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A Soulful Collection of Art and Literature
Summer 2016
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VOLUME NO. 14, ISSUE 32
The Gospel According to James and his Apostles
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“You write in order to change the world…if you alter even by a
millimeter, the way people look at reality then you change it,”
— James Baldwin.
In May, I joined a historic global community of writers, scholars,
and artists for the International James Baldwin Conference
presented by the American University of Paris (AUP).
Being in the presence of “apostles” who interpreted Baldwin’s
scripture in literature, song, and verse was a transformative experience. Walking
in his footsteps in Paris made Baldwin’s spiritual journey palpable to most of us
attending the conference. As the grand daughter of a southern Baptist preacher, my
connection to Baldwin, the boy preacher, was affirmed.
My vow to use words and images to empower, uplift, and enlighten were renewed by
being in the presence of great minds committed towards the same goals.
Barely a month after returning from the Paris conference, the world was hit with the
killings in Orlando, Florida where 49 queer and same gender loving people were
violently slaughtered in a dance club. This horrifying tragedy demonstrates the need
to teach James Baldwin’s work in our schools. His literature is as relevant today as it
was in the 1960s during the civil rights movement.
His love, honesty, and ability to challenge the way people think and act are critical
elements in fighting compassionately against all forms of intolerance and hate.
African Voices’ first digital issue is dedicated to the victims of the Orlando tragedy.
You will find excerpts from papers by scholars attending the conference on
Black joy, The Implication of Giovanni’s Room on Black Boy Queer Identity (an
interactive presentation on our website), and poems celebrating our individuality as
human beings.
Yesenia Montilla’s poem “It’s A Miracle,” succinctly addresses our concerns: “how
someone’s second amendment right seems to only leave a trail of children’s bodies
& brown bodies. & how some days I am afraid of stepping out of the house or of
whether my lover brown & beautiful will make it home.”
Our front cover artist Leroy Campbell offers comfort and inspiration in his upcoming
art exhibition “Fighting Spirit: Tribute to the Life and Times of Muhammad Ali.”
The exhibition, which opens in October, honors the power each individual has in
fighting for justice. Let’s embrace the strength in declaring — I Am Deliberate And
Afraid of Nothing.
Front Cover: Leroy Campbell, I Am Strong, Courtesy: Richard Beavers Gallery
Back Cover: Jocelyn Goode
Churches[1]
Once my roof housed
a century of music
I shone with stained glass
beautiful things pulled from fire
Father forgive me my collapse
heavy lies the head
wearing a crown of ashes
Thirteen churches
the fire a raucous song
Now I’m a casket of smoke
now my windows weep
My pews a row of blackened teeth
charred gospels a flock of ravens
They sent fire for a sin uncommitted
These men already dressed as ghosts
who burned me before
pleaded guilty with smiles
my cinders still in their teeth
A halo of caution tape
When the floods relinquished their grip
God said the fire next time
But their hands have left nothing
up to interpretation
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
© 2016 Julian Randall
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Contents
FICTION AND BOOKS
24
Olio Offers A Compelling
Tribute to Reshape Our
Musical Narratives by Shani Jamila
26
Peach Cobbler
by Aimiende Negbenebor Sela
POETRY
4
Churches[1] by Julian Randall
20
ALWAYS, THERE IS MUSIC by Ariana Brown
7
Undressing In The Rain by Yesenia Montilla
21
It’s A Miracle by Yesenia Montilla
15 Ode to James Baldwin by Zoe Smith-Holladay
30on the E express a boy asks his mama a
few things by Amber Atiya
19My Father Tells Me He and My Mother Got
Married the Year Purple Rain was Released
by Julian Randall
34
SHUFFLE MACHINE by Joel Dias-Porter
16
Don’t Let me Be Misunderstood:
The Relationship Between James Baldwin,
Lorraine Hansberry & Nina Simone
by Lynnée Denise Bonner
IN THIS ISSUE
Contributors Bios
6
8Bearing Witness to The International
James Baldwin Conference in Paris
by Charles Reese
10The Subversive Potential of Black Joy:
Reimagining Protest In the Work of
James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry
by Sarita Cannon, Ph.D.
GALLERY
32
The Gallery — Jocelyn Goode: Healing Community Through Art
IN PASSING
22
Malik Taylor (Phife Dawg) by Mirlande Jean-Gilles
African Voices print editions can be purchased at the following locations: MANHATTAN
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CONTRIBUTORS BIOS
Amber Atiya
is a poet, performer, and self-taught artist-in-training. Her work
has appeared in Boston Review, Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated
to Queer Poets of Color, PEN America, and elsewhere. A proud
native Brooklynite, she is a member of a women’s writing group
and author of the fierce bums of doo-wop published by Argos
Book in 2014.
Ariana Brown
is an Afromexicana poet from San Antonio, Texas, with a B.A.
in African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American Studies from
UT Austin. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets
Prize, a 2014 national collegiate poetry slam champion, and is
currently working on her first manuscript. Her work is published
in Huizache, Rattle, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and is
forthcoming in ¡Manteca!: An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets
from Arte Público Press.
Sarita Nyasha Cannon
is Associate Professor of English at San Francisco State University
where she teaches 20th-century American Literature. She
graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with an
A.B. in Literature, earned a Ph.D. in English from University
of California, Berkeley, and held a Postdoctoral Research
Fellowship in American Indian Studies at University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Cannon’s scholarship has appeared in
Interdisciplinary Humanities, The Black Scholar, Asian American
Literature: Discourses and Pedagogies, Callaloo, and MELUS.
She is also a classically trained soprano who sings with various
groups throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
Kieyan Chauhan
is a 17 year old, self-taught artist from the South East of
England. He specialises in portraiture and also creates music
under the name ‘Kayncee’. He is currently a full time
student studying music and art and is an avid Hip-Hop fan.
Find him on Facebook under ‘Kieyan’s Drawings’ and on
Instagram @kieyanchauhan.
DJ Lynnée Denise,
an artist and scholar, incorporates self-directed project based
research into interactive workshops, music events and public
lectures that provide the opportunity to develop an intimate
relationship with under-explored topics related to the cultural
history of marginalized communities. She is inspired by
underground cultural movements, the 1980s, migration studies,
theories of escape, and electronic music of the African Diaspora.
With support from the Jerome Foundation, The Astrae Lesbian
Foundation for Justice, Idea Capital, The BiljmAIR artist residency
(Netherlands) and The Rauschenberg Artists as Activists Grant,
she has been able to resource her performative research on a
local, national and global level.
Joel Dias-Porter (aka DJ Renegade)
was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, and a former professional
DJ. From 1994- 1999 he competed in the National Poetry Slam,
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african Voices
and was the 1998 and 99 Haiku Slam Champion. His poems
have been published in; Time Magazine, The Washington Post,
POETRY, Mead, The Offending Adam, Best American
Poets 2014, Callalloo, Ploughshares, Antioch Review, Red Brick
Review, Asheville Review, Beltway Quarterly and
several anthologies.
Jocelyn Goode: See The Gallery.
Jonathan Guy-Gladding (JAG):
“The best thing that ever happened to me was being sent to
the Caribbean in 1999…I applied to be a volunteer in the Peace
Corps and had the great fortune to be sent to the island of
St. Lucia in July of 1999. Serving as a woodwork instructor in the
beautiful southern coastal village of Laborie, I found there an
unending supply of rich subject matter in the faces and postures
of the uniformed schoolchildren, the people going about their
daily lives, and the traditional cultural aspects that make St. Lucia
such a wonderful and distinctive place.
Shani Jamila
is an artist and cultural worker whose travels to more than forty
countries deeply inform her collage, text and documentary
photography practice. Her work, which addresses themes of
identity, political imagination and witness, has been exhibited
at institutions including the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Smack
Mellon ­Gallery, SCOPE Art Fair, Corridor Gallery, the City
College of New York and Princeton University. The Smithsonian
National Museum of African American History and Culture
filmed an interview about her life and work for their inaugural
exhibit “A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond.” A Fulbright
scholar with over a decade of leadership in designing and
executing programs that use the arts to catalyze social change,
Jamila currently serves as a managing director of the Urban
Justice Center in New York City.
Yesenia Montilla
is an Afro-Latina from New York City. She is a graduate of
Drew University’s Poetry & Poetry in Translation MFA program
& a Canto Mundo Fellow. Her poetry has appeared in The
Wide Shore, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast and among other
publications. Her first collection of poetry The Pink Box is
published by Willow Books and was long-listed for the PEN
America Open Book Award.
Aimiende Negbenebor:
Creator of the award-winning short film Asa, A Beautiful Girl,
Aimiende Negbenebor Sela hails from Benin City, Nigeria. After
moving to New York in the late ‘90s, she went on to earn a
degree in Computer Engineering and Literature from Stevens
Institute of Technology. After a number of years of trudging
along in the I.T. world, she made a life-altering decision to leave
and pursue her true passion — the arts.
Julian Randall
is a performance poet, educator, and arts education advocate.
