day ISSUE NO 3
MAGAZINE
F E A T U R I N G
THE SLUMFLOWER
dreamers
EVOLT.
F
or those of you who have been down for Day Dreamers since day one, you’ll probably have noticed this issue is looooong overdue. Please don’t have my head! I’m here, it’s here. Things. Take. Time. It also takes a lot of getting passed yourself, and all of the things you think you can’t do based off of no real evidence other than what you tell yourself. The theme of this issue is REVOLT. The leading lady of this issue and on the cover, Chidera Eggerue also known as The Slumflower is the perfect day dreamer to speak to for this theme. The Slumflower, a sassy, proud saggy boobs owner from London used her social platform, and the power of digital publishing, to change the way thousands of girls and women around the world view themselves when it comes to beauty, relationships and self-worth. I want to thank all of the writers, illustrators and photographers who contributed to this issue. To those few special souls you just wouldn't let me give up on my dream, I can't thank you enough. This is much bigger than just me now. I can’t wait to take this ride with you all, day dreamers.
Bria Kiara editor in chief bybriakiara.com
in this
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editor's note
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the slumflower
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sweet like candy
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are you a writer?
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mixed privilege
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uta krauss
what will it take for the love of hip-hop
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Sweet Like ISSUE 3 / REVOLT
Candy 7
ariel burns by
WILLIAM JONES
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DAY DREAMERS words by TORI FELDER photo by TAYLOR SIMS
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I have been called many things, titles that didn't sit right. Identities that stayed lodged in my throat like too big a pill. It was only when they called me “writer” that I felt free to breathe. The words filled me, sat in my belly. A home cooked meal. It was comfortable, a name from another life. Hearing it was remembering where I was from. I could never call myself this for I was afraid I was not good enough. Real writers don’t spell words wrong. Real writers get published. Real writers can recite on stage. Real writers are more creative. They are braver, and better than me. They called me “writer” and it felt so real to me. I wore the title. It fit me, snugly. Wrapped around me, mirrored my insides, and set me free.
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DAY DREAMERS words by TORI FELDER photo by TAYLOR SIMS
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Some days, I can’t smell my privilege. Other days, it rots. All I can smell is my rotting light flesh, urging me to speak, loud . . . LOUDER. Shake shoulders, make waves, scare the men who fetishize me, and make them tremble in their seats. How come I am exotic, but my black sister is “too dark?” I want to rattle bones, fight fiercely for my sisters who are darker than me. We share the same history, but they view us differently.
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hat does it mean to be so fed up with society, and it’s people that you are willing to risk everything just to make it right for future generations? It’s the strength you manage to muster when all the fight in you has long worn out, the injustice shouts at you from atop the clouds of the American dream. Blood shot eyes because tears are the only thing that can express the way the world makes you feel. 14
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What Will It Take?
words by ANGELINA ROBLEDO image by OLADIMEJI ODUNSI
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What will it take, To gather all your strength, To collect all your feelings and stuff them in the pit of your belly to fuel you for the fight that has just begun? To find all the love inside of you, to keep those cheeks rosy, to alter mindsets, to turn hateful chants into butterflies. There are so many people against you, but so many more willing to fight for you. With love, we revolt at dawn! We will wave our fists in the air until they are bloody. We will march until our knees are bruised. We will hold up our picket signs to the clouds until blisters blossom on our palms. We will yell and scream until our windpipes collapse. We will expose the world for what it is until we are in handcuffs. Because love is the only thing worth fighting for.
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How hip-hop gave me the nerve to be me.
