haiku #103
fists can never hold
water nor love, but cupped hands
firmly opened can
—kalamu ya salaam
A Poem The Whole World Can Understand
economic exploitation is a universal
condition of the 20th century, there is no world
untouched by multinationals, nor any mind unexposed
to the lure of mass produced glitzy designer consumables
what I mean is nearly everybody in the world has caught the wave
and tasted coke or at least wanted to / is this really a well
crafted poem?
it doesn’t matter, what matters is how well we get on with
helping each other deal with the aftermaths and legacies of
colonialism, those unavoidable struggles must and will be
the subject matter of world literature, the necessary priority
of millions of us, millions of us, no matter how unpoetic this
prophesy might sound next to Shakespeare, what do
we do with the world after white people have conquered? How do
we cope with human and environmental disasters? That is
the question all our literature must in one way or another
strive to answer
assuming we have time
and they do not drop the bomb, the
strategies and dramatic movements of people
of color will be the stuff of short stories, novels,
poems, critical essays and feature length cinema, say what you
will, agree with it or not, the future is not white and this
poem, like it or not, is a statement the whole world can
understand
—kalamu ya salaam
this is dedicated
to the one
to the one ness,
to the all
to the all us,
to the creation and catapulting seed
to the beginning and brilliant continuance
to the suffering and feeling and crossings
in the dark
to the watertorture, the shocking endless
a pain and conflict we endured
we endured in these last days and times
before Black rebeginnings
to the oh
to the ah
to the
to the ancestors and the ancients
to the peace eye calm sensual
to the war eye shining serious
to the love eye crystal clear on us selves
the righteous sightings of ex
slaves surging self-consciously
into sunlit sovereignty
to the eye and to the ear
and the sounds, the sounds we
music mighty rhythm thumping
keeping us moving
together, all us on the one
to the love, the tremble, the current, the connection
and Black blessings of
ebony womb man flesh
to the saving and sending of something else west
this is dedicated to the hook up
and hipness of new afrikan
space aspirations
to Black people
to Black, to people
to a Black a people
to the on time thought and taste
that we are really one,
really, really, really all one
to those who read this poem
and wonder on this planet
and want for this truth touch
in time vector now
to all the things we are
we ain’t and hey, yes,
ought to be
this is very humbly dedicated
to the one
one love
one heart
one people
one struggle
this is dedicated
to all our triune wholeness
to those a been here
to those a here now and most certainly
to those a yet to arise and get
get hopefully more than we
way more than we got
more than we are getting
this is dedicated
to your momma and my mama
and all the soft screaming
and pleasure pain it took
to get and keep us here
don’t hurt our space
don’t hurt
don’t hurt our space
be beautiful keepers of the sun
be beautiful, keep the sun, keep us, love
be husbands to life
be break away from zoo madness, plastic
and petroleum food and sexual molesters of life
don’t hurt, don’t throw, no don’t
please don’t throw this
our love away
this is dedicated
to your old man and my old man
and all the weird walks
we and they took
and had to take
still walking, still taking some shit
somewhere, ready for the new music, and
can play it yeah, can play it,
will play it, just need some instruments
this is dedicated
to the only one something that means much
to the highest flesh order in the universe
to the abruptly interrupted but will be continued
golden social age of small circle get togethers
and ancient communal societies updated
to the knowledge that though there will never
be another you, we are going to make it
to the climb
to the getting up when we fall or temporarily fail
to the return
to the endless search to always make and leave
life better and more beautiful than when we arrived
to the one, again it must be said,
to the one, there is no other higher order
to the one we are
to the one we all are
to the one
this is dedicated
to the one i
to the one
to the one i and i
to the one
this is dedicated
to my people
the one i love
—kalamu ya salaam
SOPHISTICATED HAIKU
after loving we
quietly lay, i with my
foot out the window
—kalamu ya salaam
RAPE POEMS
(for C.C. and C.E.)
#1
“the thing
about it
was, i knew
the nigger”
a “good” rape happens
all the time,
you know him
it has been a good
date or a bad one,
you’re sober or slightly
glowing or tipsy, rarely
high or drunk, mostly
straight awake
at first he’s
insistent,
you say no,
he hesitates
but then the time comes,
the bogart begins, the
hands ruff on your
body, the methodical
pressure to make you
give it up
in the movies there is
always this mean magical minute
when each woman’s resistance
melts, her semi-serious
pleas of “no” and “don’t”
turn to methodical breathing
and clothes peeling off
in soft piles of nylons & synthetics
with a searing hot
french kiss
but this is not the movies
all you feel is pain,
as this man violates
you, again and
again
it is not passion nor pleasure
but pure physical pressure
that forces your
submission
suddenly you are not even
there, he is over your body
in your body
but you
you are not even there,
only, for truth
you are there
right there getting raped
afterwards you wash yourself
and douche but do not cry
and seldom call the police,
after all it happens
to lots of women
all the time, why
feel sorry for yourself,
you’ve been raped
before
and the thing about
it is, you thought
you knew the nigger
#2
your husband, your
lover, your duty
it is
no less a crime
when he makes you
do it, invoking
the finalness of his fists
the holiness of his husbandness
the whoreness of your wifeness
sailing smugly
and nonchalantly
through your body
like as if his penis
and a piece of paper
(with some judge’s signature
endorsed by the state)
gives him omnipotent license
and unlimited rights
of passage through
the waters of your vagina
but then this rape
(like most rapes
in this society)
this rape
in the final
analysis
is legal.
