THE FISHERMAN
THE FIRE THIS TIME: A LESSON PLAN
CLINT SMITH
JAZZ IN JAIL
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Fall/Winter 2016 $6.00
The Final Work of Louis Reyes Rivera*
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Horace Mungin Books A book that reads like tomorrow’s headlines “Or Does It Explode” goes where no one else would to ramble amid the taboo; a thrilling historic man-hunt murder mystery about what’s possible in a society that obstructs social justice in favor of a false and temporary (400 years) sense of racial superiority and security.
The tale “Or Does It Explode” provides a powerful message from Horace Mungin, a Black Arts Movement era writer drained from all of the killings of innocent unarmed black men and boys – not just the recent rash of killings of 2012 to 2016 but all of the killings of more than the last half century – who invents the Larry Davis Posse in this saga to impose an accountability that resembles justice. The book is dedicated to Eleanor Bumpers, the emotionally disturbed elderly black woman shot gunned to death in 1984 by NYPD for being behind in her rent. ToMosaicMagazine.org purchase visit www.horacemunginbooks.com
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Interview Clint Smith by Elizabeth Acevedo ................................................................... 8 Poems Ode to the End-of-Year 6th Grade Picnic by Clint Smith ................................ 12 For the Boys Who Never Learned How to Swim by Clint Smith ..................... 15 When Maze & Frankie Beverly Come on in my House by Clint Smith ........... 17 Reviews Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi .............................................................................. 18 The Fisherman by Chigozie Obioma ............................................................. 19 The Mothers by Brit Bennett ......................................................................... 20 Jazz in Jail by Louis Reyes Rivera ........................................................................ 22 Foreward by Keith Gilyard ............................................................................ 24 Suite IV by Louis Reyes Rivera ...................................................................... 25 Afterward by Ahmed Abdullah ...................................................................... 41 Excerpts from Jazz in Jail were reprinted with permission of Blind Beggar Press Lesson Plan The Fire This Time by Eisa Nefertari Ulen ..................................................... 43 Mosaic's lesson plans, developed for secondary school educators, demonstrate how our content can serve as a connective tool to empower educators to use books, writing, and reading to engage students.
*Additional writings of Louis Reyes Rivera may be published in the future.
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Editor & Publisher Ron Kavanaugh ron@mosaicmagazine.org Mosaic Literary Magazine (ISSN 1531-0388) is published by the Literary Freedom Project. Content copyright Š 2017. No portion of this magazine can be reprinted or reproduced in any form without prior permission from the publisher. Retail Distribution Publisher’s Distribution Group info@pdgmags.com Subscribe online: MosaicMagazine.org 3 Issues: $16.00 Institution Subscriptions EBSCO 1.205.991.6600 Contact the editor We welcome comments. Send e-mails to info@mosaicmagazine.org Visit MosaicMagazine.org for submission guidelines. Colophon Layout Software: Adobe InDesign CS5 Graphic Software: Paint Shop Pro 12 Mast Typeface: Whomp Editorial Typeface: Zapf Humanist POSTMASTER Please send address corrections to: Mosaic 314 W. 231 St #470 Bronx, NY 10463
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Sign of the Times An AfroSurreal Eco-Arts Festival & Social Justice Conference in Oakland Join the AfroSurreal Writers Workshop on Sat., April 22, from 1-4 pm at ProArts Gallery 150 Frank H Ogawa Plaza, Oakland, CA 94612 Congratulations to Amos White 2017 recipient of the AfroSurreal Writers Workshop’s Award for Excellence in AfroSurrealism; Congrats to Jasmine Wade & Benson Lott 2017 recipients of the AfroSurreal Writers Short Story Award; Thanks to last year’s award winner: Juliana Smith, Ronald Nelson, & Mike Hampton, the team behind (H)Afrocentric? AfroSurreal Writers Workshop (Oakland): Rochelle Spencer, Audrey T. Williams, Thaddeus Howze, Dera Williams, Rochelle Robinson, Peter McKay Special thanks to our 2016 and 2017 supporters: Jeffery Renard Allen, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kim Anderson, Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due, Shannon Holbrook, Victor LaValle, Mat Johnson, Edward P. Jones, John Keene, Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Daniel José Older, Stewart Shaw, Nisi Shawl, Veda Silva, Dr. Michele Simms-Burton, Rochelle Spencer, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Sheree Renée Thomas, Wandra Williams, and Jon Woodson
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Please don’t forget to RSVP. Go to the AfroSurreal Writers Workshop on Facebook for Eventbrite info.
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contributors Elizabeth Acevedo is the youngest child and only daughter of Dominican immigrants. She holds a BA in Performing Arts from the George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. With over fourteen years of performance experience, Acevedo has toured her poetry nationally and internationally. She is a National Poetry Slam Champion, Cave Canem Fellow, CantoMundo Fellow, and participant of the Callaloo Writer's Workshop. She has two collections of poetry, Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths (YesYes Books, 2016) and winner of the 2016 Berkshire Prize, Medusa Reads La Negra’s Palm (Tupelo Press, forthcoming). The Poet X (HarperCollins, 2018) is her debut novel. She lives with her partner in Washington, DC. Sidik Fofana has written several publication including the Source, Vibe, and allhiphop.com. His work appears in The Black Male Handbook: Blueprint for Life edited by Kevin Powell. Leila Green is the creator of the Black literary blog, Black Book Quotes. Black Book Quotes features and reviews Black literature across the diaspora. Learn more at www.blackbookquotes.com. Eisa Nefertari Ulen is the author of Crystelle Mourning. She has contributed to numerous publications, including The Washington Post, Ms., Health, Heart & Soul, Vibe, Black Issues Book Review, Quarterly Black Review of Books, and CreativeNonfiction.org. Ulen graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and earned a master’s degree from Columbia University. A founding member of Ringshout: A Place for Black Literature, she teaches English at Hunter College in New York City. www.EisaUlen.com.
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Clint Smith
Du Bois Lineage the Zombiepocalypse and the Role of the Writer in Difficult Times
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by Elizabeth Acevedo With the recent release of his first collection of poetry, Counting Descent, Clint Smith and I had a chance to discuss his new book and his role in literature as a writer and researcher. Not only is Smith one of my favorite writers, he’s also a good friend and collective-mate, and I was fortunate to be one of the first to read his collection when it was in manuscript-form. I was so moved by his collection, and honored when he asked me to blurb his book. What I said at the time is that Counting Descent is a tightly-woven collection whose pages act like an invitation to New Orleans, to the spades' table, to mom’s kitchen, to the kiss on a woman’s wrist, to conversations with hydrants and cicadas.
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The invitation in these pages are intimate and generous and also a challenge; are you up to asking what is blackness? What is black joy? How is black life loved and lived? To whom do we—this human We— look to for answers? This invitation is not to a narrow street, or a shallow lake, but to a vast exploration of life. In a voice that echoes James Baldwin, but also declares its singularity, Smith extends: “Maybe there's a place where everyone is both in love with and running from their own skin. Maybe that place is here.” And anywhere Smith is, often becomes a site of investigating what fear we are running from, and what love we’re running to. This interview proved no different.
Elizabeth Acevedo: Hey, Clint. How are you? Clint Smith: I'm doing alright. Like it has for many people, the past weeks have been a whirlwind. I think we're all processing this new reality differently and getting ready for the hard work ahead of us. EA: Agreed. I think there's so much at stake and on shaky ground. I've been turning to many different artists in an attempt to think about how to use this literary work in a meaningful way that responds to this moment in history. And to delve into the first question, with a presidentelect that has promised to change the political landscape of America as we know it, what does poetry have to offer to what may prove to be tumultuous times? What is the role of the poet right now? CS: It's interesting, I think, because for black artists, even before this election we were in the midst of a sociopo-
litical moment in which our work was speaking to and responding to the fact that our lives are precarious in this country -- and really that our lives are precarious across the world. Now, we're in a moment in which that sense of uncertainty and danger is being experienced by a much larger group of people, as we have a President-elect who threatens the well-being of wide-ranging demographic of people. I say this to say that, whether it’s police brutality, mass incarceration, or the threat of a registry for Muslims or the deportation of immigrants, we have a responsibility to challenge what we know to be unjust. We cannot let the political sensibilities of the moment compromise our ability to imagine and demand something beyond the scope of what others say is possible. EA: I love that. “The political sensibilities of the moment compromise our ability to imagine.” You a poet. Who are you reading right now that is inspiring your imagining? And why are you reading them? What I mean to say is, are you reading to find comfort? Are you reading to find hope? Are you reading to remain fully engaged in the urgency of your work? CS: That's a great question, and something that I've been considering more thoughtfully since the election --what is it that I feel drawn to consume and why? I find myself in the strange yet incredibly fortunate position where, as a graduate student and writer, my job is larger to read, write, and think about the things that matter a great deal to me. I don't take that for granted for a second. The challenge becomes the fact that the line between what is "work" and what is "rest" is pretty blurred. You know, I don't stop thinking about mass incarceration, or school segregation, or housing discrimination when I leave work. Those things are not just intellectual pur-
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Ode to the End-of-Year 6th Grade Picnic It began with a game of two-hand touch, though such administratively imposed regulations were quickly forgotten as soon as the Isley Brothers record started playing and the teachers two-stepped off into the distance. Coach Lonnie turned toward the grill, spatula in hand, ready to turn burgers into reprieve from subpar report cards. We just called him Coach, although his large belly belied the athletic prowess of his past. He flipped his fleur-de-lis cap backwards and threw on an apron that read, Always something good cookin’ in my kitchen. I had just learned how to spell innuendo though I still wasn't sure what it meant. Later, The Hot Boys were blasting through large Sony speakers that turned everywhere within a 200-foot radius into unrepentant celebration. Lil’ Wayne assuring us with brazen certainty that the block indeed was hot, as even the most secure of us heeded the warning to check the underside of our feet. Ensuring the safety of our appendages, we returned to the feast. Hot dog in one hand, Kool-Aid in the other, all of us singularly committed to getting our roll on. The girls danced in clusters, becoming accustomed to the bourgeoning parabola of their hips, learning the power they wielded over boys who were dawdling amalgamations of awkward and bravado. Prepubescent pick-up lines made rejection quotidian and gave your boys ammunition for weeks to come. Each crack helping us learn to love the sound of one another’s laughter.
