A Soulful Collection of Art and Literature

Summer 2016 $6.00 ($9.00 outside of USA)

VOLUME NO. 14, ISSUE 32 Publisher’s Note

The Gospel According to James and his Apostles

“You write in order to change the world…if you alter even by a Founded in 1992, published since 1993 millimeter, the way people look at reality then you change it,” 270 W. 96th STREET, NYC 10025 — James Baldwin. Phone: 212-865-2982 www.africanvoices.com In May, I joined a historic global community of writers, scholars, and artists for the International James Baldwin Conference PUBLISHER/EDITOR presented by the American University of Paris (AUP). Carolyn A. Butts Being in the presence of “apostles” who interpreted Baldwin’s BOARD CHAIRPERSON scripture in literature, song, and verse was a transformative experience. Walking Jeannette Curtis-Rideau in his footsteps in Paris made Baldwin’s spiritual journey palpable to most of us PRODUCTION MANAGER/ attending the conference. As the grand daughter of a southern Baptist preacher, my COPY EDITOR Obinwanne Nwizu connection to Baldwin, the boy preacher, was affirmed. My vow to use words and images to empower, uplift, and enlighten were renewed by POETRY EDITOR Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie being in the presence of great minds committed towards the same goals.

WEBSITE CONTENT EDITOR Barely a month after returning from the Paris conference, the world was hit with the Sandrine Dupiton killings in Orlando, Florida where 49 queer and same gender loving people were ART DIRECTOR violently slaughtered in a dance club. This horrifying tragedy demonstrates the need Derick Cross to teach James Baldwin’s work in our schools. His literature is as relevant today as it was in the 1960s during the civil rights movement. ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR AZIZA His love, honesty, and ability to challenge the way people think and act are critical LAYOUT & DESIGN elements in fighting compassionately against all forms of intolerance and hate. Graphic Dimensions Lorraine Rouse African Voices’ first digital issue is dedicated to the victims of the Orlando tragedy. You will find excerpts from papers by scholars attending the conference on ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS Black joy, The Implication of Giovanni’s Room on Black Boy Queer Identity (an Sonia Sanchez Poet/Activist interactive presentation on our website), and poems celebrating our individuality as

Marie Brown human beings. Literary Agent Yesenia Montilla’s poem “It’s A Miracle,” succinctly addresses our concerns: “how Danny Simmons Visual Artist/Philanthropist, someone’s second amendment right seems to only leave a trail of children’s bodies Rush Philanthropic Arts Fdn. & brown bodies. & how some days I am afraid of stepping out of the house or of whether my lover brown & beautiful will make it home.” © 2016, African Voices Communications, Inc. is a 501(c)(3), non-profit organization. Donations are tax-deductible. Our front cover artist Leroy Campbell offers comfort and inspiration in his upcoming ISSN 1530-0668 art exhibition “Fighting Spirit: Tribute to the Life and Times of Muhammad Ali.” African Voices is supported The exhibition, which opens in October, honors the power each individual has in with funds from the West Harlem Development Corp., fighting for justice. Let’s embrace the strength in declaring — I Am Deliberate And Regional Economic Development Council, Afraid of Nothing. NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts.

Front Cover: Leroy Campbell, I Am Strong, Courtesy: Richard Beavers Gallery Back Cover: Jocelyn Goode Churches[1]

Once my roof housed a century of music I shone with stained glass beautiful things pulled from fire

Father forgive me my collapse heavy lies the head wearing a crown of ashes Thirteen churches the fire a raucous song

Now I’m a casket of smoke now my windows weep My pews a row of blackened teeth charred gospels a flock of ravens

They sent fire for a sin uncommitted These men already dressed as ghosts who burned me before pleaded guilty with smiles my cinders still in their teeth

A halo of caution tape When the floods relinquished their grip God said the fire next time But their hands have left nothing up to interpretation

Ashes to ashes Dust to dust

© 2016 Julian Randall

4 african Voices Contents

FICTION AND BOOKS

24 Olio Offers A Compelling 26 Peach Cobbler Tribute to Reshape Our by Aimiende Negbenebor Sela Musical Narratives by Shani Jamila

POETRY

4 Churches[1] by Julian Randall 20 ALWAYS, THERE IS MUSIC by Ariana Brown 7 Undressing In The Rain by Yesenia Montilla 21 It’s A Miracle by Yesenia Montilla 15 Ode to James Baldwin by Zoe Smith-Holladay 30 on the E express a boy asks his mama a 19 My Father Tells Me He and My Mother Got few things by Amber Atiya Married the Year Purple Rain was Released 34 SHUFFLE MACHINE by Joel Dias-Porter by Julian Randall

IN THIS ISSUE

6 Contributors Bios 16 Don’t Let me Be Misunderstood: 8 Bearing Witness to The International The Relationship Between James Baldwin, James Baldwin Conference in Paris Lorraine Hansberry & Nina Simone by Charles Reese by Lynnée Denise Bonner 10 The Subversive Potential of Black Joy: Reimagining Protest In the Work of James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry by Sarita Cannon, Ph.D.

