On the artifacts and inspiration we leave behind

 

The $700 price tag meant I couldn’t afford to come for dinner, but I figured I could justify a $150 after party ticket as long as there was an open bar. I definitely kicked myself for not attending the Centennial Kick-off Block party last summer, which was entirely free, but I stayed home…not wanting to be on the block in the rain. 

 

On the wall in the Schomburg’s main atrium, there’s a photo of Maya Angelou dancing with Amiri Baraka on the cosmogram that depicts Langston Hughes “A Negro Speaks of Rivers” and also contains the lauded poet’s ashes. I have long dreamed of being in that photo, cheering them on from the edge of the world. 

 

 

Of course I knew Ms. Angelou, Mr. Baraka, and Mr. Hughes wouldn’t be at the party, certainly they’re having their own jubah in the heavenly afterlife, but I felt I had to be in the room making my own memories and taking my own pictures that might one day be framed on the wall. 

 

This year’s honorees were actress Angela Bassett, novelist Edwidge Danticat, journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, and musician-turned-archivist Solange Knowles. The honorees would have been all women if not for Dr. Henry Louis Gates, the renowned scholar who’s had a hand in nearly anything Black on PBS. 

 

Much respect to all of the honorees — Angela Bassett will always be Ms. Turner to me, Edwidge Danticat was one of the first Haitian authors I ever read (truly a gateway!) and as traditional journalism withers, I’m rooting for geniuses like Nikole Hannah-Jones to be at the helm of whatever comes next — but it’s Solange that’s stayed on my mind: the ways she’s evolved, and the ways my thinking about her has evolved at the same time.

 

Let’s go back to the beginning, but please note: this is a non-comprehensive history, the only timeline events are what is of note to me. 

• 2001: I survive Y2K and turn double digits. Somehow I know that Solange sings the theme song for my favorite animated Disney channel show, The Proud Family
• 2001: Destiny’s Child releases 8 Days of Christmas which features Solange on “Little Drummer Boy”, which is not my favorite song on the album
• 2004: I get my first good look at Solange in Johnson Family Vacation where she plays the angsty teen daughter alongside little brother Bow Wow, mom Vanessa Williams, dad Cedric The Entertainer, and uncle Steve Harvey. I think before this I had only seen Solange in magazine photos. I loved her in the film and thought she was soooo pretty. There were so many good movies in this era; Beyonce had done The Fighting Temptations the year before. 
• 2007: Beyonce and Solange look so cute together in the “Get Me Bodied” music video
• 2008: I’m playing Solange’s single “I Decided” non-stop the summer I get my license, which was also my alternative phase. I got most of my music from LimeWire and I didn’t do the work to download the rest of the tracks on the album Solo Star. 
• 2010: I’m yelling along to Fabolous and Nicki Minaj’s song “For The Money” during the line if you could have Beyonce would you take Solange? and at the time, this feels like a normal, sane thing to do
• 2012: Solange puts out “Losing You” and I keep wishing that I liked her albums as much as I liked her singles, but I don’t really take the time to listen to the EP True because I’ve just graduated from college and bought 5 different colors of skirt suits for my new grad school aesthetic. My alt phase is over. 
• 2013: Solange cuts her hair to a short afro. It’s not the first time she’s cut her hair, but it’s a very different look than the more polished twist-outs and roller sets that are trendy at this time. I do not think it suits her and feel she looks like a boy.
• 2014: The video of Solange cussing out Jay-Z while Beyonce looks on goes viral. I’m wishing there was audio because you can tell she’s going in. We pore over the video during a work meeting at HCZ, no work actually gets done. This is the first time I had ever heard of the Met Gala, a fashion party at a museum that I have yet to visit. 
• 2015: I start wearing my hair in the same short afro style I hated on Solange. I feel like I look like a boy unless I have a hair accessory. I buy a lot of headbands and try to make it work. After months of frustration, I start wearing ponytails.
• 2016: Solange releases A Seat At The Table and I’m obsessed. The whole world is, too. I feel unimpressed by her live performance on SNL, but I won’t hear any criticism about the album. A guy am I seeing says “it puts him to sleep”. I stop seeing him. “Don’t Touch My Hair” becomes the theme song for all friend group hangs. I start internalizing Master P’s quotes from the album. I am only slightly too young to have experienced his rise first hand so outside of being Lil Romeo’s dad, he is new to me. I love the long, wavy hair look from the album cover and her bold brows. 
• 2019: Solange drops When I Get Home. It doesn’t make as much noise as Seat, but I do not care. I like it even more than Seat and I watch and re-watch the visual album. “Do nothing without intention” starts playing in my mind. I take the time to look up every reference in the interludes and as much as I can about the images in the film. This film introduces me to the work of Jacolby Satterwhite, even though I don’t know it yet.
• 2020-2021: I spend more time thinking about spirituality. Most of the time, I play instrumentals of When I Get Home in the background.    
• 2022: I go to the ballet with friends because Solange has done the score. My friends do not like it and leave at the intermission. I stay for the second act which is set to music by James Blake. This becomes important later. 
• 2023: I start experimenting with the soft wave hair style from the cover of Seat, but I cannot figure out how to maintain the hairstyle in humid conditions. I’m on sabbatical and planning my birthday party. With nothing but ideas and time on my hands, I make a mood movie for the party on Canva. The sounds and images of my mini-film are heavily inspired by Solange’s film. There are orchids and golden disco balls. No one I send it to seems to “get it” and this frustrates me. At the party, I serve gumbo in a hotel room to recreate the vibes of the Black women’s writing group hosted by June Jordan in her Brooklyn apartment in the 1970s.

