Journeys on The Dusty Road

2012-01-05T18:41:00.000-08:00

2012-01-05T15:40:00.000-08:00

2012-01-04T14:02:00.000-08:00

Over the next two weeks, I will be posting short video interviews with several Dominican activists focused on questions about the current political moment. I will be translating the interviews in English shortly.

The first two interviews are with Marianela Carvajal Diaz and Anny Teresa Figeuroa.

2011-09-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

Dominican hair salons, hair products, women and their hair are notorious as homes of the "dubi", and an entire range of deep-relaxing products. I have had my fair share of traumatic Dominican hair salon experiences over the years. I grew up going to the hair salons with my aunt. We went there for everything from hair washing to deep conditioning to hair straightening to - yes - haircuts. I used to have burn marks on my ears from the hair dryers (the ones that go over your head), and I was one of the lucky ones. However, I stopped going to Dominican hair salons (in New York and the D.R.) after I cut my dred locs off. I think I just got tired of the trauma of it all. That last time, I had to spend 20 minutes convincing the stylist that my hair is indeed CURLY so that she could cut my hair accordingly. She didn't understand why I had dred locs in the first place.

I know I'm not alone. Plenty of sistahs in the D.R. go through the same thing and worse. Ginetta Candelario has done whole studies on Dominican hair salons and cultural expectations/transformations in the U.S., so I won't go into it here. And I wrote an essay that was published in Blackberries and Redbones (ed. Spellers and Moffit) a couple of years back that talks about how women's "presentability" (yes - with all the class, race, gender and age appropriate assumptions that you think would go into that kind of categorization) and economic sustainability in the Dominican context. So...imagine my JOY to see this video report - posted on Yaneris Gonzalez Gomez's page (thank you), which covers two resources for women who want to keep their hair natural: One to One Hair Salon (Santo Domingo, DR) and Go Natural Caribe (webpage).

Kiini Ibura Salaam, who did a student exchange program in the D.R. and wrote a very significant article on her experience, points out one of the main challenges for women of African descent who go to visit the Dominican Republic from the U.S....I'm not saying that her concerns are addressed, now, eight years later, but I do think that Dominican women, on their own terms, are defining new parameters for their struggle. Check it. (Sorry if you don't speak Spanish...I will try and put translation here soon...or maybe, you can learn Spanish.)

2011-09-05T12:36:00.001-07:00

Mark Bradford changed my life. I was in Chicago, on the train out to Oregon, this past summer. There just happened to be an exhibit of his work up at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. I was only in Chicago for a night, part of a day, and so I had to go and see it if it was the only thing I was going to do while there. The show comes down on September 18, and I only wish I had told more people about it sooner. What moved me about his work were the varying textures. You could feel sorrow, anger, irony, challenge embedded in the texture of the papers layered with paint and other materials. I could have known about him sooner, as he is one of the artists featured in the series "Art 21", but I'm just glad I know about him at all.

2011-07-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

This is the summer of new. Learning new forms of laughter. New ways of doing things.

After six weeks in the Dominican Republic learning more and more and more about social movements and the bad ass people who've made them possible, I came back to the U.S. and took a train cross country. It started in New York. The train wound through New York state over to Chicago.

While I was in Chicago, I went to see the amazing Mark Bradford exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. If you haven't seen Mark Bradford in your lifetime, please, please, please - go see his work when he's in town. He is brilliant. I also walked along Lake Michigan and took in the water that is a sea but isn't really.

The train crossed Illinois, Idaho, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and up through the mountains of California until we got to Sacramento. Along the way, I saw so much scenery that when I actually got to the hotel in Sacramento, they have those special "relaxation" videos, and I had to put the one on that was house music because I thought I'd lose my mind in the one with scenery. Being on a train for three days was like Baraka on crack, except it was my life. Still, there was one more leg of the trip: up through the mountains to Eugene, Oregon. Where I've been all summer, learning new.

Here, I've been writing, working as usual on stuff. Lots of stuff, but not so much anymore because I'm learning new ways of walking through time. kt and I have a staged reading of a play we've been working on this year coming up on August 11. I'm excited for it. The play has been really fun to work on - making me laugh as I write (or read what kt's written) - and kt is an awesome director. I head to Austin next week to work on this with her and to visit family, friends, loved ones. I can't wait.

