The Body Has Seasons
I have been reflecting this past month on forgiveness and gratitude. I want to believe people do the best they can with what they know. Sometimes we are privileged to have people in our lives that offer guidance. However, all of us are not so lucky. I think it is luck, although it is easy to believe that some of us are on the wrong lists. When are my sweepstakes or lottery tickets going to cash in? Even if I gambled, there is still a chance I might lose so why put one’s hope in such a shallow basket?
I don’t think people, especially, close kinfolk— parents, intentionally harm their children. The parents doing a good job outnumber those who are not, but the bad parents get all the publicity. This is not to say parents who are doing well don’t make mistakes too.
Harmed people harm others . . . not to mention how much easier it is to surrender than to resist, fight, oppose. It is also easy to harm those who are physically weaker and dependent like children.
Agency is a choice many people are too weakened to step into. Often, we—the abused, find ourselves alone, which is also a choice. The crowded sidewalks hold the beautiful people fashionably gowned.
When I think about children harmed, I am happy I am not the creator and don’t have any responsibility for other grown people’s actions. We learn as Muslims to stop wrong with our hands and if we cannot stop the harm from happening with our hands, bodies; then to speak against it. Lastly, we can walk away from it. This is the weakest defense. Getting involved takes courage, because you might be alone in this decision. The harmed person might not support the interference (Hadith 34, 40 Hadith an-Nawawi).
So anyway, I am thinking about these big questions as the Gregorian calendar ends and another starts. I am the Adult Child of an Alcoholic (ACA). My father was my qualifier. I hadn’t known one of the casualties in such a household are the children who lose their childhood and if we survive grow up thinking dysfunction is normal. I learned about ACA a month ago. I’d been attending AlAnon, a 12-step program for friends and families of alcoholics more off than on since 2019. When I say alcoholics, I also include narcotics and related behaviors like incest and spousal abuse. I hadn’t known that there was a whole program just for the ACA.
I have been to two ACA meetings at this writing and well, I am angry again with my father. I also learned that this forgiveness thing is expiration date stamped. Daddy’s been dead for 28 years and I forgave him formally when I was 59 years old. He died when he was 59. So anyway, when I read that ACA folks grieve their lost childhoods and part of the recovery is to parent the “lost child” within, I was like “whoa?! Hold up. I took Daddy’s photo off the altar and have been reflecting with his spirit on forgiveness, atonement and grace.
It is a process. However, I don’t want to carry this grief for my lost childhood into the New Year unaddressed. I am a person who believes ritual is a way to address spirit-related issues. In October-November 2021, I attended the second year of “Nine Layers of the Soul.” A virtual program, it began on Oct. 31 and featured healers throughout the African Diaspora, many located in the SF Bay Area like Iya Wanda Ravernell, Yeye Luisah Teish and Iya Nedra Williams. During the opening three-hour program, one of the presenters shared her ancestor elevation practice. I knew then, I had to do this for my Dad. I added repentance when I learned of ACA and got angry two weeks ago.
I started Dec. 20 and plan to continue through Dec. 27. Daily I offer two rakats for Tawuf or Repentance, followed by libations and readings from the Holy Qur’an about forgiveness, parents and children, wellness and gratitude. I close with music, mostly Abdullah Ibrahim whom my father introduced to me and whom we both enjoy. (I’d compiled a soundtrack for my father’s birthday earlier.) I dance to the songs and then greet my Dad until the next day. The first day, I offered him a little food.
I plan to end the ascension and repentance ritual with an offering in my father’s name to an organization that addresses a problem my father actively participated in. I looked into organizations that address spousal abuse in the Muslim Community. There are a couple here in California, one in the SF Bay and another in Sacramento. I was hoping to find an organization that sought out Black American Muslim women. I wonder, what sisters are doing to keep themselves safe. It is even harder now given the pandemic. I got divorced 34 years ago. I had no safe house options then. No one talked about spousal abuse in the community. I was in Oakland and San Francisco Muslim communities.
When my mother was hopping from one friend’s home to another when my father was threatening, more than 50 years ago, there were no safe houses for her with two small children. Why is there so much silence in the Black community, especially the Muslim community, American Muslim community about this?
After over 30 years in therapy, when do I get to be well? No one ever mentioned ACA or Alateen or AlAnon to me when I was a kid growing up in the Nation of Islam, a young adult, a grown woman. Officials knew my dad drank. They would send him home and eventually, he stopped attending. My mother didn’t have anyone to talk to. I never heard anyone talk about spousal abuse to even feel safe talking about this as a teenager and later as a victim myself.