-Clint Smith
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suits, understanding and studying those things reflects my broader political and personal commitments. They are with me all of the time. Even if it weren't my job to study them, I would be reading about many of these things whenever I had the opportunity. So this means that when I leave the library, I don't just "turn it off," I'm still thinking about it. I'm still wrestling with it. That's my life as a social scientist and researcher. But my life is also unique in that I'm not only a researcher, I'm also an artist. So what does that mean? When I'm reading fiction, is that as a reader or a writer? When I'm reading poems, is that work or play? I don't know that I have an answer to that, because the truth is that it's both. This is a long way of saying that, in selecting what to read, I don't know that I can silo my rationale in terms of comfort, or hope, or urgency, because it's usually a bit of all those. Part of what brings me comfort is reading things that help me understand how the world has come to be. Right now I'm reading Derrick Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well, Elizabeth Alexander's The Light of the World and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. EA: I loved The Light in the World. CS: Alexander's book is astonishing. I'm moving through it slowly so that I can savor every word. EA: And Alexander is someone who also participates in many kinds of writing, and genres. I was actually hoping to ask you about compartmentalization before we got on this thread. I’m curious about genre. In addition to your book of poems, Counting Descent, you’re also a contributor for The New Yorker, The Guard-
ian, and you’re also a public speaker and performer. How do you find your work in different genres are in dialogue? How are they divergent? How do you know what an idea needs to become? CS: Until relatively recently I struggled with the idea that of working across genres and mediums. I was really operating under this false notion that one had to become an expert in a specific space before moving to the next. One, the idea of becoming an "expert" in any sort of artistic context is a largely impossible task, and the arbiters of who is or is not an expert in certain genres or mediums is arbitrary and subjective, as it should be. Secondly, as you alluded to, different types of messages can and should exist in the medium most suited to its needs. It's not mutually exclusive. It was when I first started reading a lot of W.E.B. Du Bois' work about two years ago that I began to more confidently reject this compartmentalization. Du Bois was a poet, journalist, essayist, historian, sociologist, novelist, the list goes on and on. Seeing a scholar operate across so many different spaces --to have myriad intellectual projects contribute to his broader political project. I really resonate with that. And I recognize that some of my work will reach different audiences as well, an essay in the New Yorker might be read by a different group of people than a poem an at open mic in Southeast DC, but that doesn't mean that one is more important than another. They're simply different. My goal is to simply write as honestly as possible. Regardless of the audience or medium EA: It's like getting your words dressed. Different events require different attire but the heart of the writing is the same. That metaphor wasn't as successful as I hope, but I do understand what you mean.
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Also, I have a timer set and was waiting to see how long it took you to mention Du Bois. CS: Du Bois is my dude! Truly though, something I really appreciate about him is how, even though he was one of the most brilliant people on the planet, he wasn't afraid to admit when he was wrong.Truly though, something I really appreciate about him is how, even though. EA: He was so human, yeah? CS: Exactly. It’s so wonderful to me, the humility to recognize that sometimes you won't get it right, but you're doing the best you can. And in many ways asking to the empathy and compassion from others to be able to make those mistakes EA: Sometimes I think we're afraid of our work being retweeted out of context or what we lose if we backtrack on an idea. But, I think the writer shouldn’t be too sure. And that means sometimes you need to admit when you were off. CS: Right, you and I have talked about this a bit, but I sometimes worry about young writers coming up in the age of social media. I worry that their ideas aren't given time to grow and evolve without them being subjected to torment online for saying the wrong thing or saying something but the wrong way. I can't imagine what would have happened to me if some of the ideas I had as a young person, or even as a college student or young adult, got out into the world now. I probably would have stopped writing. EA: Right! It’s a very reactionary time in regards to posting art on social media. I'm curious about something circling back to W.E.B Du Bois.
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Well, less about Du Bois and more about your canon. I think Du Bois means to you what Lucille Clifton means to me--what I think I am trying to articulate by that is that I fancy myself as a direct literary descendent of hers. Or I hope to be. She was the first person I read who felt like kin. So much of your poetry collection has to do with family, and in regards to your personification poems of the protest novel, is literally conversant with key figures like Du Bois, James Baldwin and Richard Wright. Who are some other writers you consider yourself descended from? CS: Well certainly Du Bois, as someone who has been of incredible intellectual and political import to me. But I can't talk about Du Bois without talking about Frederick Douglass, who is many ways in the intellectual and literary forefather for generation after generation of black writers and thinkers across the political spectrum. I mean, Booker T. Washington and Du Bois were fighting over who would write Douglass' biography. It was that serious. Ralph Ellison has also impacted me in ways that go beyond what I can describe. Folks like Audre Lorde pushed me to be more precise and intersectional in my thinking. But also folks like Faulkner, and Hurston, and Tennessee Williams who paved the way as southern writers. EA: What about beyond ideology? Would those same writers stay on your list if we were talking about only craft? CS: To be honest, so much of my voice as a writer has been shaped by my contemporaries. Speaking of compartmentalization, I think you and I are part of a generation of writers, specifically writers of color, coming from the spoken word community but who are such multi-di-
For the Boys Who Never Learned How to Swim The police sirens sounded like wind getting knocked out of our stomachs. We tried to find a place to pull over where there was a semblance of light. There was no light. They asked us to step out of the car. I didn’t know why—they grabbed him like he wasn't somebody's child, palmed the back of his head like soft fruit ready to be dropped from the top of the roof so everyone could laugh at the plurality of pieces. His face against the front of the police car made him look like a fish out of water. But where is the water? When has there ever been water? When have we ever been allowed to swim? When has there ever been somewhere we can breathe? I don't remember the last time police sirens didn't feel like gasping for air. I don't remember what it means not to be considered something meant to flounder, to flap against the surface while others watch you until the flailing
stops.
-Clint Smith
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mensional artists, thinkers, and activists. They reject the idea that they can only write in one medium, they reject the idea that their politics should be absent from their art, they reject the idea that there is a literary hierarchy we should subscribe to. Those folks have and continue to, shape my art and my politics in profound ways. EA: I do think we are living in a dynamic time where many writers of colors are blurring lines on genres and subverting a lot of the expectations placed on us by the traditional American literary canon. And yo, you stay pre-empting my questions. Because I was just about to ask about contemporaries. I used to be obsessed with The Walking Dead. And I was always sad that there was no character who was a writer since it seemed like the reconstruction of civilization was important to document. So, let’s imagine: zombiepocalypse happens. Oh, no! Almost everyone is dead. By some fated circumstance you are allowed to pick five of your contemporaries to carry on the work of creating literature in a post-apocalyptic world. Outside of our collective, who are five writers you would trust to carry the task. CS: Oh man, this is really hard. I don't know if I can do it. Like I'm stressing out on the guest list for my wedding right now so only five writers. It feels like an impossible task. EA: I believe in you. You got this. CS: Hmmm. Well five contemporary writers whose work I often revisit across genre are Vinson Cunningham, Eve Ewing, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, Vann Newkirk II, and Safia Elhillo.
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EA: That’s a great list. I’m proud of you. Last question: the people want to know, what’s next for Clint Smith? CS: Well, I'm in the very nascent stages of beginning my dissertation, which is a series of portraits of men and women across the country who are serving sentences of life without parole. It's going to be such a different project than the poetry book but I'm excited to get started. ★
When Maze & Frankie Beverly Come on in my House
Mom’s eyes close. She raises the spatula as if she were going to orchestrate the gumbo into existence. Turns the knob so that we feel the bass thundering in the walls. At the start of verse one, she points to Pops, walks over, shoulders oscillating back-and-forth between the melody. Pops does the same dance he's been doing since '73— left knee, right knee, pop, snap left knee, right knee, pop, snap. At the start of verse two, Pops drops his shoulder, bites his bottom lip, & does some sort of spin move pivoting on his left foot. When he does this it's unclear if he's hurt his back or if he's doing an unauthorized version of the sprinkler. The way his hands flip & turn & slap box the sky between them. The way Mom looks confused as to what exactly is happening but she goes with it, ‘cuz she's fly like that, & has never left Pops hanging on the dance floor.
At the start of verse three, smoke alarms are going off in the kitchen. Their hands are clasped now, fingers interlocked, swinging each other back & forth. Their feet are now music of their own. At the end of the song, Frankie’s voice begins to fade but they keep dancing. She holds her hand on the back of his neck, he pulls her in closer, she looks at him, kisses him between the sweat rolling down his forehead. Then they laugh & laugh & laugh & laugh long after the song has stopped.
