Meet London Pinkney

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful London Pinkney. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with London below.

Hi London, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I have to be resilient because if I wasn’t I’d be dead. What are you gonna do as a disabled, Black girl? What are you gonna do as a lil weird punk girl? You survive. That’s the only option. Being a daughter of Los Angeles gave me resilience. Everything I do is for the little girl I was and my community. Memories of her and my loved ones fill my cup. The work I do as a writer and editor is centered in the love I have for folks united in our collective liberation. (And I don’t use those fifty-cent words lightly.) That love is endless, so I have to keep going.

But at the same time, this White Patriarchal system is designed to make sure Black women are hyper-focused on resilience. I often think about Toni Morrison’s quote that says “racism is a distraction.” Resilience can be a distraction. I’m resilient so I can experience pleasures of life—joy, play, creativity, and rest.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am a writer and editor. I earned my MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. In 2020, I founded The Ana, where I serve as editor-in-chief. The magazine was founded to be a space where the nuances of humanity are celebrated. Often times, publications are cold and treat writers and artists like content farms. The Ana seeks to celebrate the all aspects of the human condition. As a Black writer, I found that editors want to focus on the systemic trauma of artists, but not their joy. The magazine seeks to be a place were people can bring the full spectrum of their humanity and that it would be treated in good faith. Our staff is comprised of people of color, disabled folks, queer folks, and we have a large globe community that we are bouncing ideas off of. The Ana is a place where we don’t publish the work, but rather, we publish the people.

I am currently writing an essay collection about the history and. culture of Black Californians. As an Angeleno who is based in the Bay Area, I have been trying to make sense of my identity as a pan-Californian. And as I reflected on where I came from, I realized that my family’s history intersected with many historical milestones in California history. We were there for the Watts Uprising and the LA Uprising. My cousin fought wildfires while he was incarcerated. My mother grew up on a reservation that was burned down. And don’t get me started on California’s musical output— g-funk, techno, disco, hyphy. To discuss California is to discuss the ways of Black folks.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I’d recommend writers cross-study art. If you are a poet, read prose. If you love reading, watch film or dance. I have learned more about writing from watching Alvin Ailey’s chorography and Wong Kar-wai’s films, and than reading Hemingway. Explore art from all different cultures and languages. To participate in the humanities, you need to be a student of all of humanity.

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

My parents supported me even if they didn’t always understand what I was doing. They just told me, “what every you do, do it the best you can.”

Contact Info:

• Website: www.londonpinkney.com / www.wearetheana.com
• Instagram: @london-pinkney / @wearetheana

Image Credits

Hosting Image (the one with the white background): credited to Kirsten Dulan