Ariana Benson // the Word Hashira ⚔️✍🏾
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arianab.bsky.social
Ariana Benson // the Word Hashira ⚔️✍🏾
@arianab.bsky.social
610 followers 260 following 110 posts
poet, essayist, animé fan, cozy gamer, sportsball enthusiast, tree hugger, multivariate nerd 🎯

a day spent down a Wiki Rabbit Hole is a day well spent👩🏾‍💻

my📚: BLACK PASTORAL (UGA Press, 2023; winner, Academy of American Poets Lenore Marshall Prize)
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arianab.bsky.social
#nowplaying Mythwrecked! Knew I’d love this game the first time I saw the trailer, and it has not disappointed! Collecting cool stuff + unique art+ mystery = my ideal indie game! One of the most emotionally intelligent games I’ve ever picked up too—think Spiritfarer vibes.
December 16, 2024 at 1:52 AM
arianab.bsky.social
New(-ish?) Black Love Poem out with underbelly mag, a journal that presents a both a draft & final version of the same poem!

Read below abt the editing & process of this poem that came after I was “done” with my first book (spoiler: it wasn’t done with me)!

www.underbellymag.com/spotlight-ar...
FINAL VERSION > LOVE POEM IN THE BLACK FIELD Jamestown, Virginia, 1622 I look for beautiful things to plant Alongside you in my mind: the shimmer Of horseflies’ wings as they fever Over a rotting fieldmouse, the mist settled over the waiting leaves. These new things called honeybees, All buoyant with excitement at being Let off the ship. Found another dead one Yesterday—whole, stinger and all, curled up Under a tobacco leaf. I won’t step on it. Not because I’m scared of the sting. Because they ain’t So different than us—jarred in darkness, Drug cross all that blue, made to labor Under a vengeful sun so some man’s tongue taste sweet—that I can call burying them underfoot Anything like mercy. We like the bees: Ruined, and so buzzing, humming, drowning Out everything but our own noise. I’ve seen the beast all that silence Makes of man. For you, I speak, Keep sugar on my lips. I open anew My eyes. Look at the flowers, they say, The miracles of God. and it’s all I can do Not to think about how pink is no more Than a thinner kind of red. In a flower, the bee takes A kind of bride, as I choose you—thirsting For a sip of something fuller than nectar, lighter than blood.
December 14, 2024 at 3:02 PM
arianab.bsky.social
So honored to have shared a laugh with her. A giant who chose every day to walk with the people. Rest in Power 🤍

“I hope I die warmed by the life I tried to live.” —Nikki Giovanni, 1943-2024 🪽
December 10, 2024 at 7:50 PM
arianab.bsky.social
A few extra snaps from my weekend trip. Satisfied a childhood desire—staying in one of those hotels with all the inward-facing windows! Atrium style, as my adult self now knows them 😅
atrium-style hotel with crystalline/mettalic chandelier handing down in from of the arched windows a mirror selfie of me (a black woman with new locs that are dyed slightly reddish) wearing an olive-brown long sleeved top, deep blue cargo jeans, and offwhite sneakers Restaurant view of a lavender cocktail that was sadly not as tasty as it looked, a lit Christmas tree, an electronic candle, and ESPN’s Around the Horn on the TV in the background
December 9, 2024 at 12:13 AM
arianab.bsky.social
wrote a piece that theorizes why/how Black people got/are into anime 👩🏾‍🎤

imo, Saturday morning Toonami + Representation (not in traditional “protag looks like me” sense, but in the structure of the story/world) = Black fandom!

some excerpts here, full story linked:

