and physical locations of bondage created by external factors, but this is not always true. Quite simply, a "ghetto" is a place where people live. And yes, a contemporary neighborhood in Washington, D.C.(where the play happens most of the time) is our entry point into a consciousness I call "gutta beautiful."

When I reference the "gutta," I am defining a space where we are our most imperfect selves, a space we can inhabit when we are dealing with aspects of life which are not necessarily considered acceptable or healthy. Having witnessed and lived poverty, substance abuse, and domestic abuse, I’ve also come to understand that we exist in those spaces feeling like we are less than beautiful, like there’s no way anything positive can come out of this existence because it is so gutta; it is that which we want to hide. I feel that it is important for our communities to recognize that these realities that may be considered “gutta” should not be hushed or hidden under the rug. We must face those intimate and communal traumas in order to heal. And healing our traumas is always beautiful. It is sublime.

IPH: Can you talk more about the space and consciousness is articulated or practiced in the gutta? What would you say comprises a “gutta” aesthetic?

NAM: I started writing the play when I was in a doctoral program in the English Department at the University of Maryland. I had enrolled at University of Maryland after completing my MFA at American University. I thought I needed to pursue the doctorate to create a stronger economic base. I knew I was an artist at the heart level, but I was nervous about jumping into the fray. "Gutta Beautiful" changed that path drastically. The play and its characters jumped my bones! It began as a one woman performance piece, a manifesta of sorts. It evolved into the interactive, multi media stage play with a full ensemble cast, a DJ, and drummers over time. There were many crucial artistic partnerships that grew out of the play's development. Sybil Roberts, my dramaturg during the play's early stages, and Eric Ruffin, the play's first director, were and remain my sustenance during an often grueling process of discovery. Eventually, "Gutta Beautiful" was produced by the non profit I founded, Ocean Ana Rising (www.oarinc.org). It has gone on to be produced by Woodie King Jr's New Federal Theatre in NYC and Griot Productions in Trinidad, and its movement continues.

During the seminal moments of the play's birth, I was living through my own gutta beautiful walk. I felt that being in graduate school during that very difficult time of my life, dealing with the culture of violence and substance abuse on an intimate level, created an internal resistance movement. As an emerging scholar, I was investigating literature of the Diaspora. I was trying to speak to my community as an activist through theoretical discourse. But the language used in that discourse blocked most people out. I reached a place of frustration. I felt like I was being torn apart, and it was all about the politics of language and the economy of professionalism.

I started the live performance piece with the sole intent of creating an aesthetic that could speak to masses of people by pulling on popular culture and the ordinary ways that we relate. The Gutta Aesthetic is the stoop, the porch, the barber shop, the kitchen and all of the complexities therein. Riffing and "the pocket" are part of the Aesthetic, which is why the scenes have the rhythmic flow that they do; the scenes have a boom bap to them, a certain scat over a consistent bass line. That’s our conversation as a people. When we are standing on the corner talking about one thing; we are eally talking about twelve different things at once. The same thing happens in the beauty salon and barber shop, and in the kitchen, where we conjure nourishment while telling stories and cracking jokes. These are sacred forums in our community, and I want to make the theater into that same sacred forum whenever "Gutta Beautiful" is performed. That is why the core plot line of the play happens in the kitchen and on the corner. The Gutta Aesthetic also privileges "the dozens." Everybody is up for critique. We get to play the dozens with anybody in that space. But we cannot have a conversation in the gutta without there being percussion first, which is why we start the piece with the drum.

The drum and drummers in the play are called The Source. For our people, the drum is the divine catalyst for communication between the living and the spirit realm. It's the bridge between those two worlds. We cannot begin or end without the drum invoking the metaphysical and spiritual conversation that is crucial for our way of knowing and being. Then we get the DJ in there as well, who becomes the Rhythm Angel in "Gutta Beautiful." The Rhythm Angel plays songs that inform our contemporary lives. The DJ needs the drum; though he is often using electronic samples of it, it's there. I did not want to privilege one over the other, because the technology of today's music is still connected to the ancient divinity of The Source. They are different and one. I think that it is important to maintain the connection between contemporary culture and its origins. There is great power in that.

