Saidiya Hartman's Wayward Garden

I’ve been inspired to work with cut flowers since summer 2023. My love of flowers & herbs is what inspired me to start this publication. Lately, I have also been thinking about gardening. What does it mean to grow a flower from seed or tuber & watch it bloom? Is there a difference in what you give to the flower & how much you take (if at all)?

This image of someone whose existence & work have changed my life struck me. I’ve been researching the history of Balck Folks’ connection to the land, gardening, & the floral industry & have been affirmed by my quest. Part of the reason I wanted to share my arrangments as well as images of folk in nature is because it is soothing to interact with. These images create a moment of light-heartedness, better known in my body as stillness, that this world consistently deprives us of.

Saidiya Hartman photographed by Ryan Cardoso for The New Yorker 

The above image is of Saidiya Hartman, a cultural thinker whose books Scenes of Subjection & Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments affirmed my life as a Black Woman dreamer.

When asked about the word waywardness in a 2020 interview by Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Hartman’s response emphasized the organic nature of the term.

“And this notion of being a footnote to everything else is what waywardness enabled me to challenge, it seemed an organic term for describing the radical and disobedient imaginary of young black women – so that’s why I liked it.”

The word wayward & organic also comes to mind when I look at the image of Saidiya in her garden. Saidiya is among a mixture of flowering plants & grasses. It seems as if Saidiya’s garden is the embodiment of an unruly imagination…something simultaneously rooted & free.

Another way I have been affirmed through my research is knowing that many writers & artists have kept gardens. As such, Saidiya participates in a long lineage of creatives who plotted their dreams. I love the fact that one of the questions the interviewer asked her was “what is your favorite color?” To which Saidiya responded my garden in full bloom.

The three final questions from Victoria were “1) How do you define joy – what does joy mean to you? 2) What is your favourite colour? And lastly, a question you’re asking yourself, or something you’re telling yourself, from Saidiya to Saidiya.” Saidiaya’s answer follows below.

Saidiya Hartman's response to a question in her 2020 interview with The White Review

Don’t despair.

Don’t despair.

Saidiya's last words, the last words in the interview, resonated deeply with me in the current world we find ourselves living against. We are living in a world where we are witnessing multiple genocides & crumbling empires built of hollow pillars feigning power.

Yet, we know real power is not on you but within you. Power does not require the detonation of bombs or forced labor of children in mines. Power is not about using boots to stand on somebody else’s neck. We know boots are tools for trekking through a burning world while simultaneously printing a new one.

So the question remains, how do we live against the things we can’t stand in this life? How do we ease the impact of friction upon our bodies (spiritual, mental, & physical bodies)? I don’t have all the answers, but I believe one possible solution is to do your work against the grain & carve out solace in beauty as a birthright. For myself, it’s about gathering (in the lineage of vernacular folk artists) beauty to create an assemblage (as defined more in-depth in the theory this publication turns into praxis ) that is my life. This makes all the difference in softening the rigid edges & borders attempted to be imposed on me. My end goal is to soften the edges so much that the world blurs: sky into sea, mountains into valleys, gardens into meadows. Every step around the bend is a homecoming.

Don’t despair.

Don’t despair.

Sandra Brewster. Blur 18, 2017. Photo-based gel transfer on archival paper, Overall: 101.6 × 88.9 cm. © Sandra Brewster. When asked about the definition of blur within the context of the exhibit, Sandra responded “This all defines a blur to me: layered, beautiful and affirming—to know that people are made up of so much more than what you see on the outside…than what is presumed. In her book Bread Out of Stone (1994), Dionne Brand wrote: “we come full of ourselves—who we were and are and will become.” This quotation resonates with me because it simply, yet with an ephemeral weight, clarifies the dimensions embodied in one person.”

Don’t despair.

Don’t despair.

How are you giving lovin’ to your gorgeous heart? How are you watering your garden?

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