kenyonreview.org/piece/sho-ga...
You think back to those lazy childhood Saturday mornings, wiping the sleep out of your eyes as you searched the couch cushions for the remote, determined not to miss the next episode of whatever loud, bright, boom-crash-bang show the channel was airing that day. This was the height of leisure: no school, no need to get dressed or look even remotely presentable, no parents awake to interrupt your regularly-scheduled marathon (an early version of what we now call "binge-watching") with chore requests or boring errands-just a bowl of sugary cereal, an incessantly flashing screen, and an indulgent kind of innocence specitic only to the ritual of weekend cartoon watching. You feel a lament for that version of you, that harmless naivete that allowed you to fully immerse yourself in a fantasy world-a world where the rules actually made sense. A character's power was directly measurable by their level, which was illustrated by numbers and symbols that flashed on cards in a magic deck or a sparkling ball of light that indicated "evolution"—a transformation into a higher being. Everything the protagonist had, they'd earned. Every fight they won, they won by grinding to the level of strength required. You try to remember what it was like to believe that your world operated on a similar system, that all you had to do was work hard and believe in yourself and your dreams would eventually materialize right before your wide, sparkling eyes. A KENYON REVIEW = Anime is a genre that, perhaps more consistently than any other, relies heavily on tropes and common plot arcs to tell its stories. This is especially visible within the subgenre shönen (main article: Shönen), a form of "Japanese comics and animated films aimed primarily at a young male audience, typically characterized by action-filled plots" (Oxford Languages Dictionary). Shönen is bombastic, with fights and scenery that leap off the screen. It often doesn't take itself too seriously, and characters will frequently fight to what appears to be the death, only to be magically healed by some built-in plot armor. This phenomenon is a crucial element of what I call schematic Black representation in anime. The heroes have a cause and will fight for it until they drop, dedicating their whole lives to the achievement of a singular goal that, more often than not, represents some larger moral tenet of humanity: justice, love, freedom, revenge. In many ways, to exist as a Black person is to be fighting each of these battles, with all the requisite drama and blood and tears, from the very moment you are born into the world. You, like almost every shönen protagonist, are an outlier, an outcast, a never-should-have-been. Anime, with its constant violent battles and explosions and injuries and hard-fought wins, tells a story that, more closely than any other genre, represents both the struggles and triumphs of Blackness-the tiniest nuances that explain why, even though being born Black is to be dealt one of the hardest hands in life, the vast majority of us wouldn't trade our cards for anything. This bloody, stylized, death-proof hero's journey is an example of schematic representation whereby Black anime fans come to understand themselves as being represented by the genre, not just at a skin-deep level, but in a way that is perhaps more relatable and lasting in its effect; one that, in dramatizing the struggles and battles of its protagonists, demonstrates an understanding of both our material and interior lived experiences. Additionally, the characters aren't punished for justifiable violence. They are allowed, and generally encouraged, to run each other fades. They aren't demonized or labeled animalistic; rather, fighting is a means of self-expression. Each character has their own unique combat style that often aligns with an element of their personality or backstory. Taking, for the sake of argument, an agnostic position to unarmed, peer-level fighting among Black youth, one could understand anime as being representative of this long-standing in-group phenomenon. Don't start no fights, many a Black mother warns, but if another kid tries you, beat their ass. A contained, one-off fistfight has long been understood by many Black folks as an effective, if not flawless, method of conflict resolution among equals-but when taking place in a white world, these fights are often mischaracterized as symptomatic of some kind of inherent brutality and lack of humanity. In shönen, if you throw a punch, you better be ready to punch back-it's as simple as that. Conflicts are, in large part, resolved in the moment and between the interested parties, without the interference of law enforcement (because lol what laws) and policing tactics.
November 30, 2024 at 4:03 PM
arianab.bsky.social
this is an official literacy test, for context. administered by the state of Louisiana in 1964, only 60 years ago.

would you have been considered “literate” according to this test?

would someone whose ppl had been legally denied the right to read and write until (at best) one generation prior?
November 27, 2024 at 9:45 PM
arianab.bsky.social
realized I don’t have any of my poems up here yet, so here’s one:

“On Loveliness” 🐞

I like to think of it as a Black love poem, whatever that might mean to you.

#addtoblacksky
a screenshot of a poem that reads: i read somewhere that a group of ladybugs is called a loveliness. and i wonder what the person who gave them that name (surely someone of at least measurable humanity) knew, or thought they did, about what love -what kind, specifically-so embeds itself in a thing that the thing, subsequently, becomes an embodiment of that love: the way river breaks into current; the way trees make forest, simply by standing closer to each other than to anything else... ... by which I mean: i need you to tell me which of my black spots you find loveliest. which interruption of my red feels most human to the forest of your fingers; the current you river into touch along my breaking skin.
November 26, 2024 at 8:03 PM