Interview with Writer Tyra Jamison
This interview was conducted on January 22, 2020 by EIC Sarah O’Brien for Boston Accent Lit. This is the third in a 2020 Boston Accent interview series with writers.
Tyra Jamison writes from the intersections of Black, woman, artist, and student. She's Pittsburgh born, and Hill District raised. She performs her work as Mant¿s and freelances. She was the Poetry Editor for the Underground Pool (issue no. 9), and is currently an Editorial Assistant for Paperback Literary Journal. Tyra has facilitated writing, performance and community organizing workshops in with the Bill Nunn Theatre Outreach Project, 1hood Media, and the Tuesday Night Monologue Project with a focus on creative liberation for Black youth and Black femmes. You can check out more of her work at www.mantiswrites.com.
Boston Accent Lit: What is the background of your pseudonym, Mant¿s? Why did you choose it for your writing and performing?
Tyra Jamison AKA Mant¿s: Three words: Empathy, nerdiness, misandry.
Mant¿s is definitely a shoutout to the Marvel’s Mantis, a superhero whose main powers are empathy, healing, and astral projection. It’s also a really tongue-in-cheek reference to misandry (seeing that a female praying mantis *decapitates* her male sex partners). I also grew up watching Avatar: the Last Airbender and loved how Toph, a blind 12-year-old Earthbender had a fighting style called Southern Praying Mantis (Chu Gar Tong Long). She taught herself Earthbending by feeling the vibrations from her opponent on the ground, she’s taken sensitivity and transformed it into a superpower. As someone that has grown up sensitive, my writing is how I turn all of these feelings (yes I’m a Cancer sun) to a superpower. It’s how I become ferocious.
I chose Mant¿s because when I was performing I felt like I needed a Sasha Fierce. Because my poetry performance is a heightened expression of who I am and what I’m feeling.
Boston Accent: You are “Pittsburgh born, and Hill District raised.” How does this inform your art? Do you often include imagery from these places in writing pieces?
Mant¿s: When considering the writing tradition and subject matter I’m working with, Pittsburgh is a very Midwestern place. To be “Hill District raised” means that I come from one of the most dynamic, creative, self-sufficient Black American communities that is abundant in cultural and creative resources. As a result of this, the community has been punished for daring to be an autonomous cultural center. Its residents are repaid by corporations and universities attempting to displace an entire Black planet in one rapid swoop (they have not & will not be successful at this). “Pittsburgh born and Hill District raised” means this:
a.) A shorthand for the messy, ridiculous Pittsburgh intersections where my identity exists that navigate by
b.) crossing through my favorite underpass, an underground Sistine Chapel covered in street murals as you can
c.) I romanticize the F*CK out of my hometown in my writing, any chance I get.
Boston Accent: You once wrote, “The best thing about rock bottom is you can find your feet on the ground. Plus I seem to make it look good.” That is profound positive thinking. How have you navigated negative feelings toward writing, and do you have any advice for writers who struggle with their mental health at times?
Mant¿s: (CW: suicidal ideation) To writers struggling with their mental health… do what you can with what you have. Do not abandon yourself to “be okay.” I’ve been aware of my anxiety and depression since my sophomore year of college. 2018 was a year where everything that could have possibly fallen apart… did and 2019 I was picking up the pieces from that damage. Eventually I checked myself into an E.R. for suicidal thoughts. Rock bottom for me was having to sit down with my parents and tell them that I was having trouble functioning because I was trying not to kill myself. I’m in a much better place mentally because I’ve been working on trusting a support system (family, friends, therapist, and super late into 2019, my partner) to be just that. Support systems are everything. I went to therapy for a full year before having that depressive episode. A lot of folks think that therapy is supposed to solve these issues, when truly it equips you with the tools. I wouldn't have been prepared to handle it, if I hadn't already been working through it.
I know that folks have barriers to gaining a full support system. So what helped me whenever I was at rock bottom was completing low-effort tasks to get through the day. The next step was to identify what circumstances were taking joy from me and, in whatever way that I could, to get it out of my life. And I cannot stress the importance of an emergency plan.
As far as negative feelings towards writing, I had to get comfortable with revision. I also had to focus on other skills and hobbies for awhile. There’s so much I want to learn all the time so if writing is irking me, I take a break. To remember that I’m a whole person outside of it.
Tyra Jamison is featured in a photo series called “The Blacks” by Vanessa German (a Pittsburgh-based poet and sculpture artist), installed for Art in Focus at Rockefeller Center until April 5, 2020.
