Riot Woman with James Spooner Riot Woman

James Spooner is a visual artist, a parent of two, and a vegan tattoo artist who runs Monocle tattoo in Los Angeles. He is the creator 2003’s Afropunk documentary and is currently work on a graphic novel which is chronicles his experience growing up as a teenaged black punk in the California desert, entitled The High Desert.

James and I discuss being teenagers coming into punk, especially because that is the focus of his book-in-progress The High Desert. He explains how he discovered punk as an answer to the “perfect storm of adolescence” and the frustration of being one of two black punks in the high desert of California and the “racial exceptionalism” he experienced there. We also talked about how his experience changed when he moved to NYC as a teenager and met other black punks and punks of color and how those experiences led him to create Afropunk.
We talk about the importance of embracing the “do it yourself” spirit of punk and moving from being a consumer to a creator and how the DIY spirit and punk values continue to influence James' life as an artist, tattooist, and parent.