GALLERY

32 The Gallery — Jocelyn Goode: Healing Community Through Art

IN PASSING

22 Malik Taylor (Phife Dawg) by Mirlande Jean-Gilles

African Voices print editions can be purchased at the following locations: MANHATTAN 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 Amber Atiya and was the 1998 and 99 Haiku Slam Champion. His poems is a poet, performer, and self-taught artist-in-training. Her work have been published in; Time Magazine, The Washington Post, has appeared in Boston Review, Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated POETRY, Mead, The Offending Adam, Best American to Queer Poets of Color, PEN America, and elsewhere. A proud Poets 2014, Callalloo, Ploughshares, Antioch Review, Red Brick native Brooklynite, she is a member of a women’s writing group Review, Asheville Review, Beltway Quarterly and and author of the fierce bums of doo-wop published by Argos several anthologies. Book in 2014. Jocelyn Goode: See The Gallery. Ariana Brown Jonathan Guy-Gladding (JAG): is an Afromexicana poet from San Antonio, Texas, with a B.A. “The best thing that ever happened to me was being sent to in African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American Studies from the Caribbean in 1999…I applied to be a volunteer in the Peace UT Austin. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Corps and had the great fortune to be sent to the island of Prize, a 2014 national collegiate poetry slam champion, and is St. Lucia in July of 1999. Serving as a woodwork instructor in the currently working on her first manuscript. Her work is published beautiful southern coastal village of Laborie, I found there an in Huizache, Rattle, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and is unending supply of rich subject matter in the faces and postures forthcoming in ¡Manteca!: An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets of the uniformed schoolchildren, the people going about their from Arte Público Press. daily lives, and the traditional cultural aspects that make St. Lucia Sarita Nyasha Cannon such a wonderful and distinctive place. is Associate Professor of English at San Francisco State University Shani Jamila where she teaches 20th-century American Literature. She is an artist and cultural worker whose travels to more than forty graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with an countries deeply inform her collage, text and documentary A.B. in Literature, earned a Ph.D. in English from University photography practice. Her work, which addresses themes of of California, Berkeley, and held a Postdoctoral Research identity, political imagination and witness, has been exhibited Fellowship in American Indian Studies at University of Illinois, at institutions including the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Smack Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Cannon’s scholarship has appeared in Mellon ­Gallery, SCOPE Art Fair, Corridor Gallery, the City Interdisciplinary Humanities, The Black Scholar, Asian American College of New York and Princeton University. The Smithsonian Literature: Discourses and Pedagogies, Callaloo, and MELUS. National Museum of African American History and Culture She is also a classically trained soprano who sings with various filmed an interview about her life and work for their inaugural groups throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. exhibit “A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond.” A Fulbright Kieyan Chauhan scholar with over a decade of leadership in designing and is a 17 year old, self-taught artist from the South East of executing programs that use the arts to catalyze social change, England. He specialises in portraiture and also creates music Jamila currently serves as a managing director of the Urban under the name ‘Kayncee’. He is currently a full time Justice Center in New York City. student studying music and art and is an avid Hip-Hop fan. Yesenia Montilla Find him on Facebook under ‘Kieyan’s Drawings’ and on is an Afro-Latina from New York City. She is a graduate of Instagram @kieyanchauhan. Drew University’s Poetry & Poetry in Translation MFA program DJ Lynnée Denise, & a Canto Mundo Fellow. Her poetry has appeared in The an artist and scholar, incorporates self-directed project based Wide Shore, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast and among other research into interactive workshops, music events and public publications. Her first collection of poetry The Pink Box is published by Willow Books and was long-listed for the PEN lectures that provide the opportunity to develop an intimate America Open Book Award. relationship with under-explored topics related to the cultural history of marginalized communities. She is inspired by Aimiende Negbenebor: underground cultural movements, the 1980s, migration studies, Creator of the award-winning short film Asa, A Beautiful Girl, theories of escape, and electronic music of the African Diaspora. Aimiende Negbenebor Sela hails from Benin City, Nigeria. After With support from the Jerome Foundation, The Astrae Lesbian moving to New York in the late ‘90s, she went on to earn a Foundation for Justice, Idea Capital, The BiljmAIR artist residency degree in Computer Engineering and Literature from Stevens Institute of Technology. After a number of years of trudging (Netherlands) and The Rauschenberg Artists as Activists Grant, along in the I.T. world, she made a life-altering decision to leave she has been able to resource her performative research on a and pursue her true passion — the arts. local, national and global level. Julian Randall Joel Dias-Porter (aka DJ Renegade) is a performance poet, educator, and arts education advocate. was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, and a former professional A Chicago native, Randall has pursued a career in poetry since DJ. From 1994- 1999 he competed in the National Poetry Slam, 2011. A two-time national college slam competitor Randall also 6 african Voices Undressing In The Rain placed 3rd in Young Chicago Author’s Louder Than A Bomb Even though there are things University, a national individual college slam event. His work documents his journey through the world exploring concepts I can’t let go of — your smile of social justice, Blackness, Latinidad, masculinity, love and the at high noon, or the way you search for home. His first collection of poems On The Way Here, would stare into my body, as is available from 2Rise Press. though I housed a whole Charles Reese received a B.A. Degree in Mass Communications & Theatre Arts country there. & what’s from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. The multi-faceted a country in a body except a thespian is a long standing member of SAG/ AFTRA and AEA colony? & colonization can (the professional film and stage unions). Reese has numerous performing credits in theatre, television, independent film, happen to a heart as well voiceovers and web series. Reese is the editor and original actor as a whole people. & people for the Off-Broadway playbook, James Baldwin: A Soul On Fire seem to overlook that love is by the late playwright, Howard B. Simon. not a freight truck that runs Zoe Smith-Holladay is a rising 7th grade creative writing major at the Denver School over the worst parts of us; of the Arts. She is founder & author of kidsanimalstation.com, it is a bird watcher, face an animal blog that she started when she was eight. In Spring stretched out towards heaven 2016, Smith-Holladay’s first fictional piece of prose “No Man’s Land” was published in literary magazine Calling Upon Calliope. waiting to spot wings. & what Her favorite genres to read and write in are historical fiction, do I know about heaven? The comedy, and fantasy. When she grows up, she wants to be a same thing I know about wings, geneticist and would like to find a way to combine her passion for creative writing and science. I can’t have it. & so let me be a pilgrim, searching for forgetting Published on africanvoices.com your smile at high noon, which Khalil Anthony Peebles I already mentioned & which every is a polymath, a multi-disciplinary artist working within varying passing day grows fainter. & this mediums and media. His work investigates the relationships is the point: when love is gone between the spirit and space, the black body, sexuality, society, and the urban experience. Weaving together these artistic dress yourself up in the things intentions through writing, dance and movement, acting, you can’t let go of, like armor or painting, arts-admin, education, and song, his work speaks to a diverse audience and varying communities. like blossoms. Dress yourself up so pretty that even the blind Jawanza Phoenix is a lawyer and the author of two books of poems, I Need an catcall the seams of your silhouette. Assignment and The Intersection of Beauty and Crime. Seams round & soft as pillows. Nelly Rosario The weather man says chance of rain is author of Song of the Water Saints: A Novel (Pantheon, 2002), & I leave home without my umbrella. winner of a PEN/Open Book Award. Her fiction, nonfiction and poetry appear in various anthologies and journals, including This is living & loving & attempting Callaloo, Meridians, Review, Chess Life, and el diario/La to forget — when you stand in torrential Prensa. Rosario holds an MFA from Columbia University and rain during a cold spring & let a memory was formerly on faculty in the MFA Program at Texas State University. She was a recent Visiting Scholar at MIT, her alma wash off like a silk dress — mater, and presently serves as writer/researcher for the Blacks at MIT History Project. Rosario lives in Brooklyn, where she’s at © 2016 Yesenia Montilla work on a speculative novel on community medicine.

african Voices 7 Bearing Witness to The International James Baldwin Conference in Paris

By Charles Reese

Photo: Carolyn A. Butts

“No one can possibly know what is about to happen. It is happening each time, for the first time, for the only time.” — James Baldwin (1924–1987)

Journalogue One: The James Baldwin International Conference at the American University of Paris (AUP), France Celebrating 50 years of academic and cultural engagement, The AUP presented the International James Baldwin Conference “A Language to Dwell In: James Baldwin, Paris, and International Visions” from May 26-28, 2016. The conference was organized by the AUP along with co-directors, Alice Craven and William Dow, in association with the Department of Comparative Literature and English. The conference represented a broad array of global interdisciplinary explorations of Baldwin’s life and work, with a special emphasis on Paris and his experiences throughout Europe and Africa. Each day of the conference featured exciting lectures, forums, and dialogues exploring the fiery spirit of this 20th century icon. It was an engaging, educational and entertaining intersection for students and global enthusiasts around Baldwin’s work. Literary and cultural critics, historians, scholars of gender and same gender loving theorists to activists, filmmakers, musicians, and other artists gathered in Paris to share in a transforming experience. As an actor, author, educator and one of the selected presenters from the United States, I was very excited to bear witness to the legacy of James Baldwin, an American writer, civil rights activist, and expatriate in his beloved second home in France. AUP was the perfect venue to re-ignite and re-discover what Baldwin’s seminal work means for today’s tech savvy and diverse global audiences. Baldwin enthusiasts have been pushing for a long overdue film about this great writer.

8 african Voices Poets and artists Jessica Care Moore, Charles Reese, Ashleigh M. Barice, Sabrina Nelson and Rowan Edwards enjoy a moment together.

Journalogue Two: James Baldwin: Public Policies and Sociopolitical Visions (Panel #25) On Saturday, May 28, 2016, I along with my fellow panelists: Catherine Smith, an attorney who was presenting with her 12-year-old daughter, Zoe Smith-Holladay (the youngest presenter in the room and the conference) – University of Denver; Catherine Taylor, Ithaca College, New York; and Sarita Cannon, San Francisco State University gathered in this literary sacred space. Each panelist did not know each other prior to meeting in this room for a presentation but our presentations perfectly intertwined as if it were divinely planned. This unique panel was curated by AUP based on our individually submitted abstracts in the fall of 2015. We were vessels placed in a room with a specific subject matter to share as it relates to our muse, James Baldwin. I was the first one in the room, to bear witness as Baldwin would say, and my journey began with a lively introduction from our panel chair, Catherine Taylor. I rose from my seat joyously singing a call and response song, “Keep Your Eye On The Prize,” in the tradition of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s and paying homage to Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. I engaged the audience to participate in this interactive moment, while I was preparing my way to the podium to deliver my Baldwin inspired presentation, “James Baldwin: Artist as Activist and the Baldwin/Kennedy Secret Summit of 1963.” This scarcely known secret meeting was attended by Lorraine Hansberry, Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte, Dr. Kenneth Clarke and young freedom fighter Jerome Smith. It was a surreal moment of history that I will remember for a lifetime. The meeting inspired the premise for an off-Broadway play, “James Baldwin: A Soul on Fire,” by the late playwright, Howard B. Simon. My complete essay is published in the book volume, “James Baldwin: Challenging Authors” Chapter #8. Sense Publishers. (www.sensepublishers.com) and the full play book version of James Baldwin: A Soul On Fire is available on Amazon. I was graciously followed by the magical mother/daughter literary duet Catherine Smith and Zoe Smith-Holladay who passionately spoke on the subject of “Baldwin and Generational Perspectives on Civil Rights Advocacy”, coupled with Catherine Taylor’s insightful and critical analysis on “Race Politics and Hybrid Genres in James Baldwin and Claudia Rankine: From Epic to Lyric Essays”; and Sarita Cannon’s lyrical essay on “The Subversive Potential of Black Joy: Re-imagining Protest in the Work of James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry.” The highlight of this eclectic Baldwin Panel #25 was the youngest presenter in the room, Zoe Smith-Holladay who delivered a heart felt poem she wrote in response to her mother’s presentation on Civil Rights advocacy. It was a priceless moment where I believe the spirit of James Baldwin as an ancestor entered our room with joy and appreciation.

african Voices 9 The Subversive Potential of Black Joy: Reimagining Protest In the Work of James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry

by Sarita Cannon, Ph.D.