#3
few men know
how it feels to get fucked
to lay there and take
it in and out
when you don’t want to
maybe in the prisons
and behind bars
when dudes turn out
young males
but on the streets
and in the bedrooms, in
back seats of cars
and office suites
around the world
few men realize
what rape
really is
—kalamu ya salaam
HARD NEWS FOR HIP HARRY
(for Nefertiti, new word journalist)
it was like
cowboys & Indians
and he was the whole
10th cavalry
diving down
into her ravine
raising dust
in a surprise
swoop attack
that left her laying
there bent back
her thighs all aquiver
with convulsive
love spasms
and when
the big guns
went off, his
coming was like
a gattling
tearing her little
target apart
each time
they got down
it was always the
same, a rerun in 3-D
the kid riding
rough and ready
into town
turning it out
at high noon
taking swift
car of business
ah, they should
of ought to
have made a movie
out of his moves
til the day
she wouldn’t roll
with his punches, didn’t
feel like faking it
anymore, refused to
be the stunt man
taking dives
and doing what
she didn’t do
she knew
there was no easy way
to release it to romeo
without putting his
love lights out,
so she simply said
“Harry, this is no way
to make love”
like a silent star
in the age of talkies
unable to learn new lines,
like a sky diver
whose parachute
was shot, falling over
committed to a point
of no return,
Harry didn’t know
what to do
so he called her
“frigid”
but it was finis
for his toy balloons
the film had rolled
to the end of the reel,
Harry’s hard humping
had become a fantasy
that no one would
any longer pay
to see
yet Harry sat
nonetheless
incredulously
contemplating
a blank screen,
unable to figure
out why the show
wasn’t going on
(he had always
thought sex
was like what
he saw in the pictures)
“Harry, talk to me”
—kalamu ya salaam
___________________________
THE WORD BAND
Kalamu ya Salaam - poet
Ginger Tanner - lead vocals
Anua Nantambu - backing vocals
Kenyatta Simon - percussion
THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC
Black writers write White. This is inevitable for those of us of the African Diaspora who unavoidably use the language of our historic captivity as though it were our mother tongue when in actually English (Spanish, French, Portuguese or whatever European language) is our father tongue, the language of the alien patriarch who negated our mothers' tongues and mandated we use an other tongue; a white tongue in black mouths.
I believe our music is our mother tongue when it comes to representing the full and most honest spectrum of our thoughts and feelings, our responses and aspirations, our dreams and nightmares concerning who we are and the conditions with which we struggle. At the same time, the father tongue/imposed language is the lingua franca of our daily existence. This mother tongue/father tongue dichotomy represents the articulation of our classic double consciousness. When we make our music, we are our own authorities and our own creators and innovators. When we write the English language, the social authority of the language is vested in the dominant culture.
The language of our dominating step-father is a language that has not only historically degraded us but is also a language which demands conformity to alien values. Moreover, the words of the “King's English” are often incapable of expressing the complexities of our values and realities, especially those values of positive “otherness.” For example, what English words are there that give a positive description for spiritual beliefs outside of the “great religions of the world” (all of which, incidentally, are male-centered, if not outright patriarchal—think of bhudda, krisna, allah and his prophet muhammad, etc. not to mention jehovah and god the father, son and holy ghost)? All of other terms, e.g. animism, ancestor worship, voo-doo, traditional beliefs, all of them have a negative or “less than” connotation.
When we consider the specifics of our history in the Western hemisphere, the negativity is increased in terms of words to describe our reality. There are literally no English words for important segments of our lives. But beyond the negative of our resistance to exploitation and oppression, significant aspects of our existence are “undefined” in standard English, either because similar concepts do not exist or because our concepts are oppositional. In this regard, the Black tendency to coin new words is not just slang, creating words is a necessity if we are to reflect not simply our reality, but also our worldview and our aspirations.
At the same time, Black culture is by nature adoptive and adaptive. We can take anything and make use of it in our own unique way. Thus, the fact that English is a foreign language does not stop us from shaping and literally re-structuring how we use the language to make it work for us. This adaptation of a language we have been forced to adopt is however for the most part an oral activity. When it comes to writing, there is less latitude in the restructuring process. If we wrote the way we talk, few people would be able to read it, sometimes not even the authors, partially because the standards for writing are much more rigidly enforced than the standards for talking, but also because although we can make sounds and use gestures when we talk to give specificity to our utterances, this specificity is lost in the translation to text.
