my life as china

Established in 1711 on the banks of the East River between Pearl and Water Streets, the Wall Street Slave Market became one of the nation’s most profitable slave markets. It is estimated that by 1730, almost one in five people in New York were enslaved.

“my life as china” began as a poem that hoped to conjure something, imaginatively, about the significance of the Middle Passage for those who survived it and their descendants, by expanding, phrase-by-phrase, upon a single metaphor. The text is transposed here onto an often forgotten chapter in the story of New York City.

i was imported : : i was soft in the hills where they found me : : shining in a private dark : : i absorbed fire and became fact : : i was fragile : : i incorporated burnt cattle bones’ powdered remains : : ashes to ashes : : i was baptized in heat : : fed on destruction : : i was not destroyer : : was not destroyed : : i vitrified : : none of me was the same : : i was many : : how can i say this : : i was domesticated : : trusted : : treasured : : i was translucent but not clear : : put me to your lips : : i will not give : : i will give you what you have given me 

Performers

Sojourner Brown
Manick Choksi
Emma Claye
Jessica Kahkoska
Byron St. Cyr
Jeremy Yaddaw, Drums
Jake Charkey, Cello

About the Artists

Words by Evie Shockley

Music by Jeff Tang

Performance from National Sawdust in August 2018 from a residency presentation of Such Strange Gravity: Songs of Gotham, a song-cycle illuminating “hidden” history of New York, directed by Benjamin Shaw with music direction by Dan Pardo. 

“my life as china” was originally published in the new black by Wesleyan University Press.