And then, I decided to go ahead and do a performance project for my birthday this year. It's my 36th birthday. So, the performance is 36 daysweeksmonthsyearslifetimes. I learned, as I told a new acquaintance about the 36 day project, that 66 is the number of pornography in 19th century Chinese literature. "Chapter 66," she told me. "It's where the good stuff is." Thanks, M.E. I'll keep that in mind. We could all use a little good stuff.

2011-04-06T14:20:00.000-07:00

Upcoming Events
April 7, 2011 (7pm) A La Vista: Screening and Discussion of Caribbean Queer Shorts 212 York Street, Room 106 Featuring filmmakers and activists: Celiany Rivera-Velazquez, Joselina Fay and Carlos Rodriguez And featuring the films: *Lucha Libre (Republika Libre) *Reina de Mi Misma (Celiany Rivera-Velazquez) *Afuera Hay Aire (compilation) *Palabras y Gestos (La Candela) A La Vista is a one-night showcase of short films by Caribbean LGBT filmmakers from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Inspired by the first national Dominican LGBT film festival in Fall 2010, this showcase will connect voices from the Caribbean to the lives of LGBT people in the United States and beyond. Welcomes by Quisqueyalies and PRISM. Commentary and talk back with Andrew Dowe (Phd Student, Af Am/ American Studies) and Ana-Maurine Lara (PhD Student, Af Am/Anthro). This showcase is part of the LGBTS Global Queer Cinema Series, with generous support from the Wallace Sexton Fund for LGBT Studies and the Bruce Cohen Fund. Co-sponsored by Quisqueyalies and PRISM.
****************************************************
April 9, 2011 (2 - 3pm) 5th Annual National Dominican Student Conference Panel: Identidad Sexual y Dominicanidad Discrimination against the LGBTQ community is on the advent of institutionalization with the imminent ratification of the newest constitution banning same-sex marriage. At the interpersonal level, these communities are often discriminated against through the perpetuation of prejudiced views promoted by traditional beliefs of sexuality and vamped machismo in Latin America. Topics covered will not only be restricted to a conversation based within the Dominican Republic, but will also feature the importance of the Dominican activism in the United States. This panel seeks to first and foremost disseminate facts and to additionally promote thoughtful discourse in an effort to disband the stereotypes and taboos often present in such a conversation. Featuring: *Deyanira “Sargenta G” García, first Dominican publicly out rapper and peformer *Ana-Maurine Lara, nationally-acclaimed author and PhD Graduate Student (Yale - Af Am/Anthro) *Francisco Lazala, Founder of the Gay and Lesbian Dominican Empowerment Organization (GALDE) *Alicia Anabel Santos, Self-identified Latina lesbian writer, performance artist, producer, playwright and activist as well as the writer and co-producer of “Afrolatinos: the Untold Story” *Celiany Rivera-Velazquez, feminist educator and videographer, holds a PhD in Feminist Media Studies & Transnational Queer Cultural Production
*****************************************************
Monday April 11, 2011 (5.30 - 7pm) Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Colloquium Yale University, WLH 309 Ana-Maurine Lara (Anthropology and African-American Studies) “The Reconstitution of Black Atlantic Bodies and Memories in Sharon Bridgforth's Delta Dandi” and Tom Koenigs (English) “A fictitious story of one of his own sex”: Gender, Fictionality, and the Public Sphere in America, 1797-1808"
**************************************************
Wednesday April 13 (4.30pm) Rainbow Writers Series Gathering Lounge, Livingston Student Center Rutgers University A presentation and discussion of Erzulie's Skirt with Ana-Maurine Lara and Cheryl Clarke
*************************************************
Friday April 15 (10.30 - 1.30pm) Afro-Caribbean Women's Artistry as part of the 64 Days of Nonviolence Series Southern Connecticut State University Engleman Hall, Rm A120 Reading and discussion featuring: Ana-Maurine Lara, Marianela Medrano-Marra, Tanya Torres and other artists
**********************************************
April 25, 2011 (4.00pm) University of Oregon Reading of Erzulie's Skirt. For more information contact Ana-Maurine via facebook.

2011-02-17T11:01:00.000-08:00

time. text. talk.

the three axes of how i engage with performance.

time. text. talk.

time. text. talk.

the body.

i feel something brewing. something stirring in the bottom of the jar.