Not one therapist in the past 30 years has recommended AlAnon or ACA! I can only imagine the difference Alateen would have made to my life when I was 12-13-14-15-16 before I married my father over and over again starting at 19 . I am dating him now.
American Muslim men, Black men, are marrying multiple wives, many from Africa or Indonesia then after 18 years (for example) adding another woman to the mix, these new wives 20-30-40 or more years younger than the American husband(s). This happens to Black American Muslim women too, who know, as the second, third etc. wife, she has no rights, because polygamy is not recognized in America.
It’s the “rich American” syndrome. Everything is for sale. Women sell themselves to perspective husbands for a small price—sex, procreation. There should be a law against this, however “hislam” supports such acts. These are Hadith citing men who wear kufis, recite Arabic, make Hajj, pay zakat . . . who exploit female vulnerabilities –
Marriage vows also have expiration dates. Married at 25, divorced at 42. The old wife must welcome the sister-wife or perhaps leave her comfortable home penniless (often) without her children. This part – parental rights, she can fight in America; however, the poverty is almost expected. The first wife submits.
I wonder about the sins of the fathers on present generations and how no hands are clean when we think about the legacy of slavery and what our ancestors suffered, especially the women and girl children, and often boy children too. What these ancestors witnessed, what they had to participate in and the unaddressed soul wounds their descendants carry from those ancestors forward.
I am praying for my father’s soul.
The expired forgiveness stamp needs renewal, so I can begin again with myself and the child inside who needs caring for. I am reading Honoree Fanonne Jeffers’s first novel, “The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois (2021), great saga. I wonder as I read this book about the trauma and sexual violence of enslavement and its aftermath then to now and how secrets harm both the one who is silent and those who need to know. Add to this cocktail colorism and see how love doesn’t protect or erase the damage racism does to the psyche of the “dark child.” Why do people “pass” or pretend to be something they are not, even when the color of power is that of the perpetrator?
The victims still aspire to be it—him, her, them.
It’s a sickness that gets played out in the home, my home, your homes. It’s the children, especially the girls and women who suffer. Are there any families untouched by incest and sexual violence either as victims or perpetrators? How do you know when no one wants to talk about it? Blaming does not fix the problem. Ignoring the problem does not make it go away. I hope this new year, Black families, especially Black Muslim families, start addressing these hard topics and get help before another generation is harmed.
We do what is done to us. Be careful. Don’t let your babies out of your sight. Stand outside the door after you check the shower (other stalls), when they go to the bathroom at a relative’s house or a public bathroom.
Afrikan Healing and Wisdom@ InsightLA
Sunday Morning Group, January 28, 2022 | 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM PT Register Now
Reserve your spot now for this very special offering.
Afrikan Healing and Wisdom Presents:
Opal Palmer Adisa PhD., “Committing to the Abeng: Ancestry, Homeland, & Ritual”
(more info www.opalpalmeradisa.com)
This is for people with one or more parents or grandparents from the Black African Diaspora and who self-identifies as Black and/or mixed heritage.
This group is to welcome healing around our internalized racial oppression within our communities and to nurture the wisdom and gifts we have to share among us. Be comfortable in your skin. Bring your Medicine, your voice, your dance, your sage.
We welcome all genders, sexualities, and abilities.
Assistants: Shawna, Moka, and Kirsten. We hope you will join us.
Memorial Ceremony for Thich Nhat Hanh, Monk, Zen Master, Peace Activist, January 22-25
Thich Nhat Hanh, Monk, Zen Master and Activist, Dies at 95
A monk with global influence and an ally of Martin Luther King, he championed what he called “engaged Buddhism,” applying its principles in pressing for peace (NYT).
I hadn’t known of Thich Nhat Hanh, Monk, Zen Master and Activist‘s committment to comtinuing the work of Dr. King regarding “the Beloved Community,” until today. I just always liked his energy and I also liked how accessible her was. I remember his coming to Oakland, CA on several occasions. I never got to see him– sold out, etc., but I liked it that he was in the world and that one didn’t have to have lots of money or special status to be in the room with him. His memorial service began Jan. 25 and continues through the week virtually in real time. Plum Village, France, the master’s largest sangha, is hosting the services.
I remember my first encounter with “Thay’s” work. It was in his book, “Peace in Every Step.” I think I was newly divorced and finding life really complicated; however, that book gave me strategies to take life one moment at a time and to be fully engaged so I could better appreciate what it meant to be alive.