Just as there is no way to accurately notate Black music using standard western notation, there is no way to accurately translate all aspects of Black life into text because, in the words of musician Charles Lloyd, "words don't go there." For technical and/or social reasons, writing the way we speak is then: either impractical, impermissible or just plain impossible.
Yet, this impossible dream—writing Black in a White language—is precisely the task of the Black writer. The limitations of language are merely that: limitations to be overcome. Indeed, although undeniable in their negativity, the limitations of language are actually the least of our problems with writing.
The more we learn about writing, the dumber we get about ourselves. Unless accompanied by a critical consciousness, the formal act of learning to write at the college and graduate level alienates us from the majority of our people. An overwhelming percentage of the examples we are given of great writing inevitably come not only from outside of our cultural realities, many of those examples are often literally apologia for racism, sexism and capitalism (or colonialism). The very process of learning to write well is a process of not simply studying others but indeed a process of adopting the methodologies and values of an alien culture, a culture that has generally been antagonistic to Black existence. As a result, almost by definition, anyone the mainstream considers a good Black writer is either culturally schizophrenic or at the very least ambivalent about the values exhibited by the majority of Black people not only in the United States, but indeed in the whole world.
If any of us spends six or more years intensely studying how to write in an alien language, then, to one degree or another, we can not help but be alienated from our origins if our origins are outside of the culture that we have been taught to master as a writer. One sure indicator of this bi-polar state is the references we use in our work. In general three groupings will stand out: 1. Greek mythology, 2. western canonical writers (Shakespeare to Raymond Carver), and 3. western philosophy (with a notable emphasis on modernity in terms of Freudian psychology, existentialism, and post-modern individualism).
While I do not argue that any of these three groupings are irrelevant to our daily lives—after all we are partially a social product of western culture even as we are marginalized or otherwise shunned by the American mainstream, nevertheless, I do argue that to elevate these cultural references to the major tropes, images and structural devices of our writing implicitly alienates us from those aspects of our own existence that are based on other cultural values and realities.
Indeed, at one level, to engage in intellectual argument via writing reductively requires us to drag into our text words of Latin origin. We can not even restrict our word choice to simple Anglo-origin words, but are forced instead to use multi-syllabic words whose origin is twice removed from our reality. (A quick perusal of the vocabulary used in this essay will illustrate that point.) In any case, the upshot of all of this is that the more we master literacy, the more non-Black our expression becomes because the formal mastery of literacy is synonymous with covert indoctrination in western views and values. This is the dilemma of academic study that all writers of color face.
So profound is this dilemma that many of us who have mastered writing become so alienated from our "native" selves that we are unable to move an audience of working class Black people whether the audience members are reading our books or listening to us recite. How odd then, for example, to be a Black poet with an MFA in creative writing and be unable to rock a Black audience. But then one of the purposes of our education was to teach us to act like and fit in with people who historically achieved their success by excluding and/or oppressing and exploiting us.
Please do not construe this as an argument against MFA writing programs or against studying writing in college. I strongly believe in the value of study both formal and informal. The question is do we go to school to learn how to do what we want to do, ever mindful of the institutional objective, which is to make us like them, or do we go to school to prepare ourselves simply to fit in, to get a good job, to be recognized by the mainstream as a good writer? Or, to put it in other terms (community to student): "we sent you there to bring back some fire, not to become mesmerized by the light show!”
This brings us face to face with a profound fact of the Black literary tradition—almost without exception, those Black writers who have made the greatest contribution to our national literature were either self-taught or were consciously oppositional to the mainstream in both their content as well as in their use of language. Think of a Dunbar despondent that he was never accepted for writing in straight English; other than dialect poems his most lasting contribution are poems such as The Caged Bird Sings and We Wear The Mask, poems which focus on the dilemma of alienation. Think of highly educated W. E. B. DuBois whose great body of work is a veritable arsenal of charges against the west and is a celebration of Black life and resistance to oppression. Think of Langston Hughes, Richard Wight, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka—all of them self taught. Think of Francis Ellen Harper, an activist author; Ida B. Wells, an activist author; Toni Cade Bambara, an activist author; all of them autodidacts. Or if we want to consider those who were specifically educated as writers think of Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, Pultizer prize winner Gwendolyn Brooks, or Dr. Margaret Walker Alexander; all of whom focused their magnificent and often iconoclastic work on the lives and struggles of working class Black people. These and many others are the great writers of our literary tradition.
Just as not one great musical innovator within the realms of blues, jazz, gospel and Black popular music has become a great creator primarily as a result of formal musical education, in a similar vein not one major Black writer who has been college educated has made a profound impact on our literature (or in American literature as a whole for that matter) unless that writer has consciously taken an oppositional stance. This is no accident. Indeed, throughout our history thus far in America, opposition to the mainstream has been a prerequisite of Black greatness in any social/cultural endeavor. Whether this will continue to be the case remains to be seen.
