The Déjà Vu: Black Dreams & Black Time

Gabrielle Civil mines black dreams and black time to create a vibrant archive of black feminist experiences and creative expressions. Birthed at the intersection of pandemic and protest uprising, the déjà vu encircles forms both new and ancestral, drawing movement, speech, recollection, and essay into memoir. As Civil considers a spectrum of artworks--the poetry of Wanda Coleman, Haitian tourist paintings, her own dance ritual for MLK Day, Montreal street art, the 2019 film Waves--she thinks deeply about expansive black life beyond the white gaze. Full of joyful exuberance, intimacy, and humor, the déjà vu elides the boundaries between memory, dream, grief, and love to imagine the reverberations of a black future.