The multi media aspects of the play are crucial. Because I wanted to engage the community in a critical dialogue with popular culture, I needed visual images replicating the impact of advertising and music videos on our collective memory and pysche. A team of photographers and visual artists came together around the play to record the D.C.'s cultural landscape. We also created a slide show during which Lola, the main character of the play, walks down Georgia Avenue, a main "strip" in Northwest DC, completely naked. Initially, Lola is confident in her walk. She is a "star" on her walk through her neighborhood. Eventually, she stumbles and falls. She must rise with a busted lip, and continue her journey while remaining naked to the public eye. That slide show was created by our team, taking photos of Georgia Avenue, photos of Lola in my apartment at home in D.C., and then photo shopping Lola's image over the shots of Georgia Avenue at various perspectives. That slide show is a visual metaphor for Lola's journey in the play; it also exposes the audiences journey with Lola, because the audience must witness this very personal experience with her and determine how they are entertained and disturbed by her pain, her injuries, her ability to triumph. So, throughout "Gutta Beautiful" the audience must process these visual images of cultural landscape and visual metaphor. It is a complex sensory experience. It is a reflection of our own sensory over-load in real time. We are constantly bombarded by these images. We are often completely unaware of the work those images do to us, the way those images manipulate our understanding of being. Inside "Gutta Beautiful," we are able to experience and critique these images.

The gutta is raw; it is rugged. Nobody can say that it has been polished for some pleasant digestion. That is a part of the Gutta Aesthetic as well. That’s what makes it gutta beautiful.

IPH: The audience hears Go-Go before the show begins, and it serves almost as an underlying character throughout the work. Can you talk about your experience growing up listening to Go-Go? What role, if any, did Go- Go play in the creation of “Gutta Beautiful?”

NAM: I love Gogo music and culture. It is deep in my veins. I grew up on the music as do most young people in DC. My father provided legal representation for T.T.E.D. Records, a local label owned by Max Kidd, featuring many of the hottest bands during the eighties. My father was also part of the management team for Experience Unlimited (EU). So, I spent a lot of time in the studio with the bands and traveling with EU when they went on tour. I also danced on stage at concerts and in music videos. The GoGo community was really an extension of my family.

Percussion, the centrifugal force in the music, is very African. It’s got to be one of the most African music forms on this side of the Atlantic. Though it has been exposed to technology and hip-hop, there is something about GoGo that can not be absorbed into any other kind of music form, which is one of the reasons why I feel it has not experienced a high level of commercial viability. It is dependent on live performance, and that’s another reason why it works for me. The music emphasizes call and response. If you listen to recorded GoGo, it is a totally different experience from GoGo performed live because of the influence of the audience. At the GoGo, the "talker" in the band (the front man or woman) always calls out, "Where y’all from?" And the audience will say, "North East!" or "Petworth," or whatever neighborhood they claim. There’s always that give and take. The GoGo cannot exist without the audience. They are privileged as an integral part of the music and the show. In "Gutta Beautiful" that call and response is created through audience participation. The GoGo being played by The Source and The Rhythm Angel enrich that experience. GoGo is also very resistant, rebellious music, because it refuses to be co-opted. So in creating a radical aesthetic, one that speaks and moves against various oppressions, Go-Go is the perfect music.

As a cultural movement, Go-Go has been engaged in a serious battle. Gentrification has shifted the cultural landscape of the city, and the music has been targeted as something the “powers that be” would like to silence. Some GoGo bands have lost their venues. Clubs have had to sign documents saying that they won’t play the music because there is a perceived link between GoGo and violence. Any time we have Black culture at its most raw and funky form, anytime people are getting together in solidarity around a music form that is authentic and unapologetically forceful, it is going to be targeted by those who wish to water it down. So I am committed to keeping GoGo in my work as much as possible. When you come to see “Gutta Beautiful,” no matter what the City Council says in DC, no matter what radio conglomerates say, you are coming to the GoGo; we are going to take you there. We are going to continue the movement of the music.

