A Soulful Collection of Art and Literature © 2017 Afua Richardson, Marvel Comics Black Panther World of Wakanda
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A Soulful Collection of Art and Literature Summer 2017 $6.00 ($9.00 outside of USA) © 2017 Afua Richardson, Marvel Comics Black Panther World of Wakanda Proclamation Punctuation Photo: Reel Sisters 20th Anniversary Celebration October 21-22, 2017 @AMC Magic Johnson Theater, Harlem @Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Brooklyn Join Reel Sisters in celebrating 20 years of presenting films by women of color! Enjoy our fall season of exciting screenings, panels and events! Reel Sisters will screen more than 25 films from across the globe! For information visit: www.reelsisters.org Follow us on Twitter: @reelsisters || @africanvoices Reel Sisters is sponsored, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council and New York City Council members Jumaane Williams and Laurie Cumbo. VOLUME NO. 14, ISSUE 34 PUBLISHER’S NOTE “ Surely, they had insurance for cosmic funk. They pushed back. I pushed harder then…My dance was born in New York’s streets, channeled fractals from across the nation, adopted Founded in 1992, published since 1993 traditions from around the world, reimagined Ailey and 270 W. 96th STREET, NYC 10025 Dunham, Jamison and Jackson reborn as starship troopers, Phone: 212-865-2982 flinging their Black bodies through space.” www.africanvoices.com — Sheree Renée Thomas, “The Dragon Can’t Dance” PUBLISHER/EDITOR African Voices is proud to have artwork by Afua Richardson, Carolyn A. Butts one of the leading women illustrators for Marvel Comics’ “Black BOARD CHAIRPERSON Panther World of Wakanda,” and N. Steven Harris, a member of the graphic novel Jeannette Curtis-Rideau team for Brotherhood of the Fringe, gracing the outside covers of our digital issue. PRODUCTION MANAGER/ Inside the issue, you will enjoy excerpts from their comic book series and get a COPY EDITOR preview of Afua’s forthcoming series “Aquarius the Book of Mer.” Obinwanne Nwizu POETRY EDITOR The issue salutes the emergence of Black women comics as a force in creating Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie opportunities for graphic novelists of color to share their work. Following in WEBSITE CONTENT EDITOR the footsteps of Civil Rights activist Jackie Ormes, the first African-American Sandrine Dupiton woman cartoonist, Regine Sawyer is the founder of Women in Comics Collective International, an organization devoted to supporting women illustrators and comic ART DIRECTOR Derick Cross publishers. Trailblazing entrepreneur Ariell Johnson, founder of the popular comic store Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse in Philadelphia, recently received a $50,000 ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR AZIZA grant from the Knight Foundation to expand her outlet for comic book enthusiasts. LAYOUT & DESIGN Enjoy the stories in our special issue and support the graphic novelists by purchasing Graphic Dimensions Lorraine Rouse copies of their books and posters. The issue also includes “The Dragon Can’t Dance,” a short fantasy story by Sheree Renée Thomas, author of “Sleeping Under the Tree ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS of Life” and a fine selection of poems by Lynne Thompson, Quincy Scott Jones and Sonia Sanchez Poet/Activist Roman Johnson, among other talented writers. Marie Brown Literary Agent African Voices’ first double cover issue celebrates the power of graphic novelists to Danny Simmons transform society through envisioning a future where good triumphs over selflessness Visual Artist/Philanthropist, and greed. Graphic novelists create super heroes to help us cope in times when the Rush Philanthropic Arts Fdn. world is turned inside out. They inspire us to survive unimaginable odds. © 2017, African Voices Communications, Inc. is a 501(c)(3), non-profit organization. Donations are tax-deductible. Our artists are taking the lead and we can join them. Let’s use our super powers ISSN 1530-0668 of activism to tilt the world in a better direction so that future generations inherit a African Voices is supported healthier planet — spiritually and environmentally. with funds from the West Harlem Development Corp., Regional Economic Development Council, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts. Outside Covers: Afua Richardson and N. Steven Harris. For I am here, there you are: we exist, moving one in separate space. © 2017 Sherese Francis Oiled memory: be tree anointed on forehead, be light remembered. © 2017 Sherese Francis 4 african Voices CONTENTS GALLERY 22 The Gallery — Renaissance Woman Afua Richardson Takes Comics World by Storm FICTION AND BOOKS 10 The Dragon Can’t Dance by Sheree Renée Thomas 19 Interactive History for Young Readers by Debbie A. Officer 20 Paying Homage: An Artist’s Ode in Paintings on Wood with Paper, Scraps, and Memory by Debbie A. Officer 25 The Expat by Ozimede Sunny Ekhalume POETRY 4 2 Haiku by Sherese Francis 9 Ars Poetica on Being a Black Poet from Memphis by Roman Johnson Afua Richardson, The Gallery, page 22. 