It is too soon to tell whether what is sometimes referred to as the "New Black Renaissance" in Black literature will produce major contributions to the historic continuum of Black literature. While it is true that popular production is at an all time high, as the case of romance writer Frank Yerby demonstrates, there is a big difference between popularity and profundity, between best sellers and classic contributions to the tradition. Frank Yerby dominated the bestseller lists for romance in the fifties, yet his work is hardly read and seldom referred to today. Will many of today's bestsellers be subject to the same popularity vs. profundity syndrome?
Capitalism materially rewards commercial success and, in the process, emphasizes the entertainment values and minimalizes the political values of the work. Art becomes a spectacle and/or product for distribution and sale, rather than a process and/or ritual for community upliftment. Indeed, there are those who argue that that an emphasis on political relevance is an artistic straight jacket. My response is that the diminution, if not total negation, of relevance is a hallmark of commercialism, a philosophy that is best summed up in the adage: everything is for sale. I am not arguing against entertainment. I am arguing for relevance and for the elevation of people before profits, community before commercialism. Or to borrow a phrase from Jamaica's Michael Manley: "We are not for sale."
When the Bible asserts, What profits it a man to win the world and loose his soul?, a fundamental truth is raise. Do we understand that soul is a social concept, that our existence as individuals is directly dependent on social interactions? The writer who is alienated from self, invariably argues for the supremacy of the individual, the right to write and do whatever he or she wants to do without reference to one person's affect on or relationship with others. Whether pushed as good old American, rugged individualism or post-modern self-referentialism, the outcome remains the same: alienation from community and schizophrenia of the personal self.
Unless we consciously deal with the question of alienation, we as writers will find ourselves unconsciously and subconsciously at odds not only within our individual psyches but with our native (i.e. childhood) and ethnic community howsoever that community may be defined. This fundamental fact is not a problem peculiar or exclusive to Black writers, it is a problem for all writers in America.
Whom we are writing for determines what and how we write. Writing presupposes audience, assumes that the reader can understand or figure out the message or meaning of the text. Some writers write for the approval of other writers, others seek to impress critics, many attempt to capture a popular audience of book buyers. Those are but a few of the many audience segments that influence, if not outright determine, the nature of writing. In ways often transparent to or not consciously acknowledged by the writer, the tastes and interests of the presumed audience actually shape the writing. Choices of subject matter and vocabulary, style and genre are all interconnected to the interpretative abilities and desires of the presumed audience.
The authority of the audience as auditor is particularly important for writers who are peripheral to or marginalized from whatever is the mainstream of the language that the writer uses.
All writing also brings with it a tradition. Over time standards of literacy develop. The writer then may seem to be a Janus-figure: glancing in one direction at the audience and trying to shape the writing to appeal to or at least be understood by the assumed audience, and glancing in the opposite direction trying to match or exceed the prevailing literary standards. For writers of color in the United States the very act of writing alienates us from our native audience most of whom are not readers grounded in the literary traditions of the text's language.
I would argue that the truth is that every writer goes down to the crossroads—and not once or twice in a career, but each and every time we write, whether consciously by choice or de facto as a result of the particular spin we put on the style and contend of what we do. We choose between speaking to the truths of our individual and collective existence or serving mammon by scripting products for the commercial mill. We choose whether to pander to our audiences by concentrating on pleasure and thereby winning applause and popularity, or to prod and push our audiences to recognize the reality of our existence and to struggle to improve and beautify the world within which we live. In this regard, a more important metaphor for the Black writer is Elegba, the trickster Orisha of the crossroads.
In the final analysis, writing is a conversation, and even if we can not tell the pilgrim which way to go, certainly we should tell the pilgrim from whence we have come, what brought us here and what is the nature of the "here" where we now find ourselves. Moreover, the point is not simply the content. The point is also the conversation. Not just what we are saying, but also with whom we are speaking, to whom we are writing.
One of the sad truths of Black writing is that most of us are employed to be guides (some would say pimps) of Blackness. In order to succeed in mainstream terms, serving as a translator of Black life, explaining the exotica (inevitably with an erotic twist) to the non-Black mainstream is almost unavoidable. But who will explain Black life to Black people? Who will break down the whys and wherefores of our daily existence in a language that our mothers and fathers can understand and appreciate, that our children can embrace and learn from?
The question of audience is seldom raised directly in school but is implicitly dictated by the writings suggested as models. When was the last time our people were validated as the authority for our work, not simplistically as the consumers to buy our books or CDs, not duplicitously as the voters to determine a popularity contest, but sincerely as the validators who determine the ultimate relevance and value of our literary work?