A few years ago, I was listening to a KPFA fund drive and heard parts of the master’s “Happiness, Love, and Liberation” lectures. I immediately resonated with his talks about the ancestors and how to channel this energy and how to be present with what is past, because what is past (passed) is not past. It is just energy transformed.
The last time I listened to the master was this last week. I am on the Plum Village listserve and run to open the missives. This one was a talk on what happens to the old year when the new year arrives. It was so funny and thoughtprovoking and then the next day, Thay was gone. I was like “wow.”
The talks by teachers in this tradition are really helpful in understanding death and what happens after that. Many of our traditions speak of life everylasting. Certainly this has to do with one’s work and the embodied actors to continue to carry the message in their actions. The Beloved Community as a concept illustrated through Thich Nhat Hanh’s work guarentees how presence forever.
He will be missed. I do feel a bit of sorrow, but I know he was more than the vessel he called home, a home that was always bigger than the tangible container.
Elder Patrice Malidoma Somé, (Jan. 30, 1956-Dec. 9, 2021) Ase!
My introduction to Elder Malidoma Some was through his book, a classic disapora story, “Of Water and Spirit.” When I read his story, I felt validated as an African American whose ancestors whose birthrites were stolen. That he was reunited with his family of orgin and was able to survive initiation was almost magical; however, it just showed how his purpose was validated.
When the book was released, I remember going to a reading at Books Inc. in San Francisco. I don’t know if I greeted him, but the book was one I have never tired of as the enormous harm called MAAFA continues to unfold– George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Aubry just recent examples of the role racism plays in dehumanizing certain people generations later. It is a part of the fabric of this nation and by extension western culture.
His books Ritual Power and African Stories are so wonderfully written and accessible. I always felt he was sent for “them” as in white men. He seemed to stand in the doorway with the sage or efum to cleanse whiteness or deactivate the charge. Well educated in the western psychological traditions, he always seemed a little beyond my reach; however, I knew he was a brother doing healing work for our people. Sister Afua knows his work well and would share his teachings at our MAAFA ceremonies, especially at Lake Merritt in June, the Libations for African Ancestors.
I am happy he has a body of work.
I also miss his wife, Sobonfu Some, who made her transition a while back, whom I did meet and was blessed to participate in an ancestral ceremony with.
Ase to all those ancestors who served us well and may we continue to pass the wisdom forward as we wet our heads too.
From the Newsletter: Elder Malidoma completed his most recent Initiation today, Thursday, December 9th, 2021.During the past 104 days, since returning from his homeland in Dano, Burkina Faso, Elder Malidoma moved forward as the Warrior that he is as he faced many unknown territories.I have been blessed to be by his side during this time, hold witness and offer support as he journeyed forward.
While negotiating the teachings and circumstances of this intense upgrade and initiatory process- he was adamant that he would continue to meet with his students in person for as long as he was able…..and he did so.
In the midst of his traversing the multi-dimensions for healing, he also traveled to Colorado and to Asheville for many programs between his appointments and rituals.
What an inspiration he will always be…..Living his Medicine. During this past few months he deployed an attack unlike any other- against the forces of adversity -and softened into what he has called his “new dispensation”. Elder Malidoma will soon be returning to Dano, Burkina Faso where he will receive the traditional funeral rites of his tribe.
Here in the states two Ritual Weekend Gatherings will be held in honor of Elder Malidoma in the Springtime, 2022. Details about these services will be provided as they unfold. One service will be held in Asheville, NC at Ancestral Events in April and one service will be held in Cherry Plain, NY at the East Coast Village in May.
For more information about these services, please contact info@Malidoma.com At this juncture, the family does not wish to be contacted directly- although emails are welcome at the office email address and will be shared with his family.Cards for the family can be mailed to Ancestral Events, 45 Wells Valley Drive, Leicester, NC 28748
In lieu of flowers, the family is open to receiving monetary support to assist with the expenses to transport their Dad, Elder Malidoma to his Homeland ~ Mother Africa – where he will be honored as the Elder that he is- in his village.
Donations will also support his two daughters in paying the medical and other expenses that have been created during this time of their caring fortheir Dad.
Donations can be made via PayPal www.PayPal.com“friends and family” atinfo@Malidoma.com from Elder Theresa Sykes Brittany
Wanda’s Picks Radio Show Highlights and Links
Wednesday, January 5, 2022 on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show, we speak to members of the cast for Ishmael Reed’s The Slave Who Loved Caviar, up through Jan. 9 at The Theater for The New City in New York. It is also streaming live. Tickets are just $10+ small fee. For in person and virtual tickets visit https://ci.ovationtix.com/35441/production/1091241Shows are Thurday, Friday, Sat. 8 PM ET (5 PT) and Sunday at 3 PM ET (12 noon PT). Closes Jan. 9.