2011-02-09T19:08:00.000-08:00

Home is both the chattering of teeth in a cold New England city and a dream in languages made of sand.

This week, I have a vague sensation (memory) of having gone somewhere, as though I’ve been languishing on the shores of an island, walking down dusty palm-lined roads, rubbing sticky mango juice off my hands and onto my thighs, looking up at seagulls flying across a sea-blue sky. I feel as though I have just `gone home’. I realize it’s because of having spent a week curling up with and crying over the stories from Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, edited by Thomas Glave. I’ve been traveling through stories taking place on the islands. Despite my best wishes to remain objective (okay, so I didn’t try that hard), I have seen a part of myself. I have been walking through colonial cities, between old colonial walls crumbling onto mosaic tile floors. They are cities made of composites from film, photography, childhood memories. I have been sitting on front porches and crossing cement floor kitchens in conversation with one aunt or another, who may or may not be my own. I have crawled through small spaces between cardboard walls and tin roofs, searching for what – I’m not sure. I have been here before. I have never been here. The detritus of the hurricane in St Croix is strewn across my memory: missing bridges, buildings, towns and piles of garbage washing up on shore. Or was that Hurricane George?

The silence of fear numbs my ears. I have felt it. That silence that Thomas Glave coalesces into the pleading cry: “I hope that this silence doesn’t kill me or make me kill myself, because (some of us thought and continue to think) it doesn’t seem as though I can possibly be myself, my fullest truest self, the self that everyone would love to know and hug and laugh with, greet with open hands and arms, if…” (Thomas Glave, Introduction, 2). If, If, If…It is that fear that comes from knowing that walking down dusty palm-lined roads, eating mangos, crossing under the shadows of seagulls in the sky blue sky, is as much an inscription of our potential as it is a reclaiming of home. It is a knowing that our bodies languishing under the sun, along the edges of the water, that our walks - buller footed, mati draggin’, zouk jumpin’ dancehall grindin’, rara shoutin’, calypso laughin’ - are not so much an anomaly but an unwelcome reminder. Of what? Of what? Of how we “bring our imaginations to bear” (Michelle Cliff, Ecce Homo, 99); of “/spilling out, of your jeans/into the coming freedom.” (Faizal Deen, Young Faggot, 153)

I am a child of diaspora and much more: dislocations, relocations, migration, globalization. Always, at my insistence, I know there is a place for me: “i am a poet.” (Kevin Everod Quashie, Genesis, 304); “I am a feminist.” (Ochy Curiel, Autonomy in Lesbian-Feminist Politics, 142) “If I call myself a black, feminist lesbian, I am acknowledging by that that the roots of my strength, and of my vulnerability, lie in myself as a woman.” (Audre Lorde speaking with Astrid Roemer in Gloria Wekker, Mati-ism and Black Lesbianism: Two idealtypical Expressions of Female Homosexuality in Black Communities of the Diaspora, 368)

Home is a complicated place. Contrary to the nostalgic dreams of warmth, home is not always a place of safety or retreat. And yet, despite knowing all of this, I’m not dissuaded. In my mind, in my imagination, I can conjure up the heat of the island, the scent of salt and bacalao (saltfish) in the air, the blast of bachata from a passing pick up, the sucking of limoncillo (quinep) seeds, and the quick and fiery movement of children. I can also call up the miles of poverty, the scent of rotting flesh on a hot afternoon, the blast of generators and machines tearing up new roads, and the slow, pained movements of women coming out of the free trade factories. Home is a complicated place. As Glave articulates, “The desire for Home or `home’ often abides in the traveler. Our history-perhaps especially the history we find most intolerable to remember, that began for some of us with harsh voyages across the sea, but never ended there – is about nothing if not movement, memory. Dis-placement.” (Thomas Glave, Introduction, 2).

