Jarvis Contributes to New Arts Anthology from Duke University Press, Out Now

Jarvis and Truthworker Theatre Company Founding Director Samara Gaev contributed a creative piece from their ongoing dialogue to a new anthology, ”FUTURE/PRESENT: Arts in a Changing America,” out now from Duke University Press.

The piece covers Jarvis’ thoughts on catching COVID-19 before a vaccine was available and watching his neighbors die from the virus. The 2020 mass outbreak at San Quentin State Prison claimed 29 lives. After 40 years of incarceration, Jarvis also poignantly describes layers of competing fears and pressures, tenderness and joy: “Other than being here…I love being me, which allows me to wake up feeling blessed.”
Gaev listens and responds, reflecting on intergenerational violence and trauma, as well as centering breath practices. In collaboration with Jarvis, Truthworker Theatre Company have adapted Jarvis’ work and life story into performance in a variety of venues including the National Cathedral and Kennedy Center.

”FUTURE/PRESENT” is a “volume of essays and criticism, visual and performance art, artist manifestos, interviews, poetry, and reflections on community practice that builds upon five years of national organizing by Arts in a Changing America, an artist-led initiative that challenges structural racism by centering people of color who are leading innovation at the nexus of arts production, community benefit, and social change. Throughout, contributors examine issues of placekeeping and belonging, migration and diasporas, the carceral state, renegotiating relationships with land, ancestral knowledge as radical futurity, and shifting paradigms of inequity. Foregrounding the powerful resilience of communities of color, ”FUTURE/PRESENT” advances the role of artists as first responders to injustices, creative stewards in the cohesion and health of communities, and innovative strategists for equity.”