A Chicago native, Randall has pursued a career in poetry since
2011. A two-time national college slam competitor Randall also
Undressing In The Rain
placed 3rd in Young Chicago Author’s Louder Than A Bomb
University, a national individual college slam event. His work
documents his journey through the world exploring concepts
of social justice, Blackness, Latinidad, masculinity, love and the
search for home. His first collection of poems On The Way Here,
is available from 2Rise Press.
Charles Reese
received a B.A. Degree in Mass Communications & Theatre Arts
from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. The multi-faceted
thespian is a long standing member of SAG/ AFTRA and AEA
(the professional film and stage unions). Reese has numerous
performing credits in theatre, television, independent film,
voiceovers and web series. Reese is the editor and original actor
for the Off-Broadway playbook, James Baldwin: A Soul On Fire
by the late playwright, Howard B. Simon.
Zoe Smith-Holladay
is a rising 7th grade creative writing major at the Denver School
of the Arts. She is founder & author of kidsanimalstation.com,
an animal blog that she started when she was eight. In Spring
2016, Smith-Holladay’s first fictional piece of prose “No Man’s
Land” was published in literary magazine Calling Upon Calliope.
Her favorite genres to read and write in are historical fiction,
comedy, and fantasy. When she grows up, she wants to be a
geneticist and would like to find a way to combine her passion
for creative writing and science.
Published on africanvoices.com
Khalil Anthony Peebles
is a polymath, a multi-disciplinary artist working within varying
mediums and media. His work investigates the relationships
between the spirit and space, the black body, sexuality, society,
and the urban experience. Weaving together these artistic
intentions through writing, dance and movement, acting,
painting, arts-admin, education, and song, his work speaks to a
diverse audience and varying communities.
Jawanza Phoenix
is a lawyer and the author of two books of poems, I Need an
Assignment and The Intersection of Beauty and Crime.
Nelly Rosario
is author of Song of the Water Saints: A Novel (Pantheon, 2002),
winner of a PEN/Open Book Award. Her fiction, nonfiction and
poetry appear in various anthologies and journals, including
Callaloo, Meridians, Review, Chess Life, and el diario/La
Prensa. Rosario holds an MFA from Columbia University and
was formerly on faculty in the MFA Program at Texas State
University. She was a recent Visiting Scholar at MIT, her alma
mater, and presently serves as writer/researcher for the Blacks
at MIT History Project. Rosario lives in Brooklyn, where she’s at
work on a speculative novel on community medicine.
Even though there are things
I can’t let go of — your smile
at high noon, or the way you
would stare into my body, as
though I housed a whole
country there. & what’s
a country in a body except a
colony? & colonization can
happen to a heart as well
as a whole people. & people
seem to overlook that love is
not a freight truck that runs
over the worst parts of us;
it is a bird watcher, face
stretched out towards heaven
waiting to spot wings. & what
do I know about heaven? The
same thing I know about wings,
I can’t have it. & so let me be
a pilgrim, searching for forgetting
your smile at high noon, which
I already mentioned & which every
passing day grows fainter. & this
is the point: when love is gone
dress yourself up in the things
you can’t let go of, like armor or
like blossoms. Dress yourself up
so pretty that even the blind
catcall the seams of your silhouette.
Seams round & soft as pillows.
The weather man says chance of rain
& I leave home without my umbrella.
This is living & loving & attempting
to forget — when you stand in torrential
rain during a cold spring & let a memory
wash off like a silk dress —
© 2016 Yesenia Montilla
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7
Bearing Witness to The International
James Baldwin Conference in Paris
By Charles Reese
Photo: Carolyn A. Butts
“No one can possibly know what is about to happen. It is happening each time,
for the first time, for the only time.” — James Baldwin (1924–1987)
Journalogue One: The James Baldwin International Conference at the American University of Paris (AUP), France
Celebrating 50 years of academic and cultural engagement, The AUP presented the International James Baldwin
Conference “A Language to Dwell In: James Baldwin, Paris, and International Visions” from May 26-28, 2016.
The conference was organized by the AUP along with co-directors, Alice Craven and William Dow, in association
with the Department of Comparative Literature and English.
The conference represented a broad array of global interdisciplinary explorations of Baldwin’s life and work, with a
special emphasis on Paris and his experiences throughout Europe and Africa. Each day of the conference featured exciting
lectures, forums, and dialogues exploring the fiery spirit of this 20th century icon. It was an engaging, educational
and entertaining intersection for students and global enthusiasts around Baldwin’s work. Literary and cultural critics,
historians, scholars of gender and same gender loving theorists to activists, filmmakers, musicians, and other artists
gathered in Paris to share in a transforming experience.
As an actor, author, educator and one of the selected presenters from the United States, I was very excited to bear witness to
the legacy of James Baldwin, an American writer, civil rights activist, and expatriate in his beloved second home in France.
AUP was the perfect venue to re-ignite and re-discover what Baldwin’s seminal work means for today’s tech savvy and
diverse global audiences. Baldwin enthusiasts have been pushing for a long overdue film about this great writer.
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african Voices
Poets and artists Jessica Care Moore, Charles Reese, Ashleigh M. Barice, Sabrina Nelson and Rowan Edwards
enjoy a moment together.
Journalogue Two: James Baldwin: Public Policies and Sociopolitical Visions (Panel #25)
On Saturday, May 28, 2016, I along with my fellow panelists: Catherine Smith, an attorney who was presenting with
her 12-year-old daughter, Zoe Smith-Holladay (the youngest presenter in the room and the conference) – University of
Denver; Catherine Taylor, Ithaca College, New York; and Sarita Cannon, San Francisco State University gathered in
this literary sacred space. Each panelist did not know each other prior to meeting in this room for a presentation but our
presentations perfectly intertwined as if it were divinely planned. This unique panel was curated by AUP based on our
individually submitted abstracts in the fall of 2015. We were vessels placed in a room with a specific subject matter to
share as it relates to our muse, James Baldwin.
I was the first one in the room, to bear witness as Baldwin would say, and my journey began with a lively introduction
from our panel chair, Catherine Taylor. I rose from my seat joyously singing a call and response song, “Keep Your Eye
On The Prize,” in the tradition of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s and paying homage to Baldwin’s The Fire Next
Time. I engaged the audience to participate in this interactive moment, while I was preparing my way to the podium to
deliver my Baldwin inspired presentation, “James Baldwin: Artist as Activist and the Baldwin/Kennedy Secret Summit
of 1963.” This scarcely known secret meeting was attended by Lorraine Hansberry, Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte, Dr.
Kenneth Clarke and young freedom fighter Jerome Smith. It was a surreal moment of history that I will remember for
a lifetime. The meeting inspired the premise for an off-Broadway play, “James Baldwin: A Soul on Fire,” by the late
playwright, Howard B. Simon. My complete essay is published in the book volume, “James Baldwin: Challenging
Authors” Chapter #8. Sense Publishers. (www.sensepublishers.com) and the full play book version of James Baldwin:
A Soul On Fire is available on Amazon.
I was graciously followed by the magical mother/daughter literary duet Catherine Smith and Zoe Smith-Holladay who
passionately spoke on the subject of “Baldwin and Generational Perspectives on Civil Rights Advocacy”, coupled with
Catherine Taylor’s insightful and critical analysis on “Race Politics and Hybrid Genres in James Baldwin and Claudia
Rankine: From Epic to Lyric Essays”; and Sarita Cannon’s lyrical essay on “The Subversive Potential of Black Joy:
Re-imagining Protest in the Work of James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry.”
The highlight of this eclectic Baldwin Panel #25 was the youngest presenter in the room, Zoe Smith-Holladay who
delivered a heart felt poem she wrote in response to her mother’s presentation on Civil Rights advocacy. It was a priceless
moment where I believe the spirit of James Baldwin as an ancestor entered our room with joy and appreciation.
african Voices
9
The Subversive Potential of Black Joy:
Reimagining Protest In the Work of
James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry
by Sarita Cannon, Ph.D.
In “Sweet Lorraine,” James Baldwin recalls time spent
with his dear friend Lorraine Hansberry: “I would often
stagger down her stairs as the sun came up, usually in
the middle of a paragraph and always in the middle
of a laugh. That marvelous laugh. That marvelous
face. I loved her, she was my sister and my comrade”
(Baldwin xi-xii). In this moving eulogy to the brilliant
black playwright who died at age 34 in 1965, Baldwin
captures their shared commitment to bearing witness to
the injustices of their time as well as their delight in each
other and the world around them. For these two writers,
protest and pleasure were not mutually exclusive.
In this piece, I examine Baldwin’s 1963 jeremiad The
Fire Next Time alongside Hansberry’s award-winning
1959 drama A Raisin in the Sun, paying close attention
to the ways in which protest manifests not simply as
a critique of systematic racial oppression, but also as
an expression of love for self and community. Both
writers demonstrate the ways in which black pleasure is
a necessary and surprisingly subversive element of the
revolutionary spirit.
Protest lies at the heart of African-American literature.
As Black people in the United States have long expressed
their experiences of living in a country that depended
on their labor for its very existence but refused to
acknowledge their humanity, creativity, and agency,
critics too often view Black literature as solely political.