Maybe the harsh voyage lies not only in sexual-social exile, but also in the cruelty of being able to imagine what in reality is so rarely possible. Movement, memory – what is it possible to remember? In what ways, and where can we go? In a short story, Anton Nimblett writes, “I’m outside of this scene looking in. I’m looking at me sitting here, cradled in the rich, jade hills, swigging clear strong fire from the same bottle with this man…This is so close to a scene I have wished for, even conjured over the years; a scene, imagined in lonely moments – with a different end.” (Anton Nimblett, Time and Tide, 266) In this story, the narrator is a man who runs from home to his `home’: In locating himself in his past (represented by his encounter with the man), his present gives way to his potential future (his imagined scene made real enables new imaginings). But it is the uncertainty of a different end (we do not know if his repeated imagined encounter ends in sex or death and most likely we could surmise that it ends in both) that speaks to the cruelty embedded within the imagining of a queer Caribbean. Perhaps, it is the uncertainty of whether or not the land and its people will hold us that keeps us grounded when our lives have been thrown astray. Perhaps it is the taste of beauty that allows us to continue to assert our connections to those lands (and waters) and to those people as our own, despite.

Tonight, a Thunderbird was rumbling its engine outside my cold New England apartment, and my teeth were chattering. I was trying to recall where I had before had that sensation and remember waking in my aunt’s home in the capital city of Santo Domingo, many years ago, the billiard hall across the street roaring up its generator in time for their first customers. The Thunderbird shakes snow from the rooftop and it collapses into a pile on top of another pile of snow. I am instead imagining rain pouring off of roofs in slews for my cousins and me to wash in. If. If. If…Despite living “in a country that doesn’t think I should exist” (Helen Klonaris, Independence Day Letter, 197), I can still remember/imagine/dream smoky generators, falling rain, family, maybe I can imagine a land that holds me, too.

What is this crossing I have made in my imagination? This return to a place not there, not real and yet so familiar? There is language there that is different from language here. It is language that can only be recalled through land, through water, air, sun, dust: a geography in which the everyday becomes part of one’s being, and one becomes part of the surrounding land. Not in a (shorthand: colonial) nineteenth-century-English-Romance-primitive-man-of-the-land kind of way. But in the way in which snow makes my teeth crunch and the language of the everyday becomes smothered in mountains of ice. The skies, its clouds descending, rob space from above my head. I cannot walk the same here, and because I cannot walk the same, sound and language come out differently. It’s not about words: I tell you it’s not about words. It is instead about breath: the in-between, low tide shallows, lagoons of fresh water, the eye of the storm, that time of day , “when night falls [and] everything grows confusing, [when] there are no precise contours or defined faces, nothing but blurry edges, formless masses, shadows gliding from place to place.” (Jose Alcantara Almánzar, Metamorphosis, 13)

2010-11-15T22:24:00.001-08:00

Sitting with Amazing People...

This weekend, I went to a national women's studies conference. It was my first time going to such a conference, as both artist and scholar whose life is currently mostly (not entirely) unfolding inside the academic superstructure. The first thing that struck me was that most of the familiar faces and folks I knew were friends from so many of my lifetimes, but mostly from my world as a community-based artist and activist. And then, there were new folks to meet.

Throughout this weekend, there was one key moment that has touched me deeply. On Friday afternoon, Chandra Mohanty and M Jacqui Alexander performed a conversation. I was sitting in a row of amazing people, conscious of other friends sprinkled throughout the room, and conscious of the fact that I had just met most of the folks with whom I was sitting. In meeting them, I was aware of the energy they brought to the space. These were mostly women of color, many queer, who had known each other for years. They vibrated with that particular level of familiarity that renders connection palpable. We took up an entire row, and in that entire row, we were powerful.

The conversation began, first, always first, with a calling in of the ancestors, and a recognition of the labor that had generated the possibility of our collective presence. CM and MJA then proceeded to delineate the anatomy of their emotional, intellectual and political work together. I was particularly struck by MJA's assertion that what they were talking about was how intellectual work is political work, and life sustaining work - that it is a [remaking] of the self down to the level of DNA (that's not how they put it, but when you speak of transformation and life and DNA in the same breath - what you are talking about is creation in its deepest incarnations). As they progressed, the space of the hotel conference room transformed for me. I was elevated to a profoundly erotic level, in which I saw all of the potentialities of connection manifesting in time: I couldn't help but imagine what it will be like to witness the people I know now - ten years from now. To watch the connections foment collective shifts, to feel the pressing weight of all that water inside and between people foment new life.

Life...water is essential to life. The water cycle is something I always imagine as a cartoon from my elementary school science textbook. In that cartoon, there is always a river, an ocean, clouds and rain. Usually, there is also a mountain. I've learned about that cycle for so much of my life that it's almost become an assumed, total truth. In fact, I take it as fact.

