Benedita Zalabantu joins Maine Poet Laureate Stuart Kestenbaum in conversation and to read her poem "Drop of Melanin and Blood," featured in A NEW LAND, a poetry anthology from The Telling Room. Stuart and Benedita discuss writing for yourself, finding people like yourself reflected in a community of writers, a love of Stephen King and horror, working through mental health in the pandemic, finding the small details that encapsulate bigger themes, and talent’s role in poetic performance. Benedita is a senior at Portland High School and was one of the youngest students accepted into The Telling Room’s Young Writers and Leaders program.
Voices of the Future is hosted and conceived by Stuart Kestenbaum, produced by Josephine Holtzman and Isaac Kestenbaum at Future Projects, with help from Carly Peruccio, mixed by Merritt Jacob, and music by Jordan Kramer. Voices of the Future is curated and distributed by Molly McGrath and Rylan Hynes of The Telling Room. This series is made possible by the Academy of American Poets with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
To learn more about The Telling Room and its programs, visit www.tellingroom.org.
Benedita: The first time I performed, I felt weird because I don't often see people who look like me who are performers, so people that do ... Especially poetry. I don't know any poet that looks like me, except for after I got involved with The Telling Room, that's when I was like, "Oh yeah, there's actually writers."
Stuart Kestenbaum: Welcome to Voice of the Future. I'm Stuart Kestenbaum. In this series, I'm interviewing young writers and poets from Maine, all of whom have participated in programs of The Telling Room, a nonprofit writing center in Portland. The Telling Room’s mission is to empower youth through writing and to share their voices with the world. All of the authors in this series are featured in A New Land, an anthology of 30 poems written at The Telling Room. When I read or hear the work of these writers, I am moved by their enthusiasm, skill, and courage. Some of them were born in Maine, others have come here from Africa and the Middle East. All speak with urgency about their lives and their futures.
Benedita Zalabantu is a senior at Portland High School. She was one of the youngest students ever accepted into The Telling Room's young writers and leaders program, which is a leadership and creative writing group for multi-lingual and international students. In this episode, Benedita reads her poem, “Drop of Melanin and Blood.” We talk about how she wrote the poem for her family and for herself.
Benedita: My name is Benedita Zalabantu and I'm from Portland, Maine, but I was originally born in Angola and I immigrated here 2013. So the poem is called “Drop of Melanin and Blood.”
I.
There’s something about my brother that scares me.
He’s black and a man.
He’s a black man in a world where his skin symbolizes weapon.
He’s a black man in a place where his skin symbolizes thug.
How can he move through the world
when his own skin is a shield for protection
and a weapon for destruction?
The way black men walk in this world portrays them.
The way black men walk in this world scares them.
A colored man walks with a weapon, meaning skin.
A colored woman walks with labels that will define her,
but can these labels be erased?
Black boy, don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.
Black boy, don’t make a move.
Black boy, don’t adjust while handcuffed.
At a young age, little black boys are taught how
they should and shouldn’t act when they’re stopped by the cops.
Black boy, breathe. I want you to breathe.
Black boy, you will be treated as a problem before
they realize you’re human.
Black boy, keep your hands visible.
Black boy, be scared, but not too scared.
Black boy, you will matter.
Don’t you know a black man is born
with a practice target that can never be removed?
Don’t you know black bodies are weapons?
II.
My walk home with my little brother from
the bus stop is always interesting.
He talks about kindergarten as if it were heaven,
and I smile,
glad that I got a brother whose personality rivals my dad’s.
Sometimes we see birds, sometimes we see rain,
sometimes we see snow. Ain’t nothing but change.
But we don’t often see cops.
One day we did, and he looked up at me smiling
as if it were his first time seeing a blue-and-white car before.
“It’s a police car!” He jumped and pointed with excitement.
His round face looked at me, smiling with a missing tooth.
His little brown skin always makes me happy and I smiled.
He don’t know yet.
He is going to be seen as a threat as he grows up.
It hits me: I’m afraid of how insecure
he will have to be around them,
around those who are trained to protect us but fail to.
I’m scared he won’t be smiling at them anymore,
afraid he will have to raise his hands up saying
“Don’t shoot,”
afraid he will have to say
“I can’t breathe,”
afraid my brother will look up at the sky and ask,
“Why me?”
afraid he will have to say
“I’m unarmed, I swear.”
I am scared because I know.
I know this is never going to end.
I know there will be a lot of reasons
he won’t be able to breathe, and the cops
are one of them.
I know he’s getting ready for a war that I can’t prepare him for—
never really knowing when danger is around the corner,
never really knowing when dangerous is in the media.
