The Lone Crusaders of “Valhalla Rising” and “The Book of Eli”: Preternatural Archetypes and Iconic Rebels

 

This won’t be a review of these two films evaluating their merits and detractions.  More so, this blogpost is an investigative pondering, a thinking out loud about the power of movies serving as introspective lenses into ourselves.  After seeing “Valhalla Rising” a few days ago, it has not left my bones or cognitive preoccupation.  The brooding landscape, the haunting music, the brutal yet beguiling treatment of proverbial conflicts (man versus man, man versus society), the aesthetic achievement of a  movie not ending with a conventionally bow tied happy ending, have moved me.  I am responding to a movement in my marrow, an archetypal and iconic familiarity implanted by my father, now resurrected.

To give context, In “Valhalla Rising,” the clairvoyant Norseman protagonist, One Eye, is introduced as a captive exploited for the gladiator-style sport of combating and bludgeoning fellow captives.  One Eye is temporarily compliant with his slavery and defers to his captor’s bloodlust for combat.  He is then sold by his captor to another who hopes to use him to stave off the Christian Crusaders who have begun the onslaught of whomever they deem infidels.   However, One Eye brutally takes back his freedom, and resumes his quest, accompanied now by the boy (called The Boy) who provided food while in captivity and will provide his voice, as One Eye is mute.   Ironically, they encounter a group of Crusaders embarking for Jerusalem and join them.  Then when the ship is trapped by obscuring mist and stilled currents, some crew interpret the presence of The Boy as an omen of their demise.  Others are resolved in perceiving both One Eye and The Boy as a means to a supernatural confirmation of their quest, with One Eye providing messianic-like security.  The men then land upon a taiga, and begin to realize that they are nowhere near the Holy Land of Jerusalem for which their chartered their course and agendas.  They encounter aboriginals, as well as the fraying interior of the deepest and dilemma-ridden aspects of themselves, leading to revelatory unfolding.

Stories about lone crusaders and the conflicts they encounter fascinate me.  The preservation of self despite the infliction or indifference of others, the indestructible resolve to uphold and defend what is believed even at cost to self, are compelling narratives.  One Eye is embedded within an interwoven tapestry of two conflicts—man against man, and man against society.   One Eye does not willfully engage or pursue conflicts with others, or deliberately position himself to take a side for his own advantage.  In his quietude he remains resolute to keep moving, resilient in accepting and fulfilling his premonitions.  Beholding to what seems to be a calling to something greater, he combats through the shadows and valleys of others’ intentions, expectations, and manipulations.  This instinctive perseverance and acceptance of his fate are what confounds some characters and convicts others.

One Eye’s obligatory devotion to fulfilling his premonitions and the path they lay reminds me of my father.  My father was a man who availed his limbs and logic to providing me the best life possible (on earth and heaven).   Specifically, my father upheld the belief that it was his responsibility to instill within me religious practices and spiritual teachers to inform my life going forward.  The most indelible impression he makes upon me are what he taught me about my origin.  He had a way of explaining that we are translation of a divine intention.  Dad taught me about God and Christ, and many Biblical figures to serve me in life as guideposts for my living.  His favorite king was David, a man chosen by God to build and defend His kingdom knowing in his walk of earthen life he would both travail from and prevail against his personal foibles and fallibility.  Jesus impressed him because of His determination despite any and all obstacles to do His Father’s work.  Perhaps the parallel between One Eye and my father’s teachings lay in the fact that regardless of what the eye/s can see, there is a life purposefully divined and driven beyond physical unyieldingness, and to resolve to see and live life beyond circumstance strengthens one’s ability to do so sedulously and steadfastly.

Since seeing “Valhalla Rising,” I have also begun to reflect upon how I was also moved by the movie “The Book of Eli”.  The latter is also a movie that moves my marrow me because of its theme of sight beyond circumstance.  As like One Eye, Eli is diminished in his sight (he is completely blind).  However, Eli’s blindness does not mentally, spiritually or physically deter him.  Instead, his ordaining to deliver the last Bible propels Eli.  The sight garnered by conviction emboldens both characters to resist surrendering to physical limitation or societal intimidation; in Eli’s case, Carnegie’s hunting and assaulting of him to acquire the physical Bible in his care.  Throughout the movie, Eli invokes and demonstrates his Biblically-informed and infused sight to traverse an apocalyptic wasteland, the degeneration of others, and the attempted exploits of demagogue Carnegie to exploit and kill him exclusively for gain.  Unfortunately, Carnegie’s greed and thirst for power literally shrink his sight to only register what is physical.  The Bible Eli carries is written in Braille, which Carnegie cannot read and therefore exploit to wield his power.  The Bible that Eli transports is actually committed to memory: he succeeds bringing it to a repository and printing press housed in Alcatraz before succumbing to his injuries.

My fascination with both protagonists is that the fragile meets the fierce.  Despite what seems to be limits in the flesh, the execution of their beliefs is what avails them strength, courage and wisdom to continue pursuing their higher calling.  Each protagonist prevails against his own carnal limitation.  Despite the exploitation of others—attempted and executed—each remains undeterred to accomplish a goal greater than the obstacles that materialize and plague them.  They remind me of my father, whose spiritual sight helped him to prevail against affliction.  He taught me that we were born ordained to do special work on earth even before assuming earthly vessels, and celestially supported by the hierarchy of Heaven to complete it.    Who we are metaphorically, mystically, molecularly, and metabolically overshadows and overpowers  any obstacle we will experience in our walk on earth (perhaps this is also why movies like ”Contact” resound in me too . . .I’ll save that for another day).  This teaching he embedded in me informs and instructs me some 15 years after his passing.  Ironically, he died just nine days after my Baptism, and though for me premature, I have never believed this to be an accident as a surrender and restful return.

His job done on earth, as it is in Heaven.

Woman, Wife and Mother: An Evolving Intersection

As a new wife and mother, I experience jubilee and juggling.  I receive constant fulfillment yet expend breath and best guesses finishing challenges.  I stand in an intersection of past/present/future.  This triptych daily positions me to negotiate divergent responsibilities, prior obligations and new undertakings, obliging yet unifying them all.  Hopefully my intimacies, epiphanies, and suggestions offer footstools into your own possibilities.

Professionally, my career spans being a high school ELA teacher, assistant professor, educational consultant and fledging writer.   I’ve enjoyed fortune and mistakes on my own terms. Then I met my husband, and with him anticipated blessings and unanticipated compromises unfolded.

While single, we’ve been rightfully selfish with our lives, doing what we want to do when we want to do it and how we want to do it.  Consequently, we’ve come to this goal of incorporating flesh and future with dissimilar tastes in music, different perspectives on how to manage money, divergent expectations on best uses of time, disparate notions around planning for the future, etc. You get the picture.  It’s a clumsy walk.  Now we have to collaborate in little and big decisions.  Identify priorities for our relationship and agree upon ways to fulfill them.  Budget money for immediate expenses AND allocate it toward long term goals.   Learn what it means to be a partner while also honoring and providing space for each other’s independence.  Accept flaws and mistakes without later using them as leverage against one another.  Work in partnership raising our first child.

After the marital oath of cleaving as one flesh, our grafted limbs are evolving to thrive collaboratively.  But we have to share in creating answers.  What do we need to do to prepare for the future?  What are the best approaches to solve problems?  How do we nurture interdependence and maintain independence?  What do we lose in order to gain? As woman AND wife, a pressing duality I constantly address is how to prosper us AND be true to myself?

Here’s what I am discovering . . .

Being a wife is a new role. Grow into it.  You don’t simply step into the role of a wife like a wedding dress. You evolve to fulfill it.  So don’t clutter your growth into this role with assumptions or comparisons.  Let go of ideals and magazine exaggerations.   Explore and invest in what it means for you to be a wife for yourself and to your partner.  Give yourself permission and time to experience, evaluate, and even revise accordingly.

Dialogue.  Devote space and time to broach and disclose fears, concerns, and dilemmas.  Uncomfortable topics that go undiscussed (like money, parenting, a need for quality time alone, etc.) eventually fester.  Making them transparent and in the open diffuses their cancerous potential to leach from your primary goal to grow as allies.  But be careful not to bulldoze your partner into meetings.  While I thought it efficient to have weekly conference calls while planning our wedding—agenda and all—my husband thought these meetings at times were burdensome overkill.

Preserve what is personally important to you.  It is very easy (and implicitly expected) that upon becoming a wife to sacrifice personal happiness for the “greater good” of marriage and family.  Yet if you are not happy, what fruits of yourself can you offer others?  Marriage and parenting WILL impact the amount of time you can devote to fulfilling your passions, but foregoing and sacrificing them altogether is an unhealthy solution.  Find ways to maintain what feeds your core.  While now I have to fit writing in between schedules I have with my child and husband (like writing blogs at 2am), doing so maintains my wholeness.

I wasn’t tooled with blueprints to structure this marriage.  At times I fray at edges and peel at margins. What I am learning from the daily walk is that I unfold the answers through folded hands (physical and spiritual).  Surrendering to the unfolding helps me carry out and accomplish these roles as best I can.

(This blogpost occurs simultaneously in MBAMOM’s May 2012 newsletter as “Wife and Mother: What I Wonder”).

(Artwork: Woman Thinking by Stephanie Clair)

To read others’ responses, or to write your own, please click the red button below.  

To read previous posts scroll to bottom right side of page and click on title of choice.

Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman Redux: Are We a Nation Rhetorically at War with Itself?

What do we as a nation think of the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case?   Here are recent posts from CNN’s website covering different aspects of the Trayvon Martin case.[1][2]

you know: what a good scapegoat for blacks to point at and cry racism.

P41: Caucasians are liars, murderers, thieves, rapists, sodomites, false witnesses, blasphemers, gluttons, idolaters, envious, lazy, swindlers, haters of GOD ALMIGHTY, and of the ORIGINAL BLACK MAN, BLACK WOMAN, AND CHILD.

Turbokorper: …there once was a community of thugs
…who were really good at pimpin’ and selling drugs
…we just move away,
…hopin’ they will stay,
…in the squalor, the crime and the bugs.

Lagergeld: Zimmerman is a brown Mestizo like the average Mexican yet CNN and the other networks keep pimping the lie that he is white to promote such BS agendas as this and to somehow twist words, journalistic accuracy, and reality itself to make some freak show tie-in to Emmett Till.  This is Communist News Network. As you were, Comrades.

Kimip: Far more Republicans (56%) than Democrats (25%) say there has been too much coverage of Martin’s death, Big surprise there. They would only care if it was someone from corporate America that was shot and killed. 

Michwill: If you’re not a part of the black community you need to keep your opinions to yourself. We don’t comment on the priests that molest the white altar boys or all the pedophiles in your communities or even when the white husband decides to kill himself and the whole family!!

Justice Has Occurred: I just read some of Trayvon’s published tweets. He was an inmate waiting to happen. Putting him down now may have saved some lives…black and white.

Recent responses to the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman dynamic have clearly plucked a raw nerve, suggesting that this case has repercussions and ripples extending beyond that fatal night.  In some respects, the case has us all examining our experience of race and ethnicity in this shared country, particularly around civil liberties, law enforcement, due process, interactions with other ethnic groups and the perceptions we believe others hold of us based on our own positionality.  This is a case that harnesses within both individuals and groups a pulsing plethora of emotions and positions: vulnerable, victimized, and vindicated.   It is hard to not take aspects of the case personally and be impacted by them.

But as suggested by the smattering of the comments above, there is an undercurrent that is surfacing.  That facts and aspects of the case are being chiseled into reactions that are then used as leverage to hurt and harm a stranger or unsuspecting group.  What particularly resonates with me are some of the personal attacks that people have hurled at one another.  It’s made for a charged atmosphere of hurt feelings and caustic retaliation, the flinging of accusations and assumed political agendas.

