In Conversation with Adwoa Owusu-Barnieh - 'Isolation: [Hypocrisy] A One-Sided Conversation'
The best thing about working on this project was having the opportunity to include the voices and stories of Black folks outside of the US. While Your Silence Will Not Protect You was born out of a moment very specific to the Black American experience, anti-Blackness and white supremacy is obviously a problem that all Black people throughout the diaspora face.
One of those stories comes from Adwoa [pronounced adj-wa] Owusu-Barnieh, a writer based in Birmingham, UK. Here, she discusses the prevalence of anti-Blackness in London, as well as the impact of George Floyd’s murder on Black folks in Britain.
What’s your story? Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are today.
I am called Adwoa. I’m originally from Greater London, so the part of London nobody really cares about at the moment. The part of London I’m from, Boris Johnson’s my local [Member of Parliament] if that gives you a little context of the environment I was raised in. And then moved to Birmingham for Uni and I’ve stayed there since.
I’ve always been pulled towards humanities like reading, literature, mythologies are things that I’ve always found really interesting. And I think that it’s quite interesting to - just generally in terms of academic and life trajectory - I found it quite interesting to think of how we can look at something like ancient Greek mythology and think of it as being so far away and such a weird fantastical world, and we forget that we actually make up our own mythologies and that’s how we allow ourselves to exist. We exist in the present and for some reason we don’t seem to realize that, to a degree, the kind of mythologies of Greece are no different to the ways that we set ourselves up as a society and its different groups of cultures now. I think there are so many interesting ways that can be explored, and that’s kind of where I’m at at the moment.
How did you approach writing your piece, “Isolation?”
Quite unlike a lot of the other poetry that I do. Honestly, at the time it was - social media was just being so overwhelmed with Black trauma after Black trauma after Black trauma, everywhere and in the middle of a pandemic. It was something that came out more out of frustration with being bombarded with something that I’ve already known and felt and experienced. It kind of felt like watching some people in the world discover that racism, anti-Blackness exists. It’s weird because one part of you wants to say, “Well this is a really good step, it means that we’re moving forwards,” and then another part of you is kind of irritated that it’s taken some people so long. And so the poem kind of came from being caught in the middle of those two feelings. Which is quite a strange place to write from.
If you were to summarize what it means to be Black and British at this point in time, how would you?
It’s one of those things that, whereas in some countries anti-Blackness is a more covert practice, anti-Blackness in the UK is - not so much subtle but it’s systemic. It can exist without people necessarily recognizing the extent to which they harbor anti-Black views. It’s a weird world to navigate because it’s almost as if everyone is capable of having the same conversation, but nobody is communicating well. So it’s one of those things where there’s always some form of backlash to a revelation that prevents the actual work from being done. Because then things get lost in semantics and reactions, and then it means that quite a lot of the anti-Black problems that we have in the UK just continue to exist.
Police in the UK don’t carry guns, because we don’t have guns in the country. In comparison to somewhere like America, there isn’t as much obvious violence that can happen. I think a lot of non-Black people consider anti-Black racism to be killing Black people - and that is one thing on one end of the spectrum - but anti-Blackness is an entire spectrum of behaviors. As far as I’m concerned I think everyone exists somewhere on that spectrum because of how much anti-Blackness is required for capitalism and other systems that we live within.
It’s one of those things where I think you have to live in Britain to feel that flavor of anti-Blackness. It’s like when you explain something, it always sounds sillier when you say it out loud, which is kind of the case of anti-Blackness in the UK. Somewhat gaslighting sometimes.
One thing that you mentioned when you submitted your piece was that it was inspired by the murder of George Floyd here in the US - we know that there were global protests in response to that but can you talk about how that manifested in the UK from what you’ve seen?
With Georga Floyd, how I received that in the UK, all Black people are aware of how violent America is against Black people. America is a land that, as it is today, would not have been possible if it wasn’t for slavery. So there’s a very, very specific form of anti-Blackness that goes on in America, but it’s still part of a wider system. So when George Floyd’s murder happened, it more ends up bringing things to a fever pitch of what’s going on in your own environment as well.
In the UK, a woman called Belly Mujinga died of COVID. She’d been a railroad services worker in Victoria, in London and had expressed concern about COVID because she had an underlying health problem that made her more at risk. Apparently, somebody - an angry customer spat in her face and then a couple of days later she got COVID and she ended up dying in hospital. Even just trying to get - on social media at the time and especially in the middle of a pandemic - trying to get people to acknowledge or admit that there were prejudicial undertones that went on that could’ve been prevented and saved her life. That’s something in the UK that people had to go and protest about.
When there are so many things constantly happening that are all part of the same issue - and obviously murder is the largest, the most violent amplification of that issue - it kind of ends up acting as a catalyst for people to try and say, “This is not acceptable. We’ve been saying it’s not acceptable and now we’re not being heard and all of this is still happening.” I think you kind of reach a breaking point that has to proceed any form of change, and I feel like that’s what we’re experiencing now. But because we’re in this pandemic and we’re all able to communicate globally - I think for one of the first times properly, for us, we’re aware that these issues are going on everywhere across the world. Which I think is important but a really sad way to come to that revelation.
That’s all the questions that I had. I feel like we’ve been talking about really heavy stuff, so what’s one thing that’s bringing you hope about the situation that we’re in?
Very weirdly enough I think it’s just a lot of art. I graduated two or three months ago, so I did the last bit of my degree in the middle of a pandemic. It was a lot - one side it was positive to have something I could focus my attention to, but it was also quite an intense experience. One of the benefits of the past couple of months is that I’ve just had a lot more time to read, to listen to music, to actually sit down to watch a two- or three-hour film and concentrate all of my attention on that. One of the positives that I think has come out from this is that we live in a world that tells us to prioritize wealth above all else, and with the pandemic what we’ve seen is the issues that come from prioritizing wealth above all else. Then you have the arts - you have people who are writing, who are making music, who are making really wonderful films - and there is a way to communicate with people better through there. There’s a way to improve understanding with people through the arts, which is a much more fulfilling way of navigating your way through the world. That’s bringing me a lot of joy at the moment.
Adwoa Owusu-Barnieh (she/her/hers) is originally from London, UK. She currently lives in Birmingham, UK, where she completed her undergraduate studies in Classical Literature and Civilisation. Her poetic approach experiments with words and feeling, leaning more heavily on spoken poetry and musical lyricism than traditional poetic practices. As someone who recognises the liminal space she occupies within society, Adwoa is interested in exploring and amplifying the complex nuances and texture of the socio-cultural world. Adwoa is also interested in curating multi-disciplinary art exhibitions that engage with the community and writing about the many art forms that excite her. Find her on Twitter.