-Clint Smith
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Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi Penguin RandomHouse Review by Sidik Fofana The poem “Blue Seuss” by Terrance Hayes begins “Blacks stacked in boxes stacked on boxes/ Blacks in boxes stacked on shores” and ends “Blacks in rows of houses are/ Blacks in boxes too”. It is this same kind of African-American journey from the coasts of the motherland to the rocky plains of the western world that guides Yaa Gyasi’s debut novel Homegoing, a multigenerational calabash that spans centuries from Fanteland in Ghana to Harlem, to Huntsville, Alabama. At the heart is the matrilineal story of two sisters, one with distinctly Ghanaian progeny, the other the forbear of American slaves. At the end of it one is left wondering in a non-platitudinal way that maybe we are all related–that, maybe, all our stories can be explained by one small historical blip. To understand Homegoing is to understand that even at the height of the transatlantic slave trade two totally different lots could be feasible for African women. Effia, the legitimate daughter of a slave-trafficking Fante chief, is sent off to live as the wife of a British man. Her line is haunted by its role in the slave trade. James, Effia’s grandson, renounces his past to live in anonymity with a village girl. James’s daughter, Abena, makes a similar renunciation. Abena’s grandson, Yaw, marries his house attendant as almost pittance for the sins of his ancestors. We’d like to think that only Europeans were haunted by the legacy of slavery, but the victimizers were Black, too, and often shared the same bloodline as their victims. Esi, on the other hand, the bastard child, suffers the more
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familiar lot and is sold into captivity setting her lineage on an American trajectory. Her daughter, Ness, is kept as a breeder against her will. Two generations later, H. of the same line, is confined to a chain gang in a southern mine. His son, Willie, to the jazz bars of Harlem as a custodian. This is the other, more familiar lot: that of generational servitude. There’s something familiar about Homegoing, which could be inviting or damning. The novel, though uniquely structured with chapters that alternate between Esi and Effia’s family line, is well aware of its predecessors. First and foremost, one cannot think generational family saga without bringing up Alex Haley’s Roots. Effia’s son, like the legendary Okonkwo from Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, is a wrestler. Esi’s grandson Jo is a caulker in Maryland like Frederick Douglass. There is a reference to killing one’s own children to set them free like Sethe in Beloved. But these aren’t stolen, so much as borrowed tropes, spruced with Gyasi’s own wand waving. Homegoing, up front, is a story about love. Both family trees house an intimacy that cannot be broken. That sets it somewhat apart from slave novels before it that deal solely with brutality and injustice. It’s just not resilience that keeps the line going, but enduring love. This redirected focus is perhaps Gyasi’s greatest triumph. As she writes through Yaw, the teacher, “We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story”. It’s not a particularly thought; the same ideal has been used to explain history in general. Yet, here Gyasi uses for herself, as she co-opts a common story of subjugation into a story of passion.
Slave narratives can be exhausting. The subject has been poked and prodded so much, one may wonder if there’s anything fresh left to glean. That this dark epoch is alarmingly on the conscience of many contemporary black writers, does show that these colonial skeletons still lurk among us. And rightfully so. For in the grand history of time, slavery has only been an eye blink in the past–and some cases–in the present.
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma Little Brown & Company Review by Sidik Fofana It easily enough can be read as a parable. Abulu, a wild homeless man makes a grim forecast of death pitting brother against brother. He could represent the white man in colonial Nigeria. The one who has divided and plundered, who has drawn colonial war lines across African nations. Abulu easily could be the Belgian who split Rwanda into Hutus and Tutsis, the Brit who sliced Sudan into northern and southern provinces. But what if The Fishermen were not a parable? What if it were just a story? Much hullabaloo surrounds Chigozie Obioma’s arresting debut novel. This latest contribution to the African lit renaissance became only the second work by an African writer under thirty five years old to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Yet, unlike books like Noviolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Uwem Akpan, Say
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You’re One of Them, The Fishermen doesn’t seem to hold overt political motives. In a market where readers crave fiction that confronts wildly shifting tectonic plates of social unrest, the novel is neither a cautionary tale about totalitarian rule nor a horror about the self-destructive nature of non-western communities. Its message is only faintly allegorical. The Fishermen opens up with the introduction of four brothers: the irrational oldest Ikenna, the confrontational Boja, Obembe the avenger, and nine year old Benjamin who also serves as the novel’s protagonist. They hail from Nsukka the same university town made famous by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. For the most part, they are normal boys who play Mortal Kombat and idolize soccer star J.J. Ukocha, who pledge allegiance to Nigerian presidential candidate MKO Abiola. However, their idyllic existence comes to a crashing halt when the boys venture to a nearby river with idle dreams of being anglers readying themselves for the big catch. It’s here the boys meet Abulu, the village madman whose “pubic region was covered with a dense foliage of hair in the midst of which his veiny penis hung limply like trouser rope”. Abulu prophesies that Ikenna will be killed by one of his brothers. The declaration is cold and final, like something spooned out of a witch’s cauldron. Whether the boys are driven mad by fate or free will from that point on begs debate, but what is clear is the wild spiral in which the decree has sent their lives. Ikenna becomes consumed by this oracle menace, opting to shut himself off from the world. When he gets aggressive towards Boja, we cringe; the fulfillment of fate seems painfully obvious to everyone but him. The brothers
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huddle to comfort him, but herein we see the futility of human intervention in preordained matters. The more Ben and his brothers urge Ikenna to make amends with Boja , the more they push him to murder and the more their father’s dreams of his children venturing into the “oceans of this life and becom[ing] successful: doctors, pilots, professors, lawyers” crumble around everyone. It is this susceptibility to hubris and divine will that gives this the story its raison d’etre. Concertedly fabulistic, The Fishermen employs many of the same magical realist tropes–the mythical village, the madman, the proverbial warnings, the dream, the forbidden water–that characterize his famed predecessor, Things Fall Apart. Yet, the novel avoids wagging its finger at any particular political event. The characters are people first. They may ultimately be pawns weighed down by societal gravity, but at best, this is the book’s secondary concern.
The Mothers by Brit Bennett Riverhead Books Review by Leila Green A grief-stricken young woman clings to boys and secrets for far too long. "All good secrets have a taste before you tell them.” Nadia's mother has committed suicide, but she won’t allow herself to break down. With the hope of feeling whole again, she looks for solace in equally broken people. She clings to Luke, a shiftless young man that
attends her gossipy church, The Upper Room. She clings to Aubrey, a naïvely kind girl she meets the summer before heading to Michigan for college. That summer is the novel’s epicenter; the site from which the novel’s shock waves and ripples originate. During that summer, Nadia’s life is irreversibly changed when she chooses to abort her and Luke’s baby. It’s when she is forever forced to ask herself this question: what if? The Mothers vividly renders a young woman coming of age amidst intense grief and life-altering love. “What if” is the question that anchors The Mothers. It plagues Nadia’s mind and haunts each chapter. As Nadia grapples with her choices and secrets, she moves on physically. However, her mind remains stuck—almost obsessively—on the past. She wonders what would have happened if she had kept her and Luke’s child. She wonders what would happen if she and her father were closer. She wonders what her own mother’s life would have been like if she, herself, had never been born. The Mothers is a powerful examination of generational shame. Brit Bennett nicely weaves the past with the present and forces a poignant consideration of how a single person’s choice can go on to shift the world.
but the story itself feels immature. This is not simply because the protagonist is young. What makes the story immature is the way in which she never seems to mature. She seems to be stuck in the past; the same problems follow her for the duration of the novel. This left the story feeling circular and regressive. The characters don’t develop as richly as they can, thus compromising some of the book’s believability. The Mothers ultimately works because it is a reflection of the kind of gossipy, dramatic chit-chat that can go on in churches like The Upper Room. The book is a pageturner. It possesses the same magnetic quality that draws us into bouts of gossip. There is something mysteriously—perhaps sadistically—satisfying about prying into a person’s private life. While reading The Mothers, we are doing the same thing that the novel’s odd chorus of church mothers are doing: obsessively judging Nadia. ★
Ultimately, what Brit Bennett has crafted is a comprehensive portrait of one girl’s life. The story itself feels very whole. This is mostly due to Bennett’s excellent concentration on place. Nadia’s Californian hometown, her church and each house we visit is treated with intense care and is thus rendered very uniquely. Each space has its own, particular vibe and it’s interesting to see how Nadia—a very static character—navigates each one. Bennett’s prose is poignant and wonderfully metered,
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Louis Reyes Rivera
JAZZ IN JAIL MosaicMagazine.org
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Steeped in discipline and touched by genius, Louis Reyes Rivera [1932-2012] has given us an African-Amerindian lyrical and visionary epic, Jazz in Jail. He was, as he would term it, a romantic realist, one who imagined a better world and worked intensely to achieve it. If his poetry could rally support for that project immediately, so be it. But Rivera, a long-time activist and organizer, was never naïve about the prospects. Rather, he understood, with William Blake, that “the ruins of time build mansions in eternity.” His poetry may be reckoned with forever as an articulation of societal arrangements devoid of exploitation. Rivera embraced fondly one of his nicknames, “The Janitor of History.” In his estimation, the janitor cleans up the mess left by the professionally trained, including those academics who produce negative “dismissertations” (a Rivera word) about politically engaged literature. So Rivera incorporates a lineage of revolutionary writing. Pablo Neruda, Margaret Walker, Langston Hughes, Jayne Cortez, and Clemente Soto Veléz are some of his mentioned inspirations. Moreover, he vigorously contests normative historical accounts that underplay the human loss caused by the long invasion of the Western Hemisphere by Spain, Portugal, England, France, Holland, and Denmark. By Rivera’s reasoning, which lies at the heart of his saga, upwards of two hundred million fatalities resulted from European colonialism in the so-called New World, a much greater loss than the 15-45 million figure cited in much scholarship. It is in his janitor’s role that Rivera is preoccupied with the historical framing of the political and artistic aftermath of European territorial expansion and also with the historical framing of his own work, thus his career-long penchant for numerous reference notes. But now to the poem’s central irony. And Black, Brown, and Red life in the Americas has been nothing else if not situationally ironic and deeply paradoxical. W. E. B. Du Bois, another Rivera hero, knew this when he mused about double-consciousness and life behind the veil. Jazz is a child of empire but ultimately an instrument of freedom. In addition, Jazz persecuted is the people,
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and the people besieged are Jazz. Because Rivera, a practitioner of jazzoetry, taught inside the prison complex on Rikers Island, it would have been startling had he missed this metaphor. Our tremendous gain is that as a poet he explored the construct in stellar fashion. This marvel of verse is replete with creatively wide scope, multi-metric forays, rhythmic excitement, sculpted turns of phrase, and keenly rendered observations. The changes are a bit tricky at times, but it is worth working through them to arrive at the compelling conclusion. Jazz in Jail will become timeless---but is already timely. Recently, anti-jazz articles appeared in The New Yorker and The Washington Post. The first piece is a spoof in the imagined voice of Sonny Rollins. Jazz to the faux Rollins is stupid, and his major self-confession is that he wasted his life. Some joke. Of course, we know that jokes sometimes are serious statements about which one wants to say one is joking. The second essay attempts to argue soberly that jazz is “boring,” “overrated,” “washed up, ” and “hard to grasp.” Engaging these attacks at length is beyond the present purpose, but those writers wouldn’t just imprison jazz; they would execute it. Fellow poet Sterling Plumpp declared astutely for many that jazz is the music that brings literacy to the spirit. What powers, then, want to keep folks illiterate? Who wants to extinguish spirits? Fortunately, jazz and jazz people (including Sonny Rollins specifically) have a brilliant artist such as Louis Reyes Rivera on their side. When Rivera would read to me some of his work-in-progress, I sensed that he was composing a classic. I am sure of it now and am thrilled that the poem is now available to the general public. It is such a remarkable testament to liberty and human potential, such a vibrant expression of faith in the possibility of progressive communities. In the tradition of Walker’s classic “For My People” and evoking César Vallejo’s rousing “Masses,” Rivera has scored a monumental artistic victory.