Guests include: Jesse Bueno, Robert Turner,Kenya Wilson, Laura Robards, Roz Fox, Brian Anthony Simmons, Monisha Shiva (about 9:30 am pst), and possibly Ishmael Reed.
2. Wadada Leo Smith (10/21/2021)
Wanda’s Picks Radio Show Interview with JAZZ: The International Connection Artists
Today, Jan. 26, 2022, on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show, we have a special recorded show featuring artists: Mai Lingani (Burkina Faso), Seth Sharp (Iceland), Johnny Turco (Puerto Rico), who are performing this Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022, 3 p.m. ET at JAZZ: the International Connection, hosted by Rome Neal’s Banana Puddin’ Jazz. https://www.romeneal.com/banana-puddin-jazz
Music: “Where Have You Been & Crazy Medley.” Acoustic by Shinuh and Johnny Turco
Ife: Submarine
Seth Sharp and the Black Clock perform “Georgia.” He speaks about this song performance when he was on a US State Dept.Tour in South Africa, Namibia.
On the Fly
Sessions at San Francisco Public Library, Main Library 100 Larkin St., SF 94102
Author: Said Shaiye in conversation, Saturday, Jan 22, 2 p.m.
Said Shaiye reads from his new book, Are You Borg Now?. After the reading, Shaiye discusses the book, with an audience Q&A to follow.
“‘You gotta find reflections of yourself however you can to survive this country,’ writes Said Shaiye in this innovative Afrofuturist memoir. Are You Borg Now cyphers with trauma through a poetics of refusal via hard and beautiful language.” – Douglas Kearney, Author of Sho
Author: Dr. Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts , Wednesday, Jan 19, 6 p.m.
In Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, Dr. Rebecca Hall details her search to find the stories of women warriors left out of the historical record.
Candidate Forum for Alameda County District Attorney
RSVP Here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUqfu6rrDwpGt3dcfWapR3mGukU2GD9imt1
Martin Luther King Weekend Activities
“A Shattered Happiness”: The Seminole Trail of Tears and its (Continuing) Aftermath, the 184th Anniversary Seminole Maroon Remembrance of the Two 1838 Battles of the Loxahatchee River in Jupiter, Florida, an event honoring Seminole Maroons, with a special focus this year on those Maroons forcibly removed from Florida. This is A VIRTUAL event – Sunday, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Weekend, January 16, 2022, 12:00 Noon, Eastern Standard Time (EST); 9 AM PST.
The World House Documentary (Virtual & Free) Film Festival Jan. 14-17
The World House Documentary Film Festival, a free, weekend-long, virtual event celebrating the 2022 Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday.
MLK DAY EVENT: HOPE IN THE HOUR OF HOMICIDE —
In 2021, Oakland experienced a rise in violent crime more severe than those found in Chicago, Los Angeles or New York City. An infant perished in a firebombed house and a party bus filled with teenage girls was shot up leaving several wounded and two dead. In honor of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, a number of Bay Area community builders will be addressing the issue of violence in Oakland and posing solutions.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail: Dr. King’s Message for 2022 w/ Dr. David Pilgrim
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/letter-from-a-birmingham-jail-dr-kings-message-for-2022-w-david-pilgrim-tickets-241356452647
About this event
In April 1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was jailed for participating in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation, eight white clergymen, sympathetic to the Civil Rights cause, issued a public statement discouraging protests. They argued that change needed to take place through the courts and legal system rather than in public dissent. Dr. King’s response was the powerful “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
Join SpeakOut to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Day as we host Dr. David Pilgrim to discuss King’s discourse that challenged white moderates 57 years ago and how his message still resonates today. Dr. Pilgrim will explore the historical context of the letter and its relevance amidst the rise of white supremacist organizing and violence around the country.
Dr. David Pilgrim is best known as the founder and Director of the Jim Crow Museum, the nation’s largest, publicly accessible collection of more than 20,000 racist objects, located at Ferris State University where he serves as Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion. His books include Understanding Jim Crow: Using Racist Memorabilia to Teach Tolerance and Promote Social Justice, which explains the museum’s vision and work, and how the objects are used as tools to teach about race, race relations, and racism.
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For inquiries about bringing Dr. David Pilgrim to your campus or community, contact info@speakoutnow.org.
For Group Sales, contact programs@speakoutnow.org
TICKETS ARE SLIDING SCALE $5 – $30 to benefit SpeakOut’s ongoing educational work.