Yet I wonder about the impact of such flagrant and rampant personalization, how it is churning and festering within us as citizens of a shared nation, leading us into then maliciously attacking specific individuals and groups. To some degree, it is human nature to hurt when harmed (a scorned lover, a bullied child).  But to sharpen understandings of the case into weapons to inflict undue damage is making for unfortunate fallout.  A failing of compassion.  A missed opportunity to understand and be understood.

The inflation of the case whereby people are using it to insult, instigate, implicate, and inculcate fellow humans does nothing to further understanding the incident, the case, each other or us as a nation.  But what the hurling of such incendiary comments, abuse of facts from the case, and exploitation of stereotypes does is beg us to look into the mirror.  Why are we using this case to purposefully and deliberately disrobe, dismiss and denigrate?  Why are we fashioning the hurling of hurt? What benefit manifests from adding insult to injury?  What long-lasting good comes from using this case to leverage insults against fellow humans? What do any of us score, or even win?

Why are the branches attacking the body?

This is not to suggest anything against our right to free speech.  This does detract from the historical, social and cultural backdrop against which this case occurs.  But we can retain emotive clarity.  When I read such comments as those listed above, and see their growing proliferation like dandelion spawns in blistery winds, I wonder where else they will land.

And, like the nature of weeds, what potential for life they will begin to choke.

---

[1] Study: Republicans, whites more tired of Trayvon Martin coverage. CNN.com. April 5, 2012. http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/04/justice/florida-teen-shooting/index.html?hpt=ju_t4

[2] Trayvon’s Death: Echoes of Emmett Till? CNN.com. March 24^th, 2012.  http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/24/trayvons-death-echoes-of-emmett-till/comment-page-3/#comments

To read others’ responses, or to write your own, please click the red button below.  

To read previous posts scroll to bottom right side of page and click on title of choice.

From Native Son to Invisible Man: Reflections on Trayvon Martin and Rearing a Black Man-Child in America

Early this morning I was drafting a guest blog post about what it is like to be a new wife and mother. The wife version I completed, and just when I was to start drafting the part about raising a son, I read several posts and articles about Trayvon Martin’s murder. And I read Sheree’s FB post that ignited my heart and fright. 

What a tragedy of life and travesty of justice.

I then heard my son crying and went to check on him. He drifted back to sleep, except for grabbing my thumb which he would not let go of even while sleeping. After reading of this event, it moves me even more that my son trusts me to comfort him, even in his sleep.

But I don’t trust the world to protect him. Or my husband.

I asked hubby while eating breakfast today to be careful, for he is someone’s son. And he is someone’s father.

George Zimmerman’s father advocated on his behalf, yet I wonder if George thought of the impact of his actions on Trayvon’s mother and father who would be affected by what he was about to do to their son. About the dangerous stereotype he was about to reinvigorate and perpetuate because of his skewed vigilantism (how can you claim self defense when you pursue someone despite the police dispatcher’s admonishment to not do so?). About the permission he took that was not his to take in the taking of life.

As he walks free. While many of us hold sons, husbands, fathers, uncles, and brothers tighter in our grasp.

It’s 2012, and black men continue to be a hunted endangered species.

I think I will be writing a different piece about what it is like to be a mother . . .

For the weeks and months to come, many will write about the tragedy of the murder of Trayvon Martin, and the travesty of justice they foresee as imminent.  The contemplations, discussions, and emotions will be broadened to encompass indignation toward Geraldo’s flippant “hoodie” defense (what happens when you dress a certain way), the desired resignation of the neophyte Sanford Chief of Police and examination of his department’s shoddy execution of investigation and due diligence, and musings over how long the slaying of a yet another Black youth will dwell in the nation’s conscious after mainstream media no longer broadcasts it.  Yet what’s begun to stir within me is an investigation of me, of the inner workings of the new intimate space within me called parent, of what I am responsible for doing in rearing my newborn son to endure (and survive) a current and post-Trayvon Martin era.

The excerpt above was the first of two Facebook posts I wrote emotively on March 19^th after hearing about this young son’s death.  The holding of my own son, who arrived just a few short months ago, has suddenly become more intense, an honest reaction to a hellish circumstance.  But while my arms can for now shield his growing body, the eventuality is that he will outgrow them.  Although he will practice his first steps within the preparation, guidance, and sanctuary of my arms, the eventuality is that he will walk away from me into and within the world outside them.  If I have done my job well, he will be learned and equipped in how to stand on his own.  On his physical legs, yes. Yet I contemplate how best to support his standing with strategies for straddling his inherited duality; although he is spiritually and ancestrally a temple, he is a target socially, culturally, and historically.

The scrimmage fought between being a man-child of great potential and the caricature misinterpreted as being executable is a stark reality. It is alarming that prisons are built at a rate proportionate to students’ performance on elementary literacy tests, the notorious cradle-to-prison pipeline.  And many of us are now resorting (rightfully) to practicing with our sons how to interact with law enforcement (how to speak, how to posture, how not to exude being a “threat” or “menace”).  The gravity of protecting and harvesting a son (both my own and our collective) weighs on me.  I vacillate between which should “weigh” more—helping him to harness his holiness and hopes, or conduct regular drills with him on how to interface with the outer emboldened and armed law enforcement representatives and fanatics.  For this brief moment, I feel parenting duties prioritized to preserving his physical life, and once out of my arms’ reach how to effectively (ideally) do so on his own.  As my role as a parent daily unfolds, so does my quandary and question over what takes precedence in what to teach and educate.

Without Sanctuary, Lynching Photography in America, chronicles the epidemic lynching of yesteryear and its commercialization through postcards (yes, people could send well wishes to family on one side with the image of an incinerated and castrated body on the other).  Lynching, this cultural attitude legitimizing the denigration and objectification of black males and the abhorrent act manifesting from it, seems to be rearing its ugly head, with strange fruit again populating our nation’s fatigued trees (Sean Bell, Ramarley Graham, and those  whose lives ended suspiciously as chronicled by filmmaker Keith Beauchamp in “The Injustice Files: At the End of a Rope” to name a few, regrettably).   Trayvon’s death eerily echoes and harkens back to this era, as Zimmerman’s 911 calls serve as the prelude to the semi-automated lynching he was about to conduct.  Or has the era ever left us?

This is my initial reaction as a parent.  To save my offspring  from harm.  To guard what is of my flesh, my incubation.  To prepare him for a hostile world.  We know the risks of bringing forth a man-child in this land of promise (though not always of promises kept).  He is a native son, born into the milieu of fear, flight, and fate that is disproportionately slated for our young men.  He will have to make strategic decisions in his navigations and negotiations as an invisible man in these states.  Therefore, I wonder how much I must teach my son how much his body is and is not his.  What places he can and cannot be (and at what times).  What he can and cannot wear.  How he can and cannot speak.  I feel the pressure of teaching him that daily he will have to walk and breathe in duality.  To know it is his right to live by his own construction, but that such living will intersect and conflict with, as well as disrupt, others’ construction of him (and how people may consequently act on those constructions regardless of his innocence or best intentions).

Though Trayvon’s parents did not will his son to be a sacrificial lamb or martyr (nor would any parent of their lamb), they took the risk to release their son into the world; an innocent who went into the world alone was returned to them in a body bag.  However, his life and death harnessed and galvanized an insurrection and reflection bigger than himself.

But I/we as parents must be and remain brave and bold.

My infant son’s favorite position is being perched on my shoulders.  There, he steadies himself, hands and forearms braced against my shoulders.  His routine is first to peer over my shoulders, then emboldened, begins his ritual of incessantly searching out the world around him. Rapidly rotating from side to side, his eyes and head venture then fixate.  Venture, and then fixate.  Quickly that shoulder’s geography becomes a bore, and like a rock climber ambitiously leaping to a new rock, so does he.   I catch and cradle his search, support his navigation, lest he lose balance and fall from pursuing and practicing his ambition.

But this is the point.  Instinctively, he trusts (and ideally all children trust in their guardians) I will support his ambitions and protect him in his pursuit of them.  Though in these recent weeks I feel intimidated by the possible taking of my son’s life by others armed myopia, faith reminds me that the most selfish thing I can now do is cage my son.  It is important to teach him what Jesse Washington dubs “the Black Code” of conduct (1) when having to deal with law enforcement representatives and in situations that challenge his life, but he was not born or purposed solely to fulfill his or anyone else’s fear.  I would be less than a parent to teach him to cage himself because of the cowardice and inner conflict harbored and festering in others.  He trusts me that while in my arms and upon my shoulders I will bolster his investigations of the world, and support him venturing into it.

The second post I wrote on March 19^th is my ideal, my illustration, of how I am trying to raise my son.

After playing on our alphabet playmat, my son in exhaustion drifts to sleep. Resting his head on my thigh, he found his comfortable spot and relaxed. Both of us breathing heavy. Him as he descends into deep sleep. Me as I descend in thinking about Trayvon Martin. 

Will he grow from “native son” to “invisible man” (pun intended on Wright’s and Ellison’s seminal works)? Are sons and statistics interchangeable? Synonymous?

I am thinking on the world in which my son is born into, and what we will need to do to steel, strengthen, prepare and guard him. And also what we will need to instill in his imagination as chords for an (ideally) melodic world he will have to create.

And I wonder what fellow parents raising sons are wondering too . . .

(1) http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gNZGRWMd7msShtng3-UP3YcivEuw?docId=cf76e46b87df4e90bbf77cbbbabce150

To read others’ responses, or to write your own, please click the red button below.  

To read previous posts scroll to bottom right side of page and click on title of choice.

Looking into the Mirror of a Great Divide: How We Define Ourselves at the Expense of Others

In the recent blogpost titled “Black Canadian Like Me,” Alyson Renaldo suggests a contention between kindred of shared borders—Black Canadians and African Americans. She recycles the “Black on Black” crime of people of shared African Diasporic experience disliking and distancing themselves from each other, suggesting that cultural cluelessness, assimilation, and a “lack of reaching back” are the culprits.  Yet in irritating this sore spot, is the author as much its promoter as its clarifier, when suggesting for example that artist Jill Scott’s lyrical references to southern cuisine lacks insight and makes her “clueless” to the cultural experiences of others, and the questions of one Los Angeles bus driver to the author about her diction suggest a universal myopia about African Americans’ understandings of other Black people’s experiences?  The post below explores the dimensions of Alyson’s argument, and the larger dilemma underlying the building and burning of bridges between Diasporic neighbors.

In the blogpost “Black Canadian Like Me” (http://www.theroot.com/views/black-canadian-me), Alyson Renaldo begins her blog sharing reflections on recently attending a Jill Scott concert in Canada with her friends.  She admires Jill’s music, acknowledging it as a portal into an intimate portrait of Jill, a translation of personal experiences churned into lyrical public artifacts.  But it is this very translation that the author criticizes and deems offensive, indicting Jill’s song on a platform larger than her lyrics, holds the song responsible for more than self-expression.  Going wider and deeper than classifying Jill’s performance as creative expression, she critiques both Jill’s song and herself as an artist.  Because Alyson and her friends were unfamiliar with some of the cuisine and cultural references Jill made, the author alludes to Jill’s references to food as intentionally excluding her and her friends from what “should” have been a concert of inclusivity. What follows are some of the comments Alyson and her friends recorded that they made during this collision between concert and culture:

“[Jill’s] just setting up her experience in the song. But, well, not really, because she’s asking us to reminisce with her, which means we’re supposed to know about these strange food combinations, too,” and “I don’t think they know there are others on the planet with them. Maybe she thinks the ‘c’ in ‘Canada’ really stands for ‘Carolinas.’”

Alyson and her friends situate Jill’s center of gravity—how she defines herself—as off-putting, and in the author’s words, “cultural cluelessness.”  She asserts that Jill Scott disappointedly does not take into consideration the experiences of others within her music; talking about certain cuisine indicative of her personal story excludes and alienates others’ stories.