• 2024: I launch Black Star Reviews and start working on artistic self-definition. There’s a lot of friction. I keep returning to When I Get Home as I try to work things out. 
• 2025: A friend recommends I read Matriarch by Tina Knowles, Solange’s mom. I’m surprised by how much I learn about Solange and her artistry in the book. I start reflecting on why I gravitated toward Beyonce, why I didn’t listen to Solange’s music beyond the singles, and why I found her bold choices to be off-putting when I was younger. I hear about Saint Heron for the first time and I’m immediately mad that I’m late to the party.      

 

When I look back over that personal timeline, and I think about the periods that are now filled in by what I read in Matriarch, I can only chuckle. As an artist, Solange has long defied categorization and definition. I didn’t know where to put her in the boxes that I had. She didn’t fit in pop star, actor, influencer, designer and that confused me. She consistently chose looks that weren’t popular (yet) and that confused me, too. When I realized that I didn’t want to be in any boxes either, two things happened: 1) I started confusing people, and 2) Solange started making a whole lot of sense. 

 

On a separate note, Saint Heron’s mission to “preserve, collect, and uplift the stories, works and archives of Black creators” certainly overlaps with my work. However, I manifested Black Star Reviews without any conscious awareness of Solange’s projects and interest. Life can be funny like that. 

 

I feel grateful that my life has been long enough for me to change my mind about the things I once felt certain. I’m grateful for multi-hyphenates like Solange Knowles and Arturo Schomburg and Maya Angelou. Ms. Angelou was one of the first people I knew who didn’t just do one thing. “What a life,” I thought, reading I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings from my New Jersey middle school. In every chapter, Maya was somewhere new, doing something she’d never done before and not even necessarily being good at it. I admired her boldness, but I didn’t know how to pattern my life after hers. She seemed to just take chances as they came, and I wasn’t sure if I’d grow up to have fantastic (as in, a fantasy) ones like hers. I didn’t yet understand that chances are always there, revolving around us like valence electrons, or how they can increase when you combine elements. Seeds are always being planted in our lives, and you never know when they’ll sprout.

 

But back to the photograph of the cosmogram that lives inside a library that started as one defiant man’s collection. I hope that one day I can pay it all forward, in a chance I take, a moment I collect, or a picture of me in pure bliss. Cheers to the Schomburg and the generations it’s brought together. May we have another beautiful hundred years. 

 

       

    

blacklove 🖤 and starlight 🌟

 

The Schomburg Centennial Gala took place at the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on April 30, 2026. I am a member of the Schomburg and purchased my own ticket for this event.