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NEW YORK CITY TRANS ORAL HISTORY PROJECT https://www.nyctransoralhistory.org/ http://oralhistory.nypl.org/neighborhoods/trans-history INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT KIYAN WILLIAMS Interviewer: Darnell L. Moore Date of Interview: June 26, 2019 Location of Interview: Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Harlem Interview Recording URL: http://oralhistory.nypl.org/interviews/kiyan-williams-puwxmz Transcript URL: https://s3.amazonaws.com/oral- history/transcripts/NYC+TOHP+Transcript+167+Kiyan+Williams.pdf Transcribed by Sophia Insinga (volunteer) NYC TOHP Interview Transcript #167 RIGHTS STATEMENT The New York Public Library has dedicated this work to the public domain under the terms of a Creative Commons CC0 Dedication by waiving all of its rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. Though not required, if you want to credit us as the source, please use the following statement, "From The New York Public Library and the New York City Trans Oral History Project." Doing so helps us track how the work is used and helps justify freely releasing even more content in the future. NYC TOHP Transcript #167: Kiyan Williams - Page 2 (of 14) AJ Lewis: Hello, my name is AJ Lewis and I’ll be recording a conversation between Kiyan Williams and Darnell l. Moore for the NYC trans oral history project in collaboration with the New York Public Library as well as the studio Museum in Harlem. This conversation was organized by the studio museum as a public event including questions with audience members at the end as part of their programming on trans and gender-nonconforming artists of African descent. It is June 26, 2019, and this is being recorded at the Gavin grounds enterprise gallery space of Harlem. Darnell L. Moore is currently head of strategy at breakthrough US. Formally editor at large at cachous. co-managing editor at the feminist wire and editor of the feminist wire books. He is also a writer and residence at the center on African American religions, politics, and social justice at Columbia University. Moore’s advocacy works marginality, youth development, and social justice issues in the US and abroad. His memoir, No Ashes in the Fire coming of age black and free in America” recently won the 2019 Lambda Literary Aware for Best Gay Memoir/Biography. You can read more about these incredible folks in your printed programs. Thanks again for joining us this evening and enjoy the conversation. Welcome Moore and Williams. Darnell L. Moore: Hi, everybody good evening. Before we engage in conversation, I figured it’s nice to warm up the environment a little bit it’s not that, many of us here. But, we can have and sort of magnify this space of our presence and our spirit. Welcome. And I am honored to be in conversation with Williams. For a variety of different reasons as I told Williams, I am the holder of all the tea. [Laughter] We go back many years now and I have been fortunate to be able to watch them sort of shape-shift, and grow, and become, uh the artist person that they are. We met when they were a high school student in Newark. You can imagine the type of questions I have right? What I decided to do is to sort of divide my prompts or questions into four different thematic areas. Btw I have not shared this with Williams so they are going to be totally surprised. And in the spirit of our friendship that is how it should be. The first section I am going to…I just have four words, Personal, Home, Blood, and the Bricks. These two are spirit and source materials grounding y’all artworks. It’s really important in the practice of black feminism to name our contexts. I’m gonna start with that. Let's start by having you describe your people. Your home your source. Kiyan Williams: Thank You so much for—the framework through which to think through these questions and also again for being in conversation with me tonight. Before I jump—well I guess I'll jump and begin to answer that question by reflecting on our friendship. Because it feels so beautiful and wonderful to be in conversation with you almost 10 years after we met for the first time. When I was a high school student at a science park high. And I was a graduating senior. And had and just helped found my school's first gay-straight alliance, and was also still struggling and grappling with these questions of my own gender and sexuality. And looking for both models and places, for which I could find reflections. And we first meet because you were organizing a youth conference at Rutgers Newark. And I was connected with one of my teachers who's a queer artists as well. I was invited to speak on that panel that you organized back in 200 and 9. So many moons ago. Um—and that particular moment or a particular time in my life, felt especially—significant because it was a point of departure and point of transition. Cause I was leaving High School going to Stanford. So on my way to California and this sort of new life that I was beginning to imagine but couldn't really see. I was on the horizon NYC TOHP Transcript #167: Kiyan Williams - Page 3 (of 14) and I was sort of moving towards and becoming something, I can't find the language to describe. I remember meeting you for the first time and being really grateful to have encountered another creative and artist another queer black person who has forged a life—for themselves. Moore: And we didn’t age clearly we looked like this [laughter] I just wanna get that on record. Williams: Indeed, and so I just think that when we first meet you offered a model of what life could be. And hold that definition 10 years later. And to get back to the question of the blood, bricks, and material that has become the source of creative practice. I'm literally a child of brick city. [laughter] Moore: Tell it. [laughter] Williams: That’s a nickname for northern New Jersey—the city that I was born and raised in. The metaphor for the city is said to have come to the fact that the people for Newark are resilient like bricks. And I think that when I think of home I think of resilience, I think of the brick buildings that my family grew up in, that I grew up in. My family is from the back to terrace projects. I grew up in a brick building on 4thavenure and knife street in Newark. So I'm thinking about the architecture of the city I grew up in. I'm thinking about I can't help but think about how home is changing right now. How the last time I went to Newark my High School, my science high school building was demolished. In order to build luxury condos for the more money folk who are moving to Newark now. Which became a source of inspiration for some of my later works—collecting bricks um, and turning those bricks into memorials that sort of content the kinds or erasure and displacement that has come to signify or play a part in who I am. And the choices that I have made in my life. Yeah, so when I think of home it’s complicated... Moore: I know it is. I remember you were calling this moment where you are about to apply for Stanford and you were about to get your essays together. And you get kicked out of the house. This is a striking moment this is a very particular story that details relating to family, particularly to your mother. But one of the things I remember about you is how fiercely brave you were and how independent you were and I just marvel like how is this 17-years-old thang [Laughter] walking around here. With this capacity to just take ownership of oneself. So you get kicked out of the house. You have to go get the po-po to get inside your house. Not because you want to get into the house, but because you want to get your computer. Because you damn college entrance exam essays were on it. [Laughter] and then leave the house again, to apply— so talk about this moment, this sort of bridge between you having to rely on caretaking, your family who you didn’t always have the best relationship with at some points. — and then heading off to go to Stanford. Williams: It was a moment of struggle, it was definitely a moment of growing pains. But also a moment of self-discovery I had like come in consciousness as like a queer person as a nerd. And had this blooming sense of how I wanted to exist in the world— and sort of the, not knowing the possibilities ahead of me but knowing that um, the city that I was living in at the time and NYC TOHP Transcript #167: Kiyan Williams - Page 4 (of 14) also the kinds of violence I was experiencing interpersonally with family or like navigating public space as a very visibly gender non-conforming person— was just circumscribing my life. The lack of economic opportunities in my hometown. And so I had this sort of sense of I needed to go elsewhere in order to fully realize the person that I needed to become.

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