In “Sweet Lorraine,” James Baldwin recalls time spent with his dear friend Lorraine Hansberry: “I would often stagger down her stairs as the sun came up, usually in the middle of a paragraph and always in the middle of a laugh. That marvelous laugh. That marvelous face. I loved her, she was my sister and my comrade” (Baldwin xi-xii). In this moving eulogy to the brilliant black playwright who died at age 34 in 1965, Baldwin captures their shared commitment to bearing witness to the injustices of their time as well as their delight in each other and the world around them. For these two writers, protest and pleasure were not mutually exclusive. In this piece, I examine Baldwin’s 1963 jeremiad The Fire Next Time alongside Hansberry’s award-winning 1959 drama A Raisin in the Sun, paying close attention to the ways in which protest manifests not simply as a critique of systematic racial oppression, but also as an expression of love for self and community. Both writers demonstrate the ways in which black pleasure is a necessary and surprisingly subversive element of the Ruby Dee and Sidney Poitier in A Raisin in the Sun. revolutionary spirit. Protest lies at the heart of African-American literature. socially responsible as well as very beautiful,” resonates As Black people in the United States have long expressed with my reading of James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, their experiences of living in a country that depended two people who were deeply engaged with the issues of on their labor for its very existence but refused to their time and serious artists who toiled over their craft, acknowledge their humanity, creativity, and agency, striving to marry truth and beauty. (Jones and Vinson critics too often view Black literature as solely political. 183). The Fire Next Time and A Raisin in the Sun are two As Toni Morrison puts it: “The discussion of black examples of this marriage. literature in critical terms is unfailingly sociology and almost never art criticism” (cited in Conner ix). Certainly, Published to great acclaim in 1963, The Fire Next Time is there are works of propaganda that masquerade as art; part-meditation, part-sermon, part-prophecy, embodying but I would argue that for many Black writers, the social the elements of the American jeremiad that David Howard- and the aesthetic can never be separated. Toni Morrison’s Pitney identifies. This genre “cit[es] the promise” for the statement about her own work, that “a novel has to be community; “critic[izes] . . . the retrogression from the

10 african Voices LaTanya Richardson, Denzel Washington and Anika Noni Rose in Lorraine Hansberry’s classic Broadway play A Raisin in the Sun (2014). promise”; and prophesies that the community will “redeem reevaluates the definition and purpose of love, so the promise.” (Howard-Pitney 8). Instead of predicting does he redefine pleasure and its transformative potential. redemption, however, in The Fire Next Time, Baldwin A few pages later, Baldwin critiques White Americans warns what will happen to Black and White America alike if who misunderstand the “sensuality” of Black musical we do not heed the signs of racial apocalypse. His title refers forms such as jazz and the blues. (Baldwin 42). to a Negro spiritual that contrasts the mercy of flood with the Baldwin asserts: punishment of fire, fire that would become literal in urban “To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice centers just a few years following the text’s publication: in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present “God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No water but the fire in all that one does, from the effort of loving to next time.” the breaking of bread. It will be a great day for As incendiary as Baldwin’s work is, it also contains a America, incidentally, when we begin to eat bread sophisticated redefinition of love. One of these moments again, instead of the blasphemous and tasteless occurs early in The Fire Next Time when he tells his foam rubber that we have substituted for it. And 15-year-old nephew that on the day of his birth, he was there I am not being frivolous, now, either. Something “to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard, at once, and forever, very sinister happens to the people of a country to strengthen you against the loveless world. Remember when they begin to distrust their own reactions as that: I know how black it looks today, for you. It looked bad deeply as they do here and become as joyless as that day, too, yes, we were trembling. We have not stopped they have become.” (Baldwin 43). trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other none Baldwin’s call to embrace the sensual beyond White of us would have survived.” (Baldwin 7). Here Baldwin fantasies of “quivering dusky maidens or priapic black affirms the power of love for self, family, and community studs” brings to mind Audre Lorde’s definition of the as a bulwark against a hostile society. In a world where erotic as the life force that is the source of every creative Black lives did not matter, nurturing the promise of the act, “whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing next generation was a courageous act. Just as Baldwin a poem, [or] examining an idea.” (Baldwin 43; Lorde

african Voices 11 57-8). Baldwin’s definition of joy is framed by his lament of Chaka, and that the hour to march has come) of our collective separation from our bodies, our desires, Listen, my black brothers— our senses. The image of Americans consuming tasteless BENEATHA. OCOMOGOSIAY! bread evokes both our loss of pleasure in something as (Hansberry 78-9). fundamental and nourishing as breaking bread together as well as the bland, lifeless communion both within and Part of the humor of this scene lies in their ignorance: beyond the church walls. Walter and Beneatha, like most African-Americans at the time, knew little of African people, history, or culture. Written four years earlier in 1959, Lorraine Hansberry’s As bombastic as the scene is, Hansberry also underscores A Raisin in the Sun prefigures much of the turmoil of the the deep pleasure that Walter and Beneatha experience, 1960s to which The Fire Next Time refers. Hansberry’s validating the release through dance, song, and gesture drama demonstrates both her revolutionary spirit that that both characters experience in this moment of play- stemmed from her personal experience and her gift as a acting. The family tensions are temporarily put aside, playwright to animate a wide range of Black characters and the communion between the siblings underscores never before seen on stage. I read the play’s most powerful their fundamental bond. Towards the end of the scene, expressions of protest not in the moments of anguish, but in Hansberry indicates that “the mood shifts from pure moments of family connection and delight. comedy. It is the inner Walter speaking: The Southside One such moment occurs at the beginning of Act II, when chauffeur has assumed an unexpected majesty.” Walter and Beneatha, whose tense sibling relationship (Hansberry 79). Here Walter imagines himself as a noble has already been established, “play African.” Beneatha and respected warrior, not a Black man in 1950s America is wearing Nigerian robes that her African suitor Asagai eking out a living for his wife and son in the service has brought from his homeland, dancing to Nigerian industry. However delusional his vision may seem, it is music, and chanting. (Hansberry 76). Moved by his an important manifestation of Walter’s desire to live sister’s performance, Walter enters and participates in the with dignity. celebration of a royal African past: Another scene of connection, albeit a much more subdued WALTER. Me and Jomo. . . . (Intently, in his sister’s and tender one, occurs when the family gathers to present face. She has stopped dancing to watch him in this their gifts to Mama: unknown mood) That’s my man, Kenyatta. (Shouting WALTER. (sweetly) Open it, Mama, It’s for you. and thumping his chest) FLAMING SPEAR! (Mama looks in his eyes. It is the first present HOT DAMN! (He is suddenly in possession of an in her life without its being Christmas. Slowly imaginary spear and actively spearing enemies all she opens her package and lifts out, one by one, over the room) OCOMOGOSIAY. . . . a brand-new sparkling set of gardening tools. BENEATHA. (To encourage Walter, thoroughly WALTER continues, prodding) Ruth made up the caught up in this side of him) OCOMOGOSIAY, note – read it. . . FLAMING SPEAR! MAMA. “To Our own Mrs. Miniver – Love from WALTER. THE LION IS WAKING. . . . Brother, Ruth and Beneatha.” Ain’t that lovely . . . OWIMOWEH! (He pulls his shirt open and leaps up Now I don’t have to use my knives and forks no on the table and gestures with his spear) more. . . (Hansberry 123). BENEATHA. OWIMOWEH! Following this moment of celebration, Mama’s ten-year- old grandson Travis presents her with a “very elaborate WALTER. (on the table, very far gone, his eyes wide gardening hat,” the sight of which drives the adults pure glass sheets. He sees what we cannot, that he into fits of laughter. (Hansberry 124). Yet Mama hugs is a leader of his people, a great chief, a descendant

12 african Voices A scene from Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raising In the Sun (1961).

