This story update is part of the 国产吃瓜黑料 Classics, a series highlighting the best writing we鈥檝e ever published, along with author interviews and other exclusive bonus materials. Read 鈥淲e鈥檙e Here. You Just Don鈥檛 See Us,鈥 by Latria Graham here.
After reading some of Graham鈥檚 writing on a friend鈥檚 recommendation, Tracy Ross knew she had to meet her. A Black writer from Spartanburg, South Carolina, Graham has experienced the kinds of racism and aggression that Ross, a white journalist who grew up in Idaho, had never known. Yet Graham fearlessly pushes forward, writing about charged topics of race, class, and social justice, drawing on a lifetime of experience. What emerges in her work are stories of a tragic American past and present, made relatable by an empathetic mind and shared vulnerability. Shortly after meeting Graham, Ross introduced her to 翱耻迟蝉颈诲别鈥s editors, who quickly embraced her as an important new voice. In various publications, Graham, who is a visiting scholar at Augusta University in Georgia, has probed subjects ranging from a Black falconer who names his birds after people he loves, to Eartha Kitt, to the stigma of being Black and mentally ill, based on Graham鈥檚 own battle with depression. She also produced 鈥淲e鈥檙e Here. You Just Don鈥檛 See Us,鈥 a powerful essay about why Black Americans have a fraught relationship with the outdoors but still crave deep connections with adventurous settings and the natural world. This 2018 piece鈥攁nd a follow-up, 鈥淥ut Here, No One Can Hear You Scream,鈥 published in 2020鈥攍ed to a book deal for the memoir Uneven Ground, which will be published in late 2024 or early 2025 by Mariner, a division of HarperCollins.
OUTSIDE: Writing about the dynamics of race, class, and social justice for an outdoor magazine seems like a tough assignment. How did you find the balance?
GRAHAM: This story addresses a mistaken idea many people have鈥攖hat Black people don鈥檛 participate in the outdoors. I knew I could present a nuanced perspective based on my lived experience. I grew up in the outdoors. My father was a farmer; I worked at his farm stand. And I鈥檓 a hiker, snowshoer, backpacker, cyclist, and more. The data is there. Black people do things in the outdoors. It鈥檚 just that on the East Coast and in the South, where the majority of Black Americans live, there are fewer parks than in the West. I wanted people to know that. I refuse to live without sharing knowledge that I know could make someone鈥檚 life better.
You say you鈥檝e been a 鈥渄isciple of landscapes鈥 for as long as you can remember. Disciple really stands out for me. Why did you choose that word?
I think of nature as my life鈥檚 church. Nature has a lot to teach us, and it shapes my worldview. Everything in nature is connected. Humans love to forget it, but we鈥檙e part of that connection. A disciple is one who is studying, constantly learning. I鈥檝e studied the outdoors for a long time, and even though the word has been claimed by Evangelical Christians, who are mostly Republicans, I wanted to take it back. As someone who has dealt with floods, fires, and tornadoes鈥攁ll of which display the power and sheer magnitude of nature鈥擨 know there鈥檚 a higher power. It鈥檚 my teacher.
Your descriptions of your childhood home and the characters in it evoke joy for you. In a relatively dark essay, how did it feel to recall those happy things?
鈥淲e鈥檙e Here鈥 is about showing how my family has been a part of the outdoors for a long time. I wrote some of those passages as a way to celebrate people who aren鈥檛 with us anymore. They can no longer engage with this space鈥攊t鈥檚 a reliquary for them. But I鈥檓 going to take this little memory and make it real by putting it in the pages of a magazine. And the essay feels even more powerful to me now because, since I wrote it, I鈥檝e lost the thing that brought me outside in the first place: my father鈥檚 farm. I had to auction it off.
I get very sad thinking about that. The farm rooted you to the land.
Yeah. But for a moment in time, I was able to catch this comet in my hands. In the essay, I get to tell you what living and growing up there felt like. And I get to put the people from my life, like my grandma and my aunt, in the story. Their pictures, too. My grandmother had never seen a picture of herself in a magazine, and she died not long after the piece was published.
At one point, you write about your family being 鈥渟haped by the soil,鈥 which you say is 鈥渞ed from the violence of southern history.鈥 Is it hard to find beauty in such a horrifying past?
I grew up in a region where a person can be killed for being the wrong color. That鈥檚 been the case since 1526, the year Spanish explorers brought the first enslaved people to a colony on the Atlantic coast. But the landscape where those things happened is beautiful and fertile. I鈥檓 talking aesthetics, music, food. It all goes back to that dirt, and being able to sustain life in a temperate climate. The South will never be just one thing, and as a writer I鈥檓 determined to hold both parts鈥攖his entropy鈥攊n my hands.
What was it like to write this for 国产吃瓜黑料? Was there a part of you that thought these people will never get it?
I鈥檝e been doing this explanatory exploration of both social and geographical policy my whole life. For instance, in 2015, when police in North Charleston, South Carolina, killed Walter Scott鈥攁 Black man with a traumatic brain injury鈥攏o one in my family had ever protested before. I did, and I wrote about it as a way to try and figure out the world I鈥檓 in and how I fit. It was like that with 国产吃瓜黑料. I wanted readers to have a full, accurate picture of what鈥檚 going on with Black people and the outdoors. And for anybody who picked up the magazine and invested the time trying to puzzle through this with me, I have total regard.
Was it well received? Do you think people understood it?
Yeah. But I also got death threats. Apparently, some people weren鈥檛 able to just take the magazine and throw it in the trash鈥攖hey had to threaten me. But I鈥檓 willing to die standing by my truth, because I don鈥檛 think I鈥檓 doing anything wrong talking about these things.