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I am more likely to get paid for my art if it's presented alongside a white artist, so the questions around value and agency arise: What choices should I make, or do I have to make, if I want to be compensated for my work? Why isn't my art valued on its own?

Vivek Shraya

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Vivek Shraya
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I have dedicated a significant portion of my time and artistry to making art that addresses various forms of oppression, including white supremacy, misogyny, and biphobia.
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Despite the fact that I'm not highly skilled in any visual art, aesthetics have always played a strong role in my art, including my first albums.
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I didn't want to give the white reader an opportunity to think of racism as imaginary - a sentiment that is already a central barrier in addressing the problem.
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When I do book readings, I always incorporate music or singing.
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I feel like I have had to catch up to the art I've made, and learn from the protagonists I have written, especially in relation to gender.
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In poetry, I didn't have to provide resolution. I could ask hard questions without feeling responsible for the answers.
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I think white artists have a responsibility to be not only naming white supremacy, but to be using their power and privilege to support artists of color.
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As a general rule, I tend to collaborate with artists whose work I admire.
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Of course, I can't separate my queerness from my brownness - if anything, my queerness amplifies my brownness, and vice versa - but I spent so much of my early twenties trying to erase my differences, often without awareness of what I was doing.
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Making music has been connected to one of my greatest heartaches, because my own music has never quite connected with audiences. But it was this heartache that pushed me to explore other artistic avenues, like writing and filmmaking, and I ultimately feel most at home in a multidisciplinary environment.
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I continue to explore poetry.
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My intention was never to write a trans novel - which is perhaps an effective strategy for writing a trans novel.
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I have been and continue to be committed to art as a tool to ignite, comfort, and discomfort.
Vivek Shraya
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It's exciting to consider how art, in its ability to reveal, can be ahead of the artist.
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I used singing as a safety measure. I would pay attention to what songs the popular girls liked, learn those songs from the radio or library cassettes, and then accidentally sing or hum these songs in class. This would impress the girls, who would then defend me from the boys.
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I tend to focus less on genre as a starting point and more on idea or intention and let the idea dictate genre.
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Should I be collaborating with artists of color solely because of their race and my politics? This question is weighted with my own worry that I have been invited to speak or collaborate solely because of my race, and not because of my abilities.
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As a person of color, I know race can't be stripped from admiration or preference.
Vivek Shraya