I
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didn't grow up a hip-hop head. I didn't grow up around hip-hop fans. Shit, I didn't grow up on hiphop at all. I was born in 1994, into a first generation Puerto Rican family. In my household, some things were for certain: the women were to clean up after the men; no one was to speak while Don Francisco was on TV; and salsa was the only music to be played. Tito Rojas was God. Marc Anthony was Jesus. Salsa was Christianity. There was no other way about it. Every morning my mom would drive me to school in her 1986 Toyota Corolla, her speakers blaring salsa music. It was the time of Nas, Biggie and Lauryn Hill—debatably the most influential decade for hip-hop. The same sounds that inspired the likes of J.Cole and Kendrick Lamar for today’s hip-hop lovers—the greats of this era. Hip-hop was straight up thriving, and I didn’t know a thing about it. In my own musical 18
world, I was translating Spanish lyrics into English, searching for meaning in the words because lyrics always meant a great deal to me. Yet I never knew of the soulful rhymes known as rap I was missing out on. I was a fiveyear-old girl trapped in 1980’s Puerto Rico. It wasn't until much later that I escaped. However, through the years, I experimented with listening to different types of music. I’ve been a pop fan, a punk rock addict and an R&B purist. But nothing ever touched my soul like hip-hop did. In fact, my love for other types of music seemed to do more harm than good. When I was old enough to choose my own music, the popular intrigued me. The first cassette tape I ever owned was …Baby One More Time by Britney Spears. It played on my Walkman nonstop, everyday, side A and side B. When I finally put it away, carefully tucking the cassette back into its crystal case, I stared at the album art that adorned the cover and
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image by OLADIMEJI ODUNSI
FOR THE OF by E.L. ARCE
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couldn’t help but to feel the need to be just like Britney. I yearned for blonde hair, a trim figure and white skin instead of my own features—brunette, soft and tan. These insecurities carried into other aspects of my life. I didn’t own a Barbie that looked like me. I asked for permission to dye my hair blonde. At one point I even bought blue contact lenses. I began looking down upon myself, never really feeling good enough. That white girl I wanted to be so badly as a child followed me for the rest of my life. Although I grew up in a neighborhood that was heavily Puerto Rican, I hardly found myself there. I traveled miles away for school each morning. My intelligence had granted me a better education than most who lived in my area. In the vital years in which a person discovers who they truly are, I was molded by my classmates who came from wealth and parents with college degrees. I spoke without a North Philly accent; I didn’t like Spanish music, and I really hated habichuelas (beans). My family began calling me “the gringa,”
the white girl. They didn’t know the damage they were causing, and I never told them how I truly felt about myself. They loved me, but they never quite understood how a Puerto Rican girl from the hood could speak and present herself the way I did. I was different than they were. I felt like I didn’t belong. Too “white” for the hood kids and too “hood” for the white kids. I was never a confident child, and the older I grew, the more selfconscious I became, a product of a color-coded society and its judgmental ways. The music I was listening to didn’t help me, so I began writing my own songs which I now realize were actually poems. Poetry lifted me up. I wrote when I was sad. I wrote when I was angry. I wrote when I thought I was in love. It was through writing I began to accept myself. Words let me express my innermost emotions. Words are why I fell in love with hip-hop in the first place. Some people say rap stands for "rhythm and poetry," others say it stands for “real ass poetry.” Either 20
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way, one thing is true, it consists of words destined for music. I appreciate that for the same reason I dissected the words of Héctor Lavoe’s greatest hits in my mom’s Toyota Corolla so many years ago. I was always attracted to the lyrical.
It was 2008. I sat at the lunch table with my middle school friends and it was the first time I heard, “What if somebody from the Chi was ill, got a deal on the hottest rap label around, but he wasn't talking ’bout coke and birds. It was more like spoken word, except he really putting it down,” and immediately fell in love. Kanye West’s song “Through the Wire” took my hip-hop virginity, and I never looked back. After that hip-hop was my life. My family thought I shunned my culture. But it wasn’t until very recently that I found out salsa was a precursor to hip-hop in the same exact way that jazz and blues were. So, maybe I was destined to become a hip-hop head, not by nurture like most—but by nature. The lyrics that most people dismiss as degrading and derogatory, made me feel whole like nothing ever had before. It wasn’t what was said, but by how it was said. 21 The words they used, metaphors
and lyrical devices—I admired the complexity of it all. Hip-hop ain’t about drugs, hoes and material possessions. It’s about storytelling, much like journalism. It provides a voice to the voiceless. That’s what kept me coming back for more. I got lost in the bars and forgot my own insecurities. I heard socially conscious rappers embrace women with my curves and brown skin, and it made me feel worth something. In a society that only embraces perfection, hip-hop is the vagrant genre that saved my life and finally made me feel at home.
Hip-hop ain’t about drugs, hoes and material possessions. It’s about storytelling, much like journalism. It provides a voice to the voiceless.
