It's Notes from America, I'm Kai Wright.

James Spooner made a documentary in 2003 called Afro Punk.

It was a defining film for a generation of young black people who felt like outsiders.

Like they didn't fit in any part of the mainstream, black or otherwise.

The film spawned a music festival that is today a global brand, a brand that, while wildly

popular, just doesn't provide the same kind of space that James Spooner tried to carve

out for Punk's by himself.

So he's gone on trying to make that space in other ways.

He published a graphic memoir in 2022, and this fall, he'll publish a collection he co-edited

with Chris Terry called Black Punk Now.

I spoke with James Spooner recently as part of our ongoing series, Black History Is Now.

We talked about his place in the story of Punk Rock, and about the future, he's helping

today's younger black punks create for themselves.

So in your graphic memoir, you describe how you first get introduced to punk music, and

I think we want to start at that era in your life.

What was life like for you at that moment, can just kind of take us back to 1980s San Bernardino.

So I moved from New York when I was like four or five to a series of small towns.

These are Barstow, Victor Ville, Apple Valley, but basically we're talking two hours from

LA on the way to Vegas, and it's very white, very poor, and that was all fine as a little

kid, you know, but I think once I got into middle school, that's when identities start

to form and questions start to be raised, and it was also a time when my parents were

divorced, so it was just like me and my mom, who's white, and I just was kind of lost,

...