Tavia Nyong’o
Tavia Nyong’o is a Professor of Theater & Performance Studies, Professor of American Studies, and Professor of African-American Studies at Yale University. He is the author of multiple books. In 2019, he curated Dark as the Door to a Dream at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, as part of the Studium Generale Rietveld Academie.
It means something particular to write and read poetry in times like these. That particularity has to do with poetic diction, which is the opposite of the cant of fascism.
Whenever I consider the legacy of Surrealism, my thoughts turn to its under-acknowledged Black feminist lineage. That lineage appears featured in Too Bright to See (Part I) (2022) by Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, a 24-minute film included at the 2024 Whitney Biennial which focuses on the life of Suzanne Césaire: an intellectual whose contributions to both Surrealism and anti-colonial thought have often been eclipsed by the fame of her male contemporaries.