Remember when Michelle Obama said, "when they go low, we go high"? Well, what you didn't know is that Patton misheard and thought that Obama said, "when they go low, you go and get a bulldozer and dig deeper than the hole they're in, and then bury them with the dirt."
Whatever the case, the trolls will periodically send racist messages to Patton on Facebook or Twitter and then...on those days she has the time, well, then the hilarious, creative, deeply historical, fantastical, piercing, ferocious verbal onslaught that flows forth from her is a work of art and buckshot.
This racist once sent Patton a message saying she should write about Black women loving to kill their unborn children. What a terrible thing to say. Ok. Then, Patton responded, revealing her supreme abilities absorbing history, crafting narratives, critiquing racists, and playing the dozens.
First, she opened by noting "I've got a good story for you, you sunken-eyed, meth-faced, possum-fondling degenerate. Sit yo’ dented, crusty ass down" and listen. Next, she proceeded to offer three brief stories from the 1830s about the "great-great granddaddy" of the racist. In story one, Obadiah, as he was named in Patton's tale, raped an enslaved Black woman, who resisted by aborting the child, which meant for the modern-day racist, "your bloodline--THWARTED."
Next, in the second "chapter" from 1831, Patton presents a tale of a woman who leans into self-immolation rather than have a child by Obadiah.
Finally, in Chapter 3, "The Last Mistake," a child is born from Obadiah's raping ways. The mother considers that the child must die: "A quiet exit for a baby who would have grown up twisted by the hate of his white kin, filled with the festering, rotting disease of supremacy." But the baby lives. The child "survived, against all odds and lived to birth a whole line of disappointment and decay. And that’s how YOU got here today—a genetic poo stain smeared across history’s boot."
The racist troll, we learn, is "a roach that skittered past the stomp of justice."
What's the Origin Story for Patton's verbal skills?I was reading that piece and thinking about some of Patton's other comical, biting responses. I wonder if there's a way to situate her within histories of literary art. Maybe Black poetry? The phrasings, the creativity, the wordplay. Ok, yes, yes. But only Amiri Baraka put so many direct searing, comical insults on the page.
Much love to all the poets I've read, but overall, the field cares more about belles-lettres than the verbal fire flaming from Patton.
How about novels, certainly we can place Patton in the history of neo-slave narratives? That's what her story about those enslaved women was. Yes, it has the historical setting of a neo-slave narrative. It's inventive in the way of Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad (2016), and many other works within that realm. But Patton stretches out with the audience and delivery in ways that the novel ain't at for real.
Patton is no doubt over there in the world of the dozens, but her storytelling resides out there in ways that the back-and-forth of dozens don't. She also reconfigures hers to really go historical and then jump contemporary to critique a racist troll.
All of this is to say, I have more work to do to really fully situate Patton's work and workings.