Najya Williams Believes Language Is a Place of Struggle and Resistance

In this interview, Catapult’s head instructor, Gabrielle Bellot, talks with instructor Najya Williams about Black resistance, her literary inspirations, and exploring nontraditional forms.

Next month, Catapult students will have the opportunity to take an urgent new course taught by Najya Williams, which focuses on what it means to resist as a Black writer. Resistance, of course, can take many forms, and Najya’s course seeks to explore what it means to fight against traditional assumptions in our writing—be it in the content of a writer’s work or even in the form that they choose to create in or be inspired by. Below, in her interview with Gabrielle Bellot, Catapult’s head instructor, Najya shares her thoughts on the multifaceted meanings of Black resistance, the origins of her own interest in this theme, her literary inspirations, and how her sense of what it means to resist has expanded over time—and how it necessarily continues to evolve.

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Gabrielle Bellot: At the beginning of your course description, you include a great quote from bell hooks. “The oppressed struggle in language to recover ourselves, to reconcile, to reunite, to renew,” hooks writes. “Our words are not without meaning, they are an action, a resistance. Language is also a place of struggle.” Could you unpack this a bit? What, to you, does it mean to envision language as a site of struggle, a place where resistance can take place? What does it mean, in your view, to resist as a Black writer in America today?

Najya Williams: Language is something I’ve always been interested in, as a person, as an artist, and, more specifically, as writer. We often talk about education as the great equalizer, but how can we educate and be educated if the content isn’t legible and in a language that we understand? To state it plainly, how can change occur if there is a communication barrier?

In “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness,” the article from which I pulled this quotation, hooks notes that language is important for us to consider because it reflects not only the content of our perspective but also the context and positionality of our identity and lived experience. Thus, when we utilize language, we are also making choices about where we are approaching a conversation from, who we are speaking to, and how we plan to make the interaction legible to those involved.

When I envision language as a place of struggle, I imagine that I am leaning into the tension inherent to my identity as a Black woman writer in a country and field that were not created with me in mind. I imagine that I am actively choosing to invite BIPOC into conversation with my work in ways that are familiar, that establish our relationship to each other in this society, that inspire honesty in our art and writing, and that ultimately affirm rule breaking as groundbreaking for the world we are fighting to live in. I imagine that I am also actively choosing to invite non-BIPOC into conversation with my work in ways that challenge, that encourage a commitment to coconspiratorship in deconstructing inequitable systems, and that reflect who, where, and what I am without apologizing.

To resist as a Black writer in America today is to just be honest. I really think it’s as simple as that. What is your story? What are you seeing in the world? Where are we coming from? Where are we heading? What is the light in the darkness? Who are you/we beyond the struggle? What memories/language/people/food/moments still dance across your heart and mind? Systems of oppression have historically attempted to erase our truth. Part of our resistance is rooted in protecting that truth at all costs.

GB: How do you see bell hooks’s ideas here more broadly informing what you’re hoping to share with your students in this course, as well as your own writing practices?

NW: bell hooks’s ideas definitely form an anchor for my course because I aim to encourage my students to see that language, this place of struggle and resistance, can lead us to the most honest versions of ourselves and our art. I ask my students to engage with materials that constantly bring us back to the fundamentals of who we are speaking to, what we are saying, how we are ensuring legibility and understanding, and what we hope for after this interaction is over.

Beyond the ways that bell hooks’s ideas have strengthened my writing, they have also made me a better person as a whole. Language is not limited to the written word. Language lives in our bodies, minds, spirits, and so forth, and so applying this lens of analysis to every facet of my life has made for better relationships, as well as created space for me to live a life that exists as a place of struggle so that I can “recover [myself], reconcile, reunite, [and] renew.”

Language is not limited to the written word.

GB: What other writers, critics, or artists have influenced your views on what it means to take action and resist as a Black writer in America? Have you found your views on resistance shifting over time thanks to any particular thinker or artist’s work?

NW: This is a really great question! Ntozake Shange and Lucille Clifton are two writers who come to mind when I think of those who’ve inspired and influenced my views on writing as a Black woman in America.

I still remember the first time I read for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. I was enamored with the way Shange bent genre to create a choreopoem that so masterfully honors the life of Black women and girls. It felt like her work gave me permission to be myself, even if my art can’t neatly fit into “conventional” or “industry standards.” It’s a philosophy I’ve carried into my life overall, and I believe it’s allowed me to live with a sense of fulfillment. Likewise, Lucille Clifton’s poem “won’t you celebrate with me” is a piece I often revisit because it offers that honesty I mentioned earlier. She carved out space for herself, told the truth of her experience, and invited us to bear witness to her resistance.

Still, I feel like my views on resistance change so often that I can’t attribute that to any sole thinker or artist. I try to chew through a book per week, so at any given moment, I’ll encounter a line that stops me in my tracks and invites me to interrogate what I think I know.

GB: Your course will also include a number of exercises that, in your words, “push against traditional writing conventions, which will include audio journaling, story sketching, and breaking form.” Refusing to stick to just one form or genre can be its own kind of resistance, and so I’d love to hear a bit more about why you’ve chosen these nontraditional forms to have your students work with and explore.

NW: I’ve chosen these nontraditional forms for my students because, like the artists I admire and learn from, I want to offer them permission to genuinely explore. I was going to originally focus on poetry and short stories for the course but ultimately transitioned to an open-genre format with the help of the Catapult team.

When I taught this course earlier in the year, I was blown away by how creative my students were with their final projects. One student wrote a short story collection. One student began a memoir-esque project to be accompanied by a music soundtrack. Another created an audiovisual project with their words embedded into the visual artwork. I mean, I could keep going, but they really took the opportunity to ignore what convention says their work should look like and truly blossomed. Witnessing that journey affirmed for me that emphasizing nontraditional and/or multidisciplinary forms was the perfect choice for this course.

GB: In your course takeaways, you note that your students will have the opportunity to complete a first draft that “tackles the participants’ ‘margins,’” a phrasing I find really interesting as a trans woman of color myself who is often thinking about what it means to live in more than one set of margins at the same time. Could you expand on what it means to explore and tackle one’s own margins as a writer, particularly if a writer is marginalized in multiple ways?

NW: You’re asking a really important question that doesn’t have an easy answer because the multiple margins we may exist within all come with different layers of oppression and privilege. The marginalization I experience as a Black person changes drastically when I factor in my womanhood, abled-ness, financial background, educational attainment, productivity, etc. This adds important dynamics to my art and writing because my identity and lived experience are inherently ripe with the conflict and struggle of how those “margins” augment and relate to each other.

To take this a step further, the objective here is not to solely assume the label of “oppressed” or “marginalized” because that’s not an accurate representation of all the margins I both exist within and the margins I reinforce for others. For example, it would be easy for me to solely address the oppression I experience as a Black cis woman in my art, but there is also an opportunity to confront the oppression I am complicit in and perpetuate with my Black trans and nonbinary peers. I can’t remember who told me this, but someone reminded me that in all the ways I experience marginalization, there are folks who have even less privilege and freedom than I do, and I think that’s a critical element to keep at the forefront when confronting your margins as a writer, artist, and human being.

GB: What do you hope students will ultimately take away from your class?

I hope my students take whatever they need from this class to create honestly and unapologetically. Permission, freedom, innovation, storytelling technique, community, assurance, craft skills, hope, power.

I hope they take any and all of it because it’s here for them to have.