Travis tightly and tells him, “Bless your heart –this is the live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word prettiest hat I ever owned” (Hansberry 124). She nurtures ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state the spirit in which the gift was given. Moreover, the gifts of of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American gardening tools and hat symbolize the family’s recognition sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal of Mama’s dreams, which include having a home with a sense of quest and daring and growth.” (Baldwin 95). As garden. The family’s collective acknowledgment of her both Baldwin and Hansberry express, love requires a fierce desires represents the fierce love and respect for others that spirit and a commitment to embracing the full range of are essential to survival, especially for the Youngers who humanity: ours and that of others. face an uncertain future when they move into Clybourne Though both Baldwin and Hansberry demonstrate a politics Park at the end of the play. of love in these two works, neither was a naïve idealist. Although Hansberry “wrote [A Raisin in the Sun] in Their own experiences with poverty, racism, sexism, response to a racist performance” of a play about Blacks, and homophobia would not allow it. Yet, their belief in protest in her own work manifests not in expressions of the transformative power of love as a weapon against despair or anger but in moments of pleasure, love, and dehumanization united them. It is not the “turn the other communion. (Bernstein 20). As Mama reminds Beneatha cheek” love of Dr. King but rather a hard, tough, and daring after she expresses her disdain for Walter and his apparent love that is rooted in a deep esteem for one’s right to be decision to take Mr. Lindner’s money in exchange for fully human. Their spirit reminds me not to give into the not moving into a White neighborhood: “There is always temptation of despair and encourages me to embrace joy as something left to love.” (Hansberry 145). Mama speaks a mode of protest in a world that fears not only Black anger, here of the “hard love” that Baldwin refers to in The Fire but also Black pleasure. Next Time: “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot

african Voices 13 WORKS CITED Jones, Bessie W., and Audrey Vinson. “An Interview with Toni Morrison.” Conversations with Toni Morrison. Ed. Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. 1963. Reprint. Danille Taylor-Guthrie. Jackson: University of Mississippi New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Print. Press, 1994. 171-187. Print. Baldwin, James. “Sweet Lorraine.” 1969. To Be Young, Lorde, Audre. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” Gifted, and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. Sister Outsider. Berkeley: The Crossing Press, 1984. Ed. Robert Nemiroff. Reprint. New York: Signet Classics, 53-9. Print. 2011. xi-xv. Print. Vintage Black Glamour. “The good folks at Lorraine Bernstein, Robin. “Inventing a Fishbowl: White Supremacy Hansberry Documentary Project have put to rest. . . .” and the Critical Reception of Lorraine Hansberry’s 18 May 2016, 10.12 a.m. Facebook. A Raisin in the Sun.” Modern Drama 42.1 (Spring 1999): 16-27. Project Muse. Web. 4 June 2016.

Conner, Marc C. “Introduction: Aesthetics and the African One of the most famous photos of these two Black writers is American Novel.” The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking the Unspeakable. Jackson: University of not a photo of them at all. Although Baldwin’s dance partner Mississippi Press, 2000. ix-xxvii. Print. in an undated black and white picture has long been identified Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. 1959. Reprint. New as Lorraine Hansberry, she is actually Doris Jean Castle, a York: Vintage Books, 1994. Print. civil rights activist who worked for CORE (Vintage Black Howard-Pitney, David. The African-American Jeremiad: Glamour). Nonetheless, the photo is a powerful representation Appeals for Justice in America. Philadelphia: of Black joy. I am grateful to Carolyn Butts for calling my Temple University Press, 2005. ProQuest ebrary. attention to this misidentification. Web. 4 June 2016.

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14 african Voices Zoe Smith Holladay, a 7th grade creative writing major from Denver, joined her mom Catherine Smith in sharing her work at the James Baldwin Conference.

Ode to James Baldwin You questioned the deeds of humanity, with such intensity that you must have been suffering from them from the moment you were born. You wondered if change was worth anything because, to most people, it was so much easier to become an innocent and accept the truth that White America wanted you to believe in.

Perhaps your words were your gift, or your apology to White America, Maybe your words were some sort of guidance, for the innocents, who really believe that our problems have been solved, and that they have been cleansed once more, as if they ever have been.

It is a belief, a state of mind, that they suffer from. As you know so well, not a single thing is or ever was innocent about the innocents: those who run, run, run away from White America’s truth, because they tire of the answers, and look for questions instead.

© 2016 Zoe Smith-Holladay

african Voices 15 Don’t Let me Be Misunderstood: The Relationship Between James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry & Nina Simone

by Lynnée Denise Bonner

This excerpt focuses on the relationship dominant social movement narratives by privileged between Lorraine Hansberry and southern, Christian, and heterosexual voices over the social networks of cultural production, led by artists, James Baldwin. women and queer activists. When Alice Walker coined the phrase “ancestors in my This is an examination of the personal relationships line of work” she did so to describe the motivation behind between Baldwin, Hansberry, and Simone who her quest to restore the legacy of writer and anthropologist created work that was often seen as oppositional to Zora Neale Hurston. In her 1975 essay, “Looking for popular movement strategies. By focusing on their Zora,” Walker recalls posing as Ms. Hurston’s niece interconnectedness, I hope to move away from the black in order to find traces of the writer’s existence in her exceptionalism trope that denies how the comradeship childhood town of, the all-Black Eatonville, Florida. between these artists and their communities are indeed Most of what we know about the cultural work of Zora key elements in the creation of their most celebrated Neale Hurston today is due in part to the efforts of Alice works. From Jimmy’s queering of American literature Walker and her relentless search to reverse what she through Giovanni’s Room, to Lorraine’s second wave pronounced to be “the symbolic fate of far too many Black feminist thread in A Raisin in the Sun, to Nina’s Black writers in America — to die alone, impoverished, unapologetic civil rights soul song “Mississippi Goddam,” and in an unmarked grave.” Hurston’s absence from the the elevation of the charismatic male leader turns our discussion of notable artists from the Harlem Renaissance attention away from political art works that were produced was impetus for Walker’s self-directed, investigative, and or inspired by communal-spirited spaces that I hope will archival practice. garner more attention by academics and scholars. Impressed by her literal and figurative excavation work, Prior to falling in love with James Baldwin’s bibliography, I began to think about who I could name as the “ancestors I entered my relationship with him through the 1989 in my line of work.” I had questions about the silenced documentary The Price of the Ticket. It was from this histories of women and queer artists in the black radical place that I began to critically engage his position on what tradition whose legacies got lost in the male centered place an artist must occupy to ensure an honest reckoning recalling of most political and arts movements. Those with the moral cost of American life. Baldwin describes ancestors in my line of work are James Baldwin, Lorraine that this role is a witness to the truth. “[The artist],” he Hansberry and Nina Simone. And similarly to Walker’s says, “must rob us of our myths and give us our history, restorative work with Hurston, my research for the which will destroy our attitudes and give us back our International James Baldwin Conference, A Language personalities.” Throughout multiple essays, Notes of a to Dwell In, hosted by the American University of Paris, Native Son and The Creative Process being two of the was a historical recovery project that sought to interrupt highly referenced, Baldwin designates the role of the

16 african Voices artists as people whose sole purpose should be to uncover writer for Paul Robeson’s Pan Africanist and communist the illusion of America. He insists that “the artist cannot inspired newspaper called Freedom, a publication edited and must not take anything for granted, but must drive by Louis E. Burnman whom she also identified as a to the heart of every answer and expose the question the mentor. Like Baldwin, but from a different proximity, answer hides.” Hansberry too was shaped by the Harlem Renaissance and cited Langston Hughes as being one of the most influential In the 1940s, a decade before Baldwin would meet writers on her work. A one-time student enrolled in a Hansberry, he was in a community with Harlem W.E.B. DuBois African studies course, and a person drawn Renaissance writers and soon to be expatriates Richard to the work of fellow journalist for Freedom and Black Wright and Countee Cullen, and shared a unique and woman playwright Alice Childress, she learned early that transformative relationship with visual artist Beaufort in the achievement of Black rights, artists didn’t have the Delaney. Baldwin biographer David Leeming tells us that luxury to surrender their platforms to merely entertain, “Delaney was to reconcile for his protégé the music of the nor did she prescribe to one particular political strategy Harlem streets with the music of the Harlem churches, and in the pursuit of social justice. In a 1962 speech titled “A this helped Baldwin reconcile his sexual awakening with Challenge to Artist,” Hansberry speaks candidly about her his artistic awakening.” impatience with apolitical artists, saying: Baldwin’s politicization in Harlem, the Village, and Paris “Finally, I think that all of us who are thinking such functioned like a rites of passage and offers insight into things [as civil rights], who wish to exercise these where he was at the first point of connection with Lorraine. rights that we are here defending tonight, must really By the time they formally met, he was an openly queer exercise them. Speaking to my fellow artists in public intellectual expatriate and an established novelist, particular, I think that we must paint them, sing them, playwright, and essayist. Baldwin had become, as he write about them—all these matters which are not would say, “The artist here to disturb the peace.” currently fashionable. Otherwise…we are indulging Lorraine Hansberry was twenty-nine to Jimmy Baldwin’s in a luxurious complicity—and no other thing.” thirty-four when she walked into the Actor’s Studio in Perhaps one of the most compelling occurrences that the winter of 1958, where Giovanni’s Room was being affirm the intimate relationship between Baldwin and workshopped for stage production. She had heard of Hansberry was expressed in a letter he had written to Baldwin’s work and he was aware of her organizing his brother David from the South of France. In the 1965 and journalistic grind. At this production, in the face letter he writes, “The night of January 12, when my of unfavorable responses to the play by Broadway fever reached its rather alarming peak, was the night executives, Hansberry publicly defended Baldwin’s Lorraine Hansberry died.” He described his condition willingness to introduce theater audiences to homosexual that evening as a psychosomatic one. Two years leading content, which spoke to her own developing feminist up to Hansberry’s passing, Baldwin was devastated by and queer politics. This fearless representation of sexual the season of death that reached across transnational diversity, Hansberry felt, was consistent with the voice an borders to engulf his life. He returned to America to artist must have if they are to be agents of social change. address the 16th Street Baptist church bombing that killed She saw Baldwin as an ally to which he responded, “I four little girls, the abduction and murder of civil rights was enormously grateful to her, she seemed to speak for workers (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael me; and afterward she talked to me with a gentleness and Schwerner) in Mississippi, and the murder of Medgar generosity never to be forgotten.” (Baldwin:1969). Evers on his porch in front of his family. Just one month Hansberry’s clarity about the role of an artist developed after Hansberry’s passing would be the assassination of long before meeting Baldwin in 1958. She was a highly Malcolm X, who attended Hansberry’s funeral and who visible activist and public intellectual, politicized by her Baldwin was scheduled to meet with, along with Martin family’s social justice work in Chicago. When she moved L. King Jr. on February 23, two days after Malcolm to New York in 1951, she was immediately employed as a was killed. It was in the spirit of grief and gratitude that

