Guess That Makes Me the Supervillain

By Lydia Aga

I think there’s a Shakespeare in every corner of the South Bronx. 

And maybe a few Homers sprinkled throughout Fort Greene.

All my favorite poets have always been rappers. 

Amidst the endless blocks of white picket fences and the decades-old mom-and-pop shops of Secaucus, it was always me, Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, and Ali against the world. 

My creative writing teacher, Mr. Mara, taught me three things about life that year: 1) knowing how to make a mean plate of eggs is a must, 2) good form = a good punch, and 3) you always find art in unexpected places. 

Every Friday, he’d make us do a writing exercise where we’d have to create a story out of random words generated off some website just to see what we as 15-year-olds could cook up at 7:45 A.M. 

I didn’t think I could ever be a writer. I didn’t know how to articulate how awkwardly I stuck out within my white suburb within those five minutes. Stringing together Mr. Mara’s chosen words of the day, racing against the clock, and attempting to critique the stereotypical suburban bubble I lived in while being first-generation, Black, and a young girl coming of age amidst political turmoil felt too large to tackle. It always felt like I was running out of time. 

I wanted to say so much within those 5 minutes that my teacher gave us. I wanted to blow everyone away with how much I had to say about the world — how perfectly horrible it was and how perfectly horrible this world made me feel about being Black, being a girl, and being almost 15.

I think my creative writing teacher saw something within my muddled, awkward attempts at trying to articulate the nuances of a world I had yet to understand. Granted he was 5’2, (I may have generously added half an inch he’s closer to 5’1, but he’d never want to admit it) Irish,  had eye bags and wrinkles that weighed his eyes down, and already grown a long silver-speckled beard by the age of 36 - so our life experiences probably never intersected - but I don’t know who I’d be without his weekly album recommendation emails consisting of A Tribe Called Quest, Nas, Queen Latifah, dead prez, and Wu-Tang. 

I often sat in class thinking about everything my curriculum robbed me of. I gained more insight into movements that mattered by listening to Let’s Get Free by dead prez and learning about the prison industrial complex and how Fred Hampton’s death really went down or Midnight Marauders by A Tribe Called Quest and googling who Steve Biko was immediately after listening to the title track. They would squeeze the lifetimes of Black figures who were larger than life within witty, socially conscious lyrics with flows as tight as their rhymes. It was so easy to get lost in that world.

Admittedly for a while, I did use conscious rap to go against the grain and stick out amongst the other girls in my class who drooled at the sight of the Bell Jar or hailed Virginia Woolf as their literary almighty. I wanted to listen to something that felt real because I wasn’t angsty— I was angry. I can’t throw my hair into a quirky messy bun and cry my way out of uncomfortable conversations. Lana Del Rey’s yearning for the good ol’ misogynistic and racist days of 60s Americana didn't resonate with me and thankfully we’ve graduated from reposting stills of Effy from Skins. Yet, I’d always been so jealous of how those artists and writers were always able to capture their angst and articulate their pain so poetically while still being understood.  

I still never feel like a writer. When people ask me about writers I look up to I always pause because I know I can’t name Ladybug Mecca or MF DOOM or Q-Tip and be taken seriously. I guess since they don’t emote through acoustic guitars and skeleton suits - they’re not, you know, the “real deal.” It’s not to say the nostalgic escapism of white women doesn’t still move me at times (God, is “Garden Song” a tearjerker), but it’s not where I find strength. My favorite poets wear metal masks, belong to butterfly tribes, and rap about the Five Percent Nation. 

Maybe that makes me the Supervillian who’s out to destroy this myth of the “real writer.”

But, sometimes all you really need is a pad, a pen, and sometimes a beat.

A portion of this article was published in our print zine, Guilty Pleasures.