I believe the question of audience is a dynamic rather than static question. I believe in audience development. I believe that we must both reach out to our people and we must teach our people, we must embrace our people and we must challenge our people, we must elevate our people and we must critique our people, and ditto for ourselves and our peers. I believe in cycles rather than linear development. I believe in constantly doing one's best rather than achieving perfection by creating a masterpiece or two. There will always be contradictions, but the motion of our work need not be in a negative direction.
Writing is often defined as a lonely profession. I do not believe it has to be that way. Part and parcel of developing audience is developing community—as writers we need to create networks and organizations of support for one another. We need to model audience development and not simply leave it to retailers and investors to market us while pitting one writer against another. In order to know what to write about in terms of defining, defending and developing our communities, we must actively be engaged in defining, defending and developing community. If we can not develop community among our colleagues, how then will we be in a position to realistically inspire and/or instruct our audiences?
The question of audience is the ultimate question in our quest to contribute to the development of a Black literary tradition. I do not believe in racial essentialism nor in racial proscriptions. Just because one is a Black who writes, that does not mean that one's work has to be part and parcel of the Black literary tradition. I believe that Blackness is color, culture and consciousness, and that color is the least important component. Cultural awareness and practice is important, but consciousness—choosing to identify with and work on behalf of Blackness—is the ultimate sine qua non.
Each of us can choose to reject an allegiance to Blackness howsoever “Blackness” might be defined. We have the right to identify with any one or even with a multiple of human social orders. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of Blackness among African Americans is the rejection of Blackness as a defining marker of self-definition! Moreover, I do not denigrate those who choose social options that I reject—everybody has a right to define themselves. However, for those of us who are writers and choose Blackness, I suggest that we have chosen a difficult but exhilarating path. We have chosen to pass on the torch of that old Black magic, a firelight that started the saga of human history, a mighty burning whose bright Blackness continues to stress the sacredness of love, community and sharing.
—kalamu ya salaam
THE MYTH OF SOLITUDE: NO WRITER IS AN ISLAND
>>No writer is an island.<< No writer creates alone. Even those who withdraw from human contact -- the Salingers and O'Toole's of literature -- are actually shaped by their social development, or more precisely, in the cases just cited, by their social deficiencies. No matter how technically brilliant such writers may be, unless under-girded by social exchange and observations thereon, their writing will not stand the ultimate test of greatness: is the work relevant across time and across cultures?
In order to achieve both linear (across generations) and lateral (across cultures) greatness, writers must be both immersed in a specific era/culture and conscious of that era's relationship to other eras and other cultures. It is not enough to report on or even analyze the news of the day. The ultimate meanings of human existence transcend the specifics of any given moment.
In practice achieving greatness means moving beyond topicality, requires that we insightfully deal with how and why humans are shaped by social and environmental forces, and deal with how we respond to our specific shaping processes.
>>As writers, our goal is the expert use of words<< to convey ideas and information, emotions and experiences, dreams and visions. On the one hand we must study, and study hard, the development of our craft, but, on the other hand, we must never forget that craft without content is meaningless. Beyond the craft/content argument is the more important question of writing for whom? Who is our audience? Are we connected to others?
An audience is the single greatest determinant of the shape and relevance of one's craft. How is this so? This is so because as writers our whole craft is based on communication and, quiet as it is too often kept, communication requires an audience.
Some of us insist that we write to please no one but ourselves. But does that mean we write for an audience of one? No, it does not. When we write only with ourselves in mind, we are implicitly trying to communicate with the social elements that shaped our being. Indeed, who does not want to be understood by their parents, their children, their siblings and peers? Besides, if we were writing literally only for ourselves as an audience of one, we would have no need to share our writing, no need to publish or recite our writings.
In the contemporary United States, "audience" has been collapsed into the concept of consumers, people who literally buy whatever is marketed. That is ultimately a very cynical approach to determining who is one's audience. To write for and about a specific audience does not necessarily mean writing to sell to that audience. What it does mean is using the culture of the intended audience as the starting point (and hopefully an ending point) for our work.
Writing well in English presupposes that we deal with the history of English-language literature, a significant part of which includes use as a tool in the historic process of colonizing people of color. As able a craftsperson as Ralph Ellison was, craft is not what distinguishes "Invisible Man." Rather, Ellison's insightful handling of an investigation of the anti-humanist effects of exploitation and oppression on those who are victimized by a dominant and dominating society is the significance of that novel.
Ellison, understands at a depth few others have so thoroughly presented in the novel format, that both those who fight against their subjugation and those who are not even conscious of their condition are twisted by social forces. However, Ellison's novel is not merely a political screed because Ellison is more concerned with the range of human responses to social conditions than he is with advocating a specific social order. Moreover, far more than many books that on the surface seem to be more political, Ellison's novel is grounded in the cultural mores, the folklore, of mid-20th century African American life. Invisible Man can not be fully appreciated without an appreciation of Black culture.