Because water is so big and simultaneously tangible and intangible. Because water moves through the world whether or not I am aware of it. Because I have been lucky to have so much water in my life. I take water to be part of life. Living in Texas during a drought made me question whether or not we are entering a period of new cycles. Whether water will choose new paths to becoming. Whether it will continue to issue forth from the earth with the generosity it has always shown us, or whether the earth will transform its mechanisms in order to sustain itself - with or without us. We, a part of the earth, our bodies made of water, are no less affected than the earth by drought or floods, hurricanes or blizzards.

So, we entered deeper waters. I sat, listening to CM and MJA articulate a call to action, specifying the need to identify the `cartographies of location' and the `geographies of power' across multiple sites of knowledge production. I listened to CM state, "we have never worked out of despair...[but] out of a sense of real possibility and real vision." As I listened to them, I thought about all the queer of color artists I have been lucky enough to work with all these years, the ways in which our waters speak to each other, the ways in which our work has re-shaped intellectual, emotional and spiritual geographies and locations. The ways, in fact, in which we have tapped into real (im)possibilities and real vision to imagine worlds not yet imagined, and to make them material. These imaginings are ways to ask questions not yet asked; they are ways of theorizing about our lives as we construct worlds as well as the rules inside those worlds.

As we create, we enact our own disappearance so that art can take shape. We make new life appear on the page, on the stage, on the canvas, out of stone, through light, across water...And through our absence, the presence of new life is felt. And in turn, we are made visible again.

"What do we have to do at this moment aside from looking and engaging with each other?" MJA asked.

I looked at the folks sitting next to me. At IRS, CRR, DM, HB, DMS, DR and I wanted to just look and engage, to feel the current of life that had seeped into the air around us. As MJA and CM rushed through their presentation muttering, "we can't get to this now" - telling us that there was more, always more to think about and say - I turned to search for people, and for connection. The plenary ended and without a question and answer period, folks stood up to move into the next mode of interaction. I sat, dumbfounded in my seat, sensing the profound vacuum that was created by the departure of all the folks who had been sitting with me. It was literally a vacuum, and my heart hurt to feel it.

I stood up, somewhat aimless, and gathered my belongings. I was trying to act as though somehow, after being submerged for almost two hours, I could walk on land again. But it wasn't true. That question of looking and engaging had stayed with me, and I felt my heart and mind longing for the currents in which I had just been swimming. Not just emanating from the brilliant women at the podium, but also from the people with whom I had just been sitting. So, I wandered into the hallway, and ran into JM - an incredible friend, amazing playwright and mom to my very cute four month old niece. She could see from my face that I was sad, and when I cried, rubbing my heart as Sonia Sanchez told me to do, I told her, "I was just sitting with these amazing women and then they were gone, and and..."

And I thought about what it means when people are gone and what it means to be connected with others, and what it means to be human beings crossing through waters and trying to affect the course of rivers. What must we remember to see, and what do we intentionally forget to make that crossing possible?

We walked down the hallway together, getting ready to find a spot to hang out and talk through what we had just witnessed, when TJC introduced me to Chela Sandoval, who had just missed the plenary. My friends walked away as I stood sharing my notes with CS. I went over my notes, and summaries of different interludes, we combed through the conversation, asking each other what was missing. Seeing that in fact, CS herself had been missing. I asked her why she thought her work is not set into conversation with theirs...her answer was "Geography."

There was a lot to think about. But as I walked away, I felt how moved I was by this little bit of magic, and stunned that a visionary elder had stumbled into my path at that moment: a moment when in fact, I really needed to speak to an elder - somebody who could ask the questions that come with time. And I was cognizant of the fact that this had happened as I was walking across the room with friends who I deeply love and who deeply love me, and because of them, too. I laughed a little at the graceful shift that had occurred, and remembered that the body (the human body, the collective body, the earth's body) always restores itself to balance.

Now, a few days later and at home, I think about the entirety of what transpired. The fact of speaking with CS did not diminish what I had experienced as loss (a vacuum). I went up to the room where my friends were staying, and we all laughed together at the magic. I decided then and there that I would tell the folks I had been sitting with about what happened. This I would do out of a desire to let them know that they - their collective power - had affected me - a relative stranger in their midst. To let them know that I look forward to witnessing them in ten years, changing the course of rivers, to watching the collective power of their connections manifest in the creation of hence forth unimagined worlds. I would tell them so as to remind myself of the great gifts I have been given in sitting with amazing people.