The author seems to be going in the direction of a cultural indictment of a personal cuisine-based affinity upheld by Jill Scott, but is using Jill’s lyrics to lead into a generalized assumption of African Americans’ cultural insularity and exclusivity. She interprets Jill’s culinary affinity as an elitist cultural alienation of them, foregrounding it as an implication of African Americans as a whole as being culturally insular and ignorant.  Using the concert as a case study, the author devotes the rest of the blog to also discussing a premise that African-Americans participate in a self-erasure, with this erasure being a non-affiliation with Diasporic cultural and historical roots, a cultural and ethnic myopia whereby border kindred of African Descent (in this case, Canadians) are disregarded, and an unhealthy assimilation and absorption of Americana.

The blog has me pondering, and probably will continue so long after writing my own response.  Trying best to not write tit for tat, there is something about this supposition of Diasporic and border-based betrayal that does not rest well.  I think the blogpost offers a personal account about how one’s identity is formed and informed by historical and contemporary factors, but makes an over-sweeping judgment to about African Americans as a whole that further contributes fuel to an artificial fight between the survivors of the African Diaspora.

Jill Didn’t Mean No Harm

Alyson frames Jill Scott as “culturally clueless” because of the particular culinary references and cultural connections she made with them.   However, artists work on dual planes—they express a particularized experience, yet do so in forums which universalize its access and foster new possibilities.  This universal access then allows as audience to experience the framing of life as offered by the artist, while also being invited to innovate upon this offering by infusing or revising pieces of ourselves (writing a poem or essay based on a phrase, creating a dance to complement it, reminisce about a time in our lives when we experienced similar, do research, ask questions, etc.).  As another option, we can accept it at face value as just an artist’s interpretation and integrate nothing of ourselves.  To Jill’s defense (and credit), while not everyone grows up on collard greens and candied sweets as particularized by her, there is a universal human experience induced by food and tradition.  As a universal human experience, food and tradition are intertwined, used to commemorate universally human events such as rites of passage, marriage, birth, death, war, victory, etc.

Art is an invitation into a dialogue between artist and audience, a conversation amongst a multiplicity of beings.   I am a fan of Jill Scott in how she mixes a range of emotions, experiences and epiphanies with a range of sounds.  I admire how John Coltrane translates the divine into music.  Composer Clint Mansell generates a soundtrack for the movie “Requiem for a Dream” that gives a sound to addition—razor-backed, uncomfortable, brooding and solemn.  Teena Marie blends guitar and a multi-octave range to make compelling narratives.  Jamiroquai makes the ethereal into the audible.  Astrud Gilberto sings Bossa Nova in a way that is seductive, soothing, and sonorous.  Yo-Yo Ma interprets the history of countries and different music genres, rendering them into melded art.  I may not come from where each of these musicians comes from, nor agree with or enjoy everything each produces.  But, as artists do, by siphoning their specific experience through music, each provides a medium and channel into the human experience.   So to argue as Alyson does that someone’s articulation of his/her experience to be deliberately excluding of others is a huge stretch.  To suggest that an artist’s singular articulation is endemic of a practice of a people is erroneous and unfair condemnation (I’ll return back to this point in the next section).

We have to be careful of criticizing musicians (and perhaps artists in general) as cultural elitists and exclusionists because of references made in a song, and just because some references are unfamiliar or outside the realm of our specific experience.  My husband is a fan of several artists old and new, across a span of artists (from Aretha to Adele, from The Dramatics to The Bee Gees, from David Ruffin to Neil Diamond), eras (60’s, 70’s, 80’s), genres (movie scores to classic soul) and continents (here and abroad).  Several of my nieces love and grew up with Soca and Calypso.  Being around them has made for me a feeling of discomfort because I am unfamiliar with many of the songs and artists they like.  However, it is the intersection of our shared lives as family, amidst this discomfort, that has encouraged me to ask questions and penetrate past a wall of assumed difference, rather than be immobilized by assumption.  Lesson learned  and the take-away. . .while there is variance in our musical tastes, and in the content and cultural referencing of the artists, these things make for more of an opportunity for curiosity than criticism or Diasporic cutterage.

Cultural identity Held Up in the Mirrors of Others’ Eyes

Another argument made in Alyson’s blog is that there people of the Diaspora living in the United States  “process race and community differently than I” (than Canadian-located counterparts), that there was a kind of oppression-and-assimilation orientation that people of color in the United States hold compared to brethren living in Canada.  She recounts her rearing as being entrenched with identifying with the country of family origin, not current location (in this case, Canada where she was born as a citizen).  She makes several statements that that end.  For example, she states, “It was absolutely unheard of for anyone of my ilk to claim Canada,” which “absolutely everything, from your table etiquette to your family pride — was figuratively imported,” and “my generation’s parents knew what they were doing when they insisted on raising us as West Indians first, rather than Canadian.”

There are two implications here.  One is that only Alyson has been reared this way, suggesting that no other immigrant groups, whether voluntary or involuntary, practice the preservation and continuation of old traditions in new lands and inculcate their young to do the same.  Second, the author implies that if someone was not raised this same isolationistic way, that she or he is deprived and “less than.”  The author’s mentioning of how she “processes race and community” seems more as to bring separative distinction and deliberate distancing to the forefront.  Isn’t this the very same elitism she accuses Jill Scott of doing during the concert?  Jill is accused of cultural elitism because of references made in a song and “promoted” during a concert, yet the same indictment could be imposed here for the author’s elevation of how she was raised to the assumed absence of how others are not.

The author also makes an interesting statement about her rearing and interracial interactions between white Canadians and people of the African Diaspora living in Canada.  She asserts that in Canada there is a deliberate distancing between those of West Indian descent and the white majority:

“. . . when it comes to my sense of self, I am Caribbean, first and foremost.

As a child of West Indian immigrants, I clearly remember my dual development: When I stepped outside, my whole world was white, with a smattering of minorities, but when I returned home, the inverse was true. My entire socialization mirrored black and West Indian sensibilities, training that took place exclusively at home. All standards of progress were set by West Indian ideals. None of this was explicitly articulated so much as explicitly modeled.

It could be reasonably surmised that, as a community, we were invested in privacy and distance from the majority. Our parents interacted with the country’s white majority as one would a friendly co-worker. Caucasians were not our parents’ superiors — nor were they subordinate. They were just people with whom our parents were expected to spend significant amounts of time. Granted, if, while using this model, they forged friendships, that was cool, but it wasn’t even remotely necessary or solicited. Also, it goes without saying that it was not considered wise to bring one’s ‘work’ home . . .

Perhaps my generation’s parents knew what they were doing when they insisted on raising us as West Indians first, rather than Canadian. It meant that we could live within a white majority but not be defined by that majority. This is how our parents ensured our solid foundation, which was and remains an immeasurable gift.”

The author states that confining interactions with “the majority” to just work is optimal to preserving one’s own identity.  To contrast, it is the lack of preserving this distance, and the adoption of “the American dream” has led to the “downfall” of African Americans. Based on a brief stint of living and going to school in Los Angeles, talking with a bus driver, and attending a party with white Americans, Alyson contends her understandings about African Americans grew.  Yet the author condescending argument has holes as well, as evinced by judgmental comments about African Americans such as, “[there is the] American cultural norm of self-absorption, a trait to which black Americans are not immune,” “I had completely forgotten is that black Americans are still Americans, a nation firm in its resolve that no person or thing on this planet — or in the heavens — matters as much as they do.”

Alyson doesn’t specifically state what she believes as the way African American process race and community, and its differences to her own.  By implication, it seems from the blogpost she is suggesting “differently” that being born as an African American means to be devoid of rearing that infuses one’s growing up with being brought up with history, knowledge and traditions of Diasporic ancestry.   It also implies an over-willingness to accept, acculturate and assimilate the beliefs and practices of the dominant culture—to the consequential cheapening of one’s self.   Her premise also implies that to assimilate some beliefs, to participate in some of the traditions of one’s current country of citizenship, is a cheapening of oneself.  Suggesting that there was not enough “resistance” placed against integration and “hence the consequence” of marginalization.  As if to suggest living a daily strategic negotiation on multiple fronts of culture, employment, and identity are demeaning work.

However, growing up through multiplicity does not lead to mediocrity or “selling out.”  As a woman of color born and living in the United States, I am the culmination of various experiences.  Some directly rooted in my ancestry and ancestral history, others based on living within a multi-ethnic nation.  Some experiences I have had through growing up in a major urban city, others from visiting family in rural settings.  Some experiences are inherited from family traditions, others from sharing in the family experiences of others.  Some experiences as a woman of color have helped me ascend, other have been afflictions because of people’s assumptions based on my gender and ethnicity.  Who we come to be is more mosaic than singular.

I was not sure of the connections the author makes between Jill Scott’s music, her cultural upbringing, and suppositions about the African American experience.  What I did read and note was the tracing of experiences distancing, in both the author’s accounts and also in my experience as the audience.  A conventional conclusion that summarizes talking points wouldn’t do justice here, because what Alyson’s blogpost brings up is the need for more dialogue and conversation across borders of land and heart.

For now, for us all I offer one suggestion.  Stop placing so much responsibility on a song, and so little on introspection.

To read others’ responses, or to write your own, please click the red button below.  

To read previous posts scroll to bottom right side of page and click on title of choice.

This Woman’s Work: Blueprints for Being an Activist

Article for Bronze Magazine Anniversary Issue, November/December 2011

“a woman sleeps as if
tomorrow a war will begin” –Vera Pavlova

For the 1^st anniversary of Bronze Magazine (http://bronzemagonline.com), I wrote this article about the activism of women locally and internationally.  It highlights the involvement and investment of women in efforts spanning environmental issues, AIDS awareness, exposing governmental tyranny, educational advocacy, self- defense, and helping adolescents plan and prepare for the future.  But the writing of the article extends beyond telling about the impact of others.  I wrote it to also make a space for women to tell about the work they too are doing here and abroad.  To create an open space to share what each of us is doing to make a difference, move others from margin to center, contemplate a new world, and speak truth to power. 

I invite you to share at the end of this article the ways YOU are making a difference.

 

This morning I began drafting a blog about inspirational women, meditating on the living examples of goodness they harbor and promote.  Sister friends like Carla, Lisa, Kim, Karen, and Tonya balancing being employed while raising children, pursuing personal passions, and nurturing relationships. Deceased kindred such as my mother, aunt, and Eastern Star sisters who by bloodline and example exemplify what can become possible.  Their dreams pulse now in my blood.  Writers like Audre Lorde who used words as tools to instigate and liberate, playwrights like Adrienne Kennedy who pushed the envelope of drama by tooling it to shed light into our darknesses.

Yet, I indulge the guilty pleasure of watching the “Basketball Wives” and “Real Housewives” franchises, with a fascination of what will happen next.  Who will be the next woman to get a drink and then a fist thrown at her, a knife of venomous words plunged into her back, a secret put on blast, a reputation that gets her thrown under the bus?  But the actions and outcomes are cyclical.  After repetitiously seeing the cattiness, two-facedness, duplicitous fidelity, diabolical planning, sinister backstabbing, escalating emotional bullying and downright physical assault, a command for different is radiating from inside. I think I reached the saturation point of witnessing the broadcast of the basest aspect of womanhood, and the affirmation such shows get in the forms of high viewership and popularity.  But at the end of the hour, what can be culled as inspiration, a lesson, experience, strategy or new outlook that we can glean from watching women on “reality” shows to then employ and emulate in our life’s work?  There’s nothing new to learn.  So why are such shows so popular, despite the nullifying examples of trailblazing women like Suzanne Malveaux, Shirley Chisholm, Cathy Hughes, Rolonda Watts, Malkia Amala Cyril, Shirley Ceasar, Ursula Burns, Cicely Tyson, Carol Jenkins, Donna Brazile, and Oprah Winfrey?

