My Otherness

Thank You Ms. Ringgold

My fear of being treated like an other started as a child and within my family. Growing up, I was always different and couldn't learn to mask fast enough.

Being sensitive in a Black household that often pointed out your differences under the guise of "preparing" you for the real world left me feeling alone. Now, I have realized that my family’s refusal to accept me made it hard to grasp what it meant to be an “other”. I hid everything about myself to fit in with the people who were supposed to love me the most.

I often feel like I am living a double life.

When I started to experience the social landscape of middle and high school, that fear grew. My wanting to feel like I belong resulted in me trying to fit in and allowing others to get away with many slights. I didn’t have the chance to get to know myself because I was taught and socialized to think being different was wrong.

Fast forward—there I was in my college capstone class trying to find my voice.

I asked myself multiple times: why am I doing this, what am I doing and is it even worth it? During that time, I struggled with an off-putting amount of perfectionism that centered around comparing myself to others. Especially, when it came to my art and writing.

Not knowing how to come to terms with being different made it hard to have confidence in my thoughts and reasonings. One thing that majoring in art will do is sniff out inauthenticity.

One of the many tasks in putting together my capstone was finding an artist that influenced me. Of course, I went to Google and searched "Black women artist". What I found freed me from trying to live out the expectations of others.

Faith Ringgold - Maya’s Quilt of Life, 1989

While scrolling through a list of Black women artists, I stumbled upon Faith Ringgold. I proceeded to do a deep dive into her life and artistic career. Reading about her triumphs in settling into her otherness gave me solace. My struggle with otherness wasn’t just mine to bear. Ringgold did not try to fit into the boxes already on the pages before her, she made her own. She realized that by trying to fit into one, she'd lose a part of herself that wasn’t accepted.

A new question came up for me. If I can’t be accepted, why try?

I was 21 years old having a mid-mid-mid-life crisis.

Thinking back now, I realize that many factors made that transformation hard. It was the spring after the summer of 2020 and I was going to a PWI surrounded by non-black "liberal" people who treated activism and the death of black people like a trend of saviorism. I didn’t have it in me to compartmentalize how gruesome anti-blackness was but they did. I felt alone while in trying to understand why I cared so much and why others cared so little. This was me trying to fit into a box that wasn't mine to do so. It wasn’t wrong for me to care.

I stopped talking to all of these people after I graduated.

Faith Ringgold blurred the lines between activist and artist. She created a space for her to express her worries about the world and to flesh out her identity without bending to the expectations of society. She wasn't afraid of taking up space with her otherness—the complete opposite of how I was socialized.

You can't sit around and wait for somebody to say who you are. You need to write it and paint it and do it - Faith Ringgold

It was hard coming to terms with not fitting in and understanding that I shouldn't force it just to be accepted by others. If only I could tell 10-year-old me that watering myself down would only result in me losing myself. Even if I could go back, I don't think I would understand.

Ringgold taught me that otherness isn't something to be afraid of. It is something to be celebrated no matter what looks I receive.