An Hour with Adriana Green

Hang in there with this one. I don’t know how to write about Adriana without going in deep. She is one of the fiercely brightest people I have ever known. Just talking to her makes me feel smarter, like honored that she considers me worthy of having discussion with.I say that with complete deference. I mean, I know I am pretty intelligent, but I don’t really feel smart enough to hold a scholarly conversation with her. Not really. But I am perfectly alright with that and hell yes I’ll engage every time, because I know I’m learning something. Like what in the hell is Afrofuturism?

Striking is what comes to mind when I think of my first impression of Adriana. Striking, observant and present. Our first encounter was at a staff retreat when I first moved to Richmond and was a newly employed teaching artist with SPARC (School of the Performing Arts in the Richmond Community). We sat in the living room of a massively posh home off River Road in the West End surrounded by my other new colleagues. As the only people of color in the room, we zeroed in on each other immediately, as POC tend to do. It is a moment of solidarity mostly. So actually, I guess my first thought was Yay, black girl! Second thought, damn, she’s gorgeous. At some point she spoke and I thought, hell yes, and sharp!

After the meeting we had some time to just hang out on the back patio by the pool and chat with folks. Adriana was the newly hired educational assistant at SPARC, but what she really wanted to do was write. Of course my ears perked up at hearing this and I told her that I too loved to write, not that I was doing much of it at that time.

Forming Our Friendship

My first class for SPARC was teaching 4-5 year olds on Saturday mornings. Adriana ended up teaching the class with me because another teacher was unable. We had a ton of fun and sparked an easy camaraderie and friendship. Her compassion and flexibility with the kids was notable, especially when indulging the obsession with Orcas that one of our students with special abilities had. I had no idea then about the other incredible work she did with a friend of hers whom she also happened to assist as a caretaker. Quick-witted, compassionate, fiercely loyal, on top of her game; all fitting words for this woman.

She was stepping out of the ruins of a rough relationship and unemployment. I was embarking on a journey to figure out who I was again after moving myself and kids away from our family and everything we knew in DC. I had been in Richmond just a few months and after meeting Adriana, now had an incredible guide to introduce me to the city and a vibrant community of people. She was 23 and I pretended that I was again, going out dancing, going to a symposium on hair and identity, and generally cutting up. I was in a place of renewal and getting to remember who I was and my truth. She was there for that rebirth. 

Adriana helped me rekindle my love of writing with tons of encouragement and even more tangibly by bringing together a group of friends to write. She certainly had a passion for it and I felt reinvigorated. I credit her for giving me the courage to imagine that I might be a great English teacher.

Eventually, just as she was preparing to leave for Pratt Institute in New York, where she would go on to finish her master’s, she was asked to write a piece for a project that gave voices to queer folk and the acts of violence perpetrated against them. The project resulted in a staged reading of a collection of dramatized stories that benefited the Virginia Anti-Violence Project/VAVP. When the directors asked Adriana if she knew of any actresses that could perform the piece she’d written about a transgender black women’s encounter with a police officer during a Black Lives Matter rally, she recommended me. This performance renewed my activism and introduced my acting to the theatre community in Richmond. I am forever grateful.

The moment she was accepted to Pratt, I knew she was off to a brilliant start and that our constant presence in each other’s lives was coming to a close. She has since graduated and is headed to UC Berkley in the Fall to earn her doctorate in African American and African Diaspora Studies. She is going off to continue to be brilliant.

A Somber and Exhilarating Conversation

After a flurry of text messages, emails, and missed appointments, we were finally able to FaceTime on a Sunday afternoon. My friend put on a smile for me, but I could tell she was down. The enthusiasm in her voice was sincere but measured. There was a tinge of pain behind her greeting. Her response to my “how are you” was honest and lackluster. She tried to dodge the question. I dodged her query into my life to get to the heart of what was happening on her end. I don’t need to get into the details here, but suffice it to say that the journey to self takes us to depths which only the truly brave are willing to go. She is in that place. I daresay she will emerge covered in soot, but glistening from the inside out. I assure her that out of darkness comes light, that even sometimes seemingly bad things can have goodness emerge from them.