I’ve reached critical mass.  A new reaction beside distaste and criticism has to occur.  Taking my own thoughts off the video editing floor, I am taking some time to reflect on the tenacity, resilience, spirituality, talent, sacrifice, perseverance, benevolence, insight, intelligence, ferocity, savvy, surrender and serenity harbored and offered by the phenomenal women who use breath other than to bait kindred for public entertainment.

What’s absent needs to be made present.

Marypat Hector, in her recent blog “Enough with the Basketball Wives, Let’s Talk About Girl Power!” identifies several young women under the age of 30 whose lives, while not regularly broadcast on a weekly show, demonstrate contributions that confirm what our hands can produce when devoted to creating change instead of slapping a woman in the face and decimating her worth.[1]  Through her efforts as Executive Director of the National Action Network and contributing writer to NewsOne, Tamika D. Mallory uses her life and access to media outlets to bring to light issues of violence within the African-American community. [2] Dominique Sharpton, Director of Membership for the National Action Network and thespian, employs her talents resulting in the near tripling of the organization’s membership from since 2008, producing her father’s syndicated radio show, organizing marches and rallies, and creating several venues and outlets for youth to express their artistic talents.[3]  CNN Hero, activist,  author, college student and black belt martial artist Dallas Jessup, after seeing in the news the abduction of a young girl, uses her life to train girls and women in self defense through self-produced training videos, and facilitating activism within communities worldwide through her non-profit organization Just Yell Fire.[4] Environmental activist and author Jordan Howard, after being a Green Ambassador at Environmental Charter High School in Los Angeles, employs her learning of the environment to galvanize others, using films to educate the masses about sustainable living, leading and organizing the Rise Above Plastics “Student Speaker Series” that trains fellow young adults in how to promote environmental awareness within their communities, and participating in various political and social forums to raise awareness.[5]  AIDS activist and living testimony Hydeia Broadbent devotes her life experience of being born with HIV to inform the consciousness of the world, doing so through several national television and radio shows, educational institutions, panel discussions as well as international forums.[6]

And I’d also like to add three friends who are phenomenal agents of change. Angela Romans, currently Senior Advisor on Education to the Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, has worked in several community-based organizations, public schools, institutions of higher education, and political capacities to avail post-secondary opportunities to under-represented youth. [7] Tiffany Gardner is founder and Executive Director of One World Foundation, whose mission is to “develop and place young leaders (18 to 25) from poor and under-represented backgrounds in human rights and development service projects and prepare them for leadership in both the public and private sectors.”[8]  Finally, school social worker and aspiring graduate student Tonetta Collins works tirelessly in her job and within the organization CEOKids of Atlanta,[9] describing her work within the organization as helping “middle schoolers connect what they are learning in school to real world professions . . . to realize their gifts and strengths at a time when their need for social acceptance becomes important and connect them to the possibilities.”

One-sentence descriptions of the activists mentioned here is an injustice to their selfless intentions and the impact of their work.  But, the point of naming each of these women and their contributions is to reclaim space polluted with exaggerated and bifurcating depictions of women:  we have media suggesting the “best” of women that is “worthy” of extensive broadcast is the banality of the actions of a select few.   Such is the purpose, nature, and success of the beast of media. These depictions are a concerted effort toward what Martha Lauzen in the documentary “Miss Representation” associates with symbolic annihilation.  Such depictions kill off a consciousness of what we are and can be other than what is harmfully exaggerated, intentionally manufactured and massively promulgated.  “You can’t be what you can’t see,” admonishes Marian Wright Edelman, which is the point of why some media images of women prevail over others.  Ask any of us to rattle off the names of “Basketball Wives” or “Real Housewives” cast women and it can be done in a heartbeat.  Ask us to name several contemporary female activists and HOW they pave roads for change, and we become mute, having first to do some research.

The women activists in this text counter such toxic messaging.  They are mirrors for us to see an affirmative reflection of ourselves, a counter portrayal illustrating purposeful uses of our breath in harnessing and improving others’ lives.  Mirrors that empower by deflecting the media’s transmission and instead position us to learn blueprints for making a difference locally and abroad.  The “reality show” wives are not extraordinary, nor are the scope and mission of these activists outside your own reach.

The message?  Contemplate how you ARE doing something to make the lives of others better.  Why is such reflection essential to our personal and collective existence?  Because the stakes are really high.  Consider the following statistics from the documentary “Miss Representation” that illustrates the disparity in the portrayal of women, and their actual presence in important media and political junctures:[10]

• Only 16% of protagonists in films are female
• Women comprise only 16% of all film writers, directors, producers, cinematographers and editors
• Women own only 5.8% of all television stations and 6% of radio stations
• Only 7% of directors and 10% of film writers are women
• Women make up 51% of the U.S. population but only 17% of Congress
• 34 women have ever served as governors in the United States, compared to 2,319 men
• 67 countries worldwide have had female presidents or prime ministers, of which the United States is not one of them

In examining yourself, what are the ways YOU make a difference in households, schools, communities, and board rooms, regardless if the cameras are on our off?  And are you broadcasting how you make a difference in the lives of others?  Who knows the work you are doing, and using YOU as an exemplar to learn how to replicate and reproduce it?

Broadening the scope of women’s work worldwide, we recently received news of three remarkable women who do not spend their time pointing out flaws and blasting the past of cast members.  Instead, they present palms and hearts to other women as allies to prove themselves embraceable.  Use their voices for the protection of others. Offer themselves as sister kindred to create chains of solidarity.  Harness and promote others’ potential.  Their lives are proffered as a sacrificial proof of commitment.  While their stories have taken time to traverse the oceans (regrettably), Leymah Gbowee mobilizes Liberian women to save their country from 14 years of civil strife, Yemenite Tawakkul Karman protests for the rights of journalists and an end to governmental corruption, and  Liberian President Ellie Johnson Sirleaf works in private and public sectors to rebuild her beloved country.  They have, now with the Nobel Peace Prize announcement, arrived on the shores of our minds, and I hope garnering a growing consciousness for what WE can do as women across borders physical and mental.

Leymah Gbowee is no stranger to the afflictions of war.  She was no stranger to children conscripted as toy soldiers and catalysts for a war they did not create but would be responsible for exploitatively executing (literally).  Young girls and women’s bodies were commoditized and brutally raped as the spoils of war.  Hunger became the crown and shroud of too many Liberians, with starved children dropping as new food for flies.  Liberia’s history of strife between warmongering avaricious warlords and a corrupt political regime, and its consequences, were regrettably familiar.  Having had enough, she prayed for peace. While pregnant with her third child, she incubated perseverance and persistence, birthing them into a mobilization of women to “pray the devil back to hell.”[11]

Leymah’s first work was transcending assumptions of religious difference, moving beyond fears of diluting or soiling each another’s religious dispositions.  Armed with conviction, and with fellow women compatriots, she mobilized Liberian Christian and Muslim women to unite in the commerce of peace, forging a collective effort to pressure religious leaders to advocate for them.   These “Market Women,” the fodder for what would later become WIPNET (Women in Peacebuilding Network), initially began protesting in white garments along roadsides of the presidential convoy so their need for peace would glare against the tinted windows.  Despite refusals of an audience, they continued to peacefully protest until gaining an audience with President Charles Taylor on April 23, 2003.  Stepping on fear and into faith, Leymah vocalized their position statement, presenting their entreaty for peace within their nation.

Following this presentation, peace talks between then President Taylor and warring factions convened in Accra, Ghana.  Assembling with Liberian women refugees already in Accra, together with the women of WIPNET they stood guard, daily vigilant to the need for peace in their country and attentively watching the warlords and President make progress to this end. After almost two months of posturing and jockeying for position, and seeing these men enjoy comforts of hospitality they did not enjoy while in the bushes, the women were fed up, and on July 21, 2003, they locked arms around the building where the talks were being held, asserting they will not allow the men to leave until the peace talks were taken seriously, and a treaty was reached.  Subsequently the talks changed in tone, content, and direction, and with eyes and pressure offered from the international world (the threat of funding to be cut off), change came.  Taylor was exiled to Nigeria, and a transitional government was installed.  WIPNET under Leymah’s efforts, knowing that the struggle for peace just began, returned working in their communities to promote the reconciliation of Liberia (such as forgiving the rebel soldiers), as well as educating their people about the candidates, laying the fodder for sister Nobel Peace Prize recipient Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in 2006 to become the first woman elected President of Liberia.

I write about Leymah’s work in detail because I had never heard of her, this radical mission or the incredible accomplishments of these Liberia women, until the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize and then watching the documentary “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” in October.  Given this event occurred in 2003, not knowing this women’s work until eight years later sheds a glaring spotlight on my own myopia.  Saturated with too many colonizing lies.   You may have experienced the same.  The rallying of women who were stripped of all things but belief, makes the rallying of women over futile gossip and fabricated drama pale in comparison.  On the “Racialicious” Blog, a blog about the intersections of race and pop culture, guest contributor RVCBard writes about such colonization in his post “Fandom and its Hatred of Black Women Characters.”[12]  Both the author and several dozen respondents commiserated that the syndicated depictions of women of color lack multi-dimensionality, yet fans’ responses have been vitriol.  To this observation, RVCBard comments that “what gets overlooked is that the way these characters are hated [referencing such characters as Martha Jones, Tara Thornton, Guinevere, and Mercedes Jones] happens in a particularly racialized and gendered way that echoes a lot of stereotypes about Black women.”[13] I would add to this mix “reality” shows as well.  Why aren’t there reality shows about women activists?  It has to go beyond simply the suppositions of low ratings and lack of interest.

Again, this is why it is so important that the work you do to make change be made known, not for kudos, but as catalysts and models for others illustrating what can be done, and how.  It took an announcement for such work to get a blip on my radar.  I am sure I am not alone.  Imagine if we pipelined the work we were each doing to improve the community and world, this information would not be exceptional.  Maybe I/we need to develop better pipelines to disseminate such information and role models to one another, instead of allowing the media to spoon-feed us stereotypes and caricatures.

Speaking of pipelines, Leymah’s work was the precedent and ground-laying foundation for another of the Nobel Peace Prize sisters.  Kindred recipient and countrywoman Ellie Johnson Sirleaf, veteran in finance and political sectors, has grounded her life’s work in nation building. Out of ashes of political strife and economic exploitation, she has been instrumental in helping the phoenix of Liberia resurrect itself.  She has served in several professional and political capacities and women’s groups.  Over the span of four decades, she served as one of the founding members  of  the International Institute for Women in Political Leadership Liberia’s Minister of Finance, President of the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment (LBDI), Vice President of CITICORP’s Africa Regional Office in Nairobi, Senior Loan Officer at the World Bank, Vice President for Equator Bank, and under the auspice of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) served as Assistant Administrator and Director of its Regional Bureau of Africa with the rank of Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations.[14]   Even in exile she continued to work on initiatives to prosper Liberia, such as the Kormah Development and Investment Corporation, a venture capital vehicle for African entrepreneurs, and Measuagoon, a Liberian non-profit community development organization that helps war-devastated rural communities rebuild themselves (doing such things as in 2002 bringing improved sanitation to the Budumbura Camp, a Liberian refugee camp in Ghana), and later subsidizing young girls’ education.[15]  In 2003, when Charles Taylor was exiled and the National Transitional Government of Liberia was formed, she served as Chairperson of the Governance Reform Commission, later culminating in her unprecedented inauguration on January 16, 2006 as the first female President of Liberia.  In this role, she continued her work to build her country by fostering relationships with regional partners and the international community, and attracting resources to rebuild Liberia’s infrastructure.  She has served on several peace-oriented, women-empowerment, transcontinental and international initiatives, and several advisory boards.

