A proud New Orleanian living in the District of Columbia, Jude Jones is a professional thinker, amateur photographer, burgeoning runner and lover of Black culture, love and life. Magneto and Cyclops (and Killmonger) were right.
Find more of Jude’s writing here.
It always begins the same. They arrive. They are different – some in ways barely perceptible, others in ways beautifully divergent from the norm. And the people, the “normal” people, are always scared. Scared about their position. Scared about what it means that the “others” have skills they don’t. Fear turns to anger. And anger to action.
And action turns to murder.
They kill. Repeatedly. Unrepentantly. All of the power of that minority’s of miraculous beauty, torn asunder.
There is one, Moira. Her power is not controlling objects with her mind or mauling men with iron-cast claws. She lives a complete life until it’s taken from her (and it’s always taken from her) only to reappear in her mother’s womb, completely aware of everything that’s happened before her. Some would say her power is reincarnation. They would be partially correct.
Her power is memory, and it is as much a curse as it is a gift.
For though she knows with certainty dates and actions and formulas, she also knows The repeated trauma of loving and losing.
Her people lose. Every single time her people lose. No matter what she does, no matter how she tries, her people are hunted and killed simply for having the audacity to exist.
She is on her 10th life. Her 10th time trying to make something out of nothing. She holds within her stories and secrets untold, and is doing her best to both prepare her people for the struggle while preserving something, presumably, as an ace in the hole. Just in case the inevitable arises.
I read comic books for an escape, yet I find myself relapsing into my own reality. I see my world reflected and refracted. I see a people hurt like mine. Maligned like mine. Hunted like mine.
Yet powerful like mine. Envied like mine. Beautifully diverse like mine. I find sadness and inspiration. Anger articulated by an artists pen and an author’s angst.
Reading stories of a professor who, like Booker T. Washington, tried for years to make his people respectable to the majority, only to, in the end, still be separated and unequal. Reading stories of a magnetic mix of Che and Bobby Seale, a revolutionary survivor of the most unholy trauma who saw the nadir of humanity and vowed “never again” – by any and all means necessary and available.
I take solace and inspiration. For if they can survive, why can’t we? If they can fight back, why can’t we? If they can organize, the best and the worst, the pretty and the ugly, those who can fly and those who must crawl, why can’t we?
Yes the stories are engrossed with death and destruction, but always end with hope. Always with Survivors who keep fighting for the dream of a better world.
I will keep reading, rooting for the revolutionary and the professor, guided by the wisdom of memory supreme. And I will hope that as their fight endures, Ours will too.
As we sit at the crossroads of history, please help funds like The Advancement Project or other organizations that support the Black community. Stay safe, stay strong, hold fast.
A proud New Orleanian living in the District of Columbia, Jude Jones is a professional thinker, amateur photographer, burgeoning runner and lover of Black culture, love and life. Magneto and Cyclops (and Killmonger) were right.
Find more of Jude’s writing here.
