The Summertime Issue feat. Black Voices

A note from issue editor Tyrese Coleman

The simple truth is that summer is just different for Black folx.

Obviously, there are activities that translate over cultural lines: swimming, barbecues (I call them cookouts), time off school, beach, all the things that we as a collective society longed for last year—the year of loss, in so many ways. Summertime aches in our consciousness as a period of longing for many reasons but mostly we want the sticky, sweet taste of relief and rest, to luxuriate in the drowsy sun.

But for us Black folx, summertime is more. Summertime is nostalgia stirred in with your aunt’s potato salad, the only person allowed to make potato salad at the family get-together. It is the whirl of goosebumps that prickle your arms when you hear that first siren note of Roy Ayers’ “Everybody Loves the Sunshine.” It is our skin, brilliant against the sun, as if lit from within. The summertime feels like our time. Freedom. And yet…

Summertime is when we die the most. When that freedom is checked. When little Black girls are manhandled by police at pool parties, when grown Black men are choked out on the sidewalk by cops, when we’re told not to loiter so much, when perceived idleness is perceived threat, when that gold-covered skin is dampened out.

This dichotomy exists at all times but is intensified in summer when the ways of the world are less on our shoulders and we can choose to just “be” sometimes. This is what I mean by summer is different for us. The essence of this feeling is hard to put in words, but through examples, through pictures and images, I thought to recreate it to some extent for you in this issue.

What you read now turned out to be mostly a looking back, that nostalgia I mentioned for a time where we felt most like ourselves, inquisitive or confused, when we noticed the senses that surrounded us in those hazy summertime moments, when we explored our bodies or fell in love, when we realized that summer was always harder for a Black man. As I read the pieces submitted for this issue, it was hard not to decide on work that felt consistent with my own experiences but also felt representative of some universal understanding of what it means to be Black and living in a formally colonized country that refuses to let you live. In some ways, I kept returning to childhood, to what felt like a much simpler time, when summer really meant something, marked in time by the absence of school and the appearance of adventure.

My friend’s daughter, Averi, had these drawings of a little girl during the summer and something about the bubble images spoke to this. The little brown girl in her pictures is wide-eyed, sometimes bored because that’s also a part of summertime too, but mostly existing within a cocoon of innocence that I wish for all us Black folx yearning for an everlasting summer—the free part. Her drawings are a part of this issue because what is summertime if not seen from the eyes of a child?

I hope you enjoy the work in this issue. Know that a lot of love and heart went into it. I pray that this summer is different for us all but especially for us Black folx, us children of the sun. I pray that there is less violence against us. I pray that there will be less times we are pulled over. I pray that you all find summer love, even if it’s with yourself. I pray that we will all be free. This summer and forever.

Special thanks to Jane Josée Link, Cree N. Pettaway, and Ashley Monique Lee for their work as Senior Readers for this issue.

Tyrese L. Coleman is the author of the collection How to Sit, a 2019 Pen Open Book Award finalist published with Mason Jar Press in 2018. Writer, wife, mother, attorney, and writing instructor, she is the reviews editor at SmokeLong Quarterly. Her essays and stories have appeared in several publications, including Black Warrior Review, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, and the Kenyon Review. She is an alumni of the Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University and a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow. Find her at tyresecoleman.com.

Maryland-based Averi Jones (@artbyavim) is a 9-year-old, self-taught artist. She is currently studying visual art at Thomas Pullen Performing Arts School, and her favorite genre currently is Anime. She is inspired by cartoons and creates images to include herself and those that look like her in those works. This is her first published work.