Summer Eldemire’s cultural highlights
Summer Eldemire is a writer and filmmaker, currently based in Los Angeles. Her video and written work has appeared in Pree Literary Magazine, the Daily Beast, BBC, Active Cultures, the Fader, The Face, and Al Jazeera. She is the creator of the webseries Highly Favored, an official selection of the Trinidad+Tobago Film Festival, the Catalyst Story Institute, NewFilmmakers NY, the London Webfest, and Toronto’s Alternative Film Festival.
Book: Freshwater
https://www.akwaeke.com/freshwater
I keep coming back to Akwaeke Emezi’s debut novel Freshwater (2018, Grove Press); it changed my life. It was the book that gave me permission to write how I wanted and how I heard things in my head. The way Emezi writes about Nigeria and intermingles Igbo mythology into the plot is eye-opening for me because I can draw on so many similarities to Jamaica. I’ve never seen anyone do it the way they do, with such confidence and modernity. So often as Caribbean writers, we feel obligated to explain every little nuance of our culture to outsiders but Emezi cuts straight to the point (the bone, even). Their work falls on the speculative spectrum, which is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently.
Film: Atlantics
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10199586/
Atlantics by Mati Diop is a love story turned ghost story set in Senegal. It’s aesthetically incredible and filled with social commentary and a creative level of storytelling that cannot be matched. Diop is the first black woman to compete at the Cannes Film Festival, where she won the Grand Prix for Atlantics in 2019. There is something about how Diop makes the ocean and Dakar, the city Atlantics is set in, feel like characters of their own that mesmerizes me. You simply cannot guess where this film is going next. The film’s fantasy element packs a punch in a really simple way that is difficult to land so effectively when doing something surreal.
And, in honour of Pride month, you must watch Mooncake, a short film by Jamaican filmmaker Rraine Hanson. The combination of narrative and animated stop motion makes this peak into someone’s formative queer crush a visual feast.
Workshop: Pree
https://preewritingstudio.com/
There’s a renaissance happening in literature in Jamaica right now. Creatives from the diaspora are returning to Jamaica in a way that I haven’t seen in my lifetime. It feels like there’s a sense of community and something really special is happening. Jamaica has always been a creative powerhouse, punching above its weight when it comes to music but now it feels like literature is getting its moment. Last month, I attended the PREE workshops in Kingston, where the Caribbean literati was out in full force. The workshop leaders were Kei Miller, Leone Ross, Ingrid Persaud, Sharmaine Lovegrove, Shivanee Ramlochan, and Ishion Hutchinson. I met so many writers from across the Caribbean and diaspora and it was reassuring to talk to people who are going through similar experiences. At the end of the studio, we did a day trip out to Kindred on the Rock, a radical queer farm by poet Stacey Ann Chin. Spaces like these continue to encourage me that Jamaica is becoming more open minded. There’s also the Papine Writing Collective that’s an online decolonized MFA for any writers in the diaspora seeking instruction and community. I’ve been with them for two years and I don’t know whether the reading list or sense of community has changed my life more.
Music: Moth
https://open.spotify.com/album/3QYrEoeYrBdBNrtsuoCor7
Fana Hues’s album Moth has been on repeat this month, especially Til Morning Come featuring Bam Marley. Shenseea’s new album Never Gets Late Here has also been playing a lot in my household. And Sault, always always Sault and Cleo Sol. Sault is home, it’s my nervous system regulating music, it’s the music I always come back to and I never ever get sick of it. I’ve been thinking about music in a different way recently as I’ve been scoring a short film and it has me thinking about how much sound can affect a mood and how we interpret a scene. The short I’m scoring is a romance, so it needs music that feels romantic without being too on the nose.
Art: Towards the Sky’s Back Door
https://caamuseum.org/exhibitions/2024/paula-wilson-toward-the-sky-s-back-door
Toward the Sky’s Back Door is an exhibition by Paula Wilson at California African American Museum (CAAM). Last summer, I did a residency with So-Lar in New Mexico and had the pleasure of living in Paula Wilson’s home and working in her studio but had never met her in person until the exhibition in late June ‘24. Paula’s home is in Carrizozo, a tiny town in the middle of New Mexico’s high desert, population: 973 (it felt like 9.) Paula’s home felt like a Willy Wonka playground and was the most incredible art installation in itself. Everything is handmade, from the wooden door handles to the wooden forks. Her studio is filled with wooden swings and robotic art installations. As an artist, Paula is known for large-scale installations using mixed media that blur the line between art and life; the material used to weave the rug in her home is the same material used in her art. It was a full circle moment to see so many things I’d lived amongst for weeks in a museum setting.