III.
My melanin has meaning.
It is profound, dark skin
so greedy it gobbles up nouns, so tangled
look what it did to my hair,
reaching up to the sky at all angles.
To teach someone something about self-love
you got to start with yourself.
Your skin is not a dirty shirt that needs to be washed
like yesterday’s shirt.
Your skin is like hot chocolate that warms winter nights.
Like rings around tree stumps, you have a history
attached to your melanin.
Never let the glaring whiteness blind you
from the beauty you are.
Dark as the night sky,
constellations are tucked neatly underneath your bones.
You know what?
When they call you dark as the night,
tell them without you the stars wouldn’t have anything to shine for.
Perfection was not your destination,
dark girl, it was your starting point.
“Some say the blacker the berry the sweeter the juice,
I say the darker the flesh, the longer the roots.”
Thank you.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Thank you. You wrote that how long ago?
Benedita: I was a freshman.
Stuart Kestenbaum: So three years ago.
Benedita: Yeah.
Stuart Kestenbaum: When you read it now, do you feel different than the person who wrote it, or...?
Benedita: I feel like when I first wrote the poem, it was around the time where everything with police brutality was happening. The moment I realized my brother was going to be different in American society was the first time I heard about Eric Garner. That was the first time I knew my brother was going to be considered different. Then I heard about Trayvon Martin. And it just kept coming, going on and on. I was like, "Wow. I came to America for a better life, and this is what I also have to look for.” Like I mentioned, he's getting ready for a war that I can't prepare him for. All I'm doing is writing a poem. That's not necessarily going to help him. It's going to make him aware, but it's not like, "Oh yeah, my sister writes poetry. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can't kill me." No.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Right. You can't protect him.
Benedita: Yeah, I can't protect him with words. I can't do that. And his skin can't also be protected. That's why I was like, "Oh yeah, his skin is..." It would probably help him in sports, but it won't help you when you meet a cop. And then reading it now with everything that's currently happened recently with the Black Lives Matter movement, it just... Yeah, nothing really has changed. I think whenever I read it, I'm trying to be optimistic about it. But when I was a freshman, it was like, "Oh, he has to deal with this. He has to deal with that." And then I was like, "I hope he doesn't deal with this. I hope he doesn't deal with that."
Stuart Kestenbaum: You know, when I read it, it's as if you could have written it now.
Benedita: Yeah, happening right now.
Stuart Kestenbaum: So powerful.
Benedita: Yep.
Stuart Kestenbaum: You use a lot of repetition in your poem. Is that something that you do often when you write?
Benedita: Yeah, this is just particularly for this poem. I feel like when I said, "At a young age, little black boys are taught how they should and shouldn't act when they're stopped by the cops"? I was literally giving them direction on what to do and what not to do, because I go, "Black boy, breathe. I want you to breathe. Black boy, you'll be treated as a problem before they realize you're human. But before you look at a young age,” I say, "Black boys, don't speak unless you're spoken to." And then I go, "Don't make a move. Don't adjust while handcuffed."
Stuart Kestenbaum: It makes it very powerful.
Benedita: Yeah.
Stuart Kestenbaum: When you wrote it, you move from... It's very directive, like talking to your brother, like what he shouldn't do. And then it kind of shifts to this beautiful portrait of him missing a tooth. And then I love the line where you say, "Dark as the night, constellations are tucked neatly underneath your bones." Was there a moment of inspiration, or what was the process?
Benedita: Well, my very first poem is called “The Blessed Skin I Live In.” So when I started writing “Drop of Melanin and Blood,” I was thinking as if it was a part two, it was almost like a part two of “The Blessed Skin I Live In.” Then as I continued editing, I was like, “You know what?” A lot of my poems, just specifically looking at “The Black Skin I Live In,” because that's the one that people know a lot, and so I was like, "You know what, let me focus on something else. Instead of focusing on the whole black community, let me focus on somebody that actually means a lot to me." Not that the rest of the people in the black community doesn't, but somebody that's really close to me that will affect me if something like this were to happen to them. And so I was like, "My brother!" And then I was like, "You know what, let me talk about my dad." Because my brother and my dad look, they're really alike. Really alike. So I was like, "You know what, let's combine this together." But as I continued writing, it was almost like it wasn't about my brother anymore. It was about all the black boys I know, all the black little kids I know. So during my freshman year, I lost my little cousin to gun violence. So I was also thinking about him. So it was my brother, my dad, my cousin, and also the rest of the black boys I know. The missing tooth—I always make fun of him for missing a tooth, so I was like, "You know what, let me incorporate that into the poem," because I feel like I'm talking about something that's not... It's not a happy topic. It's not something I particularly enjoy talking about, but at least let's have something that could make me smile when I'm reading it. So I was like, "Yeah, missing tooth. Yes!"