The Nobel Peace Prize trinity of transformation and advocacy is completed by Yemenite Tawakkul Karman.  Journalist and human rights advocate, she has taken the tools of her voice and beliefs to collect and rally her people.   The catalyst for her activism was the refusal of the government to intervene in the intentional displacement of 30 families expelled from their village so the land could be given to a tribal leader close to the president. [16]   To quote Karman, “They never responded to one of our demands.  It made it clear to me that this regime must fall.” Engaged in weekly protests since 2007, she established with compatriots a tent camp called “Change Square” in the heart of the capital city of Sanaa.[17] [18] Tawakkul’s work has been advocating for the rights of free press, heading such groups as “Women Journalists Without Chains.”  Additional advocacy entails demanding the release of political prisoners, unabashed protest against granting immunity to corrupt government officials of the current political regime, and being a parliament member of Al-Islah (Yemeni Congregation for Reform).[19]  She is both the first Yemenite and Arab woman to receive the award.

An intersection shared by all three NPP peacemakers is that they are all mothers.  They harness motherhood as motivation for their activism, an impetus for improving the lives of all, especially children, so they may inherit a better world.   Interestingly enough, motherhood is also a commonality shared with their “reality wives” counterparts.  The difference? The former spend no time labeling potential comrades in struggle as “worthless,” “jumpoffs,” or “crazy.”  They do not use voice or venom to garner and manufacture divisiveness, alienate or create pariahs from potential allies.  These activists employ their energies and talents to fling fists not at one another over fabricated squabbles, but to the brick and mortar of oppression.  They use their talents to channel and forge new pathways and possibilities.  They neither agitate already festering wounds, nor manufacture confrontations that last across episodes and legacies.  Leymah demonstrates cunning ability to transcend potential religious barriers to unite Christian and Muslim women in a united front.  Tawakkul transcends religious, political, and gender barriers to unite the voices of Yemeni people into one.  President Sirleaf integrates various initiatives to unite a people torn by war into a country of prosperity.

We don’t have to act like Pavlovian dogs conditioned to respond as “trained” by the media. We can bolster and build instead of berate or resign ourselves to pre-determined corners.  Our national sheroes and three Nobel Peace Prize Women Warriors offer alternative routes and models for how to use our energies and resources to magnify ours’ and other’s talents to promote and harness them all for the greater good of both gender and world. “Miss Representation” closes with offering suggestions for how we can do such work . . .

• Stop scrutinizing each other
• Support media that champions accomplished women
• Boycott media that objectifies and degrades women
• Write your own stores and create your own media about powerful women in non-traditional roles
• Be a mentor to others
• May we all make empowering other women and girls a priority

I am hoping at the end of this blog you will take a moment to write and post the ways you ARE an agent of change.  This could be the pipeline that activates change in others.  Please share your blueprints, and pass them down to us.  After reading a draft of this article, my friend/brother/mentor John Jenkins shared with me its impact on him:

“I am inspired to use my mouth and mind to spread good positive stories of impact so that others gain the authority to do the same. And in this way we will begin to create the counter-narrative of who we are, who women are in this world.”

In tribute to the women mentioned, and to you, I share an original poem about the fortitude of women activists and the lessons they pass down.

What’s absent needs to be made present.

****************************************

 

The North Star (for All Women Warriors)

Women/compose the North Star/

visions from their minds endow its shine,

spin its beams wide from dreams, and give it

pulsation from ripening affirmations/

transmitting from the transcended to the transcending.

 

Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman

clasped my hand,

hastening through muck and

dark with steeled steering

commanding, “Follow the North Star!”

 

They relay my hand to Ida B. Wells

who deposits pen into palm

to record and remind the world of

the law of lynching and lynching of the law

decreeing, “Write the North Star!”

 

She brought me to meet

Mary McCloud Bethune

who conferred my other hand with a degree/

with mind elevated, emancipated by education

declaring, “Teach others of the North Star!”

 

Then Zora Neale Hurston

visited on campus/

witnessing pen and degree advised

“Now chile, youz got th’ degree fo’ da mind,

Now ya need th’ degree of da spirit!”

Took me down to the muck,

shaking me all through

the Everglades, New Orleans, and the islands,

sprinkling dialects and roots on me,

and unleashing, “Conjure with the North Star!”

 

Then Septima Clark came forging through/

recruiting/opening Citizenship schools that

farm the word and grow the vote/

took me into crowded back rooms with adult kin

compelling, “Build a bridge for others to the North Star!”

 

She carried me West to Angela Davis

who on sidewalk and in classroom

vivified the intersections of politics, activism and

the responsibility of change/

escorting me from California to Cuba,

showing me light in prison of industry and prism of mind/

shot my arm straight into the sky

demanding, “Protest in the name of the North Star!”

 

Then we traipsed to the dance festival where

Judith Jamison and the troupe

were summoning the spirits.

The Black Swan, as principal, in principle

pulled me to her stage,

and sauntered, careened, strutted, sundered

my body into chanting limbs

proclaiming, “Dance in the name of the North Star!”

 

I pirouetted cross country back to the East

where Ntozake Shange recognized

who I was to be/

put a stage in my mouth/

sat me over roses to menstruate/

performing surgery on the art of me/

expunging mayhem/so it emote milk/

uttering, “Make language/for the North Star!”

 

Then my mother,

forger of road from heaven to earth

put her hand to her stomach

feeling for my hand back,

beckoning, “Now, come. Be the North Star!”

© TMY 2011

****************************************

It’s my sincere hope that this article/blogpost serve as a launching pad for others to become inspired by learning and familiarizing themselves about the work YOU do, to use YOU as a role model, and to contact YOU to contribute. If this blogpost does this, then the mission of writing this article has been fulfilled. To post your response, click the red “Response” button at the end of this blogpost.  A box will appear where you can type in your response.

Write a response in which you share about what organization (or movement)  you support, what communities you work within and support, the work you do, the impact you are trying to make, and contact information for more details.  Whether in your home or across the world, whether large or small scale, telling what you do MATTERS.  Amplifying your contributions to the audience hear helps us learn and grow.

Finally, please also support Bronze Magazine by purchasing a print or digital copy of the anniversary issue.  The founder and editor-in-chief, Shawn Chavis, created the magazine to invigorate and affirm fellow women and their work.  It is replete with information, insight, and inspiration. The site is  http://bit.ly/vtX9U6.

To read others’ responses, or to write your own, please click the red button below.  

To read previous posts scroll to bottom right side of page and click on title of choice.

---

[1] http://globalgrind.com/news/enough-basketball-wives-lets-talk-about-girl-power-photos

[2] http://nationalactionnetwork.net/tamika/

[3] http://nationalactionnetwork.net/about/staff/dominique-sharpton/

[4] http://www.dallasjessup.com/

[5] http://jordaninspires.com/

[6] http://www.hydeiabroadbent.com/

[7] http://www.providenceri.com/mayor/mayor-angel-taveras-names-angela-romans-senior

[8] http://theoneworldfoundation.org/

[9] https://www.facebook.com/CEOKids.Atlanta?sk=info

[10] http://missrepresentation.org/

[11] “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” is a documentary profiling Ms. Gbowee and the work of several women to bring peace to Liberia. http://praythedevilbacktohell.com/

[12] http://www.racialicious.com/2011/10/18/fandom-and-its-hatred-of-black-women-characters/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Racialicious+%28Racialicious+-+the+intersection+of+race+and+pop+culture%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

[13] http://www.racialicious.com/2011/10/18/fandom-and-its-hatred-of-black-women-characters/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Racialicious+%28Racialicious+-+the+intersection+of+race+and+pop+culture%29&utm_content=Google+Reader and http://arsmarginal.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/fandom-hates-black-women/

[14] http://www.emansion.gov.lr/content.php?sub=President’s%20Biography&related=The%20President

[15] http://www.theperspective.org/measuagoon.html, http://www.modernghana.com/news/24579/1/facility-to-benefit-25000-refugees-at-budumbura-ca.html, and http://www.liberianeducationtrust.org/grants.htm.

[16] http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2049476,00.html#ixzz1bJjfgXT9

[17] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/nobel-peace-winner-tawakkul-karman-dubbed-the-mother-of-yemens-revolution/2011/10/07/gIQAmU9HSL_story_1.html?sub=AR

[18] http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/10/201110711019647156.html

[19] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/07/tawakkul-karman-profile, and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15216473

An Autobiography of Poetry, Part 2: The Skin On Which This Poetry Is Written

In Part 1, the last blogpost, I chronicled how I came to write poetry.  In this second installment, poems from different periods in my life are shared.  The three poems are “Menstruation is My Poetry,” “One the Knees,” and “Scratched Scalp.”  Each one is prefaced with an introduction of how and why it came into existence.  Poems have become my life and death, the way I reflect on a moment in life, as well as how I bring chapters of experience to a close.  The writing of them serves as a mirror, a way to see what I am thinking and feeling, to draw it out, and make sense of the pieces.  To what grand puzzle do the pieces fit?  What product am I to generate from processing this experience? 

Menstruation is My Poetry

Menstruation is My Poetry is in homage to my mother and the struggle of women to reclaim their bodies from self-rejection, abnegation and humiliation.  She was an advocate of my body as beautiful simply in its being.  But as years passed, and the influences of what is beautiful in the culture began to seep in, I began questioning my worth.   Does the shape of my hips, length of my hair, color of my skin, deem me worthy of recognition and affection?  In addition, circling around my head and heart were several derogatory remarks about women and menstruation.  That because of “raging hormones” we unhinge and become sensitive, hysterical, or overbearing. For five days each month we become physically and emotional incapacitated.    References to the flow itself also become misnomers.  Menstruation was paralleled with being “on the rag,” “the curse,” and “the monthly” as something nasty, fishy, and painful.  And something that could “get you in trouble” (signaling to a young girl you are now able to get pregnant).  As these influences converged on my body and psyche, I felt foreign to myself.

In my early 20s, there are books I read confirming my mother’s words of my body and myself transcending definitions given to it by the outside world.  Hygieia: A Woman’s Herbal by Jeannine Parvati, is a book of herbal remedies for myriad conditions, but one section that really touched me was about menstruation.  There were inspirational writings, herbal remedies for cramping, as well as step-by-step methods for even making one’s own herbal pads.  Its’ approach to the body was of healing rather than concealing or even outright rejection.  Reading the book helped me feel a comfort with my body.  It was not a thing to fight against.   Another book was WomenWho Run with Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.   Reading stories, folklore and fairy tales from diverse cultures about the transcendental aspects of woman’s body and spirit gave me language and concepts I could use as tools against commercial exploration, stereotypes of limitations, or pornographic exaggerations

Such readings gave me a lens into thinking of my body not as something to shun, but a portal, a conduit, a channel of possibilities physical and spiritual.  Informed by part spiritual beliefs and archetypes, I began understanding a woman’s body as being given the great gift of translating the divine into flesh.  So the poem delves into how a woman’s menstruation is not an incapacitation, but a channel through which hers and others’ lives emerge.

Menstruation is my prophecy/

a talking galaxy/

a legacy of language/

that spells in five days/

the incarnation of my uterus/intone homage to

my hallowed region/my carnal reason that I am the gate

through which God passes to replicate/

my menses/my sabbath/reminds me

that for five days I am five Sundays/

recording the way woman can

translate God’s wishes into flesh/

menses is my monthly rest and test

to assess my worthiness to remain

the conjurer of children/the immortal porthole

where spirit becomes son

and man becomes multiple.

 

My menses are my melodies/

songs of ascending harmonies

brewing visions into victory/

chanting red rivers of inspiration

refocus my rejuvenation

for when I shall weave black nations/

each cramp a chord plucked for cleansing/

my holy harp mellowing/

the gospel of cyclical hatching/

not a dirge but to drench/

cause being a woman is a religious experience.

 

One day/summoned to reproduce reproduction/

bring forth the gift of giving

from orbits of eggs

housed primordial in pyramid/

eventually to rotate and spin

rhythms of moons named Malcolm and Iyesha.

 

So each month I prepare

as the old souls come down me/

remind me that

the health and heritage of my body and my people

are preserved by the shedding/

that these five days of closure and cleansing

anoint me before my journey.