Boston Accent: Do you become inspired in a different way to write speculative fiction than when inspired to write poetry? Give me a tour of your creative process.
Mant¿s: Poetry often feels spiritual to me. More expressive and focused on building a voice with a heightened, textured rhythm. I love music so poems often feel like songs. When writing in form, I do have to flex some linguistic muscle to fit the form.
My fiction is driven by absurdity. Even though I’m often imagining a hectic future for this Western experiment, I am truly writing in the headspace of The Boondocks. It’s funny to me because I have a really dark, dry sense of humor, so a lot of the dystopian qualities and events from my fiction were written with a nervous laugh.
Boston Accent: In an alternate universe in which you are not a writer, performer, or website designer, what are you doing?
Mant¿s: I’d be practicing holistic medicine, full time. Imagine a little old lady living in the woods, in a cottage with a huge herb garden and lots of candles, journals, and jars. That’s how I’d like to grow old. It’s not completely out of the cards, but I want to get my flowers as a writer before I take that on full-time. The alternate universe is waiting for me to choose it.
Boston Accent: You changed your Twitter handle from “mantiswrites” to “mantiswins”—explain that slight shift in persona. How has your social media presence affected your writing, if at all?
Mant¿s: That was Twitter’s fault. They randomly locked me out of my @mantiswrites handle and I was like “aight I guess I’ll start over or w/e.” Much like a web domain, you can’t have two of the same Twitter handles, so I made @mantiswins out of necessity and spite for Twitter’s algorithms.
My social media presence is something I’m still trying to figure out. I’ve been spending 2019 transitioning my IG and Twitter to be spaces where I share what I’m working on, where I share my growth. I *really* miss the Instagram I made specifically for my writing because early in the year I received the *worst* advice regarding that, which was to combine them for a larger audience. I’ve learned that more followers doesn’t necessarily mean more tangible support. Algorithms and web visibility can be really tricky, so I see social media as a place where I can check what’s going on in artistic, spiritual, and tech communities. It also helps me keep an eye out for opportunities. If social media’s affected my writing at all, it’s been more of the community aspect than anything.
Boston Accent: Are there any changes that would you like to see in the technology community as you delve into web design and coding?
Mant¿s: More praxis around “race critical code studies,” a term coined by Dr. Ruha Benjamin to describe the body of work studying race and technology. As someone who is Black and queer, I’m really fascinated at how the tech industry has been a double-edged sword. On one hand, these lucrative skill sets are allowing marginalized people to access resources and material stability very quickly. On another hand, some tech giants are selling algorithms to corporations that create tools of surveillance, military violence, and displacement.
I really love the work of organizers like Data for Black Lives because it creates that space for social change.
Boston Accent: You begin your poem “Out of the Atlantic Ethiopian Ocean” with the powerful line, “Do not confuse my silence for consent.” In this piece, you personify the Atlantic as a goddess who is angry with the way she has been disrespected “for centuries, maybe eons.” You write, “My currents cannot carry all the corpses you cast into me” and “I’ve been listening to funeral songs that have caused the taste of my own salt to repulse me” and “my vengeance will consume you.” This poem gives me chills; it’s so vivid and necessary. I’m reminded of J.M.W. Turner’s painting The Slave Ship and the evils of slavery and of killing people by drowning them. It is astonishing to hear the sea’s perspective in your poem. How do you feel anger can be used as a writing tool; how can writers channel this energy in their creative process?
Mant¿s: I wrote that poem my senior year of high school and was blessed to have it published in Whirlwind Press in 2017! That poem was more of a possession. When writing, I was thinking about August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, where characters reference a “City of Bones,” which represents how many enslaved Africans jumped or were thrown into the Atlantic Ocean during the Middle Passage. I was also considering how many crimes against the Earth and crimes against humanity that the Atlantic Ocean had to absorb. I think that writers can look at the teachings (and purchase her current course on this) of Joy KMT (a monumental poet and priestess) where she defines rage as a tool of alchemy.
That being said, I think that writers can use anger to identify where they want to see change creatively, or otherwise.
Boston Accent: What are you reading right now?
Mant¿s: Aside from looking at the texts within race critical code studies, I’ve been revisiting all about love by bell hooks. It’s like a foundational life text for me. I’m also working through TENDER, an anthology independently published by Vanessa German and Deesha Philyaw consisting of Black femme voices from Pittsburgh, including my own!
Writer, Artist, Performer, and Editor Mant¿s will change the literary world and look good doing it.