Review | Born to Manifest - Joseph Toonga

Ta-Nehisi Coates outlines an incisive inquest into the continued and systematic endangerment of Black lives in Between the World and Me. In it, he writes: “racism is a visceral experience […] it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.” So too does Born to Manifest ground itself in the different manifestations of this violence meted out on the Black body.

As the title suggests, neither Toonga nor Godson shy away from the perceived truths that shroud them both as Black men specifically, and Black people historically. As aggressors. As trespassors. As targets. As outside the boundary of what is human. As the embodiment of the boundary itself. The negative space. Non-existent, yet hyper-visible. Dehumanised. Demonised. Guilty. Hunted.

Scholar-activist Saidiya Hartmann once asked: “What are the stories one tells in dark times? How can a narrative of defeat enable a place for the living or envision an alternative future?” Choosing to define oneself outside of the subject-object distinction, even just for a second, can therefore prove to be a radical and revolutionary act.