A horrible truth is that too many of us are unprepared to write significant literature because we have no real appreciation of our audience as fellow human beings, as cultural creatures. We know neither history nor contemporary conditions. We talk about "keeping it real" but have no factual knowledge of reality. Thus, we glibly bandy generalizations, utter hip clichés as though they were timeless wisdom, and inevitably offer instant snapshots of the social facade as though they were in-depth investigations of the structure and nature of our social reality -- in short, we lie and fantasize.
Moreover, unless we consciously deal with our conditions, we end up replicating our oppression in our literature. When we are poor we write admiringly of being rich -- when we get some money, we write guiltily about poverty. What is this madness? This is the psychology of the oppressed captivated by their own oppression.
If this analysis sounds extreme, run the litmus test of examining works of popular literature and see if this is not the case. Look at the rap videos, notice the lifestyles portrayed. Look at the movies. At some point, we need to be aware that videos, movies, televisions, all of those media employ scripts -- these scripts are our popular literature. The absence and/or low level of craft in popular literature, both in publishing and in electronic, broadcast and video mediums, points to one of our real problems -- many of the people who are scripting for the media, can't or don't write well.
Moreover, I understand that the majority of scriptwriters for Black-oriented projects are not Black writers, however, the lack of Black writers in the dominant and dominating mainstream media underscores rather than invalidates my premise. A major part of our problem has nothing to do with craft and everything to do with consciousness — our consciousness and the consciousness of our fellow humans in the United States of America.
Our daily lives are shaped by our social conditions and the consciousness that emerges from those conditions. A significant percentage of writers who are craft conscious are also writers who are psychologically alienated from their own culture. Indeed, for the person of color, the act of acquiring education and expertise typically is also an act of alienation. It is unfortunately generally true that mainstream training in craft is simultaneously a directive to distance one's self from the culture and consciousness of our Black communities. Explicitly, to become professional means to emulate the other and eschew the Black self, the working class self, and, for women, to an even greater degree than many may realize, becoming a professional also means eschewing the self-actualized female self.
Thus, it is no surprise that once we become professionals, we insist on the right to be seen as autonomous and self-defined individuals who desire to live beyond the restrictions of race, class and/or gender. Indeed, we are often proud as peacocks strutting around glorying in our individuality -- look at the beauty of my butt feathers! We disdain groups, assert that organizations stifle our creativity. Meanwhile, people who are organized control the production and distribution of our creative work.
The status quo system loves those of us who think we can make it as individuals precisely because individuals are dependent on the status quo for life support. When you don't have a community of friends and comrades, you end up going to your enemy for supper and shelter, both literally and metaphorically.
>>The challenge for conscious and self-identified writers is both external and internal.<< External to the individual, we must build community by working with and achieving an understanding of the people with whom we identify. Internally there is the individual quest to develop a craft that reflects and projects our individual feelings and ideas about ourselves as well as about the world we live in. This struggle for social and artistic development is not an abstract concern. In practical terms such development requires that we who identify ourselves as Black writers:
1. Study Black music and Black history.
Music because Black music is our mother tongue -- the language through which the deepest and most honest emotions of our people have been expressed in the rawest and most "unmediated" manner. More than in any other sphere of social activity, African Americans have determined our own musical expressions and have communicated with the world through that form of expression.
History because if you don't know yourself you will inevitably end up betraying yourself.
Is it possible to write without a working knowledge of Black music and history? Of course it is. Is it possible to produce great literature without such knowledge? Probably not, and certainly none that would be considered Black literature. Ultimately, all literature is a product of culture, whether that culture is one's indigenous culture or an adopted culture.
2. Study the craft of writing.
One certainly would not claim to be a carpenter without learning how to build, nor a farmer and be unable to raise crops. Moreover, we also need to tackle the development of our own approaches and the development of a theoretical foundation.
During the Black Arts Movement, this process was called the Black aesthetic -- the development of an aesthetic is still needed. Craft is the concrete manifestation of philosophical aesthetics. If we don't consciously shape our own aesthetics, our craft will invariably and often in a contradictory and conflicted manner reflect someone else's aesthetic, generally the aesthetics of the dominant social order.
3. Join with like-minded colleagues.
We should join writers associations, guilds, organizations, both formal and informal. Workshops are important in one's formative years. As one develops, peer associations become extremely helpful both in terms of career development and in terms of craft development. We literally find out what's going on by being in touch with others. We become inspired and get ideas from interacting with others.
The internet is a major source of community activity for young writers today. There are on-line workshops, resource web sites, informational web sites and specifically, a number of Black oriented literary web sites. A young writer who is not on-line is literally "out of it" -- outside of the ebb and flow of ideas and information. With the advent of public access through libraries, arts organizations, schools, and relatively inexpensive commercial services, there is no excuse for not being on-line.
>>Writing is not just the words on the page.<< Writing is documentation of social praxis. There is both an art and a science to writing, a feeling and a thought.