2010-07-22T23:10:00.000-07:00

I've been writing and reading and writing and reading and writing. It's been awesome. My time in Austin is drawing to a close, and I am unwrapping and wrapping words, texts, time.

In the midst of this, I have published Water Marks and Tree Rings (for a limited time), a short novela available online for your reading pleasure.

Please enjoy.
note: It takes acrobat.com a minute to load. Thank you for your patience.

2010-07-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

And this is where I tell you that I had an incredible month in the Dominican Republic, after finding my feet in the shifting sands and the salty Caribbean waters. I am an island baby, and terra firma is a fictional state for me. Though, I've learned to live with it.

The conference was a fantastic experience, and I met so many incredible people. I got to hang out with a bad ass crew of folks, and to learn about the intricacies of their work. There is so much exciting scholarship and artistic production going on in the world. It makes me smile. I think some of my favorite presentations dared to be bold in their form (conversations between old friends, for example), and in their content (the notion of "ocular penetration" in film as presented by C.U. Decena).

Soon after, I met an incredible group of artists and activists. For example, I got to see Isabel Spencer, one of the Dominican Republic's foremost theatre artists, present her piece "Derechos Henanos" as part of the Festival de Teatro Nacional. This play was an awesome experience in which I got to witness hip hop, reggaeton and evangelist aesthetics folded into one. We could argue that...well, I'll just leave that to you.

I think one of the most amazing highlights was attending the Pride (Orgullo) activities on June 26 and June 27. June 16 was a "Besaton" - a kiss in in front of the national cathedral, which is actually the first cathedral in the Americas, which makes it just pregnant with history. How awesome to see queers kiss and hold hands, and to see brown and black people walking freely over the bones of our martyred ancestors.

And then, watching a line of cars stream up the street as part of the caravan on Sunday June 27th - being in that line of cars - winding its way around the city. I will note that our route began on Avenida George Washington, went up Avenida Abraham Lincoln, across Avenida 27 de febrero and down Avenida Duarte...the metaphoric and symbolic analysis we can carry out on the names alone!!! Anyways, it was an honor and a privilege to be present to and to share time with so many bad ass Dominican activists and artists. And, it was incredible to see how many people came out on the spot (including the four hotel workers who danced as we passed by; and the restaurant worker who pointed to his colleague standing next to him; or the woman on the bus who reached down to slap some high fives); and to see how many people were in support of their LGBT compatriotas. I was really, really excited and proud. I even posted photos on facebook.

But, I wouldn't be me if I didn't speak out about how the police really tried to put a damper on things by physically attacking one of my hermanas, Mirla Hernandez, as I drove the car away from the festivities. We were heading out when he started harassing us. Someone in the car suggested I use my U.S. privilege to navigate the situation, but in that moment, not a lick of English was coming to me. As the officer's aggression increased, he started with homophobic epithets. Mirla had the courage to respond to his abuse of authority, and he did what so many police officers in the Dominican Republic feel empowered to do: he hit her, "porque el es la autoridad".

It has taken me a week to be able to write about this, as I step back to respect Mirla's decisions about how to handle the situation. But once I saw that her official statement has been published (along with the video that shows it all going down), I am now at liberty to bring your attention to this incident.

Police brutality, state violence in the Dominican Republic is at an all time high (outside of the Trujillo regime's notorious record). The same night that this incident occurred, two other officers killed a university student - with a gunshot to the head - because he refused to stop on a darkened street.

All I could think about, besides doing my best to be an accountable (U.S. citizen) ally to Mirla, was on ensuring the safety of my two friends who were there with me, visiting from the U.S. and having a great time. We did have an amazing time, and we had a Dominican time - replete with all the complexities of navigating the realities of the "New World" as D. calls it :) LOL - the New World, yes, not the Third World, but "The New World". The complexities of poverty, corruption, and oppression that exist alongside the joys of a bad ass LGBT movement, beautiful beaches and really good hedonistic aids.

