“I’m shaping the future through love”
An interview of Malik Reed on grief, Black joy, and the expansiveness of family
Meerabelle Jesuthasan
Who Cares is a series of Q&As about care—the many definitions and applications of the word, from individual to collective, as it manifests across contexts from friendships to grassroots organizations to neighborhoods to group chats. What are the radical potentials of care under capitalism, and how does care—in the many forms of work and relationships that it takes—let us reimagine the current conditions?
Malik Reed is an actor and poet from Detroit, who recently directed his first film, Broken Silence. The multidisciplinary artist’s work centers Black joy: the creation of spaces for Black and brown people to experience “catharsis, freedom, and cleansing.” In parallel to his many projects last year, Malik’s family experienced profound loss and, as a result, he became a caretaker for five children. We spoke over video call about working through grief, the social role of his creative process, and the (sometimes painful) necessity of setting boundaries.
—Meerabelle Jesuthasan
On loss and creation. In the summer, I felt a little bit guilty because I didn’t go out and protest. My uncle had died of COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic; I was trying to take care of his baby and plan a funeral. I was thinking to myself, “What is my fight?”, and I realized, “You’ve got to create.” I got this idea for a web series called “Optimism.” I started a production company, I was holding auditions. In the middle of doing that, my family was coming together for my uncle.
One day later in the summer, my niece and I were swimming at a family member’s house when I suddenly thought, “What would I do if someone just snatched my niece off the street?” I thought, “I’m gonna make a movie.” That became Broken Silence, a movie about a Black girl who disappears and a group of women determined to bring her home by any means necessary. We filmed everything in one day, on August 5. The day after we made the movie, my family experienced another devastating death. I didn’t know the last time I saw my cousin was gonna be on set for my first movie. He was just talking about how proud he was of me, he was just in my backyard. He had four kids. So now I got five babies.
On caring for his nieces and nephews. None of them live with me, though one of them usually spends the night around five times a week and I make sure to have all my kids together at least two days a week. I have set the boundary that I am not their father. I am a source of love for them, but no one will ever take that place. An energy does not die. Someone should not take a place that is not vacant. But I do believe that I can love them and be there for them. Luckily, I have a really strong family that has also stepped up. My kids are the village’s babies.
Taking care of these children is one of my favorite things. I get to pour love into someone who just takes all of it. On certain days, I got two car seats in the back, one person sitting next to me, and one person in the middle; everyone’s calling me, “Uncle Malik! Uncle Malik!” It inspires me because these kids have so much love. It’s like I’m getting to shape the future through love, and also through the discipline that I have to give at certain moments.
Having my kiddos gives me a certain drive. I don’t care anymore if someone doesn’t like my scene, or doesn’t like me as an actor. God woke me up this morning because He, She, They—God is an abundant force—is not done with me. They say, “I still have work for you to do.” And I am going to do my work, period, because what I do, and how I handle this lifetime, will affect the next generation, will affect my babies. I don’t have time to sit back and wonder if other people like me. My kids inspire me to hustle in a different way but also to take care of myself, because they require so much of my energy.
On working through grief. Pre-pandemic, my motto was that I get my work done, no matter what. It’s almost like you have to sacrifice your humanity to be a stellar artist. But this experience of creating while grieving and caring for my kids taught me that shit is a lie. It’s ridiculous that it took a pandemic for us to feel like we could say, “I’m not in a place to come to this rehearsal.” None of the anti-Black violence that has happened during the pandemic is new, ain’t none of it new! We was coming to class on the day of the Mike Brown case, the Trayvon Martin case.
My experience made me feel like I had to work with my body. On some days, I felt like I couldn’t do nothing, or some days I felt so stretched thin because my niece wants to see her cousin and my mom needs me to create the obituary for the funeral, and I need to go do something else. I felt pulled in so many ways, and I really had to learn how to say no. I’m still learning how to say no.
On communicating. I had to learn to be honest with people. When I experience anxiety, it triggers suicidal thoughts for me. It’s not just that I’m stressed, it’s like “I’m stressed and I’m thinking about something that you wouldn’t want me to think about.” So I had to say: “Let me be communicative so you can learn how to love me.” I had to teach others how to treat me. I am always doing a lot of restructuring with regards to how people see me. I feel like people have a certain understanding of what a man is, and I ain’t that! I’m strong, but I’m strong in a Malik way.
One of my biggest forms of self-love now is telling people how I feel. “When you said that, that hurt my feelings.” It hurts so bad to say! But the result of it is self-love, and it’s also showing someone else that I love them, because it shows them that I’m giving them the chance to change.
On the role of Black joy in his work. Black joy is the main ingredient but also the secret ingredient. My work is so centered around it because I’m such a resilient soul, and because I don’t believe in just surviving; I believe in living—getting to experience our bodies, getting to experience life, being able to take all these labels off and being able to transcend them. Black joy is everything, not only within the product but the process. I believe in making art that allows people to see that you can be queer and still be loved, you can have hate in your heart and still be loved, you could be the only child, you could have experienced childhood molestation, you could be anything under the sun and still be worthy of receiving God’s love. All of these were things that made me feel like I didn’t deserve to be loved, or at least not deserving of a love that would blow my mind away. Happiness is an emotion but joy is a state of mind. No matter what, the sky is gonna be blue, and that’s what my joy is.
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You can read Meerabelle’s essay “The Internet Is Not Forever” in issue 1.