Not only is no writer an island, it is up to each one of us to develop as social creatures (i.e. men and women) and as professionals. For our ancestors, for our selves, for our children and those yet unborn, let us as writers come together and create a literature that is as persistent and profound as our people who outlived centuries of chattel slavery, segregation and degradation, and who stand now on the verge of creating a new definition of what it means to be a free, proud and productive people.
—kalamu ya salaam
For Your Own Good
By April Vincent & Kalamu ya Salaam
It was a routine day, I mean I was just making my rounds and nothing unusual was happening except my partner was out sick, which really was a good thing. I don’t mean him being sick was good, I mean I liked rolling by myself and getting a chance to talk to people like Mrs. Andrews, who had twelve children but looked like she was a brand new mother with a small baby. I mean she was kind of slim, still had a sparkle in her eyes and… what the hell!
Is that guy beating up on somebody? I flashed my siren. As I got closer I saw him hit the young girl one more time and then look up at me coming toward him. He turned and walked away slowly like nothing was happening.
The girl couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. She had a bundle of clothes strewn all over the sidewalk. I got out and tried to talk to her. When she looked up at me and peeped my badge hanging around my neck, I could see fear in her eyes. This was stupid, but I understood it. She was more afraid of me, a cop, than she was afraid of that guy who had just been beating on her.
“You ok?”
“I’m fine officer, I was just trying to get some laundry done.”
“The sidewalk ain’t no washing machine and that dude sure wasn’t giving you no soap powder.”
I stared at her and she stared back. Not looking away or nothing, the fear was gone. Maybe I was wrong, maybe she wasn’t afraid. She didn’t answer me, at least not with words; just sort of threw her hands up like as if to say ‘whatever.’ She let out a brief sigh and then bent over and started picking up the clothes. When I stooped down to help, she started talking like she knew me.
“That was my baby’s father, he lives with his mamma but he does the same thing every week, come over here, acts like he’s the king of the world, starts a foolish argument, and leave. This is the first time it’s gotten this bad.”
She was crying. Silent tears rolled down the side of her jaw. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and started picking up her clothes.
“You sure you ok?”
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know why he thinks just because we have a baby together that I have to be with him. But to be honest with you, sir, I am afraid.”
“You don’t have to be afraid.” She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “You want to press charges on him?”
“No.”
Why would I press charges on the father of my child? That would only make things worse. Is that what this cop wants?
Damn, these girls always be protecting the dogs that end up biting them. She picked up a pair of green shorts. I saw a little pack of weed laying there. She saw me see it and that look of fear crept into her eyes again.
“How old are you?
“I’m almost 17.”
“You ought to be in somebody’s school.” She turned away, grabbed up an arm full of clothes and started to walk away. “Where you going?”
“I have a baby to take care of, you know.”
The weed was still sitting on the sidewalk. She saw it and she knew I saw it. “You’re forgetting something.”
I know he don’t think I’m about to take a charge for Doe.
“Oh…that’s not for me.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“Well I know you don’t have good reason to believe me, but I can assure you I would never even think about smoking weed. I can’t even afford milk and diapers.”
“Get in.”
“No!”
“Girl, get in and let me take you wherever it is you going. And pick that weed up off the sidewalk, enough for somebody to come along and get the both of us in trouble.”
“I’ll come with you but I hope you don’t expect me to tell you any more of my business. I don’t want to turn my life into an investigation.”
“Somebody need to help you figure out all this mess.”
I could look at her and see the whole story. High school. Fell in love. Hooked up with this dude. He turned her on to getting high. Got her pregnant and now is tired of her. And here she is afraid of me when she should be afraid of her whole damn future.
I may have to deal with a few problems, maybe more than the average teenager, that don’t give you the right to call my life a mess. Nobody’s perfect.
“Look, I’m going to help you out. I might be wasting my time but then again you never know. Come on, let’s go.”
“What makes you think I need your help?”
“Those tears running down the side of your face. Get in. I’m doing this for your own good.”
-end-
_____________________________
[this is actually a writing exercise from school year 2007/2008 in a students at the center class at frederick douglas high school in the ninth ward of new orleans. i asked april if she wanted to write a story together. she said yes. i told her you pick my character and i will start the story, plus you write your character's dialogue and inner thoughts. she smiled mischievously and said, you're a policeman. she was messing with me. i said, ok, and based it on an actual incident that had happened a week before.]
