An Interview with Vic Toussaint
What does it mean, to be alien, in the nation-state that is America? What does it mean to be human in the nation-state that is America?
Esther and I posed these questions – and many others – to the writer Vic Toussaint on a sunny March afternoon. We sat on the floor of their Brownsville apartment, nursing cups of chamomile tea poured with care out of a pot adorned with flowers, nibbling cornbread sopped in honey.
I met Vic at work. I didn’t know them, but I was always impressed by their pitches during work meetings, and also, they were Black. One afternoon I asked if they’d be interested in working on a podcast I was producing. I assumed they would say yes. They said no. Before that moment, it had basically never occurred to me that declining work at my workplace was an option. I was stunned, then deeply impressed. I thought, who is this person? What else do they know that I don’t?
Now, I know that Vic’s thoughts in conversation are quite similar to her food – a delightful indulgence prepared with serious attention, best savored slowly. As a Haitian immigrant and a student of political science, they have a carefully calibrated understanding of the catastrophic project of nation-building, and how this project has shaped – and warped – our conceptions of reality. This understanding, combined with a sharp imagination directed towards possibilities of world-building, gives us clues for how to navigate our American present.
Before our interview, Vic recommended some reading – The Decline of the Nation State and the End of the Rights of Man, by Hannah Arendt. We came prepared with annotations. That’s where our conversation began, and it quickly branched out to a host of other concerns – alienness, humanness, belonging, what it means to build and inhabit the worlds we dream about.
What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.
- Adesuwa
Adesuwa Agbonile:
I thought that Hannah Arendt chapter was so good. It actually changed my life. I wrote down some quotes –
Vic Tousaint:
Can I read it? Is that crazy?
Adesuwa:
No!
Vic:
(reading aloud from Arendt) “The solution of the Jewish question merely produced a new category of refugees, the Arabs.” Meaning the creation of Israel. “The creation of the nation state is the creation of statelessness.”
What she’s saying about the calamity of being stateless is – if you become effectively stateless for any reason, you're excluded from human rights, because a government is the thing that can protect your human rights. The refugee convention is supposed to protect our human rights, but not all countries are party to it. And even when they were writing those conventions, Western states privileged their nation state sovereignty. So if you don’t belong to a state who is going to protect your human rights, for all intents and purposes, you’re not human. Like, you don't have access to human rights. You don't have a mechanism through which to access those rights or have like a political voice or a say or anything like that.
So cool. I mean, not cool. It was a good essay though. (laughter)
Adesuwa:
That was the thing that blew my mind the most. Arendt is basically saying that the moment you become a human, like the moment that you stop being part of a nation, you are stripped of your citizenship, you stop having a passport, you're stripped down to your essential humanness – that is the very moment that your human rights are taken away.
Vic:
Can I read this quote that's exactly that? She said, “they [stateless survivors of concentration and internment camps] insisted on their nationality, the last sign of their former citizenship, as their only remaining and recognized tie with humanity. Their distrust of natural, their preference for national, rights comes precisely from their realization that natural rights are granted even to savages.”
Adesuwa:
This makes me wonder – what does it mean to you to be human? Do you think there's anything sacred about it?
Vic:
What feels sacred to me about being human is the ability to recognize that we are the universe experiencing itself. If you sit long enough, and you meditate, you're able to recognize that you and like that tree over there are not distinct beings. You are, but you're also not. You're made up of the same stuff and in the same universe. Death doesn't scare me because I feel like my particles will just return to wherever they came from. Does that make sense? What do you guys think?
Adesuwa:
If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said, the thing that makes me a human is, I'm intelligent. And I can think. I’m not an animal! And then I would point to a white person and I would say and we’re the same! (laughter)
Vic:
And it's true. But also you can point to an animal and you're also the same. I mean, you're different, but you’re the same.
(At this point, Vic poured us more tea. Adesuwa/Esther: thank you!)
Adesuwa:
Exactly. Recently I’ve been coming around to the idea of like, animal rights. I think the older I get, the more my definition of humanity becomes less stringent. And the more it becomes just understanding I'm part of something greater.
Esther Omole:
I read this book called Becoming Human, by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson. She talks about how the definitions of blackness, animality and humanity are all co-created. As people are deciding what's human, they're deciding what's animal, and they're using black people to manage the boundary. In order to discover what humanity is to me, I've had to understand the language that people use to contain it, and then I’ve had to take that container off. And now that I've taken the container off, I have to look around and introduce myself to the possibilities of being human.