We didn’t have a ton of time on our hands, so after checking in about what was happening with her, I shared my recent trauma. My now 13 year old scared the hell out of all of us a few weeks ago when she went missing for 8 hours. She was not abducted, thank God, and we learned just how tight knit and caring our community is. I ended up leaving a show I had just begun rehearsing and that I had been excited about directing for a year so that I could focus my energies at home and on her. This was all devastating, but did not come without some serious healing on the back end and tons of revelation. 

Adriana relates to my kid. She has dealt with more than her fair share of adolescent brooding around identity and has grappled with sustained mental health and her own rage stemming from childhood trauma. She has always had this anger that compelled her to act out, yet also become fiercely protective of those who need help the most. I asked Adriana what has compelled her to put her focus on being an activist/writer woman. For she is a gifted writer and activist, who has also been involved with the Black Lives Matter movement. 

 She reflects,

        "My father had PTSD, served in Vietnam and there were a host of other things happening with  my family that just made me angry. Like, I wanted to be able to protect people who are being disrespected. And you can see that in how even you and I met, part of why I wanted to connect with you was because I was pissed at something being said by this brilliant person not being heard. You know I just feel very protective, you know and it’s not just a need to right the world. I also think that black people are amazing, I think diversity is amazing. Afrofuturism is amazing, like we don’t need to hear the same stories over and over and we don’t have to tell them over and over. And so I think that the way in which my world feels rich, feels full of rage, feels ever present, that’s not something that I ever want to let go of, that’s holding yourself accountable. If you hold yourself accountable you have to be very present with yourself all of the time. And if you hold other people accountable, even if it’s in a very loving way, you’re always having to be in dialogue and be present, and I don’t know if I could not do those things. I think I would be bored.”

But Seriously, What's Afrofuturism?

At some point we get around to talking about writing and teaching. After graduating, she immediately started teaching creative writing classes. “Omg, Lucretia! Having to map out how we move along and teaching two classes on creative writing and one class about Afrofuturism, I have learned so much!”

I finally interrupt, “Ok, now you’ve used this term several times now. Tell me what this [Afrofuturism] is, because you know I’m an old person!”

Adriana laughs,“Essentially it’s speculative art work, anything that asks, ‘what if?’ Like -fantasy, sci-fi, anything that speculates about the condition of black subject-hood, what it means to be black ….interrogating the past, criticizing the present, and re-imagining the future. You know like, Black Panther.”

Oh, Black Panther?! Hell yes, ok, I know what Afrofuturism looks like then. Wakanda Forever, baby!

She notes that after graduating from Pratt and turning down PhD programs while she figured out what she wanted to do, she recognized that need to get into a room with other writers again and collaborate and learn and grow together. She asked Pratt for a space to convene a group largely comprised of other queer POC writers to write, critique and study theory.

“I’m going to send you this piece from this scholar Fred Moten who talks about if jazz and academia had a baby, he’s thinking about the way we think about studying and that how often academic spaces don’t really make the place for studying. That studying happens like in the barber shop or the back porch (places where oral traditions and interactions are happening with other people) or amongst friends.”

I mention how I’ve recently been getting together with a group of women to work on a collaborative theatre piece focused around the series of ridiculous episodes that women put up with and how good that feels to be bringing our stories and ideas forth in that way.

We hit on several other things, like what Moten says about how black folks should show up in academia. She says, “He says the relationship of a black scholar in academia should be one of fugitivity, like going in and stealing shit, like go in, get the money, open up the door. That’s what I did at Pratt and that’s what I want to do at Berkley.”

So...yeah, that’s one of my bestest friends in the whole wide world who I talk to like twice a year. Kicking down doors at Berkley and such. I am so looking forward to more contributions to black academia and the world from this one, though she is already a gift to both. When a star is shooting, all one can do is look up in amazement and be glad they caught a glimpse. Thanks for lighting up the sky, Love.