DAY DREAMERS
TAKING A The Slumflower WITH
interview by BRIA KIARA WILLIAMS photography by MISHA MEGHNA
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hen I first found The Slumflower via Twtter in 2015, I’d always catch myself following along to one of her consistent Twitter Talks on self-love, relationships or overcoming oppressions as a black woman in a patriarchal society. She brought me back to the good times in my life: when I was young and curious and had a fresh perspective of the world. I found The Slumflower’s words of encouragement at a time in my life where I was easily molded by the ideals that were fed to me through social media. The Slumflower’s gentle encouragement and womanly praise allowed me to change the way I see myself, other black women and our place in it. 22
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Chidera Eggerue, also known as The
Slumflower as part of her social branding, is an activist and author based in London. For the REVOLT issue, we chatted about the real power of social media and how to harness it, and the mission behind her social mission, the Saggy Boob Movement. BK: What do you believe is the real power of social media, and how has it helped to mold your place in this world? The real power of social media is the ability to relate to people. The moment people realize that they can relate to you, they become more receptive to what you have to say. This reception very quickly becomes support and before you know it, you have an attentive, core audience who care about your voice. Social media has definitely contributed to my identity in a multitude of ways but being able to turn my profile into a platform is what has inspired me to dig deeper into my aspirations to be a leader simply through living by example. BK: Social media allows us to influence millions with the click of a button. Though this power is monumental, how can upcoming bloggers, writers and thought leaders use this power without abusing it? In order for upcoming bloggers, writers and thought leaders to harness the power of social media without abusing it, one must first figure out what it is that they stand for and how that informs their core beliefs. It’s also important to bear in mind that new ideas, concepts and ways of thinking aren’t always going to be met with the enthusiasm that created it. But we mustn’t wait for people to like, agree with or understand our own truths in order for us to tell it. Social media creates room for freedom but what we must understand about being free is that with freedom, comes responsibility.
So we must be mindful of how we shape our speech and the people who may be affected by our messages. BK: Which social media platform contributed most to your goal of spreading your viewpoint on women’s bodies, sexuality, and equality? Twitter was definitely the platform that went from a website to a tool real quick for me! I like using Twitter to deliver my points and find people who think like me. But on the other side of being someone who loves using Twitter to talk, I also use Twitter to educate myself. I follow a lot of black queer women who really do shift my mental landscape by being vocal about their experiences. The world hates black queer women but the world, in the same breath, refuses to thank black queer women for their endless knowledge, creativity and ability to educate people. If it wasn’t for the black women fighting for our safety on the internet, I don’t think I would have felt as inspired to join the conversation! BK: Describe the first moment you realized this was an issue and someone (i.e. YOU) had to address it. I was 19 and hated my body. I wanted to force myself to stop disliking my 32DD boobs so I chose to stop wearing a bra. It was met with some mean comments, but I ignored them all and continued living my truth. Fast forward to 23, I’m still living my truth, loud as ever and I want as many women to join me in this journey of prioritizing our comfort! BK: What were some of the backlashes you faced early on in this movement? How did you overcome them? Initially, the movement was met with a lot of cynicism and sarcasm, especially from men, but in order to maintain my peace of mind, I had to detach myself from their preconceived ideas of what a woman “should” look like because I don’t
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have to meet anybody’s standards but my own. In order to overcome the negativity, I had to constantly remind myself that I deserve to be here, I deserve to like my body, and I deserve the love I give myself. I don’t need to wait for anybody to give me permission to like my own boobs. BK: What’s one of your favorite conversations that you’ve participated in? Myself and my best friend Nicole Crentsil (cofounder of the UK’s first Black Girl Festival) were talking about the importance of tapping out as a black woman. Black women have been forced into the position of having to save ourselves AND everyone else. Nicole has managed to find the balance between shaking the table but not letting the furniture fall on her head, as she strives to make the creative world a more accessible place for black women. All black women should learn to give their shoulders time to rest. Carrying the world daily is one tiring job!
and minimizing the judgement you place on yourself. BK: What advice would you give to other bloggers and writers about growing and impacting a large, organic tribe? Mistakes are expensive but you aren’t going to make money without making them. If you want to learn, you’ve got to be willing to be wrong now in order to be right later. Also, nothing anybody ever does is ultimately because of you. If you learn not to take things as personally as you currently do, you’ll spend less time overthinking your interactions and more time cultivating those goals of yours! Lastly, stuff always catches up with you on the internet so be mindful of the negativity you choose to indulge in. You’ve got this!
"I had to detach myself from their preconceived ideas of what a woman should look like because I don't have to meet anybody's standards but my own."
