When William Evans and Omar Holman started BlackNerdProblems.com eight years ago, they had no idea it would eventually lead to writing a book by the same name.
As they describe in the introduction: “Eight years of memes, live tweets, Game of Thrones recaps, and the hard pop culture ESPN-level analysis that cyber streets needed, all led to this Black..nerdybook.”
The book is a collection of pop culture essays on everything from Hamilton, anime, the Black card, Jordan Peele’s career pivots, and Into the Spiderverse movie, to why Simba is “garbage”
I talked to William at Gramercy Books ahead of his and Omar’s author event there this evening.
The duo defines “nerd” as a spectrum.
“It’s really is just your ability to deep dive into something niche, into something specific and have a real passion for it,” William explains.
“I think that's the deciding factor. It isn't about just being into something nerdy. It might be comic books. It might be cartoons or whatever, but it really is: how much passion do you direct to something very specific?”
How much passion do you direct to something very specific?
“Once we kind of defined that for ourselves, it gave us a lot of liberty to talk about what is nerdy and what makes us nerdy and who is under that umbrella of nerdiness.”
“A Black nerd,” William goes on, is the same definition, but we are the marginalized of the marginalized.”
William says one of the goals for Black Nerd Problems was not to only talk about content that features Black characters.
“There are some things that just catch my attention more naturally and my radar goes up if I hear there's a black actor attached to something that did not canonically have black characters in it.. However, we do have crossover and intersecting interests, and the goal is to show that yes we are Black and we enjoy these things [anime, comics, etc].
The book alternates between being funny, informative and introspective.
In one chapter, titled: The Sobering Reality of Actual Black Nerd Problems, William talks about his Friday night comic-con experience being “hijacked” by “doing the math on if I could get to my car safely with a giant, cartoonish sword strapped across my back?”
This was in 2014 about a month after a new video was released by the Utah County Attorney's Office showing Darrien Hunt, a 22-year-old black man, apparently running for his life moments before two white police officers shot and killed him.
At the time of his death, Hunt was “cosplaying” or dressed up as a Japanese samurai and wielding a decorative sword.
Williams recalled that experience as he stood at a table filled with “all of these cool weapons from fictional comic books and video games”. He ultimately declined to buy a sword of his own at comic-con that day.
In the book, he tells that story to describe how in some cases, Black Nerds have a certain set of problems. “It's not even a condemnation of people that don't have that perspective,” he says, “But we did wanna give a peak behind a curtain.”
"A real #BlackNerdProblem is not knowing if your cosplay will get you killed."
William says the book is not a “lesson” on the Black experience in America because there is no one “experience” for all Black people. But readers have told him that they’ve both related to the content and also learned something.
I asked William what he hopes readers take away from the book.
“That your voice is your own and can be successful. Your interest can drive you somewhere.”
“The book can show you that having a passion and an interest in something can drive you towards some goals that you may not even know were there before.”
William and Omar talked more about Black Nerd Problems at Gramercy Books in Bexley. King Arts Center is Gramercy’s Community Partner for this exclusive evening.
29 сен 2024