Simultaneously, The Rhythm Angel (DJ) and The Source also draw on our historical narrative through music as a community. So, The Source moves from Kongolese rhythms to contemporary GoGo rhythms, drawing on the origins of our music in Africa and the music (and peoples') journey through the Trans Atlantic slave trade and Middle Passage and those rhythms' survival and evolution into GoGo. The Rhythm Angel adds to this narrative by spinning the popular cuts remembered from my childhood, from the Blues to RandB to Hip Hop. It is all one quilt.

IPH: The title of the work illuminates and explodes the false binaries about certain facets of Black life. You pull the layers off these binaries by employing irony, satire, and humor. Also you “stage” the stage by giving each of the characters a turn to “work the pole”. Even Michael “works the pole”. What is the physical and meta-physical significance of the “pole”? In doing so, you take a recognizable element of drama, the monologue, and make it multi-dimensional performance practice that reveals the private thoughts affecting each of the characters. Talk about your choice of using the strip club and the solo pole performance as a primary cite of revelation for these characters.

NAM: There are so many layers to this. I am a strong proponent of woman power. I don’t like when we divide, when we say, "Because I got on a head wrap, I’m righteous. And because you got on Apple Bottom Jeans, you are stupid; you are a ho, and I am the Earth/Moon/Empress/Queen." I don’t like that. I'd rather us all put ourselves in the mix together, strip away all of the things that create a superficial illusion of difference, and get to the core of our hurts. Inside those wounds, we are more similar that different.

I have spent time in strip clubs. I have negotiated the space of power that it often becomes. I have been an active participant there. I wanted to address it because many women expressed frustration and fear about that space. Some friends would express that women who worked in the clubs were ignorant, sexual deviants. I knew that this was a dangerous and prejudiced judgement. The strip club is a site of power. It is a place where many cultural and societal dynamics lay naked in literal and figurative terms. Even when we are not there, even when we are not on the pole, we are still there.

Beyond that, what is that woman’s story beyond the work that she does? Let’s take the judgment off of her and make her every woman as opposed to some mutant woman who none of us want to be. Let us look at the space of being a women with sex, who is sexualized and walking through the world, and look behind that. That’s where the monologues come from in "Gutta Beautiful's" "Public Pussy Project," the local strip club in the neighborhood of the play.

This woman told me once that every woman is basically a prostitute. According to her, there is no difference between the woman on the corner marketing her "wares" and the woman in the sanctioned work place or a woman in her kitchen at home, except if a man marries her, and then she is a sanctioned whore. Now clearly this is a heterosexist belief. It is steeped in normalized craziness and passed down as folk wisdom. But it's worth exploring, too. If that is a popular assumption (and many interactions between and among the genders affirm that erroneous belief), and if that is how power functions and how sex becomes a mode of power exchange, if that’s the reality of it, and we are all "ho’s," then let’s look at that and explore it, because then we are all on the pole in varying circumstances. The pole can be the pimp, that which turns you out; it represents the tricks we play in society to get by. When Michael works the pole, he thinks he is in control of that space because he only introduces the women who will perform, soliciting cash for their dances, and encouraging the audience to enjoy the show, but he is being acted on, too. He is taking on a role that has been constructed. Even on the street corner, we must ask - is Michael a hustler, or is he being hustled? Ultimately, the audience must ask, “What is hustling us and why is it that way?”

Let’s look at the pole as a phallic symbol and how it allows for a critique of patriarchy. We slide down that slippery slope of patriarchy and still exist as women and men capable of love, often courageously transcending that very Western way of being. How do we slip and slide and maneuver through patriarchy? How do we claim that space and turn it over, inside out, and make it work for us?