BK: What was the process of writing your first book like? I spent two years writing the book, What A Time To Be Alone. I was slowly collating my thoughts and really wanting to capture each feeling whilst it was still fresh in my heart. We often forget how stuff feels when we are in a much better place which is why I think writing is so important. There’s something special about being able to relate to your old self. BK: Can you tell us a bit about what to expect from “What A Time To Be Alone?” What A Time To Be Alone is not here to fix you. It’s here to encourage you to take control of your own life, on your own terms, in your own time. What A Time To Be Alone is simply a mirror that aims to show you the parts of yourself you overlook whilst trying to quiet the chaos. It also shows you the parts of yourself you deserve to love way more. It’s all about making peace with your messy mind
Chidera Eggerue
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Uta Krauss is a 34-year-old dreamer,
practicing minimalistic art in Germany. She’s been drawing for a very, very long time. It is her wildest dream to live as an artist -- inspiring tranquility, creativity and beauty through her artwork. It was a pleasure speaking with her via email about her work’s origin, the strength it takes being a dreamer and why she continues to chase her dreams everyday. BK: An artist with a wild heart, tell me how you run wild through your choice of creative expression? My wild heart is beating in a lot ways through my art. The difficult thing is to find your style of the art you love the most. I was always a creative kind of person, even when I was little. I continued studying my craft and earned a Master’s of Arts in Artistic Design. Until now, I just got to know most of the techniques and styles and really learned about the grandmasters of fine arts. But in the end, you need to follow your heart, even if that means doing something completely different. Sometimes it’s just difficult to find the way to it. For me it was a long road of trial and failure until I found my own style. BK: What tools do you use to create and share your art? I love the Pigma Micron pens. They're archival ink, waterproof and come in different sizes. So I mix them up on acid-free paper. Instagram is the perfect tool to publish them. I love the community there and the interdisciplinary vibes that come with it. Every now and then I take part in exhibitions in the south of Germany. BK: Your art is composed of distinct shapes and lines. Is there a reason why this style appeals to you?
The lines just came to me in a process. Before that happened, I did a challenge on Instagram just for myself. A drawing a day for a year. That was kind of hard, but I made it. Not every drawing was a good one, but it empowered me to keep the creativity going. And one day, I put all the drawings together and the result was “my drawing style.” I am fascinated by the range of new compositions with this style even though it's so minimalistic. As you can see I love nature, especially the mountains. So that’s where my inspiration comes from. BK: How long have you been a wild heart? When did you first feel that dreaminess within you? When I was very young I dreamed about getting out there with my creative ideas. I grew up in a small village, there was no internet invented yet, and I always was searching for something. Later I travelled the world, got scholarships for France, Hungary and Australia and studied half a year in California. In my twenties, I explored cultures and my dreaminess still was encouraged. I am a dreamer, and I am working hard to see my dreams come true. BK: Finish this sentence: The world needs art to… Let people be free; enjoy calmness and beauty and inspire. BK: What is the secret to chasing your dreams in a world that goes against that? It takes a lot of energy to keep going especially when the success isn’t coming along immediately. Here is the point where you need to focus. The only thing that will empower you in the end, is you. There are days where you will end up being frustrated and lost. It’s on you to make decisions, and if you follow the passion that’s still growing in your heart, it’s never the wrong way to go.
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CHASING with Uka Krauss
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"OUR DARK SIDES ARE SHINING TOO" illustration by UTA KRAUSS
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"GOOD TIMES" illustration by UTA KRAUSS
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"And if you follow the that’s still growing in , it’s never the wrong way to go." - Uta Krauss 35
DAY DREAMERS
day dreamers is an independent print and digital magazine exploring the most creative minds from the worlds of literature, music and culture. in this magazine, we create a world where day dreamers can let their imaginations run wild through any creative medium of their choosing. we particularly love talking with musicians, artists and designers, and featuring the works of rising writers, journalists and visual artists.
Connect. INSTAGRAM @daydreamersmag TWITTER @daydreamers_mag
Contributors. WRITERS Tori Felder, Angelina Robledo, E.L. Arce PHOTOGRAPHERS Taylor Sims, Misha Meghna, William Jones, Oladimeji Odunsi ILLUSTRATORS Uta Krauss
Submit. if you'd like to submit your stories, poetry, essays, artwork or other lit mag materials (including interview pitches) for our future issues, please send a love note to submit@daydreamersmag.com. introduce yourself and tell us why your work sshould be featured in our magazine. this helps us keep a certain asethetic to make sure we are providing a truly dreamy world. for more information, please visit us online at www.daydreamersmag.com.
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WHERE DAYDREAMERS RUN WILD