BLACK WOMAN GENIUS ~ INTELLIGENCE by Stacy Nathaniel Jackson

Stacy Nathaniel Jackson is a trans playwright, poet, writer, and visual artist originally from Los Angeles. His work has appeared in Callaloo, Electric Literature, Foglifter, Gay and Lesbian Review, The Georgia Review and elsewhere. His Afrofuturist play The Codex of Narma was a semifinalist for the 2025 Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, and received a staged reading presented by the National Queer Theater. His Afrofuturist debut novel The Ephemera Collector was also published in 2025 by Liveright. He has received support for his work as an associate artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency #191 with Addae Moon in performance writing, and as a Cave Canem poetry fellow, Hurston/Wright Foundation speculative fiction fellow, Jack Straw Cultural Center Writers Program fellow and Millay Arts Vincent Prize fellow. He received an individual artist grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission to support his docupoetics project on African American women in the U.S. military. Stacy is a graduate of USC’s Roski School of Art and Design, holds an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University with a concentration in playwriting, and an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. 

• https://snjackson.com/

ABOUT THE MONOLOGUE

Intelligence is an intentional word-play response to the call for Black women genius monologues. The story of Doris "Lucki" Allen has captured my imagination since I first encountered primary material about her in the archives of the Women in Military Service of America Foundation. Lucki is best known in military history for predicting several events, including the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. The monologue is an imagined appearance at a twenty-first century campus event where she tells the audience about an encounter with a person in the greenroom, a thinly veiled reference to the views of social media "influencer" Candace Owens. The story is intended to highlight history, its circularity, and Lucki's Black woman genius.

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EXCERPT FROM INTELLIGENCE

     ~ Excerpt published by permission, all rights held by the playwright.

                

LUCKI 

 

I was confronted in the greenroom. My greeter had left me alone for a quick minute to grab water. Right after that, a young lady entered. Said she had to talk to me. That the country was at a turning point. I always make it a point to be respectful, you know. At the end of the day, we all need to feel..we want to be heard. So, for I don’t know how long, I listened to her pitch. After she was finished, she offered me a cap. Looking at the familiar red and white design, I declined. Told her I liked the one I was wearing just fine. I asked how she had come to her points of view. She proceeded to try to dress me down, called me stupid. Got in my face. Said my bronze stars were because of affirmative action, that my induction into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame was a pigment of my imagination. My greeter came back into the greenroom just in time. Shit, it took all of my strength not to hit the girl over the head with my cane.