african Voices 17 Baldwin penned the essay Sweet Lorraine for Esquire in “…I would often stagger down her stairs as the sun 1969, four years following Hansberry’s death, and one came up, usually in the middle of a paragraph and year after Dr. Martin Luther King had been killed. always in the middle of a laugh. That marvelous laugh. That marvelous face. I loved her, she was my The affection between Lorraine and Jimmy is clear sister and my comrade. Her going did not so much starting with the title of the essay Sweet Lorraine from make me lonely as make me realize how lonely which he jumps right into the text with the opening we were. We had that respect for each other which sentence, “That’s the way I always felt about her and so perhaps is only felt by people on the same side of the I won’t apologize for calling her that now.” Baldwin’s barricades, listening to the accumulating thunder of tender defiance reflects that of a journal entry or maybe the hooves of horses and the heads of tanks.” even a conversation with Lorraine’s lingering spirit. It’s unclear who the audience is, or whether or not this is a The sentiment in Baldwin’s writing in Sweet Lorraine cathartic piece written to fellow disillusioned movement is telling of a debilitating loneliness; the loneliness of members mourning the loss of their assassinated friends. being both radical and queer within movements driven In Sweet Lorraine, he describes an average evening with by conservative values and ideas. In Sweet Lorraine, he Hansberry, which includes lots of whiskey, chain smoking offers a vivid description of his respect for Lorraine’s eye and debates about history, politics, gender and movement as a witness, which he believes is epitomized in her play activities. He names these moments they share as “down “A Raisin in the Sun.” Baldwin speaks to the impact of home sessions” and highlights the fact that for these Hansberry’s play and the use of theater to humanize conversations Lorraine would always be wearing slacks. Black life. (Baldwin; 1969). I am especially moved by the use of the “…What is relevant here is that I had never in words “down home,” which is a phrase typically reserved my life seen so many black people in the theater. for migrants from the Black south referring to the homes And the reason was that never in the history of the they fled, but given the fact that Baldwin and Hansberry American theater had so much of the truth of black are first generation people born in the Northeast and people’s lives been seen on the stage. Black people Midwest, it’s an interesting choice of words that evoke the ignored the theater because the theater had always sense of home he found in their friendship. ignored them.” “I am especially moved by Lorraine Hansberry was diagnosed with cancer in 1963 and died in 1965, just six years after the Broadway the use of the words down premiere of “A Raisin the Sun.” She was 35. Her work on multiple front lines, as a multidisciplinary artist and home...the sense of home he political activist is, more often than not, removed from the found in their friendship.” sound bite civil rights history that we learn to memorize. Lorraine’s relevance is one of many casualties of the In this case home is being used a metaphor to express sinister and American framing of Martin Luther King’s the joy one feels when they find an ally, a person whom benign and non-threatening dream. We now know that can bear witness and offer with-ness. Jimmy considered King’s dream was more about an undeniable articulation Lorraine to be a safe place to grow, to be uncomfortable, of the American nightmare. But the cost, or as Baldwin and to be vulnerable when his eloquent rage against would say, “The price of the ticket,” to this particular the machine seemed to be the most viable form of self- kind of framing is happening at the expense of our preservation. What I’m getting at here is how our love understanding of the role of radical queer women and for Baldwin’s fire sometimes encourages us to forget artists in the movement. to remember the necessity of his pleasure, connection, and joy in the struggle. In Sweet Lorraine, Baldwin describes the closing of an evening of debate and debauchery sharing:

18 african Voices My Father Tells Me He and My Mother

Got Married the Year Your mother saw the movie with me once Purple Rain was Released I must have seen it eleven more times and I ain’t prayed for rain that hard since your grandfather passed And that was the year I learned how much a piano and I spent years trying to exhale his ghost make me look like my mother Let me tell you something about grief or my father it depends on the hour it’s only Black insofar as it’s a mirror there we were caught in the middle of a morning I look into the sky all the time in America that promised only that the fire and see his favorite song was remembering its name you and I are alike that way and we didn’t have very much back then but the promise of a marriage that’s partially my fault of smoldering flags I was the one who played his songs onto your womb I never liked it here birthright or not I just wanted you to know I’ve always been a captive of my own blood there was music amidst the drowning I stayed because nobody else wanted your grandmother Now he’s gone that and the promise of some electric grief and you know what he meant when he say that doves cry I heard Prince for the first time sometimes it hurts to remember on a pirate radio station how to go home like every other beautiful thing I know I had to steal the air that surrounded it I don’t wish for the sky anymore just a chance to know you’re safe he played all his own instruments and to say hello to my dad one last time wrote all his own lyrics and to say a goodbye to you and I never found another Black boy while I still know my name with that many hands he must be some kind of holy I never wanted to be a burden for me to turn the volume high enough but when I am fading to make it look like your grandfather’s If no fire is available ghost hadn’t been visiting for a week straight drape me in purple the sound pierced the smoke dress me like something and I had hands again that might never set

© 2016 Julian Randall

african Voices 19 ALWAYS, THERE IS MUSIC i own two of my father’s things: his favorite pink sweater & an R&B classics cd. on its front, a black man in sweatpants hovers, his hand touching cardboard, his body suspended. when i am in the music, i become the empty space. i dance with my father. i become untouchable, burn rubber, celebration, real. // once, i was sitting in a car and everyone (not black) around me heard the beat drop and howled like a pack of infants learning their most bestial cry. i left my skin to rot there, let them plunge a shovel in the dirt & lift a hundred pine boxes. go ahead. you have my permission. move with reckless abandon. call it breakdancing. it’s lit. call it something you don’t understand. // once, someone (not black) asked for my opinion on drake. i don’t think about drake. i’m somewhere trying to remember the story my uncle told, the one about young tyrone & his brothers breaking a sweat at a club, tracksuits soaking, legs a pile of hurricanes. in the story, my father is the youngest. he busts through the lineup. invokes james brown (the godfather). & every pair of hands throws together a beat & tyrone, 13 or whatever age my uncle remembers, is a star. // to be quite honest, i don’t trust anyone (not black) with hip-hop. i don’t care how it moves you or fills you with strength or is the perfect release from your confounding stress. i swear, i’m just trying to honor myself. i swear, i’m just trying to find my father. did you know that dead black fathers have their own music? did you know that nothing of mine belongs to you? // if you want to take the music, take the grief, too.

© 2016 Ariana Brown

20 african Voices It’s A Miracle how my city dies each winter someone’s second amendment the trees as bare & raw right seems to only leave a trail as a damn heartbreak of children’s bodies & brown & in the news my president bodies. & how some days tired of crying talking about I am afraid of stepping out gun control on the same day of the house or of whether that Matthew’s poem my lover brown & beautiful showed up in my mailbox. will make it home. & I can’t & how I couldn’t imagine write anymore about death the words Kevlar & children yet it’s all I know. & how tonight in back to back stanzas. & how the sky will be all kinds of colors this just reminds me of ’93 when against the iciness of humanity. I saw my first dead body outside & isn’t it a miracle that we the bodega. It sported blue kicks haven’t killed every last one that looked iridescent like those of us yet? A miracle that fish that camouflage themselves there are still those among us against the dark ocean. & how who sit & wait hoping for Spring — her face looked only eight years old, maybe ten. & how © 2016 Yesenia Montilla

Artist: Jonathan Guy-Gladding (JAG).

african Voices 21 In Passing

Malik Taylor (Phife Dawg) When A Tribe Called Quest released their debut album, “People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths by Mirlande Jean-Gilles of Rhythm,” I was 16 going on 17-years-old and trying to figure out my place in the world. I loved the music instantly. It changed my life. I had never heard anything like it. I loved their beats, rhymes, music videos, politics, Afro-centric aesthetic, intelligence and their fun. They were saying many things that I was feeling but they made it funky. They were brilliant! And they were from Queens? I was from Queens!