Keith Gilyard
“In the Ocean of Imagination there is no bottom and no brink.” Clemente Soto Vélez
Suite IV
(46) After hour jam There is nothing now permitted when the gates & lamps shut down not a murmur, not a whisper not a fidget moves about just the silence of incarcerated snores is permitted to be heard just the musk & must of dusk & dust of socks & sweat & breath trailing along these corridors of gate & cell can be haled into the nostrils of prison numbers locked & penned Countdown finished all lights out every head & body branded with a digit like the cattle prods made of iron yesterday the numerical disk recounted thrice then bedded for the night Now those vengeful badges can get busy beating up a wisecrack snarl or play with one another on the side sneak a bit on the warmest cot or simply sleep a tour away resting for that day time slot but nothing else permitted once the gates & lights shut down Now’s the time for Jazz to flourish as the dark turns into night & the light that black could give it
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glows beneath a blocked cell’s blight of muffled sounds resisting the ordered silence of the law ...Here, among the children of the horn whose parents were the authors of the song & for the song were once enslaved by the sons & daughters of yesterday’s enslavers by the lords & ladies of deceit by the upper crust of thieves elite by the owners of our sweat by the harvesters of work by the barons over military might here, among these children now imprisoned the jam unfolds in the after-hour spark you can hear it in the sniffles from each cell filtering as echoes down the hall drops of sacred water streaming from the eyes of men convicted for their music longing but to be back home no, no, no, not inmates with their Eye-Dees tagged no, no, no, not felons doing time no, no, hell no, never that they’re criminals justly paying off their victims for a compensation lost but a burst of instruments locked in jail searching for a tone unknown sought & caught, conscripted & condemned for the lyrics they create by the dope phat rich super thugs of shame Oh, there’s a crooked rascal here & there
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a Richard Pryor type the kind that makes you glad that he’s in jail but the one thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine others locked up with beside atop beneath some old cramped damp cell they just simply didn’t do it & weren’t even there not at the scene of the encounter not during the scope of the trial not even when the verdict & the sentences got handed down & never did they ever learn to read the notes on a scale or a sheet of music that plays for them a song of love or teaches them the wonder of our birth & so for them in the black & bright of cellblock night Jazz begins to play a long and muted trumpet sigh opens up this after-hour jam soft & mellow, sad, sublime letting in a mood unsilenced to slowly awaken prisoners in their cots the bass joins in to help a beat pronounce a steady constant roll of drums now adding to the texture in the mute between the two the bass, those drums that trumpet’s sigh lingers as it hovers through the air
with sound’s rapport reaching deep within the strum of two guitars struttin over, sittin in now the rhythm section filled as the trumpet’s sigh brings one by one alto, tenor, baritone bemused blending with that melody begun & with the trumpet comes soprano in an overlay of sounds as the trumpet blares & flairs above the rest : a lynching by the law a crucifixious burning of another church & home the hound dog’s scent a runaway trail the wars of resistance that were fought bringing in the melody replete while those French & flügelhorns still present in their cells arise to join this symphony of now with one long trombone raising up & counterpointing fusion in the score the countless welts are heard the snap of the rope felt the roasting pit alive the slow segue from alto & soprano helps the trumpet cry as each in turn opens up to solo underneath it all then the drums dip into Swing to claim a space their own
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the cymbals & the riffs lifting drumsticks calling back response the brass comes back to counterplay between the drums between the bass between a trumpet’s lonely sigh the bass breaks back guitars join Swing the brass takes pause the bass cries out the drums come sliding back to hit another bridge now Salsa calls out clavé as conga skins shout out loud the island beat maracas sing of Caribbean seas that roll into the face of sand pounding waves the congas slap the shoreline touched with slave ships now arriving as maracas smack the marketplace of flesh selling flesh & soul timbales pause, then strike-strike two then pause & strike-strike two again with shekeres & djimbes ringing calling on Shango to rise up with & knife the night the arrows & the spears of vengeance in his hands as congas urge those dancing seeds to remember Oya too then the brass changes up & follows suit like Carib warriors in canoes raiding slave ships, port & province
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smuggling arms like cached rum dancing to Calypso swim its dip & swing aching like the longing of steel pans blending in with pace & pause then softly changing to a vibraphonic plea that breaks away & joins with those who want to solo too now the djimbes and the drumsticks then return as shekeres & congas engage to match & shout & bout as brass comes back & then the bass & then the brass & then the drums again all guitarred by pick & string guided into solo’s light as the bass interplays with a drummer’s rapid rise that allows for the trumpet to return bring it back to those initial beats that first chord from the first song the melody of a lasting phrase one lone tone echoing the night through the halls down the corridors of jail as Jazz bids goodnight to these brethren still penned in with no lights left but the sound of the gates slammed shut.
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(47) A defensive pose
(48) Witness: Imagination
“Whenever you sit to listen to some Jazz,” opened the defense, “you never really know exactly what compels the musicians you are hearing the initial intent in the placement of a signature just before the grain that comes behind each note the books they may have read the fingering provoked by which definitive encounter so vividly recalled : a kidnapped clan some stolen land a branded chest a lopped off ear the mother of that bassman raped the parents of this horn the uncles, cousins, best friends who were lynched or shot or charred into a memory of blue smoke
“Inside each & every third eye is the Ocean of Imagination with no bottom to reach no shoreline to touch no limitation self-imposed
curling upwards to the sky hurling space chords barely understood inside an image conjured up in the deep groan whisper of a baritone in flight “You just don’t know which impulsive pulse had driven the melody to change & break in stride or what exactly they were thinking when they made that gig last night.”
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“& it is here in the deep of what we see where capacity resides to dream & seek create & shape blow the breath of life & raise into existence the insides of our we taking you & me everywhere within ourselves to trek & tread those distant tracings that rise beyond the moon overpass every planet in the sky undertake any star & state that would bind us into borders bound by fixed condition tricking us to so believe we cannot claim the order of the day or change our destiny ourselves “But imaginate the possible : if, out of the forward urge of somehow since we issued forth growing out from nothing into something given birth
from nowhere into somewhere we reach Did standing on the cusp of what & when then certainly from here we can get to any other there & in the flow of self-determined move we can change & shape the course of Now!”
(49) Witness: Myth “Within the measure of a Myth you’ll find the lie that somehow we simply just don’t know the planes of nature all around the thought we’ve all been taught : that there is but one horizon “Inside the measure of a lie you’ll find reflected in the Myth the fact that yes, indeed to rise above the wisdom we each claim is to see the every Be for what Be is grow to grasp how much greater than ourselves are the planes we have yet not known “And, yes, new horizons stand & wait on the edge of light for another struggle to ensue.”
(50) Witness: Rodin “If you pose yourself a thinker delving deep into why you
remain the target & a constant threat to those who keep their slit lips shut conditioned by the fear they may lose their jobs just because they yearn to learn a different song you’ll get caught in the web of a plot with assassins waiting in an alley dimmed & silent “That you think has always been a given in the same way each breath of air is much too often taken so for granted but to speak out loud exactly what you think is yet another matter pending now before this court “When you dare to let your eyes tell you what you see before you giving shape to the substance of your voice you have risked the consequence of thought as now you are the object of an anti-leftist sting stripped of speech & stranded to the right by the ransoming of evidence deliberately suppressed & never to affirm the fact that you do matter too “If you let yourself submit & gurgitate exactly what you did not see on a sheet of silenced music or let yourself be tricked & trained not to even whisper on the side that the world men make remains so mediocre on a planet full of promise unevolved you become a model to be praised the subject of a sculptured work of art placed in front museums or serve as molding for those caricatures selling fast at Toys R Us
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as the gigs you get like the fees you charge begin to scale into a set of schemes you will commit against your own the very treason you say you hate yet now lay bare “But if it happens you decide to be a fighter in the struggle for a better order into thought brought & wrought against the hunger & the suffer we all curse you cannot pose for another lawful photo shoot or as model to a bust have your likeness posited in public parks sitting stiff & wondering if the enemy of Dream & Do of Can & Am will let you rust out in the rain “Like the boxer you can learn to be the thinker of the act the actor of the thought & like the artistry of Johnson & Ali counterpunching quick stalking from the shadows of the ropes jerk & jab hide & wait stick, stroke, strike then fade back into black.”
