Beyond Binaries and Borders: Why a Hush Harbour?

This post is part of the A PRESS FROM SCRATCH: Behind the Scenes of Hush Harbour Press series. Hush Harbour Press is an intersectional publishing house envisioning Black futures through literary and sonic storytelling with an emphasis on the revival of short fiction. In June 2020, Hush Harbour launched its arrival as the newest literary press in Canada. This article was originally published through Quill and Quire.

The Old Plantation - Anonymous, circa 1790. A stylist painting of 12 enslaved Africans in the forefront playing banjos, a gourd and sticks to make music as a sign of resistance. The centre figure holds a stick and is bent over rejoicing. The figures are dressed in blues petticoats, some in hats, others in headscarves, all are barefoot. They are framed by two houses. 

/həSH ˈhärbər/

“...a nighttime gathering where a discrete space would be chosen by the amount of trees in that area. A branch would be broken by the first person there and everyone would know to go in that direction. There would be quilts put up to muffle and soundproof the space and what would happen in these temporary spaces would be planning resistance, storytelling, gossiping and a place to just be that was in ways a small taste of freedom.”

 -- Blacknesses Between Us, Bisha Mohamed and Ashai Nicolas [1]

This year, we at Hush Harbour Press embarked on our own journey towards liberation. Launching on June 22nd — a date  to honour and celebrate the life and legacy of Octavia E. Butler — the historical and symbolic roots of our namesake mirrors a particular type of liberation which requires us to hold space for storytelling, memory, resistance and existence. Deeply inspired by multimedia performance artist and community gem Camille Turner and her remarkable work HUSH HARBOUR [2] (a sonic walk project outlining Black histories, geographies by using archival and Afrofuturistic imagining) we envision our press to be one of many gathering places for Black people here and across the diaspora. We draw guidance from Turner, and so many other Black feminists who fearlessly explore the complexities of Black life in Canada. No doubt, the task of building a press is a massive undertaking, not simply by way of publishing and selling books, but also in continuing the rich, nuanced, often erased or invisible legacy of Black writing in this country. 

As co-founders, we are fortunate to have some blueprints guide us, but they have been scattered and required unearthing. Often we reference Sister Vision Press [3]— the first press in Canada to unapologetically commit to publishing works by and for women of colour — who sparked a different kind of fire from 1985-2001. We’ve seen Sister Vision flourish, but we’ve also witnessed it come to an end. There is something particular about witnessing that type of apocalypse. Colonial frameworks are not structured with our liberation in mind as it was never their intention. So what does it mean to start from scratch, to create beyond the boundaries, to queerifest [4] at the crosshairs of all our intersections, to propel oneself to the future? 

Within the confines of a press, our goal is to amass words, language, borderless space and time in a practice of ongoing reclamation. This must be done as a collective, with everyone. It must be in the spirit of a hush harbour. While we meditate on the term hush harbour, it is important to remember that it was illegal for Black people to congregate without permission from their white masters for generations. Gathering, in and of itself was rebellion. 

And in our observations, there is a stark contrast to the recent energies on ‘inclusivity’ and ‘diversity’ when we think of how stories are bought and sold here in Canada. Notably, there are many reactionary expressions of “we accept the works of” or “we wish to make space for” — as a way to be inclusive — without genuine investment in Black liberation or Black people. Having one or two Black folks working within these white dominated institutions is not a gathering nor is it a hush harbour. Those hardworking and often tokenized Black word-workers are alone and simply trying to survive. Whereas a true hush harbour signals us to action, to be secretive, to be audacious in our mapping, creating, praying and dreaming.

Before we announced the press to the world, we practiced starbursting — an alternative to brainstorming that doesn’t require solutions. In this column, we want to explicitly share some of our tools that have helped shape the press and we wish to begin with this concept. Starbursting is a tool we use to invite authentic collaboration between two or more people. It can look like partnering with another organization and offering room for thoughtful pause, layered ideas and experimentation. It can also look like decentering power in our decision making processes. Although, we are not naive to the notion that collaboration doesn’t always work, we reckon that it is integral to be in the practice of supporting each others’ energy. It gives us a fighting chance in journeying forward. And when we think about this as a continuum, it makes a lot of sense for Black peoples; we would follow the North Star, seeking liberation, we would gather in our hush harbours at night, and finally, more recently our literary ancestor, Octavia E. Butler, has reminded us “our destiny is to take root among the stars”. [5] But there are other constellations as well, ones moving beyond the binary of colonial borders. We’re talking about diaspora. 

Diaspora is a different type of constellation; it's a land-based constellation, it’s a constellation that has crossed waters. It has brought us together with different lived experiences, different journeys and there is an importance to gathering at this time — in order for us to get free, we all have to access freedom. Building a “Canadian” press while being true to the way diaspora operates brings about its own challenges. Too often we get wrapped up in hyper-nationalism and that capital “C” of Canadian literature that doesn’t always open space for nuanced Black narratives. Not to mention the investment in the status of Canadiana, one that has long since erased the presence of Indigenous peoples and labour of Black folks, status precarious peoples and other communities of colour. We’re interested in a publishing model that fosters international voices in reverence to diaspora. At Hush Harbour, we are thinking about diaspora as a scattering and also as an opportunity to gather in spite of that scattering. Storytelling beyond boundaries, which means rethinking how we get those ‘Canadian grants’ as earnestly redefine what Canadian literature can be. Similarly we recognize the larger power-dynamic that operates to divide and conquer our stories. Before even publishing a single book, we are starbusting new imaginings. 

Starting a ‘press-from-scratch’, for us, begins with a name. One that can hold the intentions of our vision, one that carries the weight of legacy we’ve inherited, and one that points us towards futures we want to live in. Building publicly can be a bit of a fumble, many eyes and many hearts are invested in Hush Harbour Press to be successful and sustainable, but it also invites accountability in a way that is deeply rooted in our ethics and politics. As these series continues, we will share the nuts and bolts of getting a press started, how we develop systems and frameworks, what our ethics and politics look like in the day-to-day and how we shift language from gatekeepers to spacemakers. It all begins with the act of naming.

We invite you into our Hush Harbour. 

In resistance,

Alannah & Whitney

[1] Blacknesses Between Us Zine. Vol. 1, 2016

[2] HUSH HARBOUR - CamilleTurner.com

[3] Sister Vision Press - RiseUp: a Digital Archive of Feminism Activism

[4] Although very likely a term used by many, the writers first heard this term used by d’bi young anitafrika

[5] Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler originally published in 1993