Stuart Kestenbaum: It kind of captures his innocence.
Benedita: Yeah.
Stuart Kestenbaum: It really moves, it's urgent. And then it has a slower movement with your brother, and then ends with I assume kind of talking to yourself. So you move through a lot of territory.
Benedita: I was literally talking to myself when I said, "My melanin has meaning." I grew up with low self-esteem, and dark skin in the Congolese community or Angola community weren't looked at as beautiful. They still aren't. Those are things I wanted somebody to at least let me know growing up. I was like, "You know, I have to do this for myself." Not only for myself, but I was also doing it for my sister. And we're all different skin tones. I'm the darkest one. And my sister is the lighter one. So whenever I look at her, I don't want her to feel like, oh, she's better than everybody else because she's lighter than people who are dark skinned. And I don't want to look at myself and be like, "I'm better than her because I'm dark skinned." So it's just... Yeah, I'm teaching myself self-love, but I'm also reminding her to also love herself.
Stuart Kestenbaum: So even to say that line, "To teach someone something about self love, you got to start with yourself first." I think that's a pretty profound line. So you were 14 when you wrote that?
Benedita: Yeah, I was 14.
Stuart Kestenbaum: So you finished that poem, do you think, "Whoa, where'd that come from?" Did it surprise you?
Benedita: I honestly don't know. It always catches me off-guard whenever people hear me performing, or I'm talking to somebody about poetry, and they're like, "Oh my gosh, you're really good!" I'm like, "It's just writing, what are you talking about?" That's the other thing. I'll be like, "I don't know, talent?" It's something that you have with you, but it's not something that you particularly notice it a lot, unless people actually bring it up to you. Because I remember when I was in eighth grade, I started writing in eighth grade, and I remember my reading teacher was like, "You're such a good writer." I'm like, "Please do not call me that. I'm not a writer. I just write. Because you tell me to write. I'm not doing this because I like doing this." And then freshman year I was like, "You know what? I actually like this." I was actually embarrassed. At some point I was actually embarrassed to be seen as a poet because it was like, when I performed, the first time I performed, I felt weird. Because I don't often see people who look like me who are performers, people that do... Especially poetry. I don't know any poet that looks like me, except for after I got involved with The Telling Room, that's when I was like, "Oh yeah, there's actually writers." But other than that, I was in eighth grade, I was the only poet in the whole entire grade. And I remember the first time I performed, somebody was like, "Oh, did you steal that from online?" I was like, "Why would I do that? Why would you think that?" And it made me feel so sad. I was like, "Why can't I be a writer? Why do I have to steal this from online?"
Stuart Kestenbaum: So how'd you get involved with The Telling Room?
Benedita: My reading teacher connected me with them, and then I got a scholarship for the summer program. Then I was among one of the youngest people to get accepted in the young writers and leaders program. And then I've been connected with them since then.
Stuart Kestenbaum: And do you read a lot of poetry?
Benedita: I don't. That's the thing. I don't like reading poetry, but I enjoy writing.
Stuart Kestenbaum: What do you like to read?
Benedita: I'm a horror person. I read horror books. I don't like poetry. You give me a book of poetry, I will literally look at you like—
Stuart Kestenbaum: But you like horror. What writers?
Benedita: I read Stephen King a lot.
Stuart Kestenbaum: And what kinds of writing are you doing now?
Benedita: A lot of my poems now are focused a lot on depression. When quarantine started, my mental health kind of messed up, so I focused on that a lot. I haven't said this out loud, but I think it's a good time. I've been thinking a lot about quitting poetry to be honest.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Would you continue to write?
Benedita: I am going to continue writing, but I don't know about continuing performing.
Stuart Kestenbaum: You do some of this as spoken word.
Benedita: I do spoken word.
Stuart Kestenbaum: You're allowed to evolve and change as a writer and a person.
Benedita: Yeah. Well, when I told my teacher, she was like, "No, you're not quitting! You're not quitting. You're probably just taking a break." I was like, "You know what? That's a good way to put it. I'm taking break."
Stuart Kestenbaum: Voices of the Future is hosted and conceived by me and produced by Josephine Holtzman and Isaac Kestenbaum at Future Projects with help from Carly Peruccio. The music in this episode is by Jordan Kramer. The series is made possible by the Academy of American Poets with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. To learn more about The Telling Room and its programs, visit tellingroom.org. I'm Stuart Kestenbaum. Thanks for listening.