It is often the conditions of our oppression that catalyze the most profound and necessary movements. The Dominican LGBT movement is poised to be at the forefront of putting pressure on the Dominican government to stop state violence against everyday (and queer) citizens. My prayer and my hope is that 1) there will be no more casualties; 2) if there are, that the casualties will remain within the ranks of the state in the form of response and not further violence and 3) that the violence against those on the streets be stopped. There have already been too many casualties on the street.

Power to the people. And love.

2010-06-02T10:44:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the Dominican Republic for a month. It's been four years since I was last here. I was in Haiti in December for the Ghetto Biennale; I was here in 2006 at Altos de Chavon, writing. I'm here now to present a paper at the Transnational Hispaniola conference, and to connect with folks for my on-going dissertation research (I'm at the very beginning of this work). I haven't been by myself in the Dominican Republic since 1995. The many times I was here between 1998 and 2006, I was always with other people. I'm feeling challenged.

It's a different journey by myself. This is a journey that requires the greatest strength, greatest faith in myself, greatest love for myself. I come home to a quiet apartment - an apartment I keep wanting to fill with people. I think I might have to have a party there before I'm gone. But an apartment in which I am by myself. So many people do this all their lives: live alone, walk alone. I like my time alone to write, and I'm an introvert, but I also love my friends. I love laughter and life in my surroundings. Nonetheless, these few days here already have me thinking on deeper levels of what it means to be "alone".

I imagine that I am always alone on this road called life, surrounded by people on their roads, and that we call each other closer and share our walks from time to time as we continue down our parallel roads. But, this journey is mine alone. And it is what I make of it. And I have a beautiful life. I've been able to reconnect with some old friends, and to meet some new ones. We do the cellphone dance of calling each other for our numbers. We sit out by the Parque Duarte, Parque Colon and watch the thunderstorms roll in over the city. I am lucky: I've had the opportunity to make friends in many, many places. And even though I'm not so good at staying in touch, I love them and am always so happy to see them when I do.

It's incredible to be here again. I tried to pay for a mango with a 20 peso bill, not knowing that 20 peso bills are out of circulation. Last night I went with a crew of folks down to the Malecon; the area where all the chimichurri trucks used to circle up is now a `park' with formalized seating areas. There's one restaurant that rents out toy monster trucks for children. It's something to see groups of 4 and 5 year olds driving toy trucks around as the adults sit in the night air enjoying their beers. There's a karaoke bar, which is currently all the rage. Then late at night I went with E. down to a sonero's bar where we listened to son and watched videos on the big screen and enjoyed each others' company.

I'v spent the past few days in El Conde, in my "office" from where I am currently writing. It's a restaurant with wifi. I come here, order my coffee, and then lunch, and go online and work on stuff. I stare out the glass windows at the passerby. Mostly tourists and working Dominicans. School children. Some hustlers, but they generally wait for twilight. I'm enjoying people watching. My apartment is here in the center of the city. It's actually downhill from the old city cemetery, where some of the first graves from the island are located (some as old as 400 something years old). I try not to think about that too much. For those who know me, you know why. But just one block down from my apartment is the Malecon - the ocean front stroll. I try to go there once a day. Just like I try to eat mangoes as often as possible.

My friends started sharing their stories of the earthquake. I saw a t-shirt: "Haiti, tu dolor es mi dolor." That's how I feel. One friend is going to Haiti next week. I'm trying to decide whether to go with him. I want to see people. To hold them and hug them and see them in the flesh and know they are alive. All it takes is courage on my part. I'm trying to find the courage and selflessness to go. The earthquake's fault line went down to Pedernales, to the Lago Enriquillo; the waves rose up. The villages emptied as they watched the ocean retreat. I'm hearing stories, listening, witnessing, holding.

I'm present to my own road, to the greater road, right now. Knowing that even alone, my life is anything but that. Knowing that happiness is simple. Knowing that we breathe together, even as we breathe apart.

2010-03-21T20:49:00.000-07:00

The Tour Guide in Ramble-Ations

The weather's been amazing. Well, I've been in San Francisco this past week for D'Lo's show Ramble-Ations. It was amazing. He especially killed it on Friday night when the audience's energy was SUPER high. If you're in the Bay Area for the next couple of weeks, you should definitely stop by Brava Theatre and check it out. And I'm not just saying that because I think D'Lo is fucking incredible, but because the piece is fucking incredible.