16 YEYE’S Garden by Mawiyah Kai EL-Jamah Bomani 21 Monk by Angel C. Dye 21 Before the Media Makes You a Man by Angel C. Dye 24 Daddy Registered Republican in 1931, by Lynne Thompson 24 My Life According to Brenda M. Osbey by Lynne Thompson 28 This poem would like to start with “Thank you.” by Quincy Scott Jones IN THIS ISSUE 6 Contributors Bios 15 A Farewell Note From Poetry Editor Mariah “Ekere” Tallie 30 African Voices Interview with Children’s Book Author Zetta Elliott 33 Artist Profile: Spotlight on Award-winning Graphic Novelist N. Steven Harris African Voices print editions can be purchased at the following locations: MANHATTAN BROOKLYN PHILADELPHIA, PA Studio Museum in Harlem Pratt News & Magazine Horizon Books 144 W. 125 Street New 477 Myrtle Avenue 901 Market Street York, NY 10027 Brooklyn, NY 11205 Philadelphia, Pa. If you would like to sell African Voices magazine, please contact Ubiquity Distributors at 718-875-8047 or e-mail [email protected]. CONTRIBUTORS BIOS Mawiyah Kai EL-Jamah Bomani Queens based pop up bookshop/mobile library, J. Expressions, is a native New Orleanian Writer and Spirit Woman. Mawiyah’s for which she received a 2017 Queens Council on the Arts grant; writings have appeared in The Crab Orchard Review, Dark Eros, an upcoming fantasy novel, The E; and poetry collections in Catch The Fire, Freeform Magazine, Beyond The Frontier, Kente progress, “And the Water Breaks” and “Lady Liberty.” Cloth, Fertile Ground, Family Portraits, Chicken Bones: A Literary N. Steven Harris: See page 33. Journal, Survival Digest Quarterly, From A Bend In The River, Thicker Than Water, The House of Misfit’s Guide to Spiritual Roman Johnson Enlightenment, Essence Magazine, Keeping it Hushed: The is a Watering Hole fellow, and winner of the 2015 George Barbershop African American Hush Harbor Rhetoric, Looking Rufus Lindsey Scholarship for Male Poets. He loves sweet for Soul, Black Poetry Music, The Louisiana Poetry Project and potato pie, gumbo, and shrimp and grits. He is proud to be Women’s Issues and Feminism in the 21st Century. She wrote from Memphis, Tennessee. the plays “Brown Blood Black Womb.” She is also writer of the plays “Spring Chicken,” “Crows Feet,” “Bourbon and Hair Quincy Scott Jones’ work has appeared in publications such as the African Anthem.” She won playwright of the year for her play “Spring American Review, The North American Review, and The Chicken,” in 2013. Feminist Wire, as well the anthologies such as Resisting Arrest: Mitchell L. H. Douglas Poems to Stretch the Sky and Red Sky: Poetry on the Global is the author of Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem and \blak\ Epidemic of Violence Against Women. He is a Cave Canem \al-fə bet\. His next poetry collection, dying in the scarecrow’s Fellow and a VONA alumna. With Nina Sharma, he co-created arms, is forthcoming from Persea Books in 2018. Douglas’ poem the Nor’easter Exchange: a multicultural, multi-city reading “After Murder” is featured on africanvoices.com. series. His first book, The T-Bone Series, was published by Whirlwind Press in 2009. Angel C. Dye is a poet from Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas by way of Milwaukee, Afua Richardson: See The Gallery, page 22. Wisconsin. She is a graduate of Howard University and is an Sheree Renée Thomas MFA in Creative Writing candidate at the University of Kentucky. is the author of Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (Aqueduct Her poetry has appeared in Sixfold Journal, Black Earth Press, named on the 2016 James Tiptree, Jr. Award “Worthy” Institute’s About Place Journal, and 2 Leaf Press’ Black Lives List and honored with a Publishers Weekly Starred Review) Have Always Mattered anthology. Angel has been awarded by and Shotgun Lullabies: Stories & Poems. She is the editor of the Middle Atlantic Writers Association, the College Language the groundbreaking anthologies, Dark Matter: A Century of Association, and Tuckson Health Connections. Her work Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (winner of the grapples with such issues as living in poverty and living in a 2001 World Fantasy Award) and Dark Matter: Reading the single parent home with an incarcerated parent. Bones (winner of the 2005 World Fantasy Award). Her work has Ozimede Sunny Ekhalume been translated in French, Urdu, and Spanish and her essays, is a pharmacist and an author. His fiction has appeared in The articles, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times and Missing Slate, Kalahari Review, African Writer, Café Aphra, other publications. Based in Memphis, Tennessee, Thomas is the Poetry Pacific, Winamop and Africa Book Club. His storybook Associate Editor of Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora. for children was shortlisted for the 2016 Association of Nigerian Lynne Thompson Authors (ANA) Prize for Children’s Literature. Ekhalume is is the author of Start With a Small Guitar and Beg No Pardon, currently working on a collection of short stories and a novel. winner of the Perugia Book Award and the Great Lakes Sherese Francis Colleges New Writers Award.