I must also draw attention to the role Yoruba culture functions throughout the play, especially in the "Public Pussy Project" scenes. Because I am a Yoruba practitioner, I create through my spiritual understanding of life. Though it is clear that the "Public Pussy Project" is a profane space, there is no way for me to separate the sacred from it. So, Elegua embodied by the character Papa G and possessing The Right Revered Boo Daddy, mediates between the spirit and human worlds and ushers forth the word and the moment of individual choice, standing firm at our crossroads of perception and action. He is the MC and catalyst for all that happens at the "Public Pussy Project." He incites the drama there. Oya/Yansa, the transformative power of the wind and the owner of the market place, regulates the chaos and order coming through our experiences there. It is also her transformational energy which propels the profane moments into spaces of healing. Finally, Oshun embodied by the characters Lil Mama Gypsy, Alice in Wonder-Dick, and School Teacher Pussy, presiding over sexuality, dance, and the conjure emerging from those sites of power, wields significant force throughout these scenes of the play. I want to be certain that it is understood that I am constructing a spiritual healing within the space of the strip club, because I believe that there is no space in this world where spirit is absent. Orisha are everywhere, even in the places we don't expect to find them, because of our conditioning, our accepted understanding of this illusion of a separation between the spirit and flesh. In fact, such forces, including ancestral energies, are present throughout the play, throughout our lives.

Of course, in the literal sense, there are dangers at the strip club. It is of this world. There are not many purely safe spaces in any arena constructed by human beings. But if we can analyze it and turn it over, perhaps we can claim something important in that space. I want to reclaim the space on terms diverging from its traditional classifications in the mainstream, including the video culture. Through "Gutta Beautiful," I give women voices in that space, stories, real laughter, sorrow, and complexity.

IPH: Lola seems to function as the central figure in the piece. However, audience members may be equally moved and impacted by Michael’s story. It seems Lola and Michael serve as foils of each other as they encompass all of the wholeness and brokenness of the “gutta”. Talk about how you are treating the economics and politics of Black creative and sexual energy. How does the white woman’s role symbolize or introduce certain pathologies that impede or stifle Black creative and sexual energy?

NAM: Michael is a dear character to me. I just love him. As a Black woman writing in the tradition of my foremothers, the creation of a Black male character in such a difficult circumstance was a really a labor of love. I definitely had to meditate on the process. I did not want to create a villain out of Michael. I really wanted to show his humanity beyond the dysfunction that has been thrown on Black manhood in this country. It took time because I had to work through my own issues to get there. Mike's existence as an MC is important to the piece because a lot of what "Gutta Beautiful" is about is voice. He is dedicated to cultivating a greater voice as a MC, and this translates as his journey to find agency in this world. Because he is a MC, he must fight against the traps laid by capitalism in one of its most intoxicating spheres; the entertainment industry has historically co-opted Blackness, leaving artists and community left with less than fully empowered stories sold globally. This is Michael's challenge.

Before Mike meets Lola, before they fall in love, we meet him and he rhymes. He rhymes about his endangered and politicized space as an intelligent Black male in urban America with minimal realized power but very powerful ideas. Michael allows the audience to experience a Black man negotiating his power and trying to get it to work, pushing to make his voice heard. He is intelligent, witty, concerned about his world. Once Mike is put on the auction block, he is marketing his creativity, his voice. He thinks that allowing the national standards of commercial tade to govern his creative choices will give him greater power. Perhaps he believes that he can trick capitalism, and still maintain his authenticity. He learns that such a choice can have dire implications for himself, his family, his community. Somehow, he separates himself from the history of slavery. He is turned out by the auction block and its veil of glitz, glamour, and stardom. His motivation is a very American quest for independence and power. He is blinded by that out of sense of urgency. The stakes are high. It's survival or death, but survival on whose terms?

When President Obama came into power, I troubled Mike's journey even more. People asked me if I felt his character needed to be revised because a Black man had finally risen to the highest political office in this country. But I don't feel that there's a need to change Mike. First of all, I reject all conservative critics who attempt to define and judge art emerging from the Black community on such limiting terms as if all Black artists must always create art that makes us feel good about our lives, creating fairy tales out of a need to uplift our community in the world's eyes. I believe that Black artists, and all artists, must have the freedom to create what comes from the heart. When critics limit their support of art emerging from the Black community based on some political and restrictive demand to support art that only serves to sustain some impossibly limiting community agenda, those critics simply re-enact an oppressive attempt to silence our diverse and complex narratives. Secondly, Mike's journey, and the Gutta Beautiful journey as a whole, is urgently relevant, no matter who becomes this nation's President. The social, economic, and political realities that birthed "Gutta Beautiful" in my life and heart did not disappear when Obama was elected.