 

My cycle

is conversation with the universe,

imagining and rehearsing

made possible by

inheritance of a temple of eggs

buried at conception/

resurrected each month to return me from woman back to the edge of genesis/

to transport child into destiny and embrace.

 

My menses announces my arrival

from bud to bloom/

nothingness to anew/

a gift of life to giver of life/

its language narrates my legacy of

dawning from girl to retiring as elder/

my adoption into a sacred tribe/

my rites of passage.

 

My menses is the museum of my mind/

a curator of my mission/

in destiny and divinity

my menstruation is my poetry/

my period of honest speech

where I write on cotton

the record of what has

stretched and strengthened,

strained and strangled me/

hindered my horizon from spreading/

my birthright from telling.

 

Each falling vessel

speaks of the vision

that someday

my rightful place under the sun will come/

the capture and collection of my closure

on cotton tells me so/yet the collection

has wrongfully been called abominable/

assessed evil and unclean

yet the period is so much more than the symptoms/

it/is not an it/but of her/of me/a gift/

it is a mine/it is mine/

it is our course and not our curse/

comes from the place where we are

first/songs commune in my canal.

© 2011 TMY

On the Knees, Where Macedonia was Born

“On the Knees, Where Macedonia was Born” emanated from a request from a fellow church member asking me to write something to commemorate Macedonia Baptist Church’s 70^th Anniversary.  To write the poem, I interviewed people to learn about the church’s history.  But I also wanted to conjure images of growing something from nothing, literally.  Recently I had seen the movie “Beloved” produced by Jonathan Demme. While not a fan of the movie’s interpretation compared to Morrison’s masterpiece, one scene that resonated with me was the one in which the slaves congregated and “held church” around a tree stump in the wilderness.  During slavery religious expression was institutionally restricted; our ancestors were stealthily resilient in practicing worship and maintaining tradition.  This history and the offshoot of resilience upheld by the founders of Macedonia became the impetus for writing the poem.

Later I found a book that chronicled the making of the movie through several writings and images, of which the aforementioned image was one.  As well, other images in the book showed the suppression of speaking (the use of iron bits) and the affliction imposed as a consequence of knowing too much (whip marks on the back), moved me too (so much that I incorporated them within the actual performance of the poem at the anniversary service).  Another movie that impacted me was “Sankofa” produced by Haile Gerima Mypheduh Films, Inc.  Its Anka- inspired admonition of remembering the past in order to move forward, and its message liberating oneself regardless of the cost, resonated with me.  The movies and images and history of the church converge in the poem.  Being able to show the resilience and perseverance of a people is its impetus.

I.       Call to Worship

Buildings can stand yet not be churches,

but churches can stand without four walls.

This is the beauty of being a displaced African.

 

Congregations constellated

long before the privilege of walls,

inching into communion/

embarking The Word,

championing The Word,

seeds in vacuum contradicting circumstance.

 

This church was built

not by the purchase of materials

but under the hems of walkers

worshipping/wielding/being wounded for The Word

across contesting border, armored indignation and soil called soul.

The beauty of unfolding a Christian.

 

Preaching and converting/

engaging the mouth/symbolizing the body/

the Word recruits/

a building does not recruit heights and hundreds/

only belief of being and doing more

than the confines of skin and persecution does.

The beauty of becoming faithful.

 

Mouths harboring Savior’s song/

cleansing others’ feet/

affliction churning blood into silt/

casualties of  inflicted misery/unyielding mercy.

The lineage of crusaders/

forging for us following as their longitudinal kin.

 

Tree barks would not betray our trust.

Our seedbed, sown deep in the forest,

builds from tree-stumped pulpits/rooted seats,

burning bush/instruments of hands voices feet/

domed by dusk/ canopies of leaves poring/ submitting with us/together

braiding arms,

rotating around common axis,

catalyzing Sovereignty/

unbraiding mouths/ soldered iron bit melts from tongue/

vaulting victory/ nooses lost their intimidation in strangling our praise/

rallying redemption/ shackles fraying into thread/

power indwelling/inhabiting us.

The beauty of purchasing life with purpose. Not by sight.

 

II.      Sermon

By surrendering hollowed

the skies within the founders’ hearts

clustered stars/ bodies as galvanizing vessels/

souls/portholes through which the harvest unfurled.

The beauty of relationship churning into religion.

 

Robed with word and will,

the charge now/again/is to

build and be built.

The Word,

as with ancestors,

as with our founders,

unsheathes the vocal blade,

readies earthen fields.

 

So with the charge of building a church,

the founders did not look first

for a building or lot

but inward for the first brick.

Their hands wrapped not around

building tools of cement or dirt

but around bibles and palms/

to pour Macedonia’s foundation.

 

Cords of the throat built the church/

seedling expeditions

of prayers watering the ground,

and with focused fertility, Macedonia was born.

 

Walking on visions,

pews and pulpit were

carved from ancient ambition/

Bricks were mortared word by word /

All purchased by prayer.

 

 

III.   Benediction

The church has crossed the marking of a new century.

Their words and works echo in remarkable sculptures/

Full now with newer warriors and students seeking sight.

Their convictions our footbridges,

the old voices recruit again/spinning His threads,

Continuing us in the cloth/

their elixir, continual/

His Will, realizing . . .

© 2011 TMY

Scratched Scalp

“Scratched Scalp” evolved from an experience of writing and performing with a group of phenomenally talented women. From different religious, ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientations, we converged to create a multi-poem performance piece that galvanized our experiences as women. I was honored to be adopted into the group, as the women had already worked together previously.  This poem was originally written as a call and response, with the group and me alternating reading portions of it.

In terms of content, the struggle with hair is one experienced by so many women of color.  Used to relegate the beauty of women (thinking of the song “Good and Bad Hair” from Spike Lee’s movie “School Daze”), hair has become for many of us a prism and prison.  But instead of capturing the affliction of how we maintain and wear our hair, I wanted to get to the root of the matter (pun intended).  I wanted to explore how doing one’s hair is a loving and sensory act, whereby the touching of the scalp makes for deeper relationships between the conjurer and the conjured.  My mother enjoyed when I did her hair.  There was a pride I felt in Mom wanting me to do her hair, from washing to relaxing to styling.  There was an honor I felt that she trusted her locks in her daughter’s hand.  I felt both great honor and great responsibility.  Before every shampooing, Mom always asked me to scratch her scalp.  And like clockwork she fell instantly to sleep.   Her sharing this vulnerability with me as her daughter touched my heart, still resonating in my memories.

Another tradition of hair Mommy and I was styling my hair (as do many mothers and daughters).   As a little girl, the ritual of daily bringing all my instruments, grease, bows and ribbons, then cuddling between her thighs as she parted and plaited my hair, was the foundation for how I would later reciprocate such loving care back to her.  This bond of how she cared for me, and later I for her, harnessed my hands to weave these memories into the tapestry of a poem that follows.

The poem is also tinged with a somewhat erotic goal.  I have always wanted a man to scratch my scalp and comb my hair.  I wanted him, metaphorically and literally, to transcend and share in this original bonding ritual typically enjoyed by mothers and daughters.  I’ve had the experience of men doing my hair (those that worked in salons and those in relationships), but these experiences did not reach the trust and intimacy I was looking to emulate (to no fault of their own).

 Housed in hut of long legs,

head to thigh, summoned

as when my mom did this little girl’s hair/

the surgeon began.

First at top and center of crown,

small pressure and with complete patience/

toning with surgical precision/he began

pulling the ACE comb

down the middle

top to nape, ear to ear/

prepping

to deforest my scalp.

 

Descending, spreading into sections,

clamping them securely,

long searching fingers

parse the four parts/

lifting roots,

upturning soil

follicle by follicle

loosing from each mouth/snow to fall/

scratching briskly/is hypnotic/

eyes closing/slumber imminent/

loosening/the Milky Way/is shedding

on toweled shoulders.

 

 

Warm thigh

cushions face and balances neck/while he

continues purposeful walk through garden

to dislodge debris/the scalp the instrument of conjuring.

This cartographer

with each combed dissection

unzipped astral bodies,

unveiling the troubles of the galaxy/

investigating and discerning with each gentle rake/

supernovas of stress/excited and confessional,

collapse ghosts onto awaiting bath towel/

goose bumps profess in explosive force/to finally

expel pimpled planets.

Shooting stars,

careening comets,

roaming meteors

dashing star ice/

luring me into a cosmic trance,

crumbling into communion caused by his hands.

 

 

Galactic children now all disarray, I am

unwoven from the debris of my scalp and hair/

some places are scratched raw and a little bleeding,

but I am returned a scalp that can breathe again.

Sleep cued to cure the journey, such that

 

when I tried to speak

moons

fell out

of my mouth.

© 2011 TMY

To read others’ responses, or to write your own, please click the red button below.  

To read previous posts scroll to bottom right side of page and click on title of choice.

The Stretching of Marks: An Autobiography of Poetry

This two-part installation is a chronicle of how and why I started writing.  I’ve been stuck in a rut about where to go and what to do with my poetry.  This first part is a kind of exploration into the origins of what has inspired me to write poetry.  I’m thinking the second part will be the sharing of the actual poems that have come out of this experience . . .

A Mecca of Stretch Marks

 Many rivers

scroll down

the bend of my waist,

cross my oceanic pelvis/as

 

wild wandering weeds

simmering under the canopy

of dark-splashed vines/as

 

lightning bolts raging/

scattering and bursting

blooming luminescent fission/

in thighed sky/in

 

whose plenitude

number paths

for each ovarian warrior

who will spring/to travel/

ready for war/for

 

branching

babies’ fingers to trace upward

to consult with kindred/that

 

leap and bend

with conjured joy

when his tongue

traces them/in

 

whose mud phoenixes

return to die,

submerge, and arise . . .

 

yes/

so many rivers/are

transporting from my stomach,

rimming my pelvis,

anchoring my thighs/that

 

I should not

think myself less

than being a delta

for all.

© 2011 TMY

My body is changing rapidly in this seventh month. My stomach expands and stretches outward to accommodate the inner life.  Especially present and growing are stretch marks.  Some darkly punctuated, others sprawling blond and blooming branches, they serve as symbols of incubation, as road maps my body travels to a destination called birth.  Their traversing exhibits the migration of life from inception to conception to initiation to commencement to resurrection.  They are wrongfully regarded as an abomination to be creamed and oiled away.

The stretching of marks has been a metaphor dancing in my head for awhile, which catalyzed into a life reflection emanating from a recent conversation with my husband.  He shared an epiphany about a relative’s behavior, namely how this relative’s consistent behaviors seemed attributable to the yearning to fit in, to be publically recognized and affirmed, even if the reflection is retracted in shallow waters.  Every time we visit, we’re propositioned to attend some form or another of a social networking event, but it takes the pulling teeth to get him to come to family events.  This metaphor and epiphany have stuck with me for weeks.  They seem to capture my “poetry rut.”  I finished my most recent manuscript this past December, but have only done two poetry performances so far this year.  It used to be different.

In earnest I want my poetry to be a public artifact, something sought after and devoured.  When I step onstage, I want the inhabitants in thunderous applause, the cacophony of noise and adulation brimming to overflow, and when I exit, riotous applause becomes my cape.  Who doesn’t want fame and acclaim for performing and publishing?   Well, that’s what my ego wants.  The humble side of me wants nothing more than simply to share a truth about what walking this life for four decades has been like.  To offer poems as mirrors for kinfolk to bear witness to reflections chosen and not chosen.

My husband’s analysis of my relative actually compelled me to turn my pen inward, to publish what was within that was “off.”  I told him that the last visit with this relative made me contemplate my own selfishness harboring deep in the marrow of  my  intentions and ambitions  doing open mics and finally (hopefully) publishing.  And this kind of coveting is keeping me from being both at peace and blooming.