As Toni Morrison puts it: “The discussion of black
literature in critical terms is unfailingly sociology and
almost never art criticism” (cited in Conner ix). Certainly,
there are works of propaganda that masquerade as art;
but I would argue that for many Black writers, the social
and the aesthetic can never be separated. Toni Morrison’s
statement about her own work, that “a novel has to be
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Ruby Dee and Sidney Poitier in A Raisin in the Sun.
socially responsible as well as very beautiful,” resonates
with my reading of James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry,
two people who were deeply engaged with the issues of
their time and serious artists who toiled over their craft,
striving to marry truth and beauty. (Jones and Vinson
183). The Fire Next Time and A Raisin in the Sun are two
examples of this marriage.
Published to great acclaim in 1963, The Fire Next Time is
part-meditation, part-sermon, part-prophecy, embodying
the elements of the American jeremiad that David HowardPitney identifies. This genre “cit[es] the promise” for the
community; “critic[izes] . . . the retrogression from the
LaTanya Richardson, Denzel Washington and Anika Noni Rose in Lorraine Hansberry’s classic Broadway play
A Raisin in the Sun (2014).
promise”; and prophesies that the community will “redeem
the promise.” (Howard-Pitney 8). Instead of predicting
redemption, however, in The Fire Next Time, Baldwin
warns what will happen to Black and White America alike if
we do not heed the signs of racial apocalypse. His title refers
to a Negro spiritual that contrasts the mercy of flood with the
punishment of fire, fire that would become literal in urban
centers just a few years following the text’s publication:
“God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No water but the fire
next time.”
As incendiary as Baldwin’s work is, it also contains a
sophisticated redefinition of love. One of these moments
occurs early in The Fire Next Time when he tells his
15-year-old nephew that on the day of his birth, he was there
“to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard, at once, and forever,
to strengthen you against the loveless world. Remember
that: I know how black it looks today, for you. It looked bad
that day, too, yes, we were trembling. We have not stopped
trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other none
of us would have survived.” (Baldwin 7). Here Baldwin
affirms the power of love for self, family, and community
as a bulwark against a hostile society. In a world where
Black lives did not matter, nurturing the promise of the
next generation was a courageous act. Just as Baldwin
reevaluates the definition and purpose of love, so
does he redefine pleasure and its transformative potential.
A few pages later, Baldwin critiques White Americans
who misunderstand the “sensuality” of Black musical
forms such as jazz and the blues. (Baldwin 42).
Baldwin asserts:
“To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice
in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present
in all that one does, from the effort of loving to
the breaking of bread. It will be a great day for
America, incidentally, when we begin to eat bread
again, instead of the blasphemous and tasteless
foam rubber that we have substituted for it. And
I am not being frivolous, now, either. Something
very sinister happens to the people of a country
when they begin to distrust their own reactions as
deeply as they do here and become as joyless as
they have become.” (Baldwin 43).
Baldwin’s call to embrace the sensual beyond White
fantasies of “quivering dusky maidens or priapic black
studs” brings to mind Audre Lorde’s definition of the
erotic as the life force that is the source of every creative
act, “whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing
a poem, [or] examining an idea.” (Baldwin 43; Lorde
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57-8). Baldwin’s definition of joy is framed by his lament
of our collective separation from our bodies, our desires,
our senses. The image of Americans consuming tasteless
bread evokes both our loss of pleasure in something as
fundamental and nourishing as breaking bread together
as well as the bland, lifeless communion both within and
beyond the church walls.
Written four years earlier in 1959, Lorraine Hansberry’s
A Raisin in the Sun prefigures much of the turmoil of the
1960s to which The Fire Next Time refers. Hansberry’s
drama demonstrates both her revolutionary spirit that
stemmed from her personal experience and her gift as a
playwright to animate a wide range of Black characters
never before seen on stage. I read the play’s most powerful
expressions of protest not in the moments of anguish, but in
moments of family connection and delight.
One such moment occurs at the beginning of Act II, when
Walter and Beneatha, whose tense sibling relationship
has already been established, “play African.” Beneatha
is wearing Nigerian robes that her African suitor Asagai
has brought from his homeland, dancing to Nigerian
music, and chanting. (Hansberry 76). Moved by his
sister’s performance, Walter enters and participates in the
celebration of a royal African past:
WALTER. Me and Jomo. . . . (Intently, in his sister’s
face. She has stopped dancing to watch him in this
unknown mood) That’s my man, Kenyatta. (Shouting
and thumping his chest) FLAMING SPEAR!
HOT DAMN! (He is suddenly in possession of an
imaginary spear and actively spearing enemies all
over the room) OCOMOGOSIAY. . . .
BENEATHA. (To encourage Walter, thoroughly
caught up in this side of him) OCOMOGOSIAY,
FLAMING SPEAR!
WALTER. THE LION IS WAKING. . . .
OWIMOWEH! (He pulls his shirt open and leaps up
on the table and gestures with his spear)
BENEATHA. OWIMOWEH!
WALTER. (on the table, very far gone, his eyes
pure glass sheets. He sees what we cannot, that he
is a leader of his people, a great chief, a descendant
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of Chaka, and that the hour to march has come)
Listen, my black brothers—
BENEATHA. OCOMOGOSIAY!
(Hansberry 78-9).
Part of the humor of this scene lies in their ignorance:
Walter and Beneatha, like most African-Americans at the
time, knew little of African people, history, or culture.
As bombastic as the scene is, Hansberry also underscores
the deep pleasure that Walter and Beneatha experience,
validating the release through dance, song, and gesture
that both characters experience in this moment of playacting. The family tensions are temporarily put aside,
and the communion between the siblings underscores
their fundamental bond. Towards the end of the scene,
Hansberry indicates that “the mood shifts from pure
comedy. It is the inner Walter speaking: The Southside
chauffeur has assumed an unexpected majesty.”
(Hansberry 79). Here Walter imagines himself as a noble
and respected warrior, not a Black man in 1950s America
eking out a living for his wife and son in the service
industry. However delusional his vision may seem, it is
an important manifestation of Walter’s desire to live
with dignity.
Another scene of connection, albeit a much more subdued
and tender one, occurs when the family gathers to present
their gifts to Mama:
WALTER. (sweetly) Open it, Mama, It’s for you.
(Mama looks in his eyes. It is the first present
in her life without its being Christmas. Slowly
she opens her package and lifts out, one by one,
a brand-new sparkling set of gardening tools.
WALTER continues, prodding) Ruth made up the
note – read it. . .
MAMA. “To Our own Mrs. Miniver – Love from
Brother, Ruth and Beneatha.” Ain’t that lovely . . .
Now I don’t have to use my knives and forks no
more. . . (Hansberry 123).
Following this moment of celebration, Mama’s ten-yearold grandson Travis presents her with a “very elaborate
wide gardening hat,” the sight of which drives the adults
into fits of laughter. (Hansberry 124). Yet Mama hugs
A scene from Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raising In the Sun (1961).
Travis tightly and tells him, “Bless your heart –this is the
prettiest hat I ever owned” (Hansberry 124). She nurtures
the spirit in which the gift was given. Moreover, the gifts of
gardening tools and hat symbolize the family’s recognition
of Mama’s dreams, which include having a home with a
garden. The family’s collective acknowledgment of her
desires represents the fierce love and respect for others that
are essential to survival, especially for the Youngers who
face an uncertain future when they move into Clybourne
Park at the end of the play.
Although Hansberry “wrote [A Raisin in the Sun] in
response to a racist performance” of a play about Blacks,
protest in her own work manifests not in expressions of
despair or anger but in moments of pleasure, love, and
communion. (Bernstein 20). As Mama reminds Beneatha
after she expresses her disdain for Walter and his apparent
decision to take Mr. Lindner’s money in exchange for
not moving into a White neighborhood: “There is always
something left to love.” (Hansberry 145). Mama speaks
here of the “hard love” that Baldwin refers to in The Fire
Next Time: “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot
live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word
‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state
of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American
sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal
sense of quest and daring and growth.” (Baldwin 95). As
both Baldwin and Hansberry express, love requires a fierce
spirit and a commitment to embracing the full range of
humanity: ours and that of others.
Though both Baldwin and Hansberry demonstrate a politics
of love in these two works, neither was a naïve idealist.
Their own experiences with poverty, racism, sexism,
and homophobia would not allow it. Yet, their belief in
the transformative power of love as a weapon against
dehumanization united them. It is not the “turn the other
cheek” love of Dr. King but rather a hard, tough, and daring
love that is rooted in a deep esteem for one’s right to be
fully human. Their spirit reminds me not to give into the
temptation of despair and encourages me to embrace joy as
a mode of protest in a world that fears not only Black anger,
but also Black pleasure.
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13
WORKS CITED
Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. 1963. Reprint.
New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Print.
Baldwin, James. “Sweet Lorraine.” 1969. To Be Young,
Gifted, and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words.
Ed. Robert Nemiroff. Reprint. New York: Signet Classics,
2011. xi-xv. Print.
