Black immigrants are underrepresented in the mainstream media; our rich, colorful and diverse stories are pushed to the margins of the institutionalized narratives which often are skewed and prevaricated, told without our participation but rooted in pure assumptions.
Our stories are over and under shadowed at the same time. The media coverage about immigrants plays a crucial role in helping shape the broader cultural narrative in powerful and dangerous ways. As part of uplifting and highlighting Black immigrant stories and their often-silenced voices, UndocuBlack Network is working to bridge the anti-immigrant and anti-Black rhetoric and misinformation that dictate the routine narrative surrounding Black immigrants and also striving to lift every voice up.
Without further ado, we would like to highlight Alejandro Heredia, the author of “You’re the Only Friend I Need,” the winner of the 2019 Gold Line Press Fiction Chapbook Contest.
Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and raised in The Bronx, Alejandro Heredia, is a queer Afro Dominican writer and community organizer from The Bronx, who centers his stories on friendship, community and establishing connections. His stories explore, embrace, and narrate the intricate stories of migration, queerness, and friendship. Alejandro Heredia sat down with us to chat with UndocuBlack to discuss his work as a formerly undocumented, Black queer from the Dominican Republic and how he uses his work to tell pancontinental stories that center Blackness and queerness.
UndocuBlack Network: What was the most challenging part of your journey to America?
Alejandro Heredia: Growing up in Santo Domingo, I spent a lot of time outside, whether it was in our backyard tending to our mango and avocado trees or on family trips to the beach or playing baseball with the kids from the barrio. Dominicans have a real connection to the natural world that I really missed when I migrated to New York. We spent so much time indoors during the winter, and during the summer we’d go to the park on Sundays, but it was never enough. I missed being outside. I think that took me some time to get used to. It’s only now as an adult that I’ve come to terms with the fact that I need to be surrounded by the natural world to feel okay. New York is home, but it breaks your heart in so many ways. I think that’s something I struggled with when I was seven, and it’s something I’m trying to make up for now by spending as many of my summers outside wrapped in sunlight.
UndocuBlack Network: How has your immigration journey shaped you and the work you do and produce?
Alejandro Heredia: Being an immigrant has taught me to take a transnational approach in all the work that I do. From community organizing work to my creative writing, it’s really important for me to consider the lives of Queer Black folks everywhere, not just in the United States. Also, my imagination is driven by what-ifs. What if I had grown up in Santo Domingo, instead of The Bronx? I think about that a lot, what a different queer experience I would live, if I had grown up there or lived on the island now. It’s a sobering reminder that Black folks do not have the same experience everywhere we go. Our lives are vast, nuanced, and specific. It is important to me to highlight those differences, in addition to talking about all the wonderful things that bring us together.
UndocuBlack Network: What do you think are the most important characteristics of your art?
Alejandro Heredia: That’s a tough one. I’m definitely a writer that focuses on sentences. Language matters just as much as any kind of statement or theme I might explore in my work. I think the most important characteristic of my writing is that I try, even when I fail, not to use dead language. Terms and ideas and sentences that are given to us via society. I probably can’t tell a story that hasn’t been told, but I can find a new language that expands the possibilities of how we view friendship, queerness, desire, etc. in our lives.
UndocuBlack Network: What is the main thing you want your art to communicate to viewers and readers?
Alejandro Heredia: I want to communicate that being alive is complicated and nuanced. We’re living through a time that demands that we fit ourselves into boxes and make ourselves easy to digest via social media and cultural representation. It is not enough to belong to a group or identity. One must also live and come to one’s own ideas about what it means to do that living. I’m not writing to represent anyone, necessarily. I am writing because I hate to be reduced.
UndocuBlack Network: What does friendship mean to you? What do you think friendship means to an immigrant?
Alejandro Heredia: Friendship is home. Often friendship is seen as tertiary to romantic love and biological family relationships. But I’ve always seen friendship as a great privilege because it’s a bond that you create by choice. Friendship reminds me that relationships require upkeep and that we all have the capacity to connect deeply across differences of lived experiences. When I immigrated, it was my friends that taught me the vernacular of English we spoke in The Bronx, who taught me the beauty of reading and made me feel at home when I couldn’t find love in traditional familial relationships.
UndocuBlack Network: Who is your favorite Black artist/author and what work of theirs has left an impact on you?
Alejandro Heredia: That’s a tough one, there are so many! If I say Morrison it would be redundant. Zadie Smith has a really special place in my heart because she’s a writer of sentences, too. Michaela Coel is my favorite television writer. Another favorite is Randall Kenan. I’ve written about my connection to his work before in an essay on Tasteful Rude. I wish I could give his novel “A Visitation of Spirits” to every Black Queer kid who is resisting this world which so reduces us.
UndocuBlack Network: What’s the question nobody is asking or addressing regarding Black queer immigrants?
Alejandro Heredia: I wish I could give a very political answer to this question, but I just want to see more art by Black queer immigrants. I want to read the kinds of stories these folks will write, see the worlds they’ll create through visual art. And along this path, I hope we continue to highlight the work of working-class Black folks. I sense in popular culture and in the art world a true shift in “representation,” but I am suspicious that the powers that be only want our stories when we’re glamorous, wealthy, respectable, or when we’re educating the masses on social ills.
UndocuBlack Network: What kind of stories and narratives do you want to see or read in the media regarding Black immigration particularly Black undocumented immigrants, Black queer undocumented immigrants?
Alejandro Heredia: I do not want representation for representation’s sake. I think we put a lot of our sense of self-regard on how we are “represented” on television, books, etc. as if that’s the only way to love oneself and our communities. That’s a long-winded way of saying: what I want is for Black queer immigrants to have access to resources, especially those that are undocumented so that they can hone their craft and make really dope shit. I want to see nuanced love stories featuring queer Black folks, super weird thrillers, hip-hop EPs, indie films with us in front and behind the camera.
Alejandro Heredia is a 2018 VONA/Voices Fellow and 2019 Dreamyard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium Fellow. In 2019, he was selected by Myriam Gurba as the winner of the Gold Line Press Fiction Chapbook Contest. Alejandro’s work has been featured in Teen Vogue, Lambda Literary Review, Tasteful Rude Magazine, and Auburn Avenue Magazine, La Galeria Magazine, No Dear Magazine, and NPR’s Latino USA, among others. He is an MFA candidate at Hunter College.
