Interviews: An Interview with Saida Agostini on let the dead in by Diamond Forde
Saida Agostini’s let the dead in is a marvel; a monument to stubborn love, to a healing community, and to fat black girls everywhere, this book thrives because of the care and introspection Agostini brings to her work. I am thrilled to be in conversation with Saida Agostini about pleasure, family, and music.
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Diamond: Saida, I want to start off by highlighting one of my favorite poems in the book, "harriet tubman is a lesbian." I love how it writes a new lineage in Black, queer women's history, one that we didn't even know we needed (but we did lol). I want to start with this poem because it follows a larger pattern in let the dead in where you either rewrite or mytholgize the past. I wonder, what did your excavation of the past (real or fictional) uncover for you in the making of this book?
Saida: I come from a people who have survived centuries of colonization, enslavement, rape and mass genocide. The tax of surviving white supremacy has been the inheritance of narratives that make us feel small, idle and weak in our own sight. Yet the truth is we are stunningly and utterly beautiful. Writing let the dead in required me going back and interrogating the histories and lessons I’ve been told since birth, the things my foremothers would never say to me because they believed the lie that surviving misogynoir was a shameful and ugly thing. It was ugly what we have had to survive. It is ugly that I was raped at six, it is ugly that we were enslaved - but our lineage, our tradition of finding freedom, and loving each other beyond hope is a joy, and power. We come from a tradition of miracles, and that lesson is something that I hold tight everyday. I want the world to know about it.
Diamond: I love that your book still makes room for beauty and that, similar to the aforementioned Tubman poem, you have another work, "2 fat black women are making love" that proves that pleasure and, in particular, a distinctly queer pleasure, is a major player in this book. How do you see pleasure manifesting in let the dead in? What makes it such an important theme?
Saida: Pleasure is a birthright. Our bodies were built for pleasure. I am a fat black woman which means that my right to exist, let alone be adored is constantly under debate. I am not interested in entering any conversation where my pleasure, my beauty and my love isn’t a foregone conclusion. let the dead in is an invitation to live in a world where fat black femme pleasure is celebrated and honored. I was raised in a world of big Black women and they were fierce, yet everywhere I turn big Black bodies are routinely mocked, hypersexualized and brutalized. My writing is a reclamation of bigness in all things. To be big in our blackness, our pleasure, our joy, and our wonder.
Diamond: Earlier I suggested you were writing a new lineage but it seems lineage always began with our stories. I feel like I just keep highlighting poems, but there are so many good ones in the book. For instance, in "where does the story start?" you write this compelling retelling of your Uncle Harold amidst "a ring of jeweled mermaids;" and then end by suggesting your history "starts with a riot of stubborn love." First, I couldn't help but admire the range in that poem, how many stories it can weave in its scope, but also that in retelling your story, you still adhere to both the joys and woes of family. Family can be the same force to build and destroy us, and that it is a "stubborn love" that holds those origins together. What's the significance of that "stubborn love" to you?
Saida: I think the best kind of love is that which demands growth. I came out twenty-one years ago to my parents, and it was an earthquake. My father told me I killed his heart, my aunts told me that my mother would die and it would be my fault. I say these things not to hurt or harm anyone, I say it because these things are true. It will also be true to say that because of love, I have witnessed my parents quite openly struggle and grow beyond their own understanding of god and duty to love me as I am, not who they wished me to be. Stubborn love is hard, heartbreaking work, but it is a profound and flawed teacher on what it means to be in right relationship with each other. It means being able to look at complex truths and carry them with us not as burdens, but lessons. I can say in the same breath that my family has hurt me deeply, and know without a doubt that my freedom stands solidly on the shoulders of their love. It’s this kind of love I try to practice everyday with my people: my wife, family and friends. I honor our bonds by truthtelling, by saying the things that need to be said, and working to hold their truths in return.
Diamond: I can’t help thinking this collection is a series of stubborn love letters: to the self, to family, to community. I admire the tenderness held in "whoever died from a rough ride?" which recounts Baltimore’s mourning following the death of Freddie Gray during.
