Our November 2025 Departmental Spotlight features one of our undergraduate students, Taye Hughes, interviewed by graduate student Endria Richardson.
What are you reading (or watching, or listening to) lately?
Right now, I’m reading Sula by Toni Morrison and Engendering Blackness by Patrice Douglass. Admittedly, both reads are in preparation for my classwork, but I’ve enjoyed the writings, nonetheless. And have plans to utilize both in my research going forward. If you can’t tell, I'm actually really excited to do so.
For the foreseeable future I am watching Girlfriends. Every so often I pick an old series to binge watch, and I am about three seasons in on Girlfriends, with four more to go. I used to watch this show when I got home from school growing up. It’s been really interesting rewatching the show from an adult perspective and recognizing the cultural impact it has had on a generation of viewers.
Audio-wise, I’m listening to Deon Brown. He’s a musician that fuses R&B, gospel, hip-hop, and house into a truly transcendent soundscape. Most of their music spotlights blackness, queerness, survival, and freedom, so it’s inspiring to see how a lot of the themes I write about show up creatively in other mediums.
Where do you come from? Is there a place that feels like home?
I was raised in the Inland Empire area of Southern California, specifically Moreno Valley, and I am 951 down! But I was born in Tennessee and spent a handful of years there as well, so I feel very at home in the South. I’m someone who moves around quite a bit, having lived in Atlanta, the DMV, Texas, South Carolina, and now the Bay Area. Because of that I would normally say that when it comes to a place that feels like home it is wherever my homies are. But when I moved to Oakland, I made it a point to nest for the first time in my life so home has very much become the place I have made.
Who do you love? Writers, thinkers, artists, parents, friends -- who has inspired you to be in the world the way you are?
I love Prince. He is probably the only artist I would fangirl over. I’m disheartened I never got to see him in concert, but I often watch old recordings on YouTube. When I watch him perform, I see someone completely at home in his body, in his sound, in his contradictions. It’s a rarity. I love Prince because he showed me what freedom could look like. Not the kind that’s loud or declared, but a quiet confidence of someone who knows who they are and doesn’t need anyone’s permission to be it. His expertise, androgyny, shade and savviness… Prince was (is) everything.
What is your working, thinking, or making process?
I am constantly in thought and still admittedly a slow thinker. However, I think that slowness is what ensures my working or making process leads to something worthwhile. My process begins with a feeling or maybe it’s a thought (I think this is where my tendency to intellectualize my feelings comes in handy). Still, it is typically a question I can’t quite voice or a silence in need of a podium that guides my approach to creating. Because I begin with what’s close to me, myself and my community, I tend to let my emotional registry of those moments guide any theoretical inquiry. As I’m sure is true for most people, my process is inevitably iterative. I write and rewrite, read and rewrite, revise and return. And amidst that new feelings emerge, new thoughts and subjects reveal something deeper. For me, that process of making is also a way of theorizing, a way to test the boundaries between creativity and analysis.