And then on another level, if we need to see all Black men as Presidents post Obama's election in order to fully internalize our greatest potential as a community, we must also consider that Obama's presidency is not so different from Mike's journey inside Aunty Sam's governing paradigm. We must consider, if we are honest with ourselves, how Obama's "blackness" affects his negotiation of identity and power in the public, how the U.S. government receives or acts upon his leadership, and how his power is experienced or received by the people. How does Obama work the pole? Is he able to represent and advocate for the Black community effectively as he also works for the nation? Should we demand this of him? Consider that.

To your question about Lola and Mike's relationship in the play: Lola and Mike are only foils to each other because they allow themselves to become that. When they meet in the play, they are not blank slates but the potentiality to triumph is there. They make choices that put them at odds with one another whether they are able to be conscious of these choices or not, and that is the tragedy of the piece.

IPH: How is the audience implicated in this shared space and experience of the gutta?

NAM: "Gutta Beautiful" puts everyone under the microscope, including the “self”. When I started writing the play, I was taking classes at the Brecht Forum in NYC with Theater of the Oppressed Lab. I was learning Augusto Boal's techniques and the use of theater to provoke change as a tool in Labor Rights movements. Any one who has studied Boal knows that it is important for the audience to become a part of the piece, because only when the audience becomes an actor, and not just a spectator of the piece, only when the audience becomes active do they really walk away with something that could potentially transform the way that they think and act.

“Gutta Beautiful” is not fully entrenched in the Theater of the Oppressed techniques. I have modified them for the specific purposes of the play. As a playwright, I hope that the actors will engage the audience as often as they can. They should speak to the audience and move through the house. Those actors must be prepared for the audience members to respond in various, often unexpected ways.

We bring the audience into the “Public Pussy Project”. They actually become involved in those scenes so that they understand that you are not simply watching and being entertained. This is your world; now what are you going to do?

So, the audience is definitely implicated. I am not comfortable with the audience walking away saying the character Auntie Sam did this to Michael and Lola and did this to me. No we allowed this to happen. What did you choose to do when you got on stage? What was you answer to School Teacher’s question? Did you get the lap dance? Did you enjoy it?

All of that is important to me because the primary goal of the piece is to have a conversation with masses of people. So they must be implicated; they must have some level of subjectivity and agency in the piece. It is important that the audience lives this world with the characters. When the audience is removed from the chaos or the farce or the spectacle that has happened then the art loses some of its power.

IPH: It seems as if the characters are articulating a critique of contemporary Black arts-intelligentsia. Is the Black arts-intelligentsia apart of or a part from the “gutta”?

NAM: I am not one for labels. I am careful about aligning myself with any particular group. I think that philosophical space needs to be troubled a bit. What are we doing when we elevate what way of being at the expense of another? I love the art that came out of the Black Arts Movement. It has influenced my life as a Black woman and artist. That gives me even more reason to critique. I have lived the reality of trying to come to terms with my blackness. I have considered the enslavement of my ancestors, and I have tried to recover the traditions through my dress, in my spiritual practice, and in my diet. In embracing all of that, I felt as if I had to reject anything that did not resonate as Afrikan. Anything other than this newly realized authentic Blackness was evidence of one's oppression by "the man," a certain blindness, ignorance and disempowerment. Eventually, however, I realized that is the creation of a cultural hierarchy, and it doesn’t really do much service to anyone, if all of my talk cannot embrace and speak to masses of people. I can’t start adhering to this cultural hierarchy at the expense of maintaining a connection to my community in all of its variations.

I am a woman who practices traditions born through the Trans Atlantic slave trade with roots in Africa. I celebrate that aspect of myself all the time. My ancestors are crucial to my way of being. My ancestors inform the work of “Gutta Beautiful." I can’t separate myself from any community that has been born through the diaspora, but I know we have to be able to critique ourselves.