And being human can be so many different things because there's all these different cultures. A culture is a story you tell again and again. And there's myriad cultures. It's on all those scales and it's happening all over the globe. Imagine if we all sat together and talked about that – about remembering. The older I get, the more I’m like, I know what it's like to be water. I think I remember asking to be here and knowing that it's going to end.
Adesuwa:
Something else I've been thinking about a lot is this idea of belonging. I think there is a conception of the nation state as a place of belonging, where it's like, ‘I belong to a country because like I have a passport’ or like, ‘I belong to this nationality because of the color of my skin’. I'm curious what belonging means to you, Vic. Where do you belong?
Vic:
I feel like I belong right here, in this moment in time.
Obviously I grew up here and my life on paper looked a lot like that of my peers. But in some ways I always felt removed, because the conditions with which I am able to have that day-to-day versus the conditions that allow them to have that day-to-day are very different. My existence in America is tenuous, is conditional, is liable to change, is hard fought.
And then I think about my innate knowing that I'm supposed to go back to Haiti at some point. But I have created a different self than would have been created if I had grown up in Haiti. I speak a different language, I’ve interacted with different people. Like, the way in which I belong to Haiti is different from my dad, or whatever. But I feel strangely connected to the people who are there now. And the more I learn about Haitian history in general, I feel like I see a lot of things that I want to continue to carry. I think we're very resilient as a people, very defiant, and I see that in the way that I grew up.
Not to say that I don't belong in the United States. But all of the bureaucratic red tape and barriers around immigrants – some of it has worked. I don't really see myself building a life here. There was a time when I did. As I’m deciding what I value and who is important to me and what sort of world I want to contribute to creating, I feel the clock ticking and part of it is because, you know, Trump and all these people have literally exacted a clock. But it's also just an innate knowing that this is not where I'm supposed to be forever.
In another way I feel like I could belong anywhere. Like, I think about my mom – she was a grown person in her early 30s when she moved here with two young children. Did not speak the language, had to literally create a life out of sandpaper and spit. And she did and we did, and now we have established networks, things that make us feel like we belong in the northeast or in Boston or New York. But if I could do it once, then I kind of feel like I could do it anywhere. I feel like you could drop me anywhere and I could figure out how to belong. Where do y'all belong?
Esther:
I was thinking about how my parents are the kind of people who can live anywhere. I feel like Nigerians have a reputation for that. All the Nigerians I met growing up, they created a network. They were belonging in America because they had to.
So much [American] propaganda succeeded in making you feel like you don't have a right to this place, like you can't ever belong. But your life and your mother's life disproves that. You live here, you are being here and you are fundamentally changing everything you interact with.
What I believe is that belonging cannot be granted and it cannot be taken away. It is not something that somebody can define and then assess or hand over. It is something that happened because I look out at the universe and there's one planet! And this is the one I was given. I belong with it, among it, and in it.
Vic:
The first time Trump was president, my future was very much in question. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to go to college. I didn’t know what next year was going to look like, let alone three, four years down the line. But I think what feels distinct to me now is, it’s not that I feel like I have the right to be here specifically, but I feel like I have the right to be – period. Like, I already am. You can argue with it, you can try to take it away, but it has already happened, it is happening. And as much as Trump wants to do this mass deportation thing, it is not possible. It'll never be complete.
But – how do you guys think about home? I’m always curious how other people conceptualize it. I feel like I'm always negotiating a relationship with what home is to me.
Adesuwa:
I really don't have an answer to that beyond like, my studio apartment is my home. I guess I have come to this definition of home as the place where I'm most myself and where my center feels like the center. And anyone who comes into the space must revolve around that. But there’s also a conception of home that’s not that. It could be a place you grew up or like the land that your parents come from, right? And I think that's also fair.
But I think part of the reason that I'm so serious about saying, you know, my home is like this room that I live in is because this is the space where I have the most control. I feel like this space fits me. Whereas like growing up in Seattle, going outside, I always felt like – I must leave. I knew this was not where I could live, longterm. Which brings me to my question – what does it mean to be alien, what does it mean to be other? What does it mean to feel or be figured as separate?