Bernstein, Robin. “Inventing a Fishbowl: White Supremacy
and the Critical Reception of Lorraine Hansberry’s
A Raisin in the Sun.” Modern Drama 42.1 (Spring 1999):
16-27. Project Muse. Web. 4 June 2016.
Jones, Bessie W., and Audrey Vinson. “An Interview with
Toni Morrison.” Conversations with Toni Morrison. Ed.
Danille Taylor-Guthrie. Jackson: University of Mississippi
Press, 1994. 171-187. Print.
Lorde, Audre. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.”
Sister Outsider. Berkeley: The Crossing Press, 1984.
53-9. Print.
Vintage Black Glamour. “The good folks at Lorraine
Hansberry Documentary Project have put to rest. . . .”
18 May 2016, 10.12 a.m. Facebook.
Conner, Marc C. “Introduction: Aesthetics and the African
American Novel.” The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison:
Speaking the Unspeakable. Jackson: University of
Mississippi Press, 2000. ix-xxvii. Print.
One of the most famous photos of these two Black writers is
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. 1959. Reprint. New
York: Vintage Books, 1994. Print.
as Lorraine Hansberry, she is actually Doris Jean Castle, a
Howard-Pitney, David. The African-American Jeremiad:
Appeals for Justice in America. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2005. ProQuest ebrary.
Web. 4 June 2016.
Glamour). Nonetheless, the photo is a powerful representation
not a photo of them at all. Although Baldwin’s dance partner
in an undated black and white picture has long been identified
civil rights activist who worked for CORE (Vintage Black
of Black joy. I am grateful to Carolyn Butts for calling my
attention to this misidentification.
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Zoe Smith Holladay, a 7th grade creative writing major from Denver, joined her mom
Catherine Smith in sharing her work at the James Baldwin Conference.
Ode to James Baldwin
You questioned the deeds of humanity,
with such intensity
that you must have been suffering from them
from the moment you were born.
You wondered if change was worth anything
because, to most people, it was so much easier
to become an innocent
and accept the truth that White America wanted you to believe in.
Perhaps your words were your gift,
or your apology
to White America,
Maybe your words were some sort of guidance,
for the innocents,
who really believe
that our problems have been solved,
and that they have been cleansed once more,
as if they ever have been.
It is a belief,
a state of mind,
that they suffer from.
As you know so well,
not a single thing is or ever was innocent
about the innocents:
those who run, run, run
away from White America’s truth,
because they tire of the answers,
and look for questions instead.
© 2016 Zoe Smith-Holladay
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Don’t Let me Be Misunderstood:
The Relationship Between James Baldwin,
Lorraine Hansberry & Nina Simone
by Lynnée Denise Bonner
16
This excerpt focuses on the relationship
between Lorraine Hansberry and
James Baldwin.
dominant social movement narratives by privileged
southern, Christian, and heterosexual voices over the
social networks of cultural production, led by artists,
women and queer activists.
When Alice Walker coined the phrase “ancestors in my
line of work” she did so to describe the motivation behind
her quest to restore the legacy of writer and anthropologist
Zora Neale Hurston. In her 1975 essay, “Looking for
Zora,” Walker recalls posing as Ms. Hurston’s niece
in order to find traces of the writer’s existence in her
childhood town of, the all-Black Eatonville, Florida.
Most of what we know about the cultural work of Zora
Neale Hurston today is due in part to the efforts of Alice
Walker and her relentless search to reverse what she
pronounced to be “the symbolic fate of far too many
Black writers in America — to die alone, impoverished,
and in an unmarked grave.” Hurston’s absence from the
discussion of notable artists from the Harlem Renaissance
was impetus for Walker’s self-directed, investigative, and
archival practice.
This is an examination of the personal relationships
between Baldwin, Hansberry, and Simone who
created work that was often seen as oppositional to
popular movement strategies. By focusing on their
interconnectedness, I hope to move away from the black
exceptionalism trope that denies how the comradeship
between these artists and their communities are indeed
key elements in the creation of their most celebrated
works. From Jimmy’s queering of American literature
through Giovanni’s Room, to Lorraine’s second wave
Black feminist thread in A Raisin in the Sun, to Nina’s
unapologetic civil rights soul song “Mississippi Goddam,”
the elevation of the charismatic male leader turns our
attention away from political art works that were produced
or inspired by communal-spirited spaces that I hope will
garner more attention by academics and scholars.
Impressed by her literal and figurative excavation work,
I began to think about who I could name as the “ancestors
in my line of work.” I had questions about the silenced
histories of women and queer artists in the black radical
tradition whose legacies got lost in the male centered
recalling of most political and arts movements. Those
ancestors in my line of work are James Baldwin, Lorraine
Hansberry and Nina Simone. And similarly to Walker’s
restorative work with Hurston, my research for the
International James Baldwin Conference, A Language
to Dwell In, hosted by the American University of Paris,
was a historical recovery project that sought to interrupt
Prior to falling in love with James Baldwin’s bibliography,
I entered my relationship with him through the 1989
documentary The Price of the Ticket. It was from this
place that I began to critically engage his position on what
place an artist must occupy to ensure an honest reckoning
with the moral cost of American life. Baldwin describes
that this role is a witness to the truth. “[The artist],” he
says, “must rob us of our myths and give us our history,
which will destroy our attitudes and give us back our
personalities.” Throughout multiple essays, Notes of a
Native Son and The Creative Process being two of the
highly referenced, Baldwin designates the role of the
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artists as people whose sole purpose should be to uncover
the illusion of America. He insists that “the artist cannot
and must not take anything for granted, but must drive
to the heart of every answer and expose the question the
answer hides.”
In the 1940s, a decade before Baldwin would meet
Hansberry, he was in a community with Harlem
Renaissance writers and soon to be expatriates Richard
Wright and Countee Cullen, and shared a unique and
transformative relationship with visual artist Beaufort
Delaney. Baldwin biographer David Leeming tells us that
“Delaney was to reconcile for his protégé the music of the
Harlem streets with the music of the Harlem churches, and
this helped Baldwin reconcile his sexual awakening with
his artistic awakening.”
Baldwin’s politicization in Harlem, the Village, and Paris
functioned like a rites of passage and offers insight into
where he was at the first point of connection with Lorraine.
By the time they formally met, he was an openly queer
public intellectual expatriate and an established novelist,
playwright, and essayist. Baldwin had become, as he
would say, “The artist here to disturb the peace.”
Lorraine Hansberry was twenty-nine to Jimmy Baldwin’s
thirty-four when she walked into the Actor’s Studio in
the winter of 1958, where Giovanni’s Room was being
workshopped for stage production. She had heard of
Baldwin’s work and he was aware of her organizing
and journalistic grind. At this production, in the face
of unfavorable responses to the play by Broadway
executives, Hansberry publicly defended Baldwin’s
willingness to introduce theater audiences to homosexual
content, which spoke to her own developing feminist
and queer politics. This fearless representation of sexual
diversity, Hansberry felt, was consistent with the voice an
artist must have if they are to be agents of social change.
She saw Baldwin as an ally to which he responded, “I
was enormously grateful to her, she seemed to speak for
me; and afterward she talked to me with a gentleness and
generosity never to be forgotten.” (Baldwin:1969).
Hansberry’s clarity about the role of an artist developed
long before meeting Baldwin in 1958. She was a highly
visible activist and public intellectual, politicized by her
family’s social justice work in Chicago. When she moved
to New York in 1951, she was immediately employed as a
writer for Paul Robeson’s Pan Africanist and communist
inspired newspaper called Freedom, a publication edited
by Louis E. Burnman whom she also identified as a
mentor. Like Baldwin, but from a different proximity,
Hansberry too was shaped by the Harlem Renaissance and
cited Langston Hughes as being one of the most influential
writers on her work. A one-time student enrolled in a
W.E.B. DuBois African studies course, and a person drawn
to the work of fellow journalist for Freedom and Black
woman playwright Alice Childress, she learned early that
in the achievement of Black rights, artists didn’t have the
luxury to surrender their platforms to merely entertain,
nor did she prescribe to one particular political strategy
in the pursuit of social justice. In a 1962 speech titled “A
Challenge to Artist,” Hansberry speaks candidly about her
impatience with apolitical artists, saying:
“Finally, I think that all of us who are thinking such
things [as civil rights], who wish to exercise these
rights that we are here defending tonight, must really
exercise them. Speaking to my fellow artists in
particular, I think that we must paint them, sing them,
write about them—all these matters which are not
currently fashionable. Otherwise…we are indulging
in a luxurious complicity—and no other thing.”
Perhaps one of the most compelling occurrences that
affirm the intimate relationship between Baldwin and
Hansberry was expressed in a letter he had written to
his brother David from the South of France. In the 1965
letter he writes, “The night of January 12, when my
fever reached its rather alarming peak, was the night
Lorraine Hansberry died.” He described his condition
that evening as a psychosomatic one. Two years leading
up to Hansberry’s passing, Baldwin was devastated by
the season of death that reached across transnational
borders to engulf his life. He returned to America to
address the 16th Street Baptist church bombing that killed
four little girls, the abduction and murder of civil rights
workers (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael
Schwerner) in Mississippi, and the murder of Medgar
Evers on his porch in front of his family. Just one month
after Hansberry’s passing would be the assassination of
Malcolm X, who attended Hansberry’s funeral and who
Baldwin was scheduled to meet with, along with Martin
L. King Jr. on February 23, two days after Malcolm
was killed. It was in the spirit of grief and gratitude that
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17
Baldwin penned the essay Sweet Lorraine for Esquire in
1969, four years following Hansberry’s death, and one
year after Dr. Martin Luther King had been killed.