All who register will receive a link to watch live or later at their own convenience.
ASL interpreted. English captioning will be provided.
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Honoring MLK Jr. @ MoAD-SF (Virtually)
12-1pm
A discussion with authors Jetta Grace Martin and Waldo Martin about their book for young adult readers called FREEDOM! THE STORY OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY
2-3:15pm
A program with MoAD Docents, who will present pairings of art from publicly accessible archives and music of the American Civil Rights Era.
3:30-4pm
An art workshop for families with materials at home.
Much more detail at this link with details for how to access via Zoom:
https://www.moadsf.org/event/free-family-day-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-national-day-of-service/?instance_id=16201
Politics@Joyce Gordon Gallery
To RSVP: HERE or secure.actblue.com/donate/victoryMLK
Ishmael Reed’s ‘The Slave Who Loved Caviar’ at Theatre for the New City (live and streaming) through Jan. 9, 2022
Review by Wanda Sabir
Ishmael Reed is such a brilliant writer and thinker. Perhaps the MacArthur Genius awardee can collect dividends. His current play, directed by Carla Blank, “The Slave Who Loved Caviar,” at Theater for the New City through Jan. 9, explores Black culture and white exploitation in the relationship between the Haitian-Puerto Rican American artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat (Dec. 22, 1960-Aug. 12, 1988) and Andy Warhol (Aug. 6, 1928-Feb. 22, 1987). There are so many analogous parallels, both fictional or mythic and actual, that it is amazing the play has only one intermission.
Warhol is shown as an exploitive opportunist who masquerades as an artist, while manipulating a youngster whom he fools into believing that the older man is his father divine – when in fact Warhol is a drug pusher who captures a willing Basquiat, then installs him in a basement where the kid churns out art like an assembly worker.
The cold case is reopened by two forensic scientists, Grace and Raksha (actors Monisha Shiva and Kenya Wilson, the understudy on Jan. 1, 2022) who want to bring the perpetrators to justice. It is said Basquiat died of a heroin overdose. However, those who know, know better, as do these scientists. As the contemporary team investigates, time shifts back and forth as what happened to the Haitian artist continues with other captives. Basquiat’s drug induced imprisonment is not the first or the last.
Slave owners actually used cocaine to increase productivity among the captives, Reed shares in his work. Slavery was legal. The Warhol machine also had legal protection, money and power and what money buys when the victim is Black and male or Black and female. Basquiat is compared to Cinderella, Warhol, the dad who disappears as the sharks circle for a kill.
I love the scene in Act 2 when we meet Richard Pryor, whose ghost wants to save Basquiat …
Reed’s writing is crisp and sharp as are the actors who deliver and deliver and deliver some more. Slave is a mystery that has audience up on her feet at home rooting for the victims tied to the tracks as the iron horse approaches. Carla Blank’s direction is also on point as the diction and storylines unfold clearly in nuanced layers.
I love the scene in Act 2 when we meet Richard Pryor, whose ghost wants to save Basquiat so that he doesn’t go up in chemical flames like the elder artist did. Pryor appears as a shadow puppet danced by actor Kenya Wilson.
Pryor speaks to the art of selling out to Hollywood, New York another type of killing field for Black art and artists. Pryor tells us he was a friend of Ishmael Reed, whom we see in photos in Berkeley with the actor. We sense Pryor’s regret that he didn’t stay with people who loved him. It’s hard to tell friend from foe when engulfed in f(l)ame(s).
There are overt blood suckers in the play too. Actor Jesse Bueno’s “Art Agent Antonio Wolfe” and his client, actor Raul Diaz’s “Baron De Whit.” De Whit performs a superb ghoulish job. Dressed in traditional macabre cape, he uses pretty boys to satisfy his hunger while he seduces and serves Black woman appetizer. What is unclear is how Wolfe and De Whit fool folks one would think should know better – their victims are both college educated.
The predators on the loose stay loose because police precincts headed by cops who don’t value life equally cultivate and enable a persona like De Whit’s (Andy Warhol-type) tastes. This is a very real problem on and off the page.
Roz Fox’s Detective Mary van Helsing is a cool sleuth who goes looking for the missing appetizer, “Jennifer Blue” (actor Kenya Wilson), despite legal disinterest. She is our hero. Don’t worry, this is a spoiler, but there is so much going on here, you will probably forget I told you.
I also love the references to Kemetic Ausar’s (Greek Osirus) feast day and his dismemberment or fracture into so many pieces, he could not be put back together. However, if you know how his woman, the goddess, Queen Auset’s (Greek Isis) found 13 of the 14 pieces his brother Set cut him into and then scattered. She even got hold of a spell which made her able to conceive with her dead lover. This is the original immaculate conception that the Christians borrowed.