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(51) Witness: Amicus Curiae “For everything they doin & denyin in themselves they set to blamin Jazz for all that scag sellin in the streets accusatory fingers pointed at musicians “for every frail & puny frame tracin & embracin a dream’s nocturnal tone hidden in a sour note heard inside soprano brass lookin but to work that score the feelin of a song fillin up on dope gettin high from bein low hittin hard & soundin dull poppin veins & smokin hash then grabbin hold of whatnot space that stands between a tree trunk’s bark & a housin project’s buildin wall noddin & leanin & gradually descendin hoverin down to lift back up but never touchin ground – they put all that on Jazz “But if you’d’ve asked me then like you shoulda Bird & Diz I’d’ah told yuh how I ponder over why this muse remains abused by the ringin of the dollar with a misery repressed
like the instruments you got on trial : the swellin bulge in the pockets of producers who wanna own it all the managers of clubs operatin like the overseers Freedom Songs had overthrown “the rate of pay measured ‘gainst the pleasure of a one night’s take the censorship of sound of style & content reachin out expandin with perspective the parameters of thought watered down like whiskey sold or the substance lost within the bowls of cheap made pipes “All them Sonnys snagged & bagged like Stitt & Rollins, Miles & ‘Trane, Blakey & McLean or Moody’s Mood locked up tight in rotgut hell like Billie in a padded cell ‘til each one heard the vicious in the sound : the creed of greed ascendin in the midst of longin lost bringin ‘em to sweat & kick their habits cold “& if you ask me now like you shoulda Monk or Max I’ll tell you ‘bout the music that you hardly get to hear : merchants makin money bankers backin by the ton the launderin of loans & loosely fetted cash
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bribin customs spreadin coke then placin fault on all them Folk Who Love To Hear Some Jazz “But did you ever know a flügelhorn to own the land that grows the seed in Bolivia & Peru or operate a caravan of trucks loaded up with poppies by the bush comin in from China through Afghanistan & into Paris, Rome, Madrid or like the CIA “What music did you ever hear tell took to majorin in chemistry coca leaves & poppy seeds stems & flowers placed in burners frontline, staged boiled liquid flowin thru a tube comin back powder dry or cracked then packed up tight in glacine bags & reused vials pushed straight through a network’s thrift thrivin off those hungry veins hustled hard by weight & rate “Name me one lyric ever sung by Grandma Praise Song, Grandpa Dirge that ever overthrew a government or bought or brought a military down hoardin land from peasant farmers or connin folk who coulda made more music clear to raise instead a one-crop share
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visited by malnutrition then pay ‘em off with local pesos &/or sucres, lempiras & the like “Not a solitary lyric not a single horn not one composition can you name yet, like now, you place the blame on Jazz.”
(52) Witness: Mother G-Flat Blues “I come from Alabama Massachusetts & New York I was made to work just like a mule & forced to eat that pork I’m talkin ‘bout pigs’ ears & pigs’ feet, baby pig tails, the skin & grime but I hardly got the part that’s known as prime “They took me from my homeland from the forms I used to know shipped me ‘cross the great blue waters like cargo in the hold I’m talkin ‘bout ships’ decks chained & bleedin sharp whips & sounds of pleadin the moanin & the groanin keepin time
“I was taught to sing this music by my mother, Freedom Songs I was never meant to serve some other to her longing I belong I’m tellin you no man can own his brother no one can keep another no woman taken ‘gainst her mind “I created all this music dug the ore up out the ground but they claimed it all was layin there just waitin to be found I’m talkin ‘bout sad songs & field hands weighin singers, musicians playin & all of it they say was unrefined “But if you ask Alberta Hunter, ‘tell me, why you sound so blue,’ she’ll say she paid for those notes she played but never got her due I’m askin you who owns those record labels who sells them turnin tables & who gets the ninety for the dime “They make me out a liar when I refuse to pay the rent
but accordin to my calculations I don’t owe them one red cent I’m tellin you they owe me reparations owe for incarcerations & the slavin I’m still doin is a crime “They say the Christian Ethic is to pay each one his due but I ain’t got the pay they promised & they owe my children, too I’m tellin you pay me for the songs I played you pay me for the wealth I made you pay me for my hard earned daily grind “I rose up out my heartache givin birth to modern song & raised those voices still ascendin from roots that made ‘em strong I’m talkin ‘bout all the forms that live beside you all the songs that reach inside you all them sounds you hear are really mine “I intend to raise this music & my babies to be free to cultivate the seeds of peace & grow with dignity I’m talkin ‘bout
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livin, bein, breathin, lovin birthin, raisin, huggin, nudgin & all of it so natural & divine... ... & all of it the meaning of sublime... ...all of it so natural & divine....”
(53) Nolo contendere The room was large, the table long with cushioned seats aligned in rows along the sides & against the walls at the far corner to the right an old & senile Attorney Gee beside these two commissioners, one for cops & one for city jails, their backs against crimson drapes hung & drawn to hide a sunlight’s stare beggin to break in neat stacked piles of maps & files of public notes defaulting placed beside the table’s legs the doors of cedar opened wide like the gates of stores at fire sales or NASDAQ’s floors at nine a.m. as one by one the stern cold frames of CEOs from energy & industry from cyberspace & real estate
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from future stocks & mortgage due from Interpol & Alexandria from Downing Street & Wall Street too from Hollywood & Vine hurried in & grabbed their seats flopped their folders top the wood while Every-Way-I-Can dragged his feet close behind to take his seat at the table’s dim-lit end & just as quick as quiet ruled a cacophony broke loose as speculators joined an off-key chatter of complaints circling ‘round the vocal chords of dissonant notes passed around along with pipes of Thai Stick hemp pulled & puffed by CFOs harping on in E-Flat rants grumbling how the constant coverage televised throughout the world ‘bout marching boycotts at the malls has gone beyond berserk blighting business dropping fast
“It was dumb-dumb!” said a broker off the top, his tight lipt smirk aimed at both commissioners sitting on the side. “It’s impossible to arrest every single instrument, much more, every form of music and musician. And who else but an idiot would even want to try?” “The anarchy and chaos on the streets,” the head of Entertainment added, “is heaping havoc on our flow of cash.”
“Even tambourines have left the church to join those free street concerts,” the CFO for Ecumenics chimed in quick. “Drugs are down to the lowest levels ever scored before,” said the head of Pharmaceuticals. “...And low tech guns are hardly faring better!” the CFO from Manufactures added to the din. Coughs and arguments mixing with the fumes from smoked cigars filtered to the ceiling until the CEO from the biggest bank of all entered now and took his chair to there preside at the table’s head. “Gentlemen,” the man began, slyly glancing at the three against the drapes. “It appears that our juridical arena has overplayed its own hand. But this meeting wasn’t called to discuss or assess the merits of surveillance or the quality of stings. We’re here to best resolve how to quayle a public rage now brewing into storms.” “Did he mean quell?” the CEO who profits over ore mumbled.
“Here’s our problem,” the CPA, standing up and flipping through his spreadsheets, took the cue. “DVDs and PSPs just simply aren’t selling. Sales have dipped on new PCs, and, while blogs are running rampant, no one’s googling anymore. “Three new lines of air-pumped sneakers and tighter pants are moulding in their crates. Even low slit blouses are dangling on the racks, crowded up like workers in a subway car. For the past eight months, at the average rate of five a month, stalls in malls reported closing down. Game stores and warehouse outlets no longer draw the crowds, except, of course, the ones who come to bottle up the doors. Not even our underemployed are coming in, and the cost to keep middlemen in adequate position is way beyond the budget, while working staff that do show up are not enough to justify how much we pay to have them supervised. “Those heretofore most loyal bunch of blue-blood aides are also using traffic jams for not reporting in on time. Some have even stopped to catch those Free Jazz concerts.” “What are we to do?” the banker interrupted.
“He said quayle,” the CFO from Brooklyn Gas seated to his right whispered in reply, “but he meant quell.” “Since few of us are schooled in the art of juris delicti,” the banker now continued, “I have asked Getcha here to sit with us, along with these commissioners, to listen in on our behalf. But before we start,” he paused and signaled to his chief accountant.
And with that lead, the CIA rose up stiff, then passed out charts and cleared his throat. “These we had prepared,” he said, “in conjunction with the NSA,” and paused. “Here’s the profile we’ve identified – workers striking, traffic standing, schools and children shutting down; mainstream clubs and concert halls have barred their doors while every sideman not arrested keeps playing to
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the crowds. These Folks Who Love To Hear Some Jazz have grown accustomed to the Open Mic, insisting that our judges are the ones who need to be in jail; overpaid pundits who analyze the news discussing on the air how to implement communal supervision over cops,” he paused again. “And all of this has reached that point where the only music being heard is on the streets and in our jails.” “What these facts do not address,” the Chair rejoined in full, firm tones while staring at the judge, “is the reason why we’re sitting here today – how to rectify the situation facing us.” A long pause fell as Every-Way-I-Can tried to grasp the Chair’s suggestion, groping for a set of words to satisfy the banks. “Of course, it’s too late now,” Getcha carefully began, “what with all the media and the marching and the fact that the trial itself is coming to a head. Even as we speak, both sides are preparing their summations. “I do recall,” he hesitated, still searching through his words, “a principle in law last used by Spiro Agnew when nothing else could do – nolo contendere means exactly what it says,” he paused again, mulling over what to add onto his text.
something we could use.” The Attorney General in the back immediately reacted. “How you gonna not contend within your own judicial process?” as muttering and mumbling broke back fast throughout the room. “The Chair now deems discussion closed,” the banker forcefully announced. “That’s exactly what you’re going to do! This trial cannot conclude – no summation from either side, no deliberation, and sentencing won’t do,” he stopped, his piercing eyes now glaring at the three not seated at the table. “You,” he pointed to the senile Gee, “will so instruct your prosecutors,” then turned to face the judge. “Getcha here will immediately adjourn without a date set down for reconvening. To play it safe, offer every lawyer connected with this case more promotions and retainers than either side can handle. The rest will follow suit – simply put, we set it up as if to say there never was a trial,” the banker grinned. “All we have to do is stop contending.” “I can work with that,” both CIA and NSA jumped at once. “We can put a team of hackers into play and make the paperwork and records disappear,” offered up the NSA.