The affection between Lorraine and Jimmy is clear
starting with the title of the essay Sweet Lorraine from
which he jumps right into the text with the opening
sentence, “That’s the way I always felt about her and so
I won’t apologize for calling her that now.” Baldwin’s
tender defiance reflects that of a journal entry or maybe
even a conversation with Lorraine’s lingering spirit. It’s
unclear who the audience is, or whether or not this is a
cathartic piece written to fellow disillusioned movement
members mourning the loss of their assassinated friends.
In Sweet Lorraine, he describes an average evening with
Hansberry, which includes lots of whiskey, chain smoking
and debates about history, politics, gender and movement
activities. He names these moments they share as “down
home sessions” and highlights the fact that for these
conversations Lorraine would always be wearing slacks.
(Baldwin; 1969). I am especially moved by the use of the
words “down home,” which is a phrase typically reserved
for migrants from the Black south referring to the homes
they fled, but given the fact that Baldwin and Hansberry
are first generation people born in the Northeast and
Midwest, it’s an interesting choice of words that evoke the
sense of home he found in their friendship.
“I am especially moved by
the use of the words down
home...the sense of home he
found in their friendship.”
In this case home is being used a metaphor to express
the joy one feels when they find an ally, a person whom
can bear witness and offer with-ness. Jimmy considered
Lorraine to be a safe place to grow, to be uncomfortable,
and to be vulnerable when his eloquent rage against
the machine seemed to be the most viable form of selfpreservation. What I’m getting at here is how our love
for Baldwin’s fire sometimes encourages us to forget
to remember the necessity of his pleasure, connection,
and joy in the struggle. In Sweet Lorraine, Baldwin
describes the closing of an evening of debate and
debauchery sharing:
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“…I would often stagger down her stairs as the sun
came up, usually in the middle of a paragraph and
always in the middle of a laugh. That marvelous
laugh. That marvelous face. I loved her, she was my
sister and my comrade. Her going did not so much
make me lonely as make me realize how lonely
we were. We had that respect for each other which
perhaps is only felt by people on the same side of the
barricades, listening to the accumulating thunder of
the hooves of horses and the heads of tanks.”
The sentiment in Baldwin’s writing in Sweet Lorraine
is telling of a debilitating loneliness; the loneliness of
being both radical and queer within movements driven
by conservative values and ideas. In Sweet Lorraine, he
offers a vivid description of his respect for Lorraine’s eye
as a witness, which he believes is epitomized in her play
“A Raisin in the Sun.” Baldwin speaks to the impact of
Hansberry’s play and the use of theater to humanize
Black life.
“…What is relevant here is that I had never in
my life seen so many black people in the theater.
And the reason was that never in the history of the
American theater had so much of the truth of black
people’s lives been seen on the stage. Black people
ignored the theater because the theater had always
ignored them.”
Lorraine Hansberry was diagnosed with cancer in 1963
and died in 1965, just six years after the Broadway
premiere of “A Raisin the Sun.” She was 35. Her work
on multiple front lines, as a multidisciplinary artist and
political activist is, more often than not, removed from the
sound bite civil rights history that we learn to memorize.
Lorraine’s relevance is one of many casualties of the
sinister and American framing of Martin Luther King’s
benign and non-threatening dream. We now know that
King’s dream was more about an undeniable articulation
of the American nightmare. But the cost, or as Baldwin
would say, “The price of the ticket,” to this particular
kind of framing is happening at the expense of our
understanding of the role of radical queer women and
artists in the movement.
My Father Tells Me
He and My Mother
Got Married the Year
Purple Rain was Released
And that was the year I learned how much a piano
make me look like my mother
or my father it depends on the hour
there we werecaught in the middle of a morning
in America that promised only that the fire
was remembering its name
and we didn’t have very much back then
but the promise of a marriage
of smoldering flags
I never liked it here birthright or not
I’ve always been a captive of my own blood
I stayed because nobody else wanted your grandmother
that and the promise of some electric grief
I heard Prince for the first time
on a pirate radio station
like every other beautiful thing I know
I had to steal the air that surrounded it
he played all his own instruments
wrote all his own lyrics
and I never found another Black boy
with that many hands
he must be some kind of holy
for me to turn the volume high enough
to make it look like your grandfather’s
ghost hadn’t been visiting for a week straight
the sound pierced the smoke
and I had hands again
Your mother saw the movie with me once
I must have seen it eleven more times
and I ain’t prayed for rain that hard
since your grandfather passed
and I spent years trying to exhale his ghost
Let me tell you something about grief
it’s only Black insofar as it’s a mirror
I look into the sky all the time
and see his favorite song
you and I are alike that way
that’s partially my fault
I was the one who played his songs
onto your womb
I just wanted you to know
there was music amidst the drowning
Now he’s gone
and you know what he meant
when he say that doves cry
sometimes it hurts to remember
how to go home
I don’t wish for the sky anymore
just a chance to know you’re safe
and to say hello to my dad one last time
and to say a goodbye to you
while I still know my name
I never wanted to be a burden
but when I am fading
If no fire is available
drape me in purple
dress me like something
that might never set
© 2016 Julian Randall
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19
ALWAYS, THERE IS MUSIC
i own two of my father’s
things: his favorite pink sweater & an R&B classics
cd. on its front, a black man in sweatpants hovers,
his hand touching cardboard, his body suspended.
when i am in the music, i become the empty space.
i dance with my father. i become untouchable, burn
rubber, celebration, real.
//
once, i was sitting in a car and everyone (not black)
around me heard the beat drop and howled like a
pack of infants learning their most bestial cry. i left
my skin to rot there, let them plunge a shovel in the dirt
& lift a hundred pine boxes. go ahead. you have my
permission. move with reckless abandon. call it
breakdancing. it’s lit. call it something
you don’t understand.
//
once, someone (not black) asked for my opinion
on drake. i don’t think about drake. i’m somewhere
trying to remember the story my uncle told, the one
about young tyrone & his brothers breaking a sweat
at a club, tracksuits soaking, legs a pile of hurricanes.
in the story, my father is the youngest. he busts through
the lineup. invokes james brown (the godfather). &
every pair of hands throws together a beat & tyrone,
13 or whatever age my uncle remembers, is a star.
//
to be quite honest, i don’t trust anyone (not
black) with hip-hop. i don’t care how it moves
you or fills you with strength or is the perfect
release from your confounding stress. i swear,
i’m just trying to honor myself. i swear, i’m
just trying to find my father. did you know that
dead black fathers have their own music? did
you know that nothing of mine belongs to you?
//
if you want to take the music, take the grief,
too.
© 2016 Ariana Brown
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It’s A Miracle
how my city dies each winter
the trees as bare & raw
as a damn heartbreak
& in the news my president
tired of crying talking about
gun control on the same day
that Matthew’s poem
showed up in my mailbox.
& how I couldn’t imagine
the words Kevlar & children
in back to back stanzas. & how
this just reminds me of ’93 when
I saw my first dead body outside
the bodega. It sported blue kicks
that looked iridescent like those
fish that camouflage themselves
against the dark ocean. & how
her face looked only eight
years old, maybe ten. & how
someone’s second amendment
right seems to only leave a trail
of children’s bodies & brown
bodies. & how some days
I am afraid of stepping out
of the house or of whether
my lover brown & beautiful
will make it home. & I can’t
write anymore about death
yet it’s all I know. & how tonight
the sky will be all kinds of colors
against the iciness of humanity.
& isn’t it a miracle that we
haven’t killed every last one
of us yet? A miracle that
there are still those among us
who sit & wait hoping for Spring —
© 2016 Yesenia Montilla
Artist: Jonathan Guy-Gladding (JAG).
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21
In Passing
Malik Taylor (Phife Dawg)
by Mirlande Jean-Gilles
When A Tribe Called Quest released their debut
album, “People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths
of Rhythm,” I was 16 going on 17-years-old and
trying to figure out my place in the world. I loved
the music instantly. It changed my life. I had never
heard anything
like it. I loved their beats, rhymes, music videos,
politics, Afro-centric aesthetic, intelligence and
their fun. They were saying many things that I was
feeling but they made it funky. They were brilliant!
And they were from Queens? I was from Queens!
In my mind I was a “Native Tongue.” They didn’t
know who I was but they gave me the courage
to be myself. When I saw them, I saw my own
reflection. I found somewhere I fit in. I didn’t feel so
weird. When I saw Tribe, I saw my crew.
When I finally purchased the full album on cassette I
played it all the time. I’d plead with my dad to let me
play the tape in the car. He’d acquiesce but shake
his head and laugh at the music. I remember trying to
explain the song “Ham and Eggs” to him, but he just
didn’t get it! How could he not understand the genius
that was A Tribe Called Quest?