Reed mentions that if he were to add a scene, it would be a bacchanal feast – capitalists eating the flesh of Black artists, similar to how white people at antebellum picnics tore apart the remains of the Black body on the spit once roasted (see Ida B. Wells’s “A Red Record” (1895).
Yes, “Slave” opened on the birthday of the Christian savior (Heru or Horus – the love child from the union). Reed is certainly prescient as is the Theater for The New City’s Artistic Director Crystal Field. What does closing one year and opening another with “The Slave Who Loved Caviar” say about this nation? As confederate monuments are toppled throughout the nation and reparations are a very real possibility, “Slave” is precedent setting certainly. “Slave” is a challenge and a wakeup call to those who have not been paying attention to the right thing. “Slave” says, change the channel. What did the Last Poets say about the Revolution?
Well, it’s streaming through Jan. 9, 2022, at Theater for the New City. Streaming tickets are just $10 plus a small fee. For in person ($15.00) and virtual tickets, visit https://ci.ovationtix.com/35441/production/1091241.
Reed’s “Slave” closes Jan. 9, 10 days after the feast of Auset (Dec. 30). Nia or Purpose during the Kwanzaa calendar. Reed mentions in our radio or podcast interview that if he were to add a scene, it would be a bacchanal feast – capitalists eating the flesh of Black artists, similar to how white people at antebellum picnics tore apart the remains of the Black body on the spit once roasted (see Ida B. Wells’s “A Red Record” (1895).
Reed’s research is impeccable – I lose track of some of the names, like the artist who boycotts with other Black artists a museum that sets out to exploit them. The person who plans the boycott turns around and does a solo exhibition with the museum. “Jack Brooks” (actor Robert E. Turner), an older artist who shares this story, is berated by “Young Blood,” actor Brian Anthony Simmons’s brash youngster in shorts made from the Black Nationalist Flag.
However, he is not aware of the red, black and green significance or the Hon. Marcus Garvey. Young Blood is intent on disproval of his elder’s path and upbraids him repeatedly over a history and time he was not present to evaluate. His arrogance is his downfall. There is something to be said for living to tell the story. Eyewitnesses are important, because they were there.
In “Slave” we see too often how historians are propagandists who lie to keep the empire solvent.
Remember Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in “1984”? I am reminded also of Jimi Hendrix (1970) and his demise – yes, to a drug overdose … Fuquan Johnson (2021), Shock G (2021), Juice WRLD (2020), Billie Holiday (1959), Whitney Houston (2012), The Artist Formerly Known As Prince (2006), Michael Jackson (2009).
Touched on also are the perverse tastes of the ruling class who sanitize sexual perversions, especially involving children. Turks were raping children, as were the Warhol entourage, who, in “The Slave Who Loved Caviar,” commit equally egregious crimes. It’s just no one cares enough to stop it (then or now).
Reed hints at this in his inclusion of a disappeared Black girl/woman in the crime log of Detective Mary van Helsing (actor Roz Fox).
“The Slave” is entertaining and complex. If you like your fun intellectually challenging and witty, this is your play. What’s cool is you don’t have to travel to New York; there is a streaming option that is live. Reed has recorded and performed a live score which is also really good. The projections of art and people, Carla Blank’s choreography, Haitian veves or sacred ground drawings – all enhance the immersive quality of production.
Since it is Ishmael Reed, we can actually have a happy ending – bell hooks writes in “Outlaw Culture”: ‘Altars of Sacrifice: “Re-membering Basquiat’,” that the young, yet masterful artist “journeyed into the heart of whiteness. White territory he named as a savage and brutal place. The journey is embarked upon with no certainty of return. Nor is there any way to know what you will find or who you will be at journey’s end. … Basquiat understood that he was risking his life – that this journey was all about sacrifice” (36).
How difficult it must have been for the artist to have his say as he dangled from a purveyor’s noose. Herein lies Black genius. Herein lies the tragedy. Ishmael Reed’s ability to cultivate success for the past 60 or so years stems from his artistic ethics and his refusal to allow the dominant culture to tell our story, the story of the 99 percent, the percentage who matter.
We had a conversation with many members of the cast Jan. 5, 2022, on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show podcast. Tune in (subscribe): http://tobtr.com/12046944. (Thanks to Mary@sfbayview.com and Kapani for the wonderful story layout.)