I have a critique of the Black Arts Movement and the Black Nationalist Movement in the play as both relate to the experiences of Black women. I feel like some of those stories have been silenced. There are some stories that we have not shared across generations, especially among women, as it all pertains to the Black Arts Movement and the Black Nationalist Movement. I have talked to women who were active during both movements; I've found that the movements were so much about the uplift of Black people that the uplift of Black women, and the stories about how gendered violence was enacted upon the bodies of Black women, how their labor was often under-valued, have become silenced and relegated to the unknown We’re not supposed to talk about that and how patriarchy played a role in Black Nationalism and what that meant for Black women.

We are not supposed to talk about that because in our most coveted memories of that time period, we recovered Black beauty from the ugliness of racism, segregation, and the haunting force of slavery. But I reject that stance. If we can’t fully explore those movements and put them under the microscope for critical dialogue, we can’t grow.

IPH: What does that mean as an activist artist?

NAM: I took a class called Women’s Protest Literature. The professor, Susan Leonardi, encouraged me to write a performance piece after I expressed interest in working outside of the usual discourse of the academy. I grew up performing with DC Parks and Recreation's Show Mobile Program through Mayor Marion Barry's Summer Youth Employment Program. The young people working for that program were trained by professional dancers, vocalists and musicians. I was a company dancer. We traveled throughout DC performing every summer. So I knew that if I really wanted to talk to my folk, I would have to talk to them through live performance. That was the only way to engage them in progressive and authentic way, because the discourse of academia was too specialized to reach my community effectively. I was striving for real talk. Being an activist artist is about sustaining critical dialogue and transformation. Exploring the difficulties of our community's cultural and political movements, bringing that conversation to the community, that's all activism. As an artist, I am encouraging the audience to become intellectually present in our contemporary lives and critical in our understanding of history. I am encouraging the audience to imagine a different way of seeing, being, and doing this life.

IPH: This issue of In the People’s Hands looks at the huge issue of Africana women and the legacy of violence. How does “Gutta Beautiful” engage the topic? How are the characters in the piece working through this legacy?

NAM: "Gutta Beautiful" travels through history so that our understanding of time's linearity is disrupted. On the surface, the characters are living in our contemporary time. However, the audience is asked to suspend their understanding of reality and imagine that the auction blocks of slavery and the Middle Passage still exist in our current lives. Those past lives still matter now. That culture of violence and oppression did not disappear with the abolition of slavery, nor did it begin there, though I construct its origin at the points of Lola's birth and during the Middle Passage and Chain Gang scenes in the play. Regardless of where we set the origin of the culture, however, it is clear that the culture is sustained whenever we enact violence on one another or on ourselves, whether that violence is physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual.

In some instances, we have allowed that culture to manifest in our most intimate relationships. It is also part of our psychological make-up. We often understand who we are through a violent lens, because it was an act of violence that birthed our people on this side of the Atlantic. Thus, simply being a woman of color in America can be violent, painful and oppressive. Being a woman of color in America demands courage, resilience, and strength. The women characters in "Gutta Beautiful" are speaking back to that culture while existing inside of it. They are attempting to claim a safe space inside that culture. Eventually, Lola recognizes that though she has been oppressed inside this culture of violence, she can choose to create a path that liberates her self from it simply through realizing that she can make the choice to heal. That does not mean that the culture disappears or that potential new hurts cannot arise but that she can tell her story, accept it, and still feel beautiful - as a survivor, as a woman, as a human being with love in her heart. The choice to tell the story of how one exists inside a violent history and culture is the act of resistance. It is a walk toward and inside liberation. And I think that is the case for all Africana women. We must tell our stories to dismantle the violence. Silence is not an option.

I also think that it is important to realize that Mike is going through a similar reality. He is a man. In some ways, his walk is different. However, I believe that there is no way for Africana women to heal and act as empowered agents of social change without considering the journey of Africana men. Ultimately, we are dealing with a human problem. It transcends gender. Men who act violently against women and other men have often been oppressed and abused. It is a lethal cycle. As Africana women, we must be open to conversations that challenge the gender boundaries which help that dangerous culture to continue.