Artist: Kieyan Chauhan
On March 22, 2016, I logged on to Facebook and
found out that Malik Taylor aka Phife Dawg passed
away from complications from diabetes. He was
only 45 years old. Though I didn’t know Malik
personally, I cried as if I had lost an old friend. I
blasted A Tribe Called Quest’s music. I checked in
on my people who I knew loved Tribe as much as
I did. A part our childhood was gone. Malik Taylor
was gone. I couldn’t believe it. There wouldn’t be
any more rumors of a possible Tribe reunion or
new music from the group. I was glad my kids
had already gone to school because I was a mess.
Eventually, I had to go out but I stayed on the verge
of crying. On the bus I kept listening to Tribe. I
was in shock. I couldn’t believe the world was just
continuing to operate like things were normal.
22
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A year later they released, “The Low End Theory.”
Phife rapped more on that album. He dropped
lyrical gems that left me laughing and gasping
in disbelief.
Yo, microphone check one, two what is this?
The five foot assassin with the roughneck business
I float like gravity, never had a cavity
Got more rhymes than the Winans got family
Phife comes at you so hard it’s like he’s making
up for lost time. One of the reasons that “The Low
End Theory” is such an amazing album is that Phife
gets free reign on it. Q-Tip and Phife were perfectly
balanced. Phife was straight up, no holds barred
with his style and lyrics. His message was loud
and clear. Q-Tip’s rhyme style was chill, poetic and
ethereal. Phife was grounding. He pulled the duo
back to reality. They were so different but it worked.
In 1993, A Tribe Called Quest dropped “Midnight
Marauders.” In “Oh My God,” Phife delivers this
incredible line, “When was the last time you heard a
funky diabetic?”
When folks first heard this, we were shocked. It was
a deeply personal thing for him to share. That kind of
sharing was part of his brilliance.
In “Electric Relaxation,” Phife says, I like them brown,
yellow Puerto Rican and Haitian/Name is Phife Dawg
from Zulu Nation.” As a young Haitian girl it meant a
lot for Haiti to be acknowledged in a way that wasn’t
negative or embarrassing. His simple lyrics meant so
much to me.
Malik Taylor touched and inspired thousands of people
across the globe with his gift. He was an elaborate
storyteller in the tradition of his Trinidadian heritage.
He was boastful and brash and he drew you in with his
incredible humor. He was genuine. He was real. He was
himself through and through. This is what we loved so
much about Malik.
Kahlil-Koromantee.com
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23
BOOK REVIEW
Offers A Compelling
Tribute to Reshape Our
Musical Narratives
By Shani Jamila
“Jangle up its teeth until it can tell
our story the way you would tell
your own”
Tyehimba Jess is known for giving flesh to stories
“straight from America’s barbwired heart” that have been
marginalized over the course of history. His trademark
virtuosity and genius are on full display in his recently
released second collection of poetry, Olio.
On a recent train ride into Manhattan, I ran into a
colleague who remarked on his well- worn book that sat
dog-eared in my lap. I held it up so that she could take
a picture of the cover as I enthusiastically explained
the mastery of form that Jess demonstrates in this latest
publication. It’s been more than ten years since his
National Poetry Series winning debut collection Leadbelly
was published, but as viewers of his 2011 TED talk know,
Jess has been working in that interim period on further
cultivating his already notable poetic aesthetic.
His signature syncopated sonnets have numerous
possibilities for interpretation—they can be read column
by column, crosswise, backwards or as a whole. As
he describes in the appendix, they are simultaneously
“interstitial, anti-gravitational and diagonal.” And that
is one of the most remarkable features of this book —not
only is it over 200 pages long, an exceptionally thick
volume for a poet, but many pieces contain multitudes.
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Indeed, some pages are designed to be torn out and
reshaped into rolls, banners and folds to create something
newer still. The end result is a deeply layered manuscript
that one can get lost in, inspired by, and stand in awe of.
Olio, which Jess dedicates to our community’s long
trajectory of musicians who’ve devoted their whole selves
to their art form but never had their work recorded, takes
its name from the variety of performances that comprised
the second half of a minstrel show. It is a meticulously
researched book that gives voice to a cast of fourteen
characters, including figures such as the conjoined twins
Millie and Christine McKoy, Henry “Box” Brown who
made history with his daring escape from enslavement,
and artists like the renowned Fisk Jubilee Singers,
As I stated to my colleague on the train, once I closed
Dunbar. The timeline that contextualizes the stories
Langston — not necessarily in terms of style or lyrical
sculptor Edmonia Lewis, and poet Paul Laurence
extends from 1816-2012, beginning with the founding of
the African Methodist Episcopal Church and concluding
with the second election of President Obama.
A standout piece is “McKoy Twins Syncopated Star,”
wherein Jess revels in his ability to deftly interweave
a compelling visual narrative with lines like “—we’re
fused in blood and body — from one thrummed stem/
budding twin blooms of song.” Allusions to the work
of poems like Ntozake Shange’s “Sorry” come through
in excerpts such as “Fear. I got no use for it. Fear
these pages I came to the conclusion that Tyehimba is our
sensibility, but in terms of proficiency and historical
impact. It is the rigor with which this book archives history,
offers new narratives and context for the “characters”
it contains that leads me to the conclusion that readers
a century from now will count this among the treasures
that are emblematic of this era. This stunning work of
reclamation is a book for the ages.
Olio
by Tyehimba Jess
never paid one bill nor put one morsel in my mouth,”
Wave Books, 224 pages
illustrations by Jessica Lynne Browne that adeptly
www.wavepoetry.com/products/olio
in his “Lottie Joplin, Part 2.” He also incorporates
punctuate the poems and offer a powerful visual
ISBN # 9781940696201 (paperback) — $25
complement to the work.
Memoir Writing Workshop Starts Oct. 12, 2016!
Bring a Writing Buddy!
Do you have a story to tell the
world? This workshop is for anyone
interested in writing. You will be
guided in the process of crafting a
well-told story in a nurturing
environment. Create an outline for
your book or revise written work in
8 sessions. Fee: $225.
Venue: 270 W. 96 St., NYC
Call: 212-865-2982 or
www.africanvoices.com
Workshops - Wednesdays, 10/12/16-12/7/16
african Voices
25
FICTION
Peach Cobbler
By Aimiende Negbenebor Sela
A butterfly flutters its wings.
It’s spring.
It hovers in place for a fraction of a second, then swan
dives, wistfully, from the grey-blue skies toward the
tree-lined Pearsall Avenue, suburbia in the Bronx.
Peppered with its Boricuas in business casual waving
hello to Bangladeshi mothers walking their newborns in
strollers, hoping to finally get a wink of sleep, Pearsall
Avenue casually whispers — welcome home. The lush
green panorama, speckled with tarred streets, neatly
rowed houses, quiet alleyways, and parallel-parked
automobiles is serene, luring, familial. A dog barks. A
child squeals in delight. A lawn mower putters nearby.
Peaches of varied sizes hang like ornaments on the
tree. Some confidently green, others less so. Anaisa
returns her attention to the windowsill. The butterfly’s
gone. She spoons down the remainder of her cereal,
washes the one bowl, and the one spoon, and sets them
down in an empty dish rack. She smoothes her wet
hands along the sides of her dress, smoothes down her
perfect ponytail, and turns again to the window. She
shuts it, grabs her bag off the kitchen table set for two,
pats Orlando on his head, and off she goes to face the
world outside.
The butterfly makes its way toward a shingled roof
caked in dirt, down past a set of bay windows plastered
with cobwebs, hovers over an over grown lawn, swoops
up and over a rusty wired fence, and lands delicately on
Anaisa Hill’s spotlessly clean kitchen window.
Alas, she was right; it’s a beautiful day to begin anew.
Her heels bid the concrete sidewalk good day, the palm
of her hand caresses the stretch of massive tree trunks
outlining the block — they caress back. Unfamiliar
faces smile politely at her; her plum lips return the kind
gesture. The meow of an Egyptian Mau perched on the
edge of a couch, wedged beneath the bay window of the
house at the corner, reminds her that she can make any
place home that wants to be called home.
Outfitted in a smart dress reminiscent of spring, Anaisa
leans against her kitchen sink, and spoons coco puffs
drenched in almond milk into her mouth. Her plum
lipstick leaves its mark on the spoon’s drop. She
notices it, smiles and wonders why that part of the
spoon is called a drop. Ah, the anatomy of a spoon.
Her charming golden retriever, Orlando, is at her feet.
His eyes are glued to the tiny window above the sink,
draped partially with a feather-light curtain. A breeze
disturbs the curtain. Orlando barks. Anaisa looks up
from her spoon, and smiles at the butterfly dotting
about her windowsill. It’s going to be a beautiful day,
she says. Her gaze drifts past the butterfly into her
neighbor’s yard — from whence the colorful creature
came, and lands on her neighbor’s unusually large
peach tree.
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african Voices
Growing up in an orphanage in Kampala, Anaisa
dreamed of one day calling a family hers, a home hers.