Winter Reading Recommendations
Winter is a time to reflect and access. What better way to do than this with a good book? I had an opportunity to speak to Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, (Wanda’s Picks Radio, Nov. 17, 2021) author, “LIFE, I SWEAR: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust.” It is an excellent work with intuitive prompts on can apply to one’s own life and vision for wellness.
Winter is a time to reflect and access. What better way to do than this with a good book? I had an opportunity to speak to Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, (in Nov. 2021) author, “LIFE, I SWEAR: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust.” It is an excellent work with intuitive prompts on can apply to one’s own life and vision for wellness.
I had a wonderful time at the virtual Bay Area Book Festival last year—it was one wonderful author panel or talk, after another. I was also able to have the event founder and organizer on my radio show to give highlights and tips. There were several discussions with African Disapora authors, one of my favorites, Yaa Gyasi, whose “Transcendent Kingdom,” a novel (2020), is the story of immigration and fitting in, science and addiction. Is there a way to find and isolate the gene that makes some people susceptible to than others to addiction? A story of grief and loss and when there is no container to hold the pain. It is not as esoteric as all this, but it is a journey. An African family in the deep south that worships with racists who make fitting in difficult, yet the African mother whose idea that America was better than home, to admit her error drives her mad. To everything there is a cost. Yaa Gyasi’s sophomore novel asks, was it worth it? It is a mother daughter story. It’s a sister big brother story. It is a fatherloss story. It is a Disapora story. All I can say to these characters, why stay where you do not belong? However, once one leaves home, she cannot always return. Home changes in our absence as we wander or drop anchor where were are.
In Wayétu Moore’s “The Dragons, The Giant, The Women,” a lovely memoir, we see another option. The memoir told in the voice of a five-year-old whose life changes drastically when just after her fifth birthday war starts in Liberia. The story of escape, fear. . . loss and rescue is dramatic especially through the eyes of a child who hears “drums” (bullets) in the woods without realizing the danger (32).
“Why is everyone asleep,” Wayétu asks as the family makes their escape from Monrovia.
“They are asleep,” [her father says]. “You cannot sleep right now, because we have to go see Mam.”
First there were only a few, sprinkled here and there, surrounded by dark red puddles. Then on some roads there were many. I saw and old man and woman, I saw some boys, some men, then I saw a family resting—a mother and father and four children—surrounded by a deep red color, their clothes scattered around them” (48).
A family of girls, the children save their dad who looks like one of the ethnic groups killed on sight. This feat is just one of the many magical heroic instances in the story—We see city life contrasted with the village where they are safe. The children learn their ancestral village language(Vai) as they make friends with the children. We see the power of love, the mother studying abroad for her graduate degree steps up to save her family, while Moore’s dad, has to leave the safety of the village when one of his girls gets sick. He returns safely and she gets well. However, everyone is not so lucky and sorrow visits the paternal village.
Once in the United States we see how assimilation acts like a poison in this Liberian family and attempts to turn the girls against their African mom and dad. However, this African girl’s educated Mam is not having it.
However, at the center of the tale is that of Black wom(b)en magic and how these nightmares that haunt the narrator through her childhood into adulthood until finally she is able to return home and find the rebel soldier who saves her family.
“They’re coming for us!” I belted and cried, attempting to gain footing to ease the blood from escaping my knees.
“Run. They’re coming! They’re coming for us! Run! I shouted against the resonating cackles. I turned around again and a revel’s heartless face and eyes, his cruel lips and tongue, were in my face. . . . I felt his hand grab my dress” (114).
“I was dreaming, I realized, and had somehow woken up everyone in the house with my screaming. I rubbed my eyes to see them clearly. They stood watching me. I sat up in bed and Mam and Papa finally came toward me with outstretched hands, careful as though I had been newly injured and they were afraid of breaking any more bones” (114).
A true story, the tale reads like poetry, which makes the sadness not vanish, rather settle around us— compassion stirred for the children who are captured by demons and then hypnotized. Yet, despite these small odds for rescue or hope, love does save the day here and it is because of one brave soldier girl’s act of kindness, who helps this family escape death—perhaps for her family whom she could not save.
“Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol” (1996) by Nell Irvin Painter, is a classic. In this wonderful text Painter juxtaposes Truth against fantasy and myth. It is a great book for those persons who have read Truth’s “Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Bondwoman of Olden Time” and perhaps also know, her Book of Life, which is excerpted in the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (1991). Hers was one of the earlier published writing by a Black woman. Truth was a generation older than Harriet Tubman and a contemporary of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, poet, novelist (“Iola Leroy”), educator and suffragist, and Harriet Jacobs, formerly enslaved author, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
“My Soul Has Grown Deep: Classics of Early African American Literature,” editor, John Edgar Wideman (2001)
In this wonderful volume, John Edgar Wideman has assembled both known and rare stories of African American excellence as told by them. It is a rare instance to hear Black people tell their own stories from such a varied perspective, yet here they are from Richard Allen, founder of the AME Church, Phyllis Wheatley to Jarena Lee, Allen’s contemporary, she also a preacher or spiritualist, to Sojourner Truth and Olaudah Equiano to Frederick Douglass, Nat Love, cowboy and frontiersman, whose story I had not known; Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson and Paul Lawrence Dunbar. The authors lovely introduction to the collection as well as his chapter summary biographical essays to these full length works, makes this investment (1270 pp.) an important document for those interested in foundational American history texts.
In Wideman’s elegant prose he writes: “The entries in this collection . . . have been chosen because they can speak for themselves, because they stimulate dialogue, because individually and as a group they address the bottom-line issue of survival, the still unresolved question of America’s identity. If we read attentively, listen to the voices preserved here, perhaps we’ll learn how each of us, consciously or not, is implicated, enmeshed in the contradictions, ironies, the precarious successes and heartbreaking, body-crushing failures of a so-called ‘democracy’ in which some are always more equal than others” (9).
Honoree Fanonne Jeffers’s “The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois (2021)
Honoree Fanonne Jeffers’s first novel, “The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois (797 pp., 2021), is a great saga. I wondered as I read this book about the trauma and sexual violence of enslavement and its aftermath then to now and how secrets harm both the one who is silent and those who need to know. Add to this cocktail colorism and see how love doesn’t protect or erase the damage racism does to the psyche of the “dark child.” Why do people “pass” or pretend to be something they are not, even when the color of power is that of the perpetrator?
We traverse several narratives in “Love Songs”, a lament to the tragedy of enslavement and this virus which once leeched into the blood and bone spreads rapidly. Despite shared linage, pillage and destruction lead the way as acquisition – land, goods and people, people as goods or tinder destroy lives generations into the future.
We meet these cursed children who walk blindly into covered traps.
There were so many times when I had to close Jeffers’s book and take a walk. Told through the lens of a contemporary incest survivor, we see how secrets can’t save and that loss is the consequence of holding one’s peace. And is it really peace when the silence itself suffers?
What we won’t do for love? We see how aberration changes and mutates, the sins of fathers and grandfathers are passed on like an inheritance, more accursed.
We learn of magic and wickedness and how families are split apart and important lessons are forgotten and the next generation has to learn them again. Damn. What a waste too!
We learn of redemption and forgiveness. Sometimes a person forgives just because they can’t stand the pain of memory. Holding onto grief and anger is a noose that won’t let the survivor go until she removes her neck from the tourniquet. Hum. For some it’s a lesson learned too late.
I tried skipping ahead and then realized that it wasn’t possible. Jeffers’s has crafted a litany that demands an audience listen to the complete overture in the order presented. So I stayed up late, took breaks and ended up getting through the book in just a few days.
Well-researched one thing to note is the internecine connections in one family between the indigenous people of the land, Africans enslaved and free and Mexican from late 18th century to the present. These characters are southern born. It is a landscape most have left; however, these Black people choose to stay. It is their homeland.
There are three girls, dad a physician, mom a high school teacher, great uncle a historian at a historic Black college, founded by Black women. The youngest daughter Ailey tells the story when we land in her epoch. The novel traverses the generations until finally we end up in the same universe. Don’t hold your breath, it takes about 500 or so pages to get there. However, the story is not hard to follow, just follow.
DuBois, a flawed DuBois, a humanized DuBois, joins us on the excursion, each chapter opens with a song or his commentary. The book does not literally sing to us unless we reflect on “Souls of Black Folk,” the loss, the tragedy that is life for Black America. This tragedy is not only out there, it lies behind closed doors in the unexamined life—the lives of a middle class Black family that has not examined its secrets which leak into the ground water and contaminate the little ones, the innocent children who grow up to be dysfunctional adults.
A family legacy is a lot to carry when one has not looked into the luggage before she picks it up. Ailey picks the suitcase up and puts it down and picks it up again. She loves her sisters, especially her big sister, Lydia Claire Garfield (1966).
“Love Songs” is how between Ailey Pearl Garfield (1973) and her Great Uncle Jason Thomas “Root” Freeman (1907), the two are able to unpack the suitcase so that no one else has to be harmed. It is a great unraveling. The story also shares how the dead are not really gone, that we really are our ancestors.
Words Across the Waters Event