“No lo what?” the mining giant asked, perplexed. “...contendere,” Getcha clipped right back. “It means to say, I won’t contend, allowing one to deny the charge without the need to lie. Perhaps,” he stopped, “it’s
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“In other words,” the Chair came back. “A raid never did take place. And with no records to verify otherwise, Jazz was never put in jail. In six months’ time, the public will forget that Jazz and Kin had ever been arrested.”
“But if you do that,” the Commissioner of Corrections quickly interjected, “who’ll be taking up the spaces in our city jails?” “Who else?” retorted the Commissioner of Police, then rhetorically replied, “if not the ones who threaten our quality of life. Just don’t call them musicians anymore. Instead, use a different batch of catchwords; call them predators and pimps, career criminals who deserve to be locked up – boosters and burglars, deadbeats and grifters, wife beaters and suspected terrorists, hookyplaying teens and absentee parents, squeegee men and unlicensed vendors, loan sharks and number runners, petty larcenists stealing sodas off a truck, low level dealers and distributors against the common good; better yet, drunks and derelicts who defecate in parks.” Not to be outdone, the CIA rejoined, “We can whisper to our editors at every city desk to kill or screen whatever myths reporters try to file. I’ll order them to push, instead, stories stressing crime.” “Stop hiring their sidemen,” quickly added NSA. “Don’t let them headline anymore; refuse all suspected bandleaders access to renew their passports; pull a raid on every brand new venue for serving as a drop-off point for ganja and cigars or operating backroom poker games and cutting every pot.” “Stop using them as teaching artists working with the youth,” the chief of cops segued back. “Don’t even mention music in the schools.”
“But how to make a profit out of such a plan,” Real Estate’s Chief of Staff wondered with a question. “Corporate inroads into prisons,” answered back the Chair. “And you,” he coldly stared at Real Estate, “will target areas where musicians are likely to reside, then raise their rent and mortgages, while I’ll adjust the interest rates on penalties and subsequent foreclosures. Any snags come into play, the Feds will handle.” The head of cops swooped back in, “Once they’re evicted for defaulting on their payments, we can have ‘em all arrested for panhandling in the streets.” “...And the IRS,” CIA added to the stew, “can do the same to those who mail their tax forms late. And anyone caught prerecording incompliant music can be linked to gangs and drug cartels with foreign ties. And while they’re being processed through the courts, ignore any reference to those occupations listed on their RORs.” “I can put more cop shows on the air,” quickly chirped the head of Entertainment. “Get the sociologists in on this,” quipped a major publisher. “Psychoanalysts, too,” butted in an aide-de-camp for drug related Rehabilitation, then looked to see if he’d overstepped his bounds. “And while we’re at it,” the chief of cops chipped right in, “I can triple the number of SCUs currently in place.”
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“That’s good, that’s good,” Every-Way-I-Can agreed, “but what should I tell my tribunal?” “Yeah,” the jailer said. “And what am I supposed to do with all that music now locked down? Can’t just let ‘em go!” “We’ve come this far,” the Chair broke back, “the rest should be as easy. Without referring to those five demands, we’ll ask Justice to set up a Joint Interstate Judicial Review Board with the staunchest judges chosen to investigate themselves. As for those musicians still in jail, both the CIA and NSA can come up with a plan. No one here need know their details until and if reported in the news. And even then, we can plausibly deny whatever question posed. And on that note, I’ll entertain a motion to adjourn.” ★
Jazz in Jail Afterword: Louis Reyes Rivera Remembered
1997 found me attempting to write a memoir of my life in music, including my work with the great bandleader, pianist, composer, and arranger Sun Ra. I soon realized that I was a bit out of my element in the writing world and could use some help. A phone call to Amiri Baraka yielded the suggestion, among other bits of advice, that I contact Louis Reyes Rivera. I recognized the name and had, in fact, seen Louis perform impressively five years earlier at Birdland (the second) on 106th Street and Broadway. I don’t think you could find any two artists more cosmically in tune than Louis and me. It began with his being a mentor directing me through an understanding of the English language that I’m sure was the equivalent of a Master’s degree. As we worked on the manuscript --titled “Traveling the Spaceways, A Strange Celestial Road”-Louis meticulously appraised the writing I produced, giving me suggestions for revision. It was through that process that we became real friends and bonded as brothers through both the written word and music. We sat out in front of Sistas’ Place, a coffee house in Bedford-Stuyvesant that has become a highly regarded cultural institution, and exchanged ideas and related experiences for hours at a time. My work with Louis allowed for real cross-pollination. I worked with his Jazzoets ensemble, a group of accomplished musicians who performed at Sistas' Place on the first and third Sundays of each month. In turn, Louis performed in my group Diaspora. The name is an acronym
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for “Dispersions of the Spirit of Ra.” In addition, Louis began editing Sun Ra’s poetry for presentation at concerts. In 1999, based on discussions between Louis and me, along with Viola Plummer, an activist and founder of Sistas’ Place, we organized a series of open forums among poets, musicians, visual artists, and the community called Conversations, which were held immediately prior to Jazzoets performances. The Conversations series had two primary goals. One was to introduce the artists who would be performing at Sistas' to the community, and the other was to get more people to attend the Jazzoets performances. Both goals were realized. With Louis' presence, we brought some of the most advanced poets into Sistas' Place. Eventually, we added to our programming a series titled Satellites of the Sun. Its purpose was to feature former and current members of the Sun Ra Arkestra as leaders of their own groups, sometimes playing Sun Ra’s music and sometimes playing their own. During the second year of Satellites, trombonist and visual artist Dick Griffin brought his band. With him was vocalist Lil Phillips, who had gone to City College with Louis. She impressed the audience so much that we booked her to return in March of 2001 with her trio, which included her husband and bassist/composer James Phillips. Enchanted with the environment, the Phillips couple immortalized Sistas’ Place in song. At the suggestion of my wife Monique Ngozi Nri, who is also a poet, we began to play the song before every show. By 2002, Louis had become a producer on the local radio station WBAI, where his presence would ensure that
Cultural Warriors and Revolutionary Artists would have a voice on his program Perspective. He often focused attention on Sistas' Place. He even made me a co-host. Over time, Louis and I considered that what we were achieving culturally, particularly at Sistas' Place, required specific language to distinguish it from other initiatives. We wanted to give this music a 21st Century definition. During the writing of my memoir, I found myself using the phrase “Jazz: A Music of the Spirit” as a descriptive of the music that defied categorization. By 2006, Louis, Monique, and I had developed a paper in this vein, which we posted on the Sistas’ Place website as well as my own. Ultimately, I know that all of the work that Louis and I did together from 1997 until he left the planet in 2012 had an influence on this epic poem, Jazz in Jail. We were able to present Jazz in Jail as a work in progress at Sistas' Place with music created by Dr. Salim Washington. Louis was at the height of his creative powers during those sessions, and the merger of poetry and music, one of his signature achievements, was on brilliant display. As a written text, Jazz in Jail places Louis with great and immortal contemporaries such as Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez, and Sekou Sundiata, all of whom produced enduring works that are tributes to the interplay between poetry and this art form we call “Jazz: A Music of the Spirit.” Louis knew this was some of his best work. He knew he had conceived a masterpiece. It was a privilege to witness and be a part of the process. Ahmed Abdullah Band leader, educator, organizer
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by Eisa Nefertari Ulen In 1963 James Baldwin published a seminal treatise on American race relations, The Fire Next Time. Baldwin’s two essay volume greatly influenced the mid-20th century Civil Rights Movement. In his January 31, 1963 review of The Fire Next Time, The New York Times staffer Sheldon Binn wrote: “’You must put yourself in the skin of a black man...’ writes James Baldwin as he seeks to translate what it means to be a Negro in white America so that a white man can understand it. Despite the inherent difficulties of such a task, his translation in latest book, "The Fire Next Time," is masterful. No matter the skill of the writer, and Mr. Baldwin is skillful, one can never really know the corrosion of hate, the taste of fear or the misery of humiliation unless one has lived it. Only James Meredith knows what it really means to be James Meredith. But if the actuality cannot be known, it can be related. On one level it can be related so the listener becomes more or less curious, mildly interested and intellectually aware of what he is hearing.