It didn’t matter where. Right there in Uganda, or as far
East as Papua New Guinea, as long as it was hers. She
dreamed and dreamed until twenty years later, when
she found herself in a place called Calgary. Then she
stopped; but I digress.
It’s nighttime.
Anaisa pulls a plate of rotisserie chicken breast out
of the microwave oven that sits on the counter table
beneath the window facing her peach tree neighbor’s
house. It’s dark. There’s no sign of life from within or
Artist: Jonathan Guy-Gladding (JAG).
around the house. She turns away from the window,
leans against the sink, and chows down — a familiar
routine. She stares at the unopened boxes that line her
kitchen walls and thinks, “I have to get to those soon.”
Orlando plays “good dog” at her feet. His puppy dog
eyes looks playfully into hers. She “accidentally” drops
a piece of chicken and he of course, rushes for it — life’s
small pleasures. She returns her gaze to the window, and
her smile wanes. She’s never been a fan of the dark, but
she’s learned to live with it. She washes the one dish,
sets it down in the dish rack next to the one bowl and the
one spoon from breakfast, and turns the lights off. She
may have to live with the dark, but she doesn’t have to
listen to its secrets. Someone told her that not so long
ago. She can’t remember whom.
In her comfy pajama bottoms and t-shirt, Anaisa cozies
up in bed. Orlando hops on next to her and takes his
place guarding the foot of the bed. She reaches for the
book on her nightstand, and flips to a bookmarked page.
The trees outside her window rustle. “Why does the dark
turn you into giant monsters?” She asks. They don’t
answer, they simply sway. Through the shadows of
swaying trees, Anaisa spies a dim light piercing through
her neighbor’s dusty windows. Inside the house, a
shadow paces. It stops, and waltzes back to the window
facing Anaisa’s bedroom. It stands there, perfectly still.
Morning comes.
Anaisa’s at the kitchen sink dressed sharply; bowl of
cereal in hand, and staring into her neighbor’s yard. The
peaches are ripening! She spies the butterfly perched
on one of them. A smile creeps up her face. There’s
something so innocent about butterflies. Bowl to her
mouth, she gulps her milk and wipes off the mustache it
leaves behind. She washes the one bowl, the one spoon,
smoothes her wet hands down her skirt and ponytail,
grabs her purse off the kitchen table set for two, pats
Orlando on his head, and pulls the door shut behind her.
Her day goes by as usual, uneventfully, and nighttime
finds her again in her PJs, comfortably tucked under
african Voices
27
her sheets, reading a book. Outside her window, the
dark settles in. The lights inside her neighbor’s house
dim. Behind the neighbor’s dusty windows, a shadow
paces, stops, stands perfectly still. Where did he learn
to do that? Why would he have needed to learn to do
that? Or is he mimicking her standing perfectly still by
her window, watching him watching her. It made her
wonder if that man knew she was there — the night a
band of thieves broke into the home of the Nigerian
family that had taken her and another orphan girl in.
There was so much screaming pouring out of one small
mouth. Not hers. She lay perfectly still in a corner
behind Momma’s big couch, as it was called, and
almost held her breath. He stood there for a while.
Again, I digress.
It’s summer.
The door opens, and Orlando practically crawls in,
panting. Anaisa’s sweaty hand tosses keys into a glass
bowl on her windowsill. She stares out the window,
mouth agape, as blue jays nonchalantly chow down
beautiful ripe peaches! Infuriated, Anaisa marches to
the side of her house and yells at the little dinosaurs
devouring her succulent peaches. Well, not hers, but
close enough. “If I can’t have a family, I can at least
have peaches!” she yells at the birds. They seem to
smile at her as they peck into one juicy ripe peach after
another. Their happy songs fill the air. She looks further
up the tree and spies a lone, unharmed, ripe peach at the
very top. She glances down at the base of the tree. It’s
covered in rotten peaches with ants and flies playing
vultures. She shakes her head and walks away as the
slightly lifted curtain, from inside her neighbor’s dusty
window, falls back in place.
Many mornings pass and Anaisa’s routine remains
constant. The kitchen sink and small window frame
her world inside her home. She watches, as the one
last peach standing, slowly withers. Summer turns to
winter, leaves turn from orange to brown, bare branches
are blanketed in snow, and holiday music fills the air.
Boxes line Anaisa’s kitchen walls. Who’s to say that a
home can’t have boxes lining its walls? She was almost
married once. Young, naive and eager to have a home, to
make a home, she fell in love with a traveling salesman
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african Voices
from Calgary. Need I say more? Well, maybe a little
more. They met while she was in college in London. Full
of life, and oh so innocent, she believed every word he
said. She loves books, you know. They’ve always kept
her company, so she had no fear dreaming the dreams
she dreamt in books. They were to marry as soon as she
graduated, so they bought a house, in Calgary, to call
home. It was lined with boxes; some his, but mostly
hers. I’ve strayed. Where was I? The Bronx. Ah, yes!
Spring has sprung!
Green trees, flowers in bloom, birds chirping, sunlight
fills the room.
And the butterfly dots about her windowsill. Anaisa,
at her kitchen sink, lowers her bowl from her face. She
grins from ear to ear. The lush green peach tree is full
again with unripe fruit — a second chance. She twirls
her ponytail into a bun, and dashes off to face the world.
With each passing day, she watches. As the tree’s fruits
grow and ripen, she grows and ripens. She unpacks
her boxes one day, excited to see the next. She keeps
company with the tree in the mornings while enjoying
her coco puffs, and shares how her day went with it at
night over rotisserie chicken breast. Do not fret! Orlando
suffered no neglect. They’ve become a family of three,
sharing a window and a kitchen sink.
Summer arrives, and it’s a scorcher.
Anaisa, at her sink, fills a glass with water and downs
it in rhythm with Orlando’s gulps. She turns to the
window and freezes. Blue jays sing their happy song
as they chow down sweet ripe peaches. Anaisa slams
her glass down and marches over to the side of her
house. She grabs the short step ladder propped against
her outside wall, and yells “not again!” as she leans it
against her neighbor’s wire fence precariously. She
hops on, reaches for a fruit, but she’s a few inches short.
Up the second step she goes. The ladder gives a little,
but she finds her balance and reaches. She’s still a few
inches short. Up step three, she and the ladder are at
an angle. She reaches up and leans over the fence. The
tips of her fingers graze that ripe peach ever so slightly.
There’s a wicked glint in her eyes. She’s almost there!
Up on the tip of her toes, she reaches further still and
grabs that pinkish gold ripe peach in the palm of her
hand — nirvana. She pulls down, hard. Bad move. She
topples over the fence and into her neighbor’s yard.
Golden ripe peach secure in her hand, she takes a
calming breath with her eyes closed.
A giant shadow falls across her face. She opens her
eyes and is met by the stern gaze of a pair of bluish gray
eyes, shrouded by a set of bushy eyebrows that belong
to the giant of a man poised at the crown of her head.
In a flash, she’s on her backside, her back against the
tree. He glances down at her hand; she follows his gaze.
The peach! She shoves it into her mouth, bites hard,
swallows, gags, and shoves some more, until there’s
nothing of the peach left. She spits out the pit, and “sits”
her ground. The neighbor turns on his heels and walks
into his house. Almost immediately, he returns with a
bowl and places it on Anaisa’s outstretched legs. He
reaches up above her seated self, plucks peach after
peach, and drops them into the bowl ‘til it overflows. He
helps Anaisa up without a word, places the few peaches
that missed the bowl on top of the heap, and walks back
into his house. Anaisa stands frozen to her spot. For a
moment, she eyes the wire fence, but thinks better about
it and opts for the front gate instead.
Back inside her kitchen, she sets the overflowing bowl
of peaches down on the table set for two, sits on her
floor, and wraps her arms around her knees. Orlando lies
next to her. His face on his paws, he reflects her somber
mood. The butterfly, watching from its usual place on
her windowsill, flutters into the kitchen, and perches
softly on the crest rail of one of the chairs at the table set
for two. Anaisa stares harder at the bowl of peaches and
in a flash, she’s on her feet. Startled, Orlando does the
same. He prances around in circles, tail wagging.
Anaisa’s a woman on a mission. One after another,
cabinets fly open; ingredients land on the kitchen
counter; bowls, tin foils, rolling pins, fly out of cabinets
beneath the counter, above the counter, the fridge, the
pantry; and a few minutes later, the oven door shuts.
Anaisa is covered from head to toe in flour. Orlando’s
coat is a whiter shade of gold. His face, buried in a bowl
licked almost clean of pie batter. The kitchen looks like a
tornado went through it. An hour later, a mouthwatering,
golden brown, peach cobbler finds its way out of the
oven. Anaisa is a vision in her yellow dress. She turns to
her window and smoothes down her locks. It cascades
down her neck in neat large waves. She picks up the pie,
and finds herself in front of her neighbor’s door. His
eyes land on the pie Anaisa holds up to his face. What
man can resist a pie that good looking? He ushers her in.
