America to come: a contemplation on the creation of ‘Why is we Americans?’

“Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, 
or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. 
Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition 
that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, 
or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.”

–Sara Ahmed

Many times, we give meaning to things in retrospect that happen by chance. I have lived between New York, Berlin and Tel Aviv for almost thirty years and until now I have not dared to make any film or work about being American. The place where I feel most at home is dialectically the least understandable of all. Thus, I left it to chance to give me the inspiration to tell the remarkable story of the Baraka family, a story that will help me understand which America I would like to call home.  

I have always identified as a universal Jew through the particular struggle for Palestine, recognizing that the struggle for justice, freedom and equality for Palestine contains within it all struggles. And so, I left America to those who know America. 

Nevertheless, here in Brooklyn I began to hear a voice coming out of myself to myself, as the poet Avot Yeshurun wrote, and the voice asked me: how much am I really a stranger here and why the hell am I insisting on calling a place that could be home—exile? I recently read a brilliant sentence by the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz: “Home is not where you were born. Home is where all your attempts to escape cease”. 

Following these words, it seems as though America is home for me—at least at this moment. My children are here, my illnesses, my life drive and death drive. Everything is concentrated here. If it is my home, then fighting for this home to be better and more just is my first impulse. But how? In Israel/Palestine I consider myself as someone who knows a few things, but here in America I set out like a student who knows nothing, a student looking for a teacher to show him the way. 

I found myself in Newark one morning visiting Ben Korman, who was trying to revolutionize the perception of housing in the elusive place between gentrification and support for underprivileged neighborhoods.  It was in Newark where I met Kiburi Tucker by chance, who told me the captivating history of his family and of the family of Mayor Ras Baraka. As soon as he mentioned Amiri Baraka, Ras’ father, all my sensors opened wide. It was Mahmoud Darwish, the great poet of Palestine, who told me about Amiri. I studied and taught the works of Amiri Baraka together with my beloved Juliano Mer Khamis at The Freedom Theater in Jenin Refugee Camp. 

The opportunity to learn about the America that I would like to be a part of finally arrived. The teachers were a family and a city that is constantly in motion and ever changing. Through the Baraka family and the city of Newark, I was able to learn about an America to come, an America that is not ruled by color or by class, but by socialist values of justice and equality. An America that is aware of white supremacy and capitalist supremacy and fights it. An America that is aware of the importance of art and activism that is not in the service of the dominant ideology, but functions to help dismantle such power structures. 

It is a great gift for me and for my viewers to embark on this journey to learn from a family that not only grew up on radical values but also created new ones, while continuously learning through both stinging failures and historical victories. 

The philosopher Alain Badiou taught me about militant art, a presentation that invents itself and its audience rather than a representation that operates within existing aesthetic frameworks. This is what I experienced with Juliano’s art at the Freedom Theater, and I experienced it again with the Baraka family in Newark, a family that lives in the inseparable triad of art, politics and theory. I see it in this family that rejects the priority of identity politics over class struggle, while still representing the Black struggle in America in a way very few other families do. 

I met Ayana Morris, a filmmaker from Newark who was supposed to be my assistant director. She introduced me to the secrets of the city of Newark, also known as Brick City. It was not long until it was clear that the film would not be created from a relationship between director and assistant director, but rather from a dialogue between equals that teach each other to see from two different perspectives, the layered reality of Newark as America’s microcosm. 

Consequently, Ayana became a co-director and together we, like Jewish Talmudic scholars, argued the world in order to make decisions together of what to shoot and why, and how to cut the materials with acute awareness of the dyadic inner and outer gaze that the film produces.  We formed a close bond and our mutual trust turned this tension that could have potentially turned into an argument over who has the right to tell a story into a collaboration that allows a story to be told from different perspectives illuminating each blind spot. 

After several meetings with Mayor Ras Baraka, it was decided that we would meet with the matriarch of the family, Amina. No one prepared me for this meeting. It was like entering a revolutionary creative tornado: singing, rare stories, anger, trauma, building trust, breaking trust and rebuilding again. This meeting produced a wave of longing for my mother. Perhaps the reason for my decision to go with this project to the end is the resemblance I found between Amina Baraka and my mother, Shulamit Aloni: two women who endured severe tragedies in their lives and in their war on patriarchy. These women carried the weight of truth on their shoulders that served as a lighthouse for many more women who followed in their footsteps. They have built a home for themselves, each in their own way, and this is the work and art of revolutionary humanity. 

In our numerous encounters, Amina taught me about the intersections and tensions between Marxist  and Black struggle, about loss, about music, about Nina Simone, about recurring traumas, and much about changing and searching for truth at the expense of everything else. I learned about a journey of a mother who has lost what is most precious to her, her beloved daughter Shani.  As much as we want to only fight for the class struggle that we assume contains it all, the particular body screams: see me, hear me, a gay black woman from Newark was murdered also because of who she was. Out of their grief, Amina and the family established the Shani Baraka Women’s Resource center in Newark that helps women in need. Our film is dedicated to Shani.

I see Amina Baraka as a revolutionary, a wounded healing mother, a mother who contains within her the whole story of a Marxist Black woman who does not place color and gender at the center of struggle, though I have met no other woman who is aware of the price of color and gender more than her.  

English edited by Billie Alexopoulos 

For Mondoweiss Readers: 25% off to an exclusive virtual screening on Sunday, January 16th 12:00 pm Eastern time with a live Q&A with Udi Aloni & Slavoj Zizek following the screening. Use code: WIWA#25ZIZEK and buy a ticket here.

Udi Aloni
Udi Aloni is a filmmaker, writer, and artist whose work focuses on the interrelations between art, politics and theology in Israeli-Palestinian history and German-Jewish philosophy. His movies and visual art projects have been presented in various leading museums, galleries, and film festivals around the world. His new film “Why is We Americans?” had its world premiere at the American Black Film Festival in November 2021.