It’s a poem that makes room for this moment of profound grief, loss, and mourning in the Baltimore community, but also tenderness. I love that you celebrate that tenderness in lines like, "in Baltimore touch is a reverence, how a man I barely know sees me weeping, places a palm on my shoulder asking nothing but baby you good? you good?" Please tell us, how do you see your community shaping or influencing the direction of your work?
Saida: I am blessed to be in community with expansive and loving Black folks who live in a state of joy. I would never have put out my first collection of poems without the mentorship and love of people like Teri Ellen Cross Davis, Toi Derricote, Jan Beatty, Jacqueline Trimble and Omari Daniel, who looked at me, and said yes, keep writing. I didn’t see myself as a poet for a long time. It took the generosity and care of people who loved me to see myself as I was, rather than who I believed myself to be.
That's the beauty of black queer and trans folks, we make the impossible possible everyday. I am part of the Rooted Collective, a group of Black lgbtq cultural organizers, healers and artists rooted in Baltimore. We are currently filming damn y’all fine, a documentary celebrating the beauty of Black LGBTQ people in Baltimore. I never would've imagined that we would be able to create and fund something like this when I first founded the collective, but Rooted has a way of pulling together to support each other’s dreams, not just in words, but actions.
This is what I want for all of us, to have a circle of emphatic and complete belief in our dreams. My community reminds me of the magic of our work, and pushes me to come to the page without shame or question.
There are days I wake up and think about how close I was to never putting my work out into the world, and what I would have lost in my own fear of being seen. We’ve been taught as Black women that we must be perfect and merciless with ourselves to be valued by the world. It’s not a surprise we are hesitant to put out art, when we see how artists like Lizzo or Megan Thee Stallion are treated. I wonder how much art and stories have been lost from Black women and femmes because of the virulent misogynoir we face.
Diamond: I’m glad you mentioned art and music at the end of your statement, because I couldn't help but notice how present music is in your work, especially the giants of old school goodies like Luther and Prince. Tell us, what is the soundtrack of your work? What should we be listening to while we read your work?
Saida: Let me start by stating one undeniable truth: Luther Vandross is the GOAT. I first fell in love with Luther Vandross while listening to his greatest hits cd on repeat as I tried to fall asleep underneath a bat nest in a Ghanaian river village - but that’s a story for another time. I was raised on love songs. I would read my work listening to Gregory Porter, Jazmine Sullivan, D’Angelo, Aretha Franklin, Betty Everett, Nina Simone, Madison McFerrin, Marvin Gaye, Smoky Robinson, meshell ndegeocello, and Emily King.
About Saida Agostini
Saida Agostini is a queer Afro-Guyanese poet whose work explores how Black folks harness mythology to enter the fantastic. Her work is featured in Plume, Hobart Pulp, Barrelhouse, Auburn Avenue, amongst others. Saida’s work can be found in several anthologies, including Not Without Our Laughter: Poems of Humor, Sexuality and Joy, The Future of Black, and Plume Poetry 9. She is the author of STUNT (Neon Hemlock, October 2020), a chapbook reimagining the life of Nellie Jackson, a Black madam and FBI spy from Natchez Mississippi. Her first full length collection released by Alan Squire Publishing (March 2022), let the dead in, was a finalist for the 2020 New Issues Poetry Prize and the Center for African American Arts & Poetics Poetry Prize. A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, and member of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective, Saida is a two-time Pushcart Prize Nominee and Best of the Net Finalist. Her work has received support from the Ruby Artist Grants, and the Blue Mountain Center, amongst others. She lives online at www.saidaagostini.com
About Diamond Forde
Diamond Forde’s debut collection, Mother Body, is the winner of the 2019 Saturnalia Poetry Prize. Forde has received numerous awards and prizes, including a Pink Poetry Prize, a Furious Flower Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award from Claremont Graduate University. A Callaloo, Tin House, and Ruth Lilly Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg fellow, Forde’s work has appeared in Boston Review, Obsidian, Massachusetts Review, and more. She serves as the interviews editor of Honey Literary, the fiction editor of Nat. Brut, and she lives in Asheville with her partner and their dog, Oatmeal.