Some of the themes of “Erasure,” are concerned with the erasure of Black childhood, black people being represented almost as domestic objects in their home, and the hidden labour of Black women.

I wanted it to be unhinged and witchy, allowing broken down collapsed mental health in. I saw scores and scores of postcards of children escaping from alligators, and the threat of children being fed to them.

I also saw a picture in a photography book called Hard Art, about the hard rock scene in DC in the ‘70s and ‘80s. It showed all these rock bands like Bad Brains playing a local housing project in DC.There was this photograph of a band playing, and some in the audience were kind of folding their arms, not quite sure about this music. But there was this little Black girl on the front row, and she’s looking at the lead singer with this expression of pure glee on her face at this rule-breaking noisy music. She’s just enraptured.

I thought, I wish I had seen this photograph when I was screaming in my indie band Helen, and I was the only black girl, not just in the band, but in the room. I felt a lot of anger when I was there because I was peeling back a kind of truth that I hadn’t known.

Hear more about my experience writing “Erasure” for my #BehindBlackRainbowsSeries.