I don’t want to live anywhere where they are killing me
1.
it’s crazy. most of us
kind of assume that where we are born
is home, where our first kiss was, learning to walk, literally,
throwing our first stone at someone in anger,
sitting at the table a mouth full of mother’s meatloaf
or was it strawberry pie, or even monkey bread—
those twisted strings of dough that were a wonderful
combination of chewy cake and sweet stuffing—
catching the bus home from school with friends,
the first drink, wasn’t it when uncle teddy
served you beer at thanksgiving, you were five?
like that, we think of that location in the mythic sense
the high drama that came later, the desperately sought
trysts, sneaking to liaison with someone you know you
ought to avoid, or the first time you got together
with someone whom you wanted the whole world
to know you were committed to being with for life,
or so you thought, how wonderful the world looked
as you lay dreaming on your back your head
secure in a special someone’s lap, or how short
the walk after the dance from the club to the parking lot,
what you wouldn't have given for a reprise of that heaven
the way a lover looks when their whole face smiles
just because you came around the corner with
a yellow tulip in your hand and a pack of almond m&m’s
secreted behind your back as you whispered
smokey’s ooh baby baby into an eagerly awaiting ear
actually those were the preludes—the real high drama
came some years later, the first time calling someone,
anyone, to come and get you out of jail, which you were in
for doing something stupid, something really, really
stupid, and then there was the accident when you banged
up someone’s new car, but those were just the breaks, not
the actual high drama of sitting sullen in some counselor’s
waiting room, your head thrown back to the wall
avoiding the eyes of your better half who was now
the loyal opposition and whose eyes were the same eyes
only smaller in the head of the child to whom you
could not some how find the right words to make sense
of this mess that was formerly your marriage
where these scenes take place, the parlor in which
a cousin's camera has caught you crying, the foggy mirror
where you examined yourself, one flight up in a total
stranger’s house and sheepishly you wonder what were you
doing in this blue tiled bathroom so very early in the morning
when you were supposed to be somewhere else—life is what
some people call this, and where you live your life, shouldn’t
that be the place you call home?
2.
the water. my god the water. the angry water
rain roaring sideways with the force of a freight train,
smashing your resolve to ride it out, or inching
down an interstate at two miles an hour so call evacuating
from the water. the dirty, angry water, running
if you were lucky enough to have wheels and a wallet
with plastic in it. the water. you will dream of
wet mountains falling on you and wake up gasping
for air as though you were drowning, oh the water
deeper than any pool you’ve ever swam in,
water more terrible than anything you can think
of, another middle passage, except this time
they don't even provide ships
I used to wonder how my ancestors survived
the Atlantic, Katrina has answered that question,
I wonder no more—there is a faith that is beyond
faith, a belief when there is nothing left to believe in,
no, not god, well, yes, god, for some, for many, it was
jesus, a few humduallahed, or whatever, but it was also
whatever that visited this terror upon us, and so
to keep believing in whatever, now takes something
the mind can not imagine, the realization that in order
to live you had to survive and in order to survive
you had to do whatever needed to be done, few
of us really, really know what we will do
when we’ve got nothing but have to find something
to keep us going, how you manage your sanity
in the water, corpses floating by, gas flames
bubbling up from some leaking underground line,
and you sitting on a roof and you just pissed
on yourself because, well, because there was
no where to go and do your business, five days
of filth, no water but flood water, no food but
hot sun, no sanitation but being careful where
you stepped, where you slept, where you turned
your back and eliminated, being careful to survive
twelve days later and you still don’t know where
all your family is, if you’ve got faith, you’re about to
use it all—is this some of what our ancestors saw?
3.
it is over a month later and you still can’t walk
on the land that used to be your backyard,
they treat you like a tourist, you can only
be driven down your street in a big bus,
you can only look out the window at what twisted,
funk encrusted little remains of all you ever owned
and some kid with a gun won’t let you go
to get big mama’s bible
this shit is fucked up, that’s what it is,
fucked up and foul, the smell of a million
toilets overflowing, of food that been rotting
for days inside a refrigerator that became
an oven because the electricity was off and
the sun was beaming down ninety degrees or more
and the worse part is that none of what you
already went through is the worst part, the worst
is yet to come as government peoples with
boxes and things they stick into the ground
tell you that even if the water hadn’t drowned
you, something called toxicity has made it
impossible for you to stay here, they are
telling you it is impossible for you to stay
in the house that been in your family
for over fifty years even though it’s still standing
it’s impossible to live here, and what shall
we call this? what shall we tell the children
when they ask: when are we going home?
4.
I don’t want to live anywhere where they have
tried to kill us even if it was once a place
I called home—but still and all, my bones
don’t cotton to Boston, I can’t breath
that thinness they call air in Colorado,
a Minnesota snow angel don’t mean shit
to me, and still and all, even with all of that,
all the many complaints that taint my
appreciation of charity, help and shelter,
even though I know there is no turning back
to drier times, still, as still as a fan when
the man done cut the 'lectric off, still,
regardless of how much I hate the taste
of bland food, still, I may never go back,
not to live, maybe for a used to be
visit, like how every now and then you
go by a graveyard… I am not bitter, I am
just trying to answer the question:
what is life without a home?
what is life, without
a home? and how long does it take
to grow a new one?
—kalamu ya salaam