I’m trying to be careful in not summoning an audience to a pity party, but maybe pondering together the origins of my poetry can help me move back to center, recalibrate my intentions.  There is a gift inside me, and yet competition.   How to get it out, and for whom? To what end? The one answer I do know is that I do not want to fade to black.

Poetry began for me in part from immersing in worlds harnessed by stories and sounds, reading mythology (Norse Gods and Giants), the “make your own adventure” books, the Bible and Prince songs.  Each steered my imaginings about what could be written about, encompassing love, battles of good versus evil, and the explanation for how and why things came into existence.  I tried my hand at emulation.  Writing Battle sequences, tragic love stories (my 6^th grade teacher called my mom about what I was being “exposed” to at home because of a Prince-inspired story I wrote): these were some of the topical curiosities my pen sprawled on paper.

My most private lamentations were housed within my adolescent journals.  Conventional complaints and suspirations  about growing up, crushes on teachers, the lack of a boyfriend, the quirks of bodily changes, friends, parents, etc.  I churned them into poems as a way to translate my feelings into “high art” (I smile). Pivotal to harvesting “my art” was my mother’s making of me to study the dictionary.  After doing my teachers’ homework, Mom assigned me to learn new words and apply them to the compositions she made me write as practice.  While tedious, thank God she made me study the dictionary, because it became (ironically) a source of inspiration.  The rote conquest for vocabulary expansion and SAT success led to something wonderful.  A love of words.  A love of words as portals.  The possibilities that could unfold from just one word, the worlds that could unfold from one word (some of my poetic experimentations include words like tohubohu).

Add to this lexical love an attraction to particular sounds.   I tried practicing how to put words to the sweeping music, and mimic the depth and complexities of the emotions enveloped in the songs.  Teena Marie’s lamentations of love living and dying like supernovas in songs such as “Casanova Brown,” “Out on a Limb,” and “Yes Indeed.”  Riveting and haunting classical recordings such as Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2, and Prelude in C-Sharp, Op.3, No. 2. Playing clarinet in the Bronx Borough-Wide Bands and Orchestras for years also inspired my ears and written translations.  Music such as “Caravan” by Duke Ellington, and “1812 Overture” claimed my attention, fueling future wants to learn how to capture such sweeps and battles of sounds in words.  This fondness of words fused with the aforementioned themes, and the sounds and power of music that make for it a resounding and resonating force to be reckoned with, collided on  paper.  My first canvas.  Yet to this day, this poetry still slumbers in journals, old loose leaf binders, and manuscripts dusking, untouched by the light of others’ eyes.

Ms. Kupperman-Guinals, my high school drama teacher, gave me a text that would catalyze my writing.  For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf inspired me,  serving as the impetus for my writing ever since.   Its first person accounts lathered me in symbolic colors and confrontational narratives.  Reading them gave me a lens into how poetry could be a tool to exhume life experiences, excavate silenced testimonies and allegories about gender, ethnicity, and life itself, and place them on the stage of paper for us to witness.  As part homage/part apprenticeship/part discipleship, I began situating my poetry as an instrument of social change and self-exploration.

During my undergraduate stage, my evolution as a writer was spawned by gravitating toward the literary, religious, feminist, and African-American literature surrounding me.  I read The Qur’an cover to cover to conceptualize other interpretations of what is God and how best to obey God (while toggling being a Christian minister and medical doctor–I aspired to become a doctor of the spirit and doctor of the body).  Toni Morrison’s and Maxine Hong Kingston’s melding of mystique and the female experience left me spellbound, imprinting upon me transcendental interpretations of what it means to be a woman of color.  Morrison’s novel Beloved captured my heart and ambition for how to capture and synthesize the human and holy experiences of Black people on paper.  Her classical writing, her mastery of a complex register that is both brutal to read and yet both beautiful and brilliant to witness, made me want to be just like her.  Kingston’s The Woman Warrior fascinated me in how myth and memoir marry and divorced throughout one’s life.   I read Shange’s other poetry collections (The Love Space Demands, A Daughter’s Geography, Ridin’ the Moon in Texas) as mentor texts for how to write about experience.  Reading This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color showed me how words can serve as an impetus and agent of change. A class on Romantic writers connected me with Blake’s poetry and Milton’s Paradise Lost, immersing me more deeply into explorations of the relationship between morals and mayhem, between man and God.  The sonic and lyrical revolution of Public Enemy compelled me “to keep it real.” Bram Stoker’s Dracula impaled my fascination of writing horror through the genre of letters and diaries.

Poetry became a centripetal and centrifugal tool to search myself, to explore and view myself bone by bone for what and who I was becoming, and learning what I could build bone by bone to later export.  Poetry for me evolved as tool for activism, to make a forum for exploring gender issues, my growing interest in feminism and learning about my African roots.  I began sharing poetry at open mics and began building a credible reputation.  I also began writing yearly letters to friends and family during Black History Month (in homage to Marcus’ example), using words to share gratitude for them being in my life, and words to inspire each year as a year where anything and everything was possible. People wanted to hear what I said.  These experiences galvanized in me a passion for writing as a means for change.  Consequently I wrote an honors thesis identifying patterns in the ways female characters negotiated silence in Ntozake Shange’s texts, and a collection of poetry that expanded on this theme as well.

There was a series of events on campus that moved my poetic pen from paper to the stage.  The catalyst was twofold.  There was the posting of advertisements for an upcoming male and female revue with the eyes and mouth of the latter blacked out with a marker.  Another was publications in the campus newspaper by one columnist admonishing how women need to respect themselves by dressing appropriately (one statement being that some women wear their clothes so tight you could see their pubic hairs).  The overt objectification of what I believed as sacred—in mind, body, and spirit–compelled me to put pen to paper to stage.  Compelling me to write an original choreopoem compiled from the poetry I was writing for my thesis, and to take action by both directing and producing it.  Having no formal theatrical training, this endeavor was blessed by recruiting several classmates, the phenomenal talents and blessings of strangers and professors, and the benevolence of strangers who donated time, talent, and money.  This choreopoem (“Episodes of Womanhood/Mahogany Women’s Movements/A Blackened Woman’s Voice from a Different World”) debuted in 1994.  The underlying goal was to take all that I had learned from my readings and writings, and channel them to galvanize others’ voices, to spawn a larger conversation of what it means to be a woman of color.  The play sold out both nights.  There was such receptivity, words received and exchanged as gifts, where both I and the audience were moved.  During the Q & A several audience members said they never saw anything like this.  Neither had I.

This lesson has taught me about the power of poetry as the building of bridges and bonds with others.

The next phase was a kind of return to confessional poetry, but also a honing of how to channel the craft.  Using poetry as confession, I would write about what I thought and felt about relationships.  There was my erotic self, the one who wanted to understand love and the physical sharing of it as something earthly and spiritual (differing from the sexualized “do me baby” kind of poetry, though there’s a placeholder in my history where that occurs).  I had started exploring this part of myself beginning in my early twenties, and took time now to invest in it more.  I also began being a tabula rasa, writing for particular themes and purposes, such as Soul Kitchen (a monthly open mic), church commemorations such as pastoral and foundational anniversaries (and even a collection of hymns), and exploring journalistic/archivist poetry writing.  I began writing about what I was witnessing in life and the news, spanning the rise of ultrasound clinics in India, the infibulations and genocide occurring in Africa, the impact of violence on culture, and translating experiences of friends into poems.  A friend of mine who formerly was a state trooper told me a devastating account of a young boy who he stopped on the highway and the horrific cargo he was later found carrying.

What also marks this period in my writing is the prayerfulness within which I engulfed my words, that the words of my mouth and meditations of my heart be divinely inspired by something other than ambition, amorous inclinations, or ambivalence.  This emanates from my belief that the authenticity of my poetry comes from a force greater than me.  Not to say that what I wrote was never carnal, selfish or hurtful, but this at least was (and still is) my goal.  Before writing poems I would pray, and before performing them I would do the same.   I wanted my poems to honor the audience of an audience.  It was really important to me (then and now) to not exploit the ears and hearts of others.  This also marks a time when I started to forge writing in a different genre.  I started a novel, trying to fuse the worlds of jazz, poetry and narrative in a multi-generational epic about a family.

Now looking back, I am not any clearer about the rut that was the impetus for this blog.  But writing this helped me free up space.  To trace the stretch marks of my poetry to read the autobiography they produce.  At the core, I KNOW that I love the feeling of home that comes from writing and being at poetry venues.  And the education that comes from both.  There is something that feels both like homecoming and a harnessing to do more with your art when surrounded by fellow artists.   To give context, there is the welcome that Starski brings to the mic and venue that is infectious.  The unbridled power of Michael Richardson when he hijacks the mic to spit truth.  The fire Backdraft blazes about life and love.  Helena is precise and bombastic on the mic, and harbors an uncanny ability to laugh and cry reflecting on life as a social worker. Elijah is pensive and meditative.  Shadokat is surgical with sound.  Charan weaves stories with transcendental truths. Back in the nostalgic and phenomenal days of Soul Kitchen, Mojave preached for the audience to liberate from self-incarceration, Fisiwe’s voice excavated gold from muddy waters, Dee mellowed the crowd with melodies about love, and Dallas evangelized with the electric guitar.  Attending the Urban Juke Joint made the sharing poetry a holy sacred art. Poets like Definition blessed the mic with visions.   Hosting poetry readings was also a kind of homecoming.  I hosted them for my high school students so they would have a forum to explore and share themselves, while also passing the baton to teach them  how to host a home for others (thanks Kristen and Kyle).

Finally, there is the ultimate giving that comes with no coin-based profit.  There is my sister friend Carla who self published her first book of poetry because it was just that important to give a gift back to the world.  And now, there are my family and friends who have volunteered to read my most recent manuscript.

Now this moment makes me think to why I write poetry.  It is a gift to give others.  Though I still feel a kind of hesitation to be seen, I know my poetic bone still manufactures marrow.  I feel like I am at a three-way intersection of wanting to contribute to different spaces, to experiment as I used to, and to shape and mold a new space and place altogether.  Maybe because I am in a stage I can’t yet describe or perform yet on a stage.  Maybe because of the changes occurring in my body and in my body of work.  Writing this blog, I begin to understand from where I have traveled, and now where I could stand.  As I watch my body of work change, it’s fascinating to see how it stretches and changes to accommodate new life.  I’m moving from . . .

To Carla, Crystal, Donna, Kerwin, Marcus, Miles, and Terence, a special thank you for your investment and involvement.

A special thank you to Terry Matilsky for the original photography.

To read others’ responses, or to write your own, please click the red button below.  

To read previous posts scroll to bottom right side of page and click on title of choice.

 

Recycling Somalia: Same Cliché for a New Generation?

She

is crawling

above heating sand,

her stomach swelling pregnant

with starvation,

inching on

shriveling cacti legs

crumbling

under her shadow,

digging for a trace

of earth’s clear spit,

scraping

for wiggling dirt pearls/

dragging back meager treasure

to feed a chorus

of children without voices,

a crippled and parched husband,

 

as flies

fold their legs,

waiting

for the feast

to fall.

© 2011 TMY

I wrote this poem almost twenty years ago, after watching news broadcasts introducing the atrocities suffered in Somalia.  It was my way of trying to internalize the affliction, and through poetry, create a medium to bring attention to the devastation and generate contemplation in others.  Revisiting the poem, I think on with disappointment how recent news coverage seems to exploit the Somali suffering for ratings.  Can news broadcasts go beyond repeat telling of affliction and instead delve into what makes it complex and complicated? Can it serve as a medium for change and not exploitation? This post delves into and explores these questions, advocating that mainstream daily news broadcasts do more than hype and holler.

I want the news to do more than resurrect nostalgic distortions (oh, the poor people of Africa).

Around the clock broadcasts escalates Somalia’s crisis into a headline fad. Militant kin keep fellow man’s life and death hostage.  Internal promises from Somalian government officials affirm swift action against religiously driven militants.  Our retinas are bombarded with brutal images and evangelistic urgency.

