EP. 001 - MONIQUE

Vision like Jupiter. Fire like Mars.

MONIQUE MITCHELL - 'DEATH'S DAUGHTER'

Artist. Educator. Rebel.

Age: 26

Location: Los Angeles, California

Death is always around the corner. My friends jokingly call me morbid, but really, I’m just hyper-aware of my mortality. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 3 months old and died 4 years later. I grew up across the street from the cemetery my best friend would be buried in at 23. There was a chalk outline of my first crush’s body on the end of my block. His blood stained the pavement for months.

Mama & Me.

I don’t live in denial of my death. I anticipate it. I rise each morning with the awareness that I can die today, and that fills me with a sense of urgency. Have I written a story that will outlast me? Have I offered my all? Did I, as my mother would always tell me, treat people the way I want to be treated?

Young. Wild. Free.

We are all walking towards our death. The gift we offer the world is in how we walk. I walk with poetry. In a life riddled with destruction, creation was my natural response. I’ve learned that the desire to create, the desire to dream, is inherent protest. I never set out to be political in my art. But I am a Black woman in America, a country that incarcerated my father. A country that killed my best friend. A country that lynches the lives and stories of children who look just like me. Thus, the very act of creating is resisting.

I know I will die one day. I’ve accepted this.

I write so my voice will live. I write so our stories will live.