In my mind I was a “Native Tongue.” They didn’t know who I was but they gave me the courage to be myself. When I saw them, I saw my own reflection. I found somewhere I fit in. I didn’t feel so weird. When I saw Tribe, I saw my crew.

When I finally purchased the full album on cassette I played it all the time. I’d plead with my dad to let me play the tape in the car. He’d acquiesce but shake his head and laugh at the music. I remember trying to explain the song “Ham and Eggs” to him, but he just didn’t get it! How could he not understand the genius that was A Tribe Called Quest?

A year later they released, “The Low End Theory.” Phife rapped more on that album. He dropped lyrical gems that left me laughing and gasping Artist: Kieyan Chauhan in disbelief. Yo, microphone check one, two what is this? On March 22, 2016, I logged on to Facebook and The five foot assassin with the roughneck business found out that Malik Taylor aka Phife Dawg passed I float like gravity, never had a cavity away from complications from diabetes. He was Got more rhymes than the Winans got family only 45 years old. Though I didn’t know Malik personally, I cried as if I had lost an old friend. I Phife comes at you so hard it’s like he’s making blasted A Tribe Called Quest’s music. I checked in up for lost time. One of the reasons that “The Low on my people who I knew loved Tribe as much as End Theory” is such an amazing album is that Phife I did. A part our childhood was gone. Malik Taylor gets free reign on it. Q-Tip and Phife were perfectly was gone. I couldn’t believe it. There wouldn’t be balanced. Phife was straight up, no holds barred any more rumors of a possible Tribe reunion or with his style and lyrics. His message was loud new music from the group. I was glad my kids and clear. Q-Tip’s rhyme style was chill, poetic and had already gone to school because I was a mess. ethereal. Phife was grounding. He pulled the duo Eventually, I had to go out but I stayed on the verge back to reality. They were so different but it worked. of crying. On the bus I kept listening to Tribe. I was in shock. I couldn’t believe the world was just In 1993, A Tribe Called Quest dropped “Midnight continuing to operate like things were normal. Marauders.” In “Oh My God,” Phife delivers this

22 african Voices incredible line, “When was the last time you heard a funky diabetic?”

When folks first heard this, we were shocked. It was a deeply personal thing for him to share. That kind of sharing was part of his brilliance.

In “Electric Relaxation,” Phife says, I like them brown, yellow Puerto Rican and Haitian/Name is Phife Dawg from Zulu Nation.” As a young Haitian girl it meant a lot for Haiti to be acknowledged in a way that wasn’t negative or embarrassing. His simple lyrics meant so much to me.

Malik Taylor touched and inspired thousands of people across the globe with his gift. He was an elaborate storyteller in the tradition of his Trinidadian heritage. He was boastful and brash and he drew you in with his incredible humor. He was genuine. He was real. He was himself through and through. This is what we loved so much about Malik.

Kahlil-Koromantee.com

african Voices 23 BOOK REVIEW

Offers A Compelling Tribute to Reshape Our Musical Narratives

By Shani Jamila

“Jangle up its teeth until it can tell our story the way you would tell your own”

Tyehimba Jess is known for giving flesh to stories “straight from America’s barbwired heart” that have been marginalized over the course of history. His trademark virtuosity and genius are on full display in his recently released second collection of poetry, Olio.

On a recent train ride into Manhattan, I ran into a colleague who remarked on his well- worn book that sat dog-eared in my lap. I held it up so that she could take a picture of the cover as I enthusiastically explained the mastery of form that Jess demonstrates in this latest publication. It’s been more than ten years since his Indeed, some pages are designed to be torn out and National Poetry Series winning debut collection Leadbelly reshaped into rolls, banners and folds to create something was published, but as viewers of his 2011 TED talk know, newer still. The end result is a deeply layered manuscript Jess has been working in that interim period on further that one can get lost in, inspired by, and stand in awe of. cultivating his already notable poetic aesthetic. Olio, which Jess dedicates to our community’s long His signature syncopated sonnets have numerous trajectory of musicians who’ve devoted their whole selves possibilities for interpretation—they can be read column to their art form but never had their work recorded, takes by column, crosswise, backwards or as a whole. As its name from the variety of performances that comprised he describes in the appendix, they are simultaneously the second half of a minstrel show. It is a meticulously “interstitial, anti-gravitational and diagonal.” And that researched book that gives voice to a cast of fourteen is one of the most remarkable features of this book —not characters, including figures such as the conjoined twins only is it over 200 pages long, an exceptionally thick Millie and Christine McKoy, Henry “Box” Brown who volume for a poet, but many pieces contain multitudes. made history with his daring escape from enslavement,

24 african Voices and artists like the renowned Fisk Jubilee Singers, As I stated to my colleague on the train, once I closed sculptor Edmonia Lewis, and poet Paul Laurence these pages I came to the conclusion that Tyehimba is our Dunbar. The timeline that contextualizes the stories Langston — not necessarily in terms of style or lyrical extends from 1816-2012, beginning with the founding of sensibility, but in terms of proficiency and historical the African Methodist Episcopal Church and concluding impact. It is the rigor with which this book archives history, with the second election of President Obama. offers new narratives and context for the “characters” it contains that leads me to the conclusion that readers A standout piece is “McKoy Twins Syncopated Star,” a century from now will count this among the treasures wherein Jess revels in his ability to deftly interweave that are emblematic of this era. This stunning work of a compelling visual narrative with lines like “—we’re reclamation is a book for the ages. fused in blood and body — from one thrummed stem/ budding twin blooms of song.” Allusions to the work Olio of poems like Ntozake Shange’s “Sorry” come through by Tyehimba Jess in excerpts such as “Fear. I got no use for it. Fear never paid one bill nor put one morsel in my mouth,” Wave Books, 224 pages in his “Lottie Joplin, Part 2.” He also incorporates ISBN # 9781940696201 (paperback) — $25 illustrations by Jessica Lynne Browne that adeptly www.wavepoetry.com/products/olio punctuate the poems and offer a powerful visual complement to the work.

Memoir Writing Workshop Starts Oct. 12, 2016! Bring a Writing Buddy!

Do you have a story to tell the world? This workshop is for anyone interested in writing. You will be guided in the process of crafting a well-told story in a nurturing environment. Create an outline for your book or revise written work in 8 sessions. Fee: $225.

Venue: 270 W. 96 St., NYC Call: 212-865-2982 or www.africanvoices.com

Workshops - Wednesdays, 10/12/16-12/7/16 african Voices 25 FICTION

Peach Cobbler

By Aimiende Negbenebor Sela

A butterfly flutters its wings. It’s spring.

It hovers in place for a fraction of a second, then swan Peaches of varied sizes hang like ornaments on the dives, wistfully, from the grey-blue skies toward the tree. Some confidently green, others less so. Anaisa tree-lined Pearsall Avenue, suburbia in the Bronx. returns her attention to the windowsill. The butterfly’s Peppered with its Boricuas in business casual waving gone. She spoons down the remainder of her cereal, hello to Bangladeshi mothers walking their newborns in washes the one bowl, and the one spoon, and sets them strollers, hoping to finally get a wink of sleep, Pearsall down in an empty dish rack. She smoothes her wet Avenue casually whispers — welcome home. The lush hands along the sides of her dress, smoothes down her green panorama, speckled with tarred streets, neatly perfect ponytail, and turns again to the window. She rowed houses, quiet alleyways, and parallel-parked shuts it, grabs her bag off the kitchen table set for two, automobiles is serene, luring, familial. A dog barks. A pats Orlando on his head, and off she goes to face the child squeals in delight. A lawn mower putters nearby. world outside.