Vic:
I think it's hard, and it can be lonely, to not be necessarily understood everywhere you go. When I'm around other Haitian people, there's a part of me that they deeply understand. And then there are parts of me that they don't understand, that I sort of put on the back burner when I'm in that space. Like I might not say that I use they/she pronouns, for example. But then in certain spaces now, the part of me that's Haitian is the thing that's on the back burner in that space.
And, I have found that there are like relationships that make room for all of the parts of you, even if they don't necessarily understand them or like relate to them. Like, in the romantic relationship that I was just in, she's Moroccan and I'm Haitian but we really bonded, I felt like over being immigrants or, like sort of coming to a new place and sort of being other in that place. I would say that I felt wholly loved, like regardless of whether or not I was wholly understood. The more I'm open and accepting of every part of myself, the less othered I feel wherever I go. There was a time where like my being queer felt really loud and present. Like when I was at church, I felt like those identities were rubbing up against one another. But now, you know, I go home and if my mom wants to go to church and I'm in the mood to acquiesce, I'm like, fine. And I'm gonna wear what I want there. If I make concessions about what I wear and how I present myself, they are decisions I am making, and not something that I feel like I have to do for other people to accept to receive me. Even if you don't accept or receive me, I accept and receive me, and that's that's enough.
In terms of living in Haiti, I know that, like other people will see and sense part of my quote unquote alienness or otherness; the part of me that doesn't neatly overlap with their lived experience. I hope to God I don't have an American accent by then. Please Lord Jesus. But even if I do, that is okay because I have lived a different life and I can't hide away from that. I can't rewrite history. And the funny thing about time is that like, the longer I'm there, the longer that we will start to build our own new history. Time will allow us to build new memories.
Adesuwa:
Do you have an imagination of what your new is? And what things do you want to take from the past to put into the new and what things do you want to leave behind?
Vic:
There was a time when I was like eleven and I was imagining my future. I had this dream one time about going to college in New York. I made up a university in my mind. The college I went to looked nothing like that, but it felt like that. And I think because I've had that sense, like once before, I know to trust it. I don't know how I get back to Haiti, or even when, but I know that it's true.
I've actually been doing this practice of picturing myself in different futures. There's a lot of ifs about how this next year could go. Like if, the status that I have now is revoked in August, then I'll probably go to London and then potentially come back to the States if I have a green card from my job. Or if I hear back from this Canada thing, then I'll probably go to Canada, which I never thought I would do. But I've been just sort of like, trying to place myself in different futures, just to see. And they each come with their different challenges. Like in some of these futures, I can't take my family with me. I may not be able to come back to the States . I don't even know where my career is going, that’s the least of my problems.
But I do know what my quote unquote work is. Wherever I go, I know that I'm supposed to be figuring out how to contribute to this new world that I feel in my bones is possible. That I know we deserve. We deserve to all be able to live freely and well. And whether or not that happens within my lifetime, I know that there are things that I can do and must do in order for that world to come about eventually, you know?
I've been reading Black Jacobins by C. L. R. James. One thing that it does really successfully is place you temporally, just before the Haitian revolutions and paints you a picture of what the world looked like then. When slavery was completely normal, and, in fact, the very foundation of the entire economic ecosystem of the world. If you were enslaved at that time, you had no conception of a world that did not have slavery as it's economic underpinning, especially if you were in the United States. So I think about what it meant for them to create a world where slavery didn't exist, having no conception of what that world looks like. And I feel like that’s very similar to what we're trying to do now, which is create a world where imperialism and colonialism and capitalism aren't like the order of the day, even though we have no conception of what that looks like. There are pieces of it we can look to, like the way indigenous folks all over the world have lived. But, in my lifetime, you know, these systems were here when I got here and for all I know, this is the only way that it could be. I think that's the mentality of most people, because that's what you're raised to believe. You're not even raised to question why we have nation states, for example. But I feel like, you know, if my ancestors could end enslavement, we can do fucking anything. And it's gonna cost us just as much as it cost them. Like, it cost people their lives.