Massive consequences are vivified.  Ugly images of caravans of families losing loved ones as they search for food and shelter are voiced over by narratives of the political landscape that make it difficult for food supplies to traverse it and get to the people who desperately need it.  There is the Armageddon-like foreboding of food and supplies shortly reaching depletion if additional funding is not procured.  Smatterings of statistics are sprinkled throughout the broadcasts, recounting how tens of thousands of children died in months passed for no good reason.  These sound bites decorate and oxymoronically complement images of flies peppering the livings’ shrinking skin.  Fraying limbs.  Distending stomachs.  Fatless faces.   For such events, familiar medical and veteran news correspondents are hastily dispatched for frontline broadcasting, delivering detailed narratives of the hardship plaguing nomadic families, the atrocity of war, and decimation of a people because of both these culprits.  In an unsolicited spotlight,  the Somali people are in the crossfire between their basic needs, multiple political agendas, and international attention.

Again.

I am dismayed because the transmission of the depravity within Somali borders is nothing new.  Propagating  once more are the effects of insurgency and famishment. Our eyes and heart are incessantly arrested by the images; on cue, pervasive heartbreak resurfaces.  I don’t want to sound like I am not sympathetic and genuinely concerned to the afflictions of fellow humans.  But, I feel at times I’m in the crossfire too. I am concerned (to borrow from Noam Chomsky) about media’s portent agenda for manufacturing consent.  Like Shakespearean plays made timeless by their rereading and reproduction, I feel like the exact story is being told again to captivate this new audience, acclimating them to the all-too-familiar story of African suffering.  Why is the focus of broadcast media  again on this particular affliction, but less on brokering epiphanies we need to extract about humanity?  Why rouse this particular story, and this way of telling it, again?

What is selectively missing from headliner broadcasts are the other parts of the story and experience.  Precipitating events leading to the atrocities, the local and international parties involved, and to what end is a solution (if any) is being sought.  Instead, in byline fashion, we are given a cursory explanation for why the pervasive starvation and death toll are occurring: civil strife, intercepted relief, inadequate medical supplies or facilities. But that is all.  There is no exposition, explication, or exegesis.  In lieu of such depth, what are selectively advanced and chronicled are images exacerbating visual and emotional hysteria.  The shrouded corpses.  The impoverished improvised  medical centers.  Colorfully wrapped walking bones.  Advertised (again) are only manifestations devoid of an examination of symptoms, causes and the possible remedies.  As the viewing audience, all we are currently allowed to witness are bodies piling due to a seemingly insidious unstoppable disease—our exploitation for ratings.

Again.

In depth coverage helps give me information, perspectives and context to understand why certain events occur (and continue).  I expect news-based media to do more than radiate and disseminate hype, to catalyze and breed hysteria.  During the 1990s, the suffering of Somali people due to trenched warfare was brought into the spotlight by such documentaries as Frontline’s “Ambush in Mogadishu.”    As a consequence of the ousting of dictator Siad Barre, and the conflict over power that subsequently arose between factions, an estimated 300,000 Somalis died of starvation.  The needs for food and internal stability were disseminated to strum support for intervention.  Under the Bush and Clinton Administrations, US troops were then dispatched in what was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission shared with a multi-nation collective to protect food convoys and avail much needed sustenance to starving people.  Then, morphing from a diplomatic into a political agenda (the UN Security Council’s counter-insurgency passed a resolution to hunt and apprehend warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid,  leader of a prominent Islamic regime, simultaneous with attempted negotiations centered around UN initiative of nation-building), what resulted was the disastrous stranding of US Rangers and slaughter suffered by Somalis.  After this debacle, western involvement declined, manifesting in the scaling down of UN and US soldiers in Somalia and a political and ethical ambiguity that would later impact western intervention in Rwanda.

To compare, such an integrated approach to broadcast news resulted in giving viewers information, perspectives, and context.  There was the provision of timelines,  intimate access to accounts by multiple stakeholders involved (politicians, US Rangers and Somali rebels), sharing of different types of information, in a concerted effort foster and facilitate understanding.  In all, Frontline built an informed precipice from which to consider the event itself, and later events to come.

Just a few years later, the media again resurfaces the the massacre and consequential hunger of Africans.  Civil strife and its offspring are chronicled and regurgitated again, this time in Rwanda.  The Frontline documentary “The Triumph of Evil” recounts the UN and US ambiguity and wavering over whether to define the slaughter of Tutsis as genocide results in the estimated 800,000 Tutsis killed in 100 days, the exodus of Rwandans, and the strife and starvation that become yet again strange bedfellows.  Yet true to a principled form, Frontline again provides the viewer timelines of events, multiple perspectives weighing pros and cons of pivotal decisions, and follow-up resources for further exploration and contemplation.

When watching news broadcast like Frontline, I don’t feel held hostage to ambiguity or ulterior motives.  While I don’t exalt this specific documentary series or its format as THE BEST or THE SOLE means for covering daily current events, or as a journalistic model that all media should emulate, I can say it provides a different experience of the news.  It illuminates an event and advances insight.  Comparatively, it offers an alternative to current approaches to mainstream news broadcasts:  visceral  instigation through images of mass suffering, and sentential summary of refugee displacement due to unstable governments.   The exploitation of “the real” story, and hesitation by  mainstream news broadcasts to delve deep,  makes me skeptical of “the daily news” to be nothing more than an agenda-laden mouthpiece.

Again.

I am a fan of news shows.  Daily I rotate through CNN, MSNBC, HLN, and Fox News channels.  My mom routinely watched morning and evening broadcasts and read daily papers.  My uncle is an avid fan of CNN and reads newspapers too.  “The news” is in our blood.  As a mother to be, I too watch “the news.”  I have a growing commitment to being a parent that keeps abreast of current events.  But I also find myself asking more questions as I watch the daily broadcasts on such news channels, and find I have to do a lot of work in discerning and discriminating what is “news.”  As I am about to turn on the Saturday morning broadcast of CNN . . .

To read others’ responses, or to write your own, please click the red button below.  

To read previous posts scroll to bottom right side of page and click on title of choice.

A Triptych of Trials, Tribulations, and Redemption: Movie Review of Gun Hill Road

In his first full feature film, writer and Director Rashaad Ernesto Green creates a tour de force in the poignant portrayal of Enrique, Angela, and Michael, a Bronx family on the mend.  Starring Esai Morales, Judy Reyes, and introducing Harmony Santana.  A Grand Jury Nominee at the 2011 Sundance Festival.  A film by SimonSays Entertainment.  Distributed by Motion Film Group.  In limited release in NYC and LA. 

Three Characters Joined and Distanced by Blood

Gun Hill Road is a film about trials, tribulation and redemption.  Within minutes we are thrust into a community and family welcoming home its prodigal son, and it is in this pivotal moment the lives of three family members begin to unfold. Enrique, a father and ex-con, attempts re-entry into a world and family who define him more by his absence than his present potential.  As husband and patriarch, he works arduously toward the reconciliation between past and present.  The mother, Angela, negotiates marriage and motherhood; despite her sacrifices both to make do with and make ends meet with scrapes of life offered, she pangs for her own happiness and completion.  Michael, the teenage son, seeks confirmation of his transgendered self within worlds that work relentlessly to objectify his outer beauty and extinguish his inner beauty.  The three have the best intentions to reunite, but each one’s resistant to being hurt again.  It won’t be easy, but each is resilient to press through harm into hope.

A Story of Contrast and Complexity

Director and writer Rashaad Ernesto Green creates a screenplay that steers away from clichés and stereotypes, instead constructing and vivifying characters with layered complexity.  The experiences of the characters with incarceration, transgenderism, masculinity, fatherhood, and infidelity are not treated as one-dimensional, but in nuanced relationship with each other.  Enrique’s time in jail haunts him even after he gets out, which manifests in both his challenge to again consummate his marriage and the unconventional means he employs to “bring his son around.”  Michael is a teenager struggling to balance his self-esteem and self assuredness.  He accepts who he is, and wants others to do the same.  His struggles for acceptance are detailed through poetic pleas for recognition during open mics, the give and take of one-sided relationships, the guardedness of the fraternity of his community, and the mirror he is both trying to find and resist within his father.   Angela’s sacrificial fidelity to institutions and relatives are juxtaposed by her love interest in Enrique’s absence, being sole provider within an economic and familial gap, and the unconditional promotion and protection of their son.  Green skillfully avoids insulting the audience by telling a story already told.  The film instead invites us into an authentic witnessing of the contemplation and work of three family members trying to gravitate toward individual and familial wholeness.  Brutal truths are relayed with unflinching transparency.

Green’s choice of storytelling in his first full feature film, complemented by its cinematography earns him kudos. His courageous storytelling is such that other filmmakers may be too reluctant to discuss.   Gun Hill Road was a finalist for the Jury Award at the 2011 Sundance Festival.  Melding one part memoir, one part journalism, one part documentary, with one part novel, Green bends and blends genres to create a fictitious masterpiece.  He skillfully mimics the gritty eloquent narration of “The Wire,” the journalistic feel of “Law and Order,” the familial realism of PBS’s “An American Family” with the unapologetic and blatantly beautiful truth-telling of Lee Daniel’s “Precious.”  Careful not to typecast, Green’s cinematic truism lies in his inventive work in sequencing the story so that it flows like a trilogy of three distinct narratives, yet harmonizes them to illustrate the portrait of a family.  In this novel movie, the Bronx is its own complex character, captured and depicted well by Gun Hill Road’s alleys and corners for marking identity and reclaiming one’s self, its’ congestion of buildings, the parks where people make and break relationships, serving as an oxymoronic mattress of rest, and even its brilliance in sunrise and twilight I fondly remember witnessing when growing up there in the 70s and 80s.

Getting Behind the Vision:  An Actor’s Just Due

The cast transcended acting well.  They brought to life characters so convincing they reminded me of the people I pass on my way to work in schools in the Bronx.  Veteran Judy Reyes and breakout actor Harmony Santana do hard work to convey with balance and integrity the vulnerable and resilient spirits of their characters without indulging caricature and stereotype.  The supporting cast complements their work, from the beatdowns to the buildups of the lead characters, with realism.  A special “shout out” has to go to Esai Morales, who as the main character and supporter of Green got behind the potential of this movie, and as an inexhaustible dynamo brought it to fruition.  A veteran actor who has garnered acclaim for working in several movies and television shows, and recognition as a self-defined “actorvist,” his talent is given full bloom and due justice in this film.  An actor who surgically brings out the grit and grim of Enrique, yet portrays his vulnerability and frustration with equal precision, Morales’s performance should receive the highest acclaim during award season.

Conclusion: Our Stories, Our Lives

Gun Hill Road is a must see movie.  As an audience member, I found myself intrigued and engrossed within minutes.  The movie unapologetically and unhesitatingly thrusts you into a world of mistakes, misguided intentions, and devotion.  Viewing this movie is an unflinching experience where Green, Morales, the cast, and The Bronx make you privy to the joys and pains of life.  It is a rare film that provides you intimate access to the inner workings of relationships:  those recoiled and renegotiated between family members, those individuals reconcile within themselves, and those carefully (and at times carelessly) brokered and navigated with the world.  The familial and personal skirmishes are not oversimplified.  They illustrate the workings of humans and spirits trying to come back to center.   The movie is one of contrasts, relentless in its confrontation of bitter hard truths and the beauty of life, while relaying both reverently and tastefully.

Spoiler alert: the movie does not dishonor or disrespect the audience with a conventional Hollywood story or ending.  It shows homage to life on an urban landscape, and delivers as such.

Gun Hill Road is currently in limited release in New York City and Los Angeles.  It’s important to support this film, so please spread the word.  We need to seem more films like this, with minority filmmakers who know how to tell their own stories.

To read others’ responses, or to write your own, please click the red button below.  

To read previous posts scroll to bottom right side of page and click on title of choice.