The butterfly makes its way toward a shingled roof Alas, she was right; it’s a beautiful day to begin anew. caked in dirt, down past a set of bay windows plastered Her heels bid the concrete sidewalk good day, the palm with cobwebs, hovers over an over grown lawn, swoops of her hand caresses the stretch of massive tree trunks up and over a rusty wired fence, and lands delicately on outlining the block — they caress back. Unfamiliar Anaisa Hill’s spotlessly clean kitchen window. faces smile politely at her; her plum lips return the kind gesture. The meow of an Egyptian Mau perched on the Outfitted in a smart dress reminiscent of spring, Anaisa edge of a couch, wedged beneath the bay window of the leans against her kitchen sink, and spoons coco puffs house at the corner, reminds her that she can make any drenched in almond milk into her mouth. Her plum place home that wants to be called home. lipstick leaves its mark on the spoon’s drop. She notices it, smiles and wonders why that part of the Growing up in an orphanage in Kampala, Anaisa spoon is called a drop. Ah, the anatomy of a spoon. dreamed of one day calling a family hers, a home hers. Her charming golden retriever, Orlando, is at her feet. It didn’t matter where. Right there in Uganda, or as far His eyes are glued to the tiny window above the sink, East as Papua New Guinea, as long as it was hers. She draped partially with a feather-light curtain. A breeze dreamed and dreamed until twenty years later, when disturbs the curtain. Orlando barks. Anaisa looks up she found herself in a place called Calgary. Then she from her spoon, and smiles at the butterfly dotting stopped; but I digress. about her windowsill. It’s going to be a beautiful day, It’s nighttime. she says. Her gaze drifts past the butterfly into her neighbor’s yard — from whence the colorful creature Anaisa pulls a plate of rotisserie chicken breast out came, and lands on her neighbor’s unusually large of the microwave oven that sits on the counter table peach tree. beneath the window facing her peach tree neighbor’s house. It’s dark. There’s no sign of life from within or

26 african Voices Artist: Jonathan Guy-Gladding (JAG). around the house. She turns away from the window, turn you into giant monsters?” She asks. They don’t leans against the sink, and chows down — a familiar answer, they simply sway. Through the shadows of routine. She stares at the unopened boxes that line her swaying trees, Anaisa spies a dim light piercing through kitchen walls and thinks, “I have to get to those soon.” her neighbor’s dusty windows. Inside the house, a Orlando plays “good dog” at her feet. His puppy dog shadow paces. It stops, and waltzes back to the window eyes looks playfully into hers. She “accidentally” drops facing Anaisa’s bedroom. It stands there, perfectly still. a piece of chicken and he of course, rushes for it — life’s Morning comes. small pleasures. She returns her gaze to the window, and her smile wanes. She’s never been a fan of the dark, but Anaisa’s at the kitchen sink dressed sharply; bowl of she’s learned to live with it. She washes the one dish, cereal in hand, and staring into her neighbor’s yard. The sets it down in the dish rack next to the one bowl and the peaches are ripening! She spies the butterfly perched one spoon from breakfast, and turns the lights off. She on one of them. A smile creeps up her face. There’s may have to live with the dark, but she doesn’t have to something so innocent about butterflies. Bowl to her listen to its secrets. Someone told her that not so long mouth, she gulps her milk and wipes off the mustache it ago. She can’t remember whom. leaves behind. She washes the one bowl, the one spoon, smoothes her wet hands down her skirt and ponytail, In her comfy pajama bottoms and t-shirt, Anaisa cozies grabs her purse off the kitchen table set for two, pats up in bed. Orlando hops on next to her and takes his Orlando on his head, and pulls the door shut behind her. place guarding the foot of the bed. She reaches for the book on her nightstand, and flips to a bookmarked page. Her day goes by as usual, uneventfully, and nighttime The trees outside her window rustle. “Why does the dark finds her again in her PJs, comfortably tucked under

african Voices 27 her sheets, reading a book. Outside her window, the from Calgary. Need I say more? Well, maybe a little dark settles in. The lights inside her neighbor’s house more. They met while she was in college in London. Full dim. Behind the neighbor’s dusty windows, a shadow of life, and oh so innocent, she believed every word he paces, stops, stands perfectly still. Where did he learn said. She loves books, you know. They’ve always kept to do that? Why would he have needed to learn to do her company, so she had no fear dreaming the dreams that? Or is he mimicking her standing perfectly still by she dreamt in books. They were to marry as soon as she her window, watching him watching her. It made her graduated, so they bought a house, in Calgary, to call wonder if that man knew she was there — the night a home. It was lined with boxes; some his, but mostly band of thieves broke into the home of the Nigerian hers. I’ve strayed. Where was I? The Bronx. Ah, yes! family that had taken her and another orphan girl in. Spring has sprung! There was so much screaming pouring out of one small mouth. Not hers. She lay perfectly still in a corner Green trees, flowers in bloom, birds chirping, sunlight behind Momma’s big couch, as it was called, and fills the room. almost held her breath. He stood there for a while. Again, I digress. And the butterfly dots about her windowsill. Anaisa, at her kitchen sink, lowers her bowl from her face. She It’s summer. grins from ear to ear. The lush green peach tree is full again with unripe fruit — a second chance. She twirls The door opens, and Orlando practically crawls in, her ponytail into a bun, and dashes off to face the world. panting. Anaisa’s sweaty hand tosses keys into a glass bowl on her windowsill. She stares out the window, With each passing day, she watches. As the tree’s fruits mouth agape, as blue jays nonchalantly chow down grow and ripen, she grows and ripens. She unpacks beautiful ripe peaches! Infuriated, Anaisa marches to her boxes one day, excited to see the next. She keeps the side of her house and yells at the little dinosaurs company with the tree in the mornings while enjoying devouring her succulent peaches. Well, not hers, but her coco puffs, and shares how her day went with it at close enough. “If I can’t have a family, I can at least night over rotisserie chicken breast. Do not fret! Orlando have peaches!” she yells at the birds. They seem to suffered no neglect. They’ve become a family of three, smile at her as they peck into one juicy ripe peach after sharing a window and a kitchen sink. another. Their happy songs fill the air. She looks further up the tree and spies a lone, unharmed, ripe peach at the Summer arrives, and it’s a scorcher. very top. She glances down at the base of the tree. It’s Anaisa, at her sink, fills a glass with water and downs covered in rotten peaches with ants and flies playing it in rhythm with Orlando’s gulps. She turns to the vultures. She shakes her head and walks away as the window and freezes. Blue jays sing their happy song slightly lifted curtain, from inside her neighbor’s dusty as they chow down sweet ripe peaches. Anaisa slams window, falls back in place. her glass down and marches over to the side of her Many mornings pass and Anaisa’s routine remains house. She grabs the short step ladder propped against constant. The kitchen sink and small window frame her outside wall, and yells “not again!” as she leans it her world inside her home. She watches, as the one against her neighbor’s wire fence precariously. She last peach standing, slowly withers. Summer turns to hops on, reaches for a fruit, but she’s a few inches short. winter, leaves turn from orange to brown, bare branches Up the second step she goes. The ladder gives a little, are blanketed in snow, and holiday music fills the air. but she finds her balance and reaches. She’s still a few Boxes line Anaisa’s kitchen walls. Who’s to say that a inches short. Up step three, she and the ladder are at home can’t have boxes lining its walls? She was almost an angle. She reaches up and leans over the fence. The married once. Young, naive and eager to have a home, to tips of her fingers graze that ripe peach ever so slightly. make a home, she fell in love with a traveling salesman There’s a wicked glint in her eyes. She’s almost there!

28 african Voices Up on the tip of her toes, she reaches further still and tornado went through it. An hour later, a mouthwatering, grabs that pinkish gold ripe peach in the palm of her golden brown, peach cobbler finds its way out of the hand — nirvana. She pulls down, hard. Bad move. She oven. Anaisa is a vision in her yellow dress. She turns to topples over the fence and into her neighbor’s yard. her window and smoothes down her locks. It cascades Golden ripe peach secure in her hand, she takes a down her neck in neat large waves. She picks up the pie, calming breath with her eyes closed. and finds herself in front of her neighbor’s door. His eyes land on the pie Anaisa holds up to his face. What A giant shadow falls across her face. She opens her man can resist a pie that good looking? He ushers her in. eyes and is met by the stern gaze of a pair of bluish gray eyes, shrouded by a set of bushy eyebrows that belong His house is like something out of C.S. Lewis’ to the giant of a man poised at the crown of her head. imagination. Books and antiques line the walls, shelves, In a flash, she’s on her backside, her back against the and coffee tables from the narrow hallway to that of the tree. He glances down at her hand; she follows his gaze. living room. He clears a space on a table littered with The peach! She shoves it into her mouth, bites hard, even more books, sets the pie down, and rushes out of swallows, gags, and shoves some more, until there’s the room. Anaisa runs her fingers over the spine of one nothing of the peach left. She spits out the pit, and “sits” book after another, all wrapped in brown construction her ground. The neighbor turns on his heels and walks paper, with obscure hand written words and Roman into his house. Almost immediately, he returns with a numerals on them. The neighbor returns with paper bowl and places it on Anaisa’s outstretched legs. He plates and utensils. Anaisa joins him. He clears a seat for reaches up above her seated self, plucks peach after her, hands her a set of plastic utensils, and sets about the peach, and drops them into the bowl ‘til it overflows. He business of eating pie. He serves her first, then himself, helps Anaisa up without a word, places the few peaches and settles into a chair. that missed the bowl on top of the heap, and walks back Anaisa takes a bite of hers. He does the same. She into his house. Anaisa stands frozen to her spot. For a quietly takes another. He does the same. She gently moment, she eyes the wire fence, but thinks better about slides one of the brown paper covered books over to him it and opts for the front gate instead. and points to the spine. He puts down his fork and writes Back inside her kitchen, she sets the overflowing bowl on its top cover: This Side of Paradise. She flips open the of peaches down on the table set for two, sits on her book cover and sure enough, it’s F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s floor, and wraps her arms around her knees. Orlando lies masterpiece. She slides over another. He pencils in next to her. His face on his paws, he reflects her somber Of Human Bondage. She opens it, correct again! Her mood. The butterfly, watching from its usual place on excitement overtakes her. She digs into disordered her windowsill, flutters into the kitchen, and perches heaps of brown paper covers, running back and forth softly on the crest rail of one of the chairs at the table set from shelves on walls with book after book. The Pearl, for two. Anaisa stares harder at the bowl of peaches and Exodus, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Aunt Julia and in a flash, she’s on her feet. Startled, Orlando does the the Scriptwriter, Love in the Time of Cholera, Things same. He prances around in circles, tail wagging. Fall Apart. He’s half way through the pie when Anaisa dashes off for another book, on the topmost shelf. She Anaisa’s a woman on a mission. One after another, hops on the ladder propped against the shelves and cabinets fly open; ingredients land on the kitchen reaches for two rather large volumes. He looks up from counter; bowls, tin foils, rolling pins, fly out of cabinets his pie just in time to see her teeter and fall backwards beneath the counter, above the counter, the fridge, the off the ladder. Books scatter, he breaks her fall. He’s a pantry; and a few minutes later, the oven door shuts. quick one, this man. She looks up at him and chuckles, Anaisa is covered from head to toe in flour. Orlando’s he shakes his head; she turns the spine of the volume in coat is a whiter shade of gold. His face, buried in a bowl her hand to him. With eyes fixed on her beautiful face, licked almost clean of pie batter. The kitchen looks like a he responds On Love and Loneliness.