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On another and higher level, it can be related so the listener becomes virtually part of the experience, intensely feels the hurt and pain and despair, and yes, even the hope. The listener can be transformed, as far as words will take him, into the skin or the teller. Out of his own pain and despair and hope, Mr. Baldwin has fashioned such a transformation. He has pictured white America as seen through the eyes of a Negro.” Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time has continued to inspire thinking people through the generations. Indeed, Baldwin wrote the first essay in Fire as a letter to his young nephew. In 2015, Gen X writer Ta-Nihisi Coates published Between the World and Me, a meditation on race in America that Coates authored as a letter to his son. Of Coates’ prose, Toni Morrison wrote "I’ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates." With his National Book Award winning book, Coates has helped articulate the salient message of our time: that Black Lives Matter. Familiarity with the work of James Baldwin, as well as a meaningful engagement with today’s Movement for Black Lives, is certainly not required for educators to teach Jesmyn Ward’s The Fire This Time. However, educators may choose to provide their students with historical context by starting with Mosaic Magazine’s Baldwin lesson plans, then build on Baldwin by giving students the opportunity for substantive engagement
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with #BlackLivesMatter, before proceeding to this lesson plan to teach The Fire This Time. (*To teach James Baldwin, educators can access Mosaic Literary Magazine lesson plans by visiting www.mosaicmagazine.org/education/lesson-plans. In addition, educators can access the #BlackLivesMatter lesson plan to help them teach Ta-Nihisi Coates at http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/974642 Jesmyn Ward is the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the novel Salvage the Bones, which won the 2011 National Book Award. An associate professor of creative writing at Tulane University, Ward also wrote the memoir Men We Reaped. With her fourth book, The Fire This Time, Ward has assembled a powerful collection of work by contemporary writers of African descent. Divided into three parts, Legacy, Reckoning, and Jubilee, The Fire This Time examines the #BlackLivesMatter Movement and is an homage to James Baldwin. Ward works in the African tradition of call and response, recognizing Baldwin’s 1963 Fire as a call that the author activist issued through time and across Movements to his literary descendants. Those descendants, Gen X and Millennial writers like Edwidge Danticat, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Emily Raboteau, and Mitchell S. Jackson, respond, with meaningful reflections, stirring meditations, and calls to action, all collected in Ward’s 21st century Fire.
I. Introduction to James Baldwin (See Mosaic lesson plans www.mag-
cloud.com/browse/issue/1129462) II. Introduction to the Movement for Black Lives (See Mosaic lesson plans: www.magcloud.com/browse/ issue/974642)
III. Structure A. Topics for Discussion 1. The Intimacy of Letters a. Define epistle b. What is an epistolary narrative? c. Think about the letters you have given and received, including cards for things like birthdays and special holidays and even notes passed in class. Would an email on your birthday feel as special as receiving a traditional card with a personal note? d. How does receiving a letter or card make you feel? If someone special had to tell you something important and full of emotion, do you think receiving a letter would make their message seem more meaningful? e. Let’s be specific. Is a hand-written love note more meaningful than an email or text message? Is a handwritten expression of sympathy more meaningful than an email or text? Why? f. People save text and email messages on their phones and computers. Where do people save letters? Do people like your grandparents, parents, and other adults close to you keep letters and cards that you made for them when you were little?
2. Edwidge Danticat contributed “Message to My Daughters” to Ward’s Fire. Why do you think she wrote her narrative to her daughters – rather than about them? a. Do you think this letter is something Danticat’s daughters will want to reread when they get older? b. How do you think it feels to be a child and receive a letter like this from your mother? c. This letter is very different from a birthday or holiday card. What are some of the ways that it is different? But it is similar in some ways, isn’t it? In what ways is Danticat’s letter similar to a special occasion card? d. Is Danticat’s letter a different way of telling her daughters she loves them? e. Why do you think Baldwin, Coates, and Danticat examined the vulnerability of Black life in America in letters they wrote to young family members? 3. Legacy, Reckoning, Jubilee a. Define each of these words b. Think about the places you have heard these words before. Has anyone ever heard these words used in a place of worship? c. What is the Day of Reckoning? d. Why do you think Ward used these words to divide her book into three parts? How is use of these terms different from simply dividing her book into Part I, Part II, and Part III? e. Essay Idea Write an essay about the Black Lives Matter Movement as you understand it. Feel free to use the first person and make this a personal essay if you want to. Divide your essay into three parts using Ward’s word
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choices. For Part I, of your essay, Legacy, write about the history of violence against Black bodies as you understand it. For Part II of your essay, Reckoning, write about the way(s) you have come to understand that history. Come to a kind of resolution about how that past makes you feel. Do you think the history of violence against Black bodies needs to be atoned for, punished, or otherwise reconciled and resolved? Write about that resolution in Part II of your essay. In Part III of your essay, Jubilee, imagine celebrating a victory over this history of violence. What do you think the celebration of free Black bodies will look like in the future? Describe this Day of Jubilee as you imagine it in Part III of your essay.
might your epistolary narrative communicate to readers about #BlackLivesMatter? What does your series of letters communicate to readers about your community and school? What does your series of letters communicate about you?
B. Other Activities 1. Choose your favorite contribution to Ward’s Fire. Think about why that piece is located in the section of the book where it appears. Draw or collage a set of images that express the feeling of historical legacy, personal reckoning, or momentum toward a future jubilee that your favorite piece evokes.
4. Write a letter to your future grandchildren telling them about the ways you experience life in America today. In your letter, be clear that you are writing this letter before they are even born because you want them to have some history of American life as you lived it. Tell them you hope your description of the past will help them power their own futures. In your letter, be explicit about race, gender, class, and your interactions with police. Do you have a great diversity of friends across racial, ethnic, and religious lines, or do most of your friends look a lot like you? Does your circle of friends reflect the diversity (or lack thereof) in your community? How does it feel to be a boy, or a girl, or transgender, or gender fluid? Write openly about gender identity and the ways that expectations along gender lines impact you. Tell your future grandchildren if you feel wealthy, poor, or somewhere in the middle. Tell your grandchildren if you feel optimistic or pessimistic about your financial future. Finally, in your letter to your grandchildren, tell them how you
2. Choose a class partner. As you read and discuss Ward’s Fire in class, write letters to each other. In your letters, identify the piece you’ve read and communicate to your partner the thoughts and feelings you had as you read the piece. Did an idea come to you suddenly when you read a particular line or paragraph? Did your feelings change as you read the piece? When you and your partner finish the book, collect the letters you wrote back and forth to each other by placing them in chronological order. Read them as one epistolary narrative. Do the letters read as a cohesive, substantive whole? What
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3. Identify one favorite piece in each of the three sections of Ward’s Fire. Research the writers who contributed your top 3 works. Write a letter to each contributor, and mail it to the college or university where they teach. If any of your favorite contributors are not university professors, then send your letter to the publicity department at Scribner Publishing Company with a note attached asking the publicist to please send your letter along.
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feel when you see police officers in your community. Tell them why you feel the way you do. If you have had interactions with police officers, describe that experience so your future grandchildren can really see your life, as you lived it, when they read your letter two generations from today. (This activity can easily be modified for students to write to a younger family member, like a sibling, niece, nephew, or younger cousin.)
IV. In the Tradition A. Topics for Discussion 1. Define the word connotation. 2. Define the word denotation. 3. Read “November Cotton Flower” by Jean Toomer https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/ poems/detail/46406 a. Note word choices like “winter,” “rusty,” and “old” b. Do these word choices connote life or do they connote death? c. How many word choices that connote death can you find in this poem? d. Now, read the last two lines of the poem. Are “the brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear” a kind of resistance to death and decay? e. Is “the beauty so sudden for that time of year” a kind of insistence on life? f. How does this poem make you feel?
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4. Now read Jericho Brown’s poem a. Does the list of flowers at the start of the poem suggest life? b. What do you think the speaker of the poem means with the reference to “our dead fathers” who “Wiped sweat from their necks”? Assuming the speaker of the poem is African American, who might “our dead fathers” be? c. Do blooming flowers connote life? d. What image does the speeding video of blooming flowers create in your mind? What do you see when you read lines 11-12 of the poem? e. Could the speeding blooms somehow connect to video images of African Americans who are killed by police officers? Think about all the videos of Black people killed by police that you have seen. f. Do you know who the people are who are listed in the last line of the poem? Where have you heard these names? g. How does this list of names make you feel? h. How is the list of names similar to the list of flowers? How is the list of names different from the list of flowers? i. In what ways is a young man like Mike Brown like a flower? What attributes do Black boys and men share with flowers? j. Does the list of names in the last line of “The Tradition” connote life or death? k. In what ways is “The Tradition” like “November Cotton Flower,” and in what ways is it different? B. Essay Idea Write a poem comparing Black boys and men or Black girls and women to something beautiful in the natural
world. You might compare Black boys and men to flowers, as Jericho Brown does in “The Tradition,” or you might compare Black girls and women to a flower as Toomer does in “November Cotton Flower.” You may choose any gender you want to, and you may choose to compare the gender you select to another beautiful element of the natural world, like sunlight, moonbeams, hillsides, ocean waves, deep lakes, open fields, ice, or snow. C. Additional Activities 1. Make a list of ten words that come to your mind when you think of flowers. Make another list of ten words that come to your mind when you think of Black men. How many of those word choices are the same? How many are different? 2. Research writer Jean Toomer. Make a list of the interests and experiences he had. Create a poster board project that celebrates the dynamic life Jean Toomer had. 3. Read at least two more poems by Jean Toomer that were published in his book, Cane. Read at least two more poems by Jericho Brown. Is Brown working in the tradition of ambitious and beautiful art like Toomer, his literary fore-parent? Create a visual project, like a collage, painting, or even a chart, that celebrates the literary aspects of Jericho Brown’s and Jean Toomer’s poetry.
