Joy Is the Resistance

They want us to be angry all the time. They expect it. They prepare for it. They have speeches ready for our rage and tear gas ready for our marching and think pieces ready for our grief. But they are not ready for our joy. They are not ready for the cookout on the corner where somebody's uncle plays Frankie Beverly so loud the whole block starts two-stepping, and the kids run through the sprinkler like the world isn't on fire, because right here, right now, in this moment — it isn't. Joy is the resistance they didn't see coming. It is my grandmother humming hymns while she braids my sister's hair — the same hymns her grandmother hummed in fields that were never supposed to grow anything beautiful. It is my father laughing — that deep, rolling, shake-the-table laugh — at a joke only he thinks is funny, and all of us laughing anyway because his joy is contagious and contagious joy in a world that wants us somber is a revolutionary act. They burned our books. We memorized the stories. They banned our drums. We made music with our hands. They told us we were nothing. We built Harlem. We built jazz. We built a culture so powerful the whole world tries to wear it. So yes, I will march. Yes, I will speak. Yes, I will fight. But I will also dance. I will also laugh. I will also live so fully, so loudly, so unapologetically that my existence itself becomes the answer to every question they had about whether we would survive. We didn't just survive. We threw a party.