african Voices 29 on the E express a boy asks his mama a few things

(boy hums) (boy thoughtful) someone from slaverin you—like and breaks his neck. why didn’t the slaves fight back? what if they helda gun can’t you talk about somethin what slaves? to your head? or my head? pleasant, why you thinkin why we ain’t fight back? that’s not gonna happen. bout this? who said we should learn karate cause save the peel we ain’t fight back? just in case. i’ma collect more. but we was slaves. (eye-roll) (suck-teeth) (suck-teeth) not before we was slaves. what chops and kicks you better why they ain’t just shoot gonna do against bullets? have on clean socks the white people? (takes boy’s banana peel) don’t be embarrassin me no guns. (boy wipes mouth) at the doctor’s office. what about knives what if banana peels (boy laughs) (boy or scissors? no was a weapon? thoughtful) did slaves knives or scissors. (suck-teeth) how? laugh while they was slaves? what about poison booby trap the apartment like on detective shows? with peels where they was gettin and the bad guy slips poison from, boy? the drug store. (suck-teeth) why they ain’t use they hands? who said they didn’t? how they become slaves then? (silence) would you let someone slave you? can you eat your banana? how would you stop

Artist: Aziza

30 african Voices (exasperated) how should i know? when i die zombies. you laugh. i’ma come back as a walrus. then no one could hurt us (exasperated) (exasperated) cause we’d am i a slave? why can’t you already be dead. but when do you start to laugh just be a boy? (exasperated) when you a slave? walruses are tough (side-eye) what is there and eat lots of fish— (eye-roll) to be happy for? can we go fishing? (suck-teeth) family. (kisses top of boy’s one thing at a time. (silence) head) (playfully taps back where are the slave families? of boy’s head) (exasperated) boy, they © Amber Atiya what if they ain’t have family everywhere. when did they first laugh we slaves family too? and what they think i guess. was funny? can we bring flowers? maybe they saw (exasperated) boy a picture of you (places arm where? around boy) i dunno. how? the slaves dead we both was here before. and happy now. (boy gets loud) i wanna buy roses. so you was a slave? (side-eyes boy) (suck-teeth) wit who money? no, i was and take them a fairy. where? then why you ain’t to a funeral. free the slaves? so you gon just roll up (suck-teeth) on somebody funeral i freed as many as i could. why uninvited? can’t you say somethin where our slave family nice or fun? buried? i like your make-up (sigh) i. don’t. know. and your purse. (boy plays (boy sneezes) with zipper) (boy thoughtful) (side-eyes boy) we should become

african Voices 31 The Gallery Jocelyn Goode: Healing Community Through Art

Jocelyn “Extraordinare1” Goode is a painter and muralist By using photography, recorded interviews and portrait whose portraits have garnered community support. One painting, artist Jocelyn “Extraordinarie1” Goode began a of her most noted series includes intimate portraits of men visual dialogue and put a spotlight on a growing issue that and women who survived the crack era. deserves more attention. Beginning in March 2010, she interviewed and photographed African-American men “Concerning The Crack” explores the growing “crack” and women 40 and over and the now grown-up “crack- between the younger and older generations of the African- babies” and young people 21 and under. The participants American community caused by many factors including had the opportunity to share their perspectives on the the Crack-Cocaine Epidemic of the late 1980s and the aftermath of the epidemic and the way technology affects Technological Phenomenon of the new millennium. their life as well as their solutions for healing the Black One of the consequences of crack is a generation community. From the data, she created painted portraits of young people who have little knowledge of the struggle that merge the faces of young and old and incorporate and progress of previous generations. Many African- quotes into each piece. American elders are confused by the younger generation’s attitudes, culture and self-destructive tendencies. Artwork by Jocelyn Goode

32 african Voices Artist’s Statement “My artistic voice has matured over the 20 years from when I formally began studying fine art at the age of 14. Today my art functions as a tool that allows me to build a platform to amplify my voice as an agent of social progress. Painting, drawing, mixed media, graphic design, apparel design and installation are instruments I utilize to express ideas about the state of a collective reality I share with other people of African heritage living in America. My art lends me the ability to highlight narratives of pioneers and heroes whose lives offer valuable lessons that we need to keep alive. I aspire to provoke thought by visually representing familiar images in a different light. And on a fundamental human level, I make art to share complex emotions in a way that others can relate to. Ray Bradbury, Ralph Ellison, Jean-Paul Satre, James Baldwin and George Orwell. Ultimately, I want my art “I am inspired by artists like Salvador Dali, Rene to help people to heal neglected wounds, to see beauty Magritte, Alice Neel, Lois Mailou Jones, Kehinde Wiley in overlooked places, to stimulate imaginations, and to along with writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Aesop, increase consciousness.”

african Voices 33 SHUFFLE MACHINE What ruffles between each undealt door her fingers like through which “next” echoes, a thing with feathers, there is a rising, two faces riffling, like the suddenness of glossy finished breaths, an unseen Aegean. each a volume of vortex Now her arrested and booked under practiced hands pitch the Second Law of Thermodynamics, tomorrow’s fate a coffle of cardboard chaos across an oblong table. dovetailing a desire The waitress brings that cannot be boxed or cut something you crave by sharpest image edges as a daffodil doth or Victoria’s secrets interlaced of the dew, into a deck’s sexy designs. (no napkin, please) What’s held in says sip this, your table-side tank her lips are full, of bated breath? her wrists fragrant, Necks pulse in vain, her heart too is barred. throb like traffic lights I heard a bee buzz, honey on a Saturday night, when I tried. hands clean as gloves And if you tip her on a bourgeois burglar, over? Face up. cuffed and cupped, trembling, riffling the clay This ain’t origami, chips lining the edge (you are not allowed of a bet that begs anarchy. to fold.) She is your Miss Fortune, And how would that change running fountain of infinity. the credit of the cards? Everybody misses She would of course the river except you. simply re-deal Always the kissed banks to your empty seat. swishing the same. Maybe The pot wants she was only to be right, the Queen of Hearts maybe raised. peeled like a tamarind What it gets by randomized hands is to be splashed. and you were never More and more under her suited King.

© 2016 Joel Dias-Porter

34 african Voices Far more common threads bind us than differences that divide us.

From start to finish this “was a great collection of well-written short stories all connected together, depicting the life-story of a Vietnam Vet who struggles with PTSD. The first chapter really breaks your heart and compels you to read on. With only 160 pages, you’ll finish this book in a day. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to reading more from this author! – Wanda, Goodreads”

Emancipation opens with “the story of a tragic event. The author cleverly draws the dark thread of this tragedy through the lives of all characters in the story collection. All the stories are beautifully written and the characters keenly observed. I thoroughly enjoyed Emancipation and recommend it. ” – Mary, Goodreads

Available in print and EBook online. To order your copy go to www.michaelrlane.com.