Lois Elaine Griffith (3/4): Shared Vulnerability
from Invitation to the Species Hosted by Invitation to the Species
Punctuated by the sounds of tools, helicopters, and sirens in her Fort Greene garden, Lois Elaine Griffith discusses with Alisha Mascarenhas what it means to create, repair, and build community within and beyond the era of COVID-19. Lois considers the intersectionality of her father’s Caribbean-American influence on her life and the ways in which it has rippled throughout her experiences as a teacher, writer, and visual artist. As co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Founders Archive Project, she notes the urgent need for spaces that encourage self-expression in the spirit of the Cafe’s original mission- “from the street to the stage.” She stresses the formation of communities supported by and for the people as an access point to accessibility and the use of art to inform living. In the context of our current state, she explores the role of the artist, the “community of presence” that can be created when we listen to the internal and “native ways” in meaningful transference. “We’re living in the break,” so what comes after? How do we heal? Lois’ hope is for us to pay more attention to the people and things around us, to exercise physically, and mentally, and to “understand whose shoulders we stand on.” She claims that within this process, we too can be carriers in order to give back what’s been given to us, as her father always told her. The interview ends with a poem “Climate and diversity as everything is alive” composed by Lois in the form of a letter to Alisha, who reads it aloud.
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