V. Defending Black Men A. Topics for Discussion 1. Read this online biography of Phillis Wheatley. What do you think of the fact that her husband and children are not even mentioned, but the family that owned her is? https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/phillis-wheatley 2. Now read this biography of Wheatley. What does the depiction of Wheatley’s husband make you think of him as a man, husband, and father? http://www.biography.com/people/phillis-wheatley9528784#later-life 3. This is Wheatley’s signature poem. What do you think it means? Go through the poem line by line, and talk about what the speaker of the poem seems to be saying. On Being Brought from Africa to America 'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, "Their colour is a diabolic die." Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train. 4. Read this excerpt from Henry Louis Gates’ “A Critic at Large: Phillis Wheatley on Trial.” h t t p : / / w w w. e n . u t e x a s . e d u / C l a s s e s / B r e m e n / e316k/316kprivate/scans/gates.html The emergence, in the mid-eighteen-forties, of fugitive-
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slave authors, such as Frederick Douglass, rendered Wheatley's stylized rhymes passÈ. Under the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist movement was assuming an urgency and a stridency consonant with the angry realism of Douglass's voice. Wheatley disappeared from view and when she reappeared, in the late nineteenth century, it was as a version of what Jefferson had made of her---a symbol of artificiality, of spiritless and wrote convention. Unlike Douglass, who was embraced by the black literary community; she was a pariah, reviled for "On Being Brought from Africa to America," even though the poem belongs among her juvenilia. In 1887, Edward Wilmot Blyden, one of the fathers of black nationalism, wrote about her contemptuously, and the tone was set for the century to come. "One looks in vain for some outburst or even complaint against the bondage of her people, for some agonizing cry about her native land, "James Weldon Johnson wrote about "On Being Brought from Africa to America," in 1922. Instead, one finds a "smug contentment at her own escape there from." Wallace Thurman, in 1928, called her "a third-rate imitation" of Alexander Pope: "Phillis in her day was a museum figure who would have caused more of a sensation if some contemporary Barnum had exploited her." Another black critic described her as "a clever imitator, nothing more." By the nineteen-sixties, criticism of Wheatley had risen to a high pitch of disdain. Amiri Baraka, a founder of the Black Arts Movement, wrote in 1962 that Wheatley's "pleasant imitations of eighteenth-century English poetry are far and, finally, ludicrous departures from the huge black voices that splintered southern nights with their
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hollers, chants, arwhoolies, and ballits. " In "Images of the Negro in American Literature" (1966), Seymour Gross wrote, "This Negro poetess so well fits the Uncle Tom syndrome .... She is pious, grateful, retiring, and civil." A few years later, the critic Addison Gayle, Jr., issued his own bill of indictment: Wheatley, he wrote, was the first among black writers "to accept the images and symbols of degradation passed down from the South's most intellectual lights and the first to speak with a sensibility finely tuned by close approximation to [her] oppressors." She had, in sum, "surrendered the right to self-definition to others." Phillis Wheatley, who had once been cast as the great paragon of Negro achievement, was now given a new role: race traitor. The examples could be multiplied, as versions of the Jeffersonian critique have been taken up by successive generations of black-writers and critics. Too black to be taken seriously by white critics in the eighteenth century; Wheatley was now considered too white to interest black critics in the twentieth. She was an impostor, a fraud, an avatar of inauthenticity. It's striking that Jefferson and Amiri Baraka, two figures in American letters who agreed on little else, could concur in the terms of their condemnation of Phillis Wheatley. 5. Now read this excerpt from Alice Walker’s essay, “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens.” Walker asks us to think differently about Wheatley and her signature poem. What is Walker saying about Wheatley? http://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/webtexts/Wheatley/phil2.htm 6. How can we begin to fairly judge African Americans
in the colonial era? 7. This tradition of (re)visioning Black life continues with Jeffers’ “Defense” of Wheatley’s husband in Fire. Why do you think other African American writers have chosen to focus on Wheatley – and not her husband? 8. Do you think it is important for Jeffers to defend this man who married the famous 18th century poet? 9. What are some of the stereotypes about Black men? What about Black husbands? What are the stereotypes about Black fathers? 10. Why do you think Jeffers did so much research, and why do you think she included all the historical evidence she could dig up in her essay? 11. Do you think most Americans believe that most Black men are good husbands and fathers, or do you think that most Americans think that most Black men are bad husbands and fathers? 12. What do you think are some stereotypes about Black men? 13. Do you think the stereotypes about Black men can influence the way police officers interact with them? 14. Did you know that Black fathers are more involved in their children’s lives than any other racial group in America? How does this fact about loving Black fathers make you feel?
SUBSCRIBE TODAY Mosaic is a print tri-annual (Spring, Summer & Fall/Winter) that explores the literary arts by writers of African descent, and features interviews, essays, and book reviews. Mosaic provides a unique space to preview upcoming releases through book reviews and author interviews. Each issue is supplemented with educator lesson plans based on our mission.
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15. Did you know that Black women are the most educated group in America, and that those educated Black women are more likely to read a book than any other racial group across gender lines in this country? How does this fact about the intelligence of Black women make you feel? 16. Did you know that college-educated Black women are more likely to start their own business than any other racial group across gender lines in this country? How does this fact about Black female entrepreneurship make you feel? B. Essay Ideas: Think about a Black husband and/or father that you admire. It could be a family member, friend, or a famous Black man that you’ve never met. Write a letter to America explaining why this Black man’s life matters. Be specific about why the person you select is loved, admired, and needed by his family members. Or Think about a Black wife and/or mother that you admire. It could be a family member, friend, or a famous Black woman that you’ve never met. Write a letter to America explaining why this Black woman’s life matters. Be specific about why the person you select is loved, admired, and needed by her family members. C. Additional Activities 1. Read this Daily Kos article about the true state of Black fathers. Pull the most important facts you identify in the article, and use them to create a poster celebrating Black fatherhood. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/5/13/1383179/-
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The-absent-black-father-myth-debunked-by-CDC
album influence you?
2. Read this Clutch magazine article about the true state of Black women readers. Pull the most important facts you identify in the article, and use them to create a poster celebrating Black women. h t t p : / / w w w. t h e a t l a n t i c . c o m / e n t e r t a i n m e n t / a rchive/2014/01/most-likely-person-read-book-collegeeducated-black-woman/357091/
3. What region of the country do we live in? What words do you think other people in the country would use to describe the region where we live?
3. Read this Alternet article about Black women being the most educated group in the U.S. - and the group most likely to start their own business. Pull the most important facts you identify in the article, and use them to create a poster celebrating Black women. http://www.alternet.org/gender/black-women-most-educated-people-america 4. How do you see your future? Who will write your story? Create an action plan for your future. How will you insure that you are educated, well-read, and an involved parent in the future?
VI. Defending Black Women A. Topics for Discussion 1. What is the name of the most important song you ever heard? Why does that song mean so much to you? 2. Have you ever played an album over and over again? If so, which one was it? How did the replaying of this
4. What words would you use to describe the region of the country where we live? 5. What close family friend or family member has done the most to support you, uplift you, even keep you alive? 6. If you had to name a song that helped express the way you feel about that person, what would the song be? 7. In “Da Art of Storytellin,” Kiese Laymon makes a point of saying his grandmother had “to pull the guts out of thousands of chickens a day.” What do you think a job like that is like? How would you describe that kind of work? 8. Do you think it would be easy or hard to rise at 4:30am every day to make breakfast for your family before going to work in a food processing plant? 9. Are Black women who do this kind of work often denigrated in the American mainstream? In what ways are Black female factory workers often put down? 10. In what ways is Kiese Laymon’s “Da Art of Storytellin” a defense of his Black grandmother? In what ways is Laymon’s essay a tribute to his grandmother? 11. Look up the word validation and write down the
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dictionary definition of that word. In what ways did OutKast’s music validate the beauty, power, and beauty of his grandmother? B. Essay Idea Write a tribute to a person who raised or helped raise you. In your tribute, identify the thing about you that you are most proud of that this person has helped shape or bring out of you. In addition, make sure you identify the specific things this person has done to help you. As you write, think about the song or songs that remind you of this influential person. The tribute you write should identify this music, include any special or poignant lyrics, and tell the person you write about the way this music makes you feel because it makes you think of them. C. Additional Activities 1. In the middle of a poster board, write the word validation. Above the word validation, write the name of a person you know is magnificent but who is often overlooked, ignored, or even despised in mainstream society. Around those two words, draw, collage, or write out reasons why you wish to validate the worth of this person. Express in a visually stunning way the reasons why you value this person. 2. Read Kindred by Octavia Butler. 3. Write a song to offer a tribute to someone in your school or community who has positively influenced you.
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VII. Bonus Essay Read The New York Times review of James Baldwin’s 1963 book The Fire Next Time. The review is overwhelmingly positive, and includes a one sentence paragraph that reads, “He has pictured white America as seen through the eyes of a Negro.” In this 2016 DailyKos.com review of Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, the reviewer writes, “Every American should read Between the World and Me. The book is a letter that Ta-Nehisi Coates has written to his teenaged son, but it is more, way more than that. If you want to surrender your white privilege for a bit and experience what it is like to be a black person in America, immerse yourself in the arc of Coates’ life as he shares with his son and with us. You may be white in America and think that your life does not seem to have any “white privilege” in it. If so, then you need to read this book even more than most of us. We still have a ways to go if we really want to eliminate racial discrimination in our society, which was supposedly built on the precept that “all men are created equal”. Is it still important that Black people help white America see America through the eyes of people of color? Is that still necessary? Why or why not? Is that task of making whites see America the way non-whites see it a burden that people of color should take on, or do white Americans need to do the work of undoing racism within the white community? https://partners.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/ baldwin-fire.html http://bit.ly/2jUBT3W
black documents
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Bronx Museum of the Arts • 1040 Grand Concourse, Bronx NYC Saturday, November 18, 2017
PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION JAMEL SHABAZZ: BLACK DOCUMENTS: FREEDOM Andrew Freedman Home • 1125 Grand Concourse, Bronx NYC November 16 to December 9, 2017
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An exploration of identity in literature, photography, and the media. BlackDocuments.com Photo credits: Lola Flash and Jamel Shabazz