There were parts of the book where James was talking about how enslaved people, as the revolution was happening, would literally walk up to cannons and just put their arm in it to block it, so that other people could come and like, you know, continue the fight. What sort of commitment you must have to a vision of a world you have never seen to be literally willing to give your body over to it? And I feel like I see that sort of resilience and commitment to world building in Palestinians fighting today. Like those kids, many of them have never been outside of Gaza. All they know of a free Palestine is what has been told to them by their grandparents, parents. Like, I don't know how you don't look at that and think, yeah, I need to get the fuck up and do something, you know? I don't think that our role is the same, like everywhere, but we all have a part to play. I don't know that I'm going to see the fall of capitalism or the United States within my lifetime, but I know that there are steps and things that I can do that other people who come after me can build upon that will get us there eventually. In the same way that like, you know, enslaved people in my ancestry, like, didn't know that, you know, however many years down the line, they're like living relatives would have free will, more or less, to do what they want. And they fought anyway. So, I can fight. I can tussle.
Adesuwa:
When we were talking about this interview, one of the things you pointed out was how when you’re an immigrant in America, your actions are limited in very real ways. You can’t vote, you don’t have a political voice. But I feel like just now, you’re talking so much about having a voice, doing work, having imagination, having an opinion, taking action.
Vic:
I really used to feel constrained by the fact that like – everyone’s talking about immigrants and I can't even vote to tell them what I think about all of it. I used to feel constrained by that. And I was also really obsessed with understanding power and like who has it, what they do with it. But now I'm like, that's just one system that's been established. Like, I think people should vote. But that's just one action that you can take in terms of contributing to world building. I would really, really encourage people to sit with and think about what kind of world do you want to live in. Not even the global everything, just – how do you want to interact with other people? What sort of dreams do you want to be able to have? Do you want to be able to start up a little garden and feed your neighbor and go to sleep at 4 PM in the afternoon every day? Like, what do you want? What do you dream about? What do you wish you could do with your time? What are the things keeping you from being able to do those things? And what institutions and systems need to be built in order for you to be able to do whatever you want with your time? And then go ahead and get busy building it.
I feel like my contribution to a world that looks like that is through writing. I really want to wage war on the way that our imaginations have been captured. Like the world can look different, but we are not even encouraged to think about that. I feel like speculative fiction does that a lot, you know, imagine different worlds. I think Octavia Butler did that a lot. I want to do similar things with my writing.
Adesuwa:
Okay, follow up question. What do you want? Like, what is a good day for you?
Vic:
I want to wake up after it's light out, but not super late. And then I want to take a lot of time making breakfast. I want to have other people around and, you know, share that breakfast with. I want to read a little bit. I want to take a nap, I wanna go chat with a neighbor, see what they're up to. I wanna have my grandma tell me some stories. Um, then I wanna cook again, cause it's probably gonna be about dinner time by then. I want to not have to go to a grocery store to get fruits and vegetables. I want to either just have it in my yard or go ask a neighbor what they have and we trade. You know, if they have an egg, and I need an egg, but I have pepper, I'll give them pepper, they give me an egg. I want to have people that I love nearby, or be able to talk to them if not. I want to write. Tell some stories.
I want to be able to live with who I love and not have it be questioned. Not have to explain myself to really to anybody. I wanna swim in the ocean. Or like a river; some body of water. I feel like the things that we all want are pretty simple, like most people just wanna like eat well, sleep, hang out with their friends and family. I think laziness is a myth. I think if people had time, they would like, get creative and make music and like, hang out, tell stories. I don't know, figure out what crafts they like. I want to build a table. Why the hell not?
Esther:
You could design, like, an incredible table and you just don't know, cause no one's giving you wood.
Vic:
I think about that a lot. Like, what skill do I have that I don't know about because I've never done it? I think what I want from the world and for myself is like true freedom. Is really being able to decide how you're going to spend your time and not be beholden to these systems that say you have to go to work to get money to buy food, to buy a house, a place to live. Like, you're already on the planet. You should have a place to live. You know what I mean? And if you already had a place to live, and if a place to live was always guaranteed, then, maybe you wouldn't feel like you have to go and work and make some money and whatever, maybe you’d be like, shoot, maybe I'll go learn how to be an actor.
Adesuwa:
Especially in a world where Chat GPT exists. There is a machine out there that can write a good enough email to send to another machine. I'm sure we could actually automate a lot of this shit and make a lot of money, and the government could just give it to us.
Vic:
I really want people to realize how much power they actually have in terms of world building. It doesn't have to be like this, and your actions can contribute to it not being like this, in the near or distant future. Whether or not you live to see it, it will happen. So, like, really sit with and think about, like, what do you want? Really, really. What do you want? other than money and success, what do you want? And who are the people you want to share that vision with and what will it take for the world to look like that? Yeah. That’s it.