His house is like something out of C.S. Lewis’
imagination. Books and antiques line the walls, shelves,
and coffee tables from the narrow hallway to that of the
living room. He clears a space on a table littered with
even more books, sets the pie down, and rushes out of
the room. Anaisa runs her fingers over the spine of one
book after another, all wrapped in brown construction
paper, with obscure hand written words and Roman
numerals on them. The neighbor returns with paper
plates and utensils. Anaisa joins him. He clears a seat for
her, hands her a set of plastic utensils, and sets about the
business of eating pie. He serves her first, then himself,
and settles into a chair.
Anaisa takes a bite of hers. He does the same. She
quietly takes another. He does the same. She gently
slides one of the brown paper covered books over to him
and points to the spine. He puts down his fork and writes
on its top cover: This Side of Paradise. She flips open the
book cover and sure enough, it’s F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s
masterpiece. She slides over another. He pencils in
Of Human Bondage. She opens it, correct again! Her
excitement overtakes her. She digs into disordered
heaps of brown paper covers, running back and forth
from shelves on walls with book after book. The Pearl,
Exodus, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Aunt Julia and
the Scriptwriter, Love in the Time of Cholera, Things
Fall Apart. He’s half way through the pie when Anaisa
dashes off for another book, on the topmost shelf. She
hops on the ladder propped against the shelves and
reaches for two rather large volumes. He looks up from
his pie just in time to see her teeter and fall backwards
off the ladder. Books scatter, he breaks her fall. He’s a
quick one, this man. She looks up at him and chuckles,
he shakes his head; she turns the spine of the volume in
her hand to him. With eyes fixed on her beautiful face,
he responds On Love and Loneliness.
african Voices
29
on the E express a boy asks his mama a few things
(boy hums) (boy thoughtful)
why didn’t the slaves fight back?
what slaves?
why we ain’t fight back?
who said
we ain’t fight back?
but we was slaves.
not before we was slaves.
why they ain’t just shoot
the white people?
no guns.
what about knives
or scissors? no
knives or scissors.
what about poison
like on detective shows?
where they was gettin
poison from, boy?
the drug store.
(suck-teeth)
why they ain’t
use they hands?
who said they didn’t?
how they become
slaves then?
(silence)
would you let someone
slave you?
can you eat your banana?
how would you stop
someone from slaverin you—like
what if they helda gun
to your head? or my head?
that’s not gonna happen.
we should learn karate
just in case.
(eye-roll) (suck-teeth)
what chops and kicks
gonna do against bullets?
(takes boy’s banana peel)
(boy wipes mouth)
what if banana peels
was a weapon?
(suck-teeth) how?
booby trap the apartment
with peels
and the bad guy slips
Artist: Aziza
30
african Voices
and breaks his neck.
can’t you talk about somethin
pleasant, why you thinkin
bout this?
cause save the peel
i’ma collect more.
(suck-teeth)
you better
have on clean socks
don’t be embarrassin me
at the doctor’s office.
(boy laughs) (boy
thoughtful) did slaves
laugh while they was slaves?
(exasperated) how should i know?
you laugh.
(exasperated)
am i a slave?
but when do you start to laugh
when you a slave?
what is there
to be happy for?
family. (kisses top of boy’s
head) (playfully taps back
of boy’s head)
what if they ain’t have family
when did they first laugh
and what they think
was funny?
maybe they saw
a picture of you (places arm
around boy)
how?
we both was here before.
(boy gets loud)
so you was a slave?
(suck-teeth)
no, i was
a fairy.
then why you ain’t
free the slaves?
(suck-teeth)
i freed as many as i could. why
can’t you say somethin
nice or fun?
i like your make-up
and your purse. (boy plays
with zipper)
(side-eyes boy)
when i die
i’ma come back as a walrus.
(exasperated)
why can’t you
just be a boy?
walruses are tough
and eat lots of fish—
can we go fishing?
one thing at a time.
where are the slave families?
(exasperated) boy, they
everywhere.
we slaves family too?
i guess.
can we bring flowers?
(exasperated) boy
where?
i dunno.
the slaves dead
and happy now.
i wanna buy roses.
(side-eyes boy)
wit who money?
and take them
where?
to a funeral.
so you gon just roll up
on somebody funeral
uninvited?
where our slave family
buried?
(sigh) i. don’t. know.
(boy sneezes)
(boy thoughtful)
we should become
zombies.
then no one could hurt us
cause we’d
already be dead.
(exasperated)
(side-eye)
(eye-roll)
(suck-teeth)
(silence)
© Amber Atiya
african Voices
31
The Gallery
Jocelyn Goode:
Healing Community Through Art
Jocelyn “Extraordinare1” Goode is a painter and muralist
whose portraits have garnered community support. One
of her most noted series includes intimate portraits of men
and women who survived the crack era.
“Concerning The Crack” explores the growing “crack”
between the younger and older generations of the AfricanAmerican community caused by many factors including
the Crack-Cocaine Epidemic of the late 1980s and the
Technological Phenomenon of the new millennium.
One of the consequences of crack is a generation
of young people who have little knowledge of the struggle
and progress of previous generations. Many AfricanAmerican elders are confused by the younger generation’s
attitudes, culture and self-destructive tendencies.
32
african Voices
By using photography, recorded interviews and portrait
painting, artist Jocelyn “Extraordinarie1” Goode began a
visual dialogue and put a spotlight on a growing issue that
deserves more attention. Beginning in March 2010, she
interviewed and photographed African-American men
and women 40 and over and the now grown-up “crackbabies” and young people 21 and under. The participants
had the opportunity to share their perspectives on the
aftermath of the epidemic and the way technology affects
their life as well as their solutions for healing the Black
community. From the data, she created painted portraits
that merge the faces of young and old and incorporate
quotes into each piece.
Artwork by Jocelyn Goode
Artist’s Statement
“My artistic voice has matured over the 20 years
from when I formally began studying fine art at
the age of 14. Today my art functions as a tool that
allows me to build a platform to amplify my voice
as an agent of social progress. Painting, drawing,
mixed media, graphic design, apparel design and
installation are instruments I utilize to express ideas
about the state of a collective reality I share with
other people of African heritage living in America.
My art lends me the ability to highlight narratives
of pioneers and heroes whose lives offer valuable
lessons that we need to keep alive. I aspire to
provoke thought by visually representing familiar
images in a different light. And on a fundamental
human level, I make art to share complex emotions
in a way that others can relate to.
“I am inspired by artists like Salvador Dali, Rene
Magritte, Alice Neel, Lois Mailou Jones, Kehinde Wiley
along with writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Aesop,
Ray Bradbury, Ralph Ellison, Jean-Paul Satre, James
Baldwin and George Orwell. Ultimately, I want my art
to help people to heal neglected wounds, to see beauty
in overlooked places, to stimulate imaginations, and to
increase consciousness.”
african Voices
33
SHUFFLE MACHINE
What ruffles between
her fingers like
a thing with feathers,
two faces riffling,
glossy finished breaths,
each a volume of vortex
arrested and booked under
the Second Law of Thermodynamics,
a coffle of cardboard chaos
dovetailing a desire
that cannot be boxed or cut
by sharpest image edges
or Victoria’s secrets interlaced
into a deck’s sexy designs.
What’s held in
your table-side tank
of bated breath?
Necks pulse in vain,
throb like traffic lights
on a Saturday night,
hands clean as gloves
on a bourgeois burglar,
cuffed and cupped,
trembling, riffling the clay
chips lining the edge
of a bet that begs anarchy.
She is your Miss Fortune,
running fountain of infinity.
Everybody misses
the river except you.
Always the kissed banks
swishing the same.
The pot wants
to be right,
maybe raised.
What it gets
is to be splashed.
More and more under
each undealt door
through which “next” echoes,
there is a rising,
like the suddenness of
an unseen Aegean.
Now her
practiced hands pitch
tomorrow’s fate
across an oblong table.
The waitress brings
something you crave
as a daffodil doth
of the dew,
(no napkin, please)
says sip this,
her lips are full,
her wrists fragrant,
her heart too is barred.
I heard a bee buzz, honey
when I tried.
And if you tip her
over? Face up.
This ain’t origami,
(you are not allowed
to fold.)
And how would that change
the credit of the cards?
She would of course
simply re-deal
to your empty seat.
Maybe
she was only
the Queen of Hearts
peeled like a tamarind
by randomized hands
and you were never
her suited King.
© 2016 Joel Dias-Porter
34
african Voices
Far more common threads bind us
than differences that divide us.
“
From start to finish this
was a great collection
of well-written short
stories all connected
together, depicting the
life-story of a Vietnam
Vet who struggles with
PTSD. The first chapter
really breaks your heart
and compels you to read
on. With only 160 pages,
you’ll finish this book in
a day. I thoroughly
enjoyed it and I’m looking
forward to reading more
from this author!
”
– Wanda, Goodreads
“
Emancipation opens with
the story of a tragic event.
The author cleverly draws
the dark thread of this tragedy
through the lives of all characters in the story collection.
All the stories are beautifully written and the characters
keenly observed. I thoroughly enjoyed Emancipation
and recommend it.
”
– Mary, Goodreads
Available in print and EBook online.
To order your copy go to
www.michaelrlane.com.