“Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.”
Ocean Vuong
“Words, you are my shield. Words, you are my song.”
Abigail George
Congratulations on all your books Jacques Fleury. It is difficult to write and few are called to do it although there are many books, but not as many that impact a conscience or consciousness. It is difficult to write about racism or what we have endured. In South Africa it is the ghost of the brutal regime of apartheid that we are now dealing in the country of her sister, democratic post-apartheid, post-covid South Africa. To write about this kind of subject matter, one doesn’t allow have to have the psychological framework or education to withstand the negativity that comes your way, it is also painful to write about discrimination and those that came before us who experienced it, it doesn’t really matter where in the world they, those that came before, found themselves in, racism has the same face everywhere.
I wonder if you have ever read Frantz Fanon or the novels of Bessie Head, the poems of Rethabile Masilo, Mzi Mahola, Vonani Bila, Mxolisi Nyezwa, Ayanda Billie and Mangaliso Buzani, Romeo Oriogun? Continue to write your truth to power, until it resonates with the world. Continue to write your truth into being. It takes one person with enough self-belief and courage to start a movement. Be that movement, no matter how tough or rough it gets. This is what those who came before us did. We have our own philosophers and poets, we have our own educators and universities but we exist for the world and not just for the disenfranchised or marginalized anymore.
“Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.”
Ocean Vuong
“Words, you are my shield. Words, you are my song.”
Abigail George
Congratulations on all your books Jacques Fleury. It is difficult to write and few are called to do it although there are many books, but not as many that impact a conscience or consciousness. It is difficult to write about racism or what we have endured. In South Africa it is the ghost of the brutal regime of apartheid that we are now dealing in the country of her sister, democratic post-apartheid, post-covid South Africa. To write about this kind of subject matter, one doesn’t allow have to have the psychological framework or education to withstand the negativity that comes your way, it is also painful to write about discrimination and those that came before us who experienced it, it doesn’t really matter where in the world they, those that came before, found themselves in, racism has the same face everywhere.
I wonder if you have ever read Frantz Fanon or the novels of Bessie Head, the poems of Rethabile Masilo, Mzi Mahola, Vonani Bila, Mxolisi Nyezwa, Ayanda Billie and Mangaliso Buzani, Romeo Oriogun? Continue to write your truth to power, until it resonates with the world. Continue to write your truth into being. It takes one person with enough self-belief and courage to start a movement. Be that movement, no matter how tough or rough it gets. This is what those who came before us did. We have our own philosophers and poets, we have our own educators and universities but we exist for the world and not just for the disenfranchised or marginalized anymore.
Please, whatever you do, don’t stop writing.