Ramble-ations characters include: Amma - the Sri Lankan mother who's up to date not just on the latest lesbians, but also the latest beats; Vanathee - the superficial, self-absorbed diva who mourns her "best friend's" death (hint: they weren't really best friends); grandfather Ghandi-G who waxes on the nature of violence while drinking himself under the table; and Nic - the sensitive butch who makes sure that not only she neat, but so is the theatre. Then there are the video clips narrating the Tour Guide D'Lo's life and chillin with Amma at the house. D'Lo's particular brilliances lie in the ways he mixes the deep honesty of profound pain of loss and trauma with the humour of recognition. All in a body that holds an amazing physicality and control. I never thought I'd be laughing at watching a character stumble across the stage as he ingratiates himself to history and the "nature" of colonization.

The end of my spring break (I'm supposed to be finishing a paper as I speak, eh-hem, blog) was only topped by the two art shows bracketing my trip to San Francisco. I went to see El Anatsui's (Ghana, 1944) work at the Shainman Gallery in Chelsea. His work is so beautiful, not only in its textured layers, but in his exquisite choice of colors,the way he makes fabric out of cans and bottle caps, and how he transforms walls (lands?/scapes?) through his interior visions.

detail

I've known of his work for a few years, but had never had a chance to see it in person. So, when I saw it listed, I ran down to the gallery and allowed myself to be surrounded by the shimmering gold and silver "fabrics" of his work.

Then today, on my way back to New Haven, I stopped by the MOMA to see the Marina Abramovic retrospective. Again - GO. If you can, go and give yourself several hours. Marina Abramovic (Yugoslavia, b. 1945) has been at the forefront of performance art for the past several decades. She is famously known for her collaborations with Ulay, and the nature of her work: they are pieces that test the very limits of human endurance. She's lost consciousness with several of her performances from such factors as smoke inhalation, or from exchanging breath with Ulay for 14 minutes without cessation (Breathing In/Breathing Out). I was struck by the profound trust that the two artists had with each other, and I cried as I watched them meet for the last time on the Great Wall of China - to bid each other goodbye.

film still from Light/Dark in which the artists slap each other for 8 minutes

It was amazing to see the videos of her work, and also to be present to the "re-performances" of her work, in particular, Luminosity; Relation in Time; Nude with Skeleton; and Imponderabilia. Luminosity struck a particular chord with me. The accompanying text quotes Abramovic stating that the piece is about connection with the audience (a woman is standing over a bicycle seat in mid air, her arms poised at opposite ends of the clock); for her, "The spirit does not burn in any condition." The young woman performing that piece had huge eyes, and she seemed almost joyful, despite what I could only imagine as incredible pain. She was glowing, a glow bigger than the light fixed on her.

And then, there was the special moment of watching Abramovic in the flesh. She's performing a piece, "The Artist is Present" in which she sits in a chair during the entire exhibit. Viewers/visitors are invited to sit opposite her. There is a live web cam trained on the table for the entire duration of the sit. It's a re-performance of the piece when performed with Ulay in various locations around the world. Only, in his place are the museum visitors. I didn't have time to sit in line - a visitor can sit for as long as they feel is appropriate, but I appreciated seeing everyone else do so. I especially appreciated seeing her. She's so incredibly beautiful, and her level of concentration is awe-inspiring.

2010-02-09T11:57:00.000-08:00

I'm reading about performance and remains for a class. How to engage performance given its proclivity for disappearance. There is a supposition that time and space continue forward in a linear trajectory. How about the ever present palimpsest of overlapping spaces/times/material beings as a possibility?

I remember raulsalinas and Oloye speaking of how space requires witness. How engaging with other human beings is about transforming space by the fact of occupying it, moving its energy, filling it, giving it meaning. That once the space has contained the actions of its inhabitants, traces linger in the air, become part of the materia prima for the past and the future. In other words: that space will always contain what was in it, and so the past is reconstructed. And so is the future.

So, anxieties about disappearances are far from where I stand. In fact, I'm watching those anxieties from over here, wondering why they're visiting the minds of others. And then I think: well, genocide is a good reason to be anxious about disappearance. So is death in general. Then I think about transformation - the notion of transformation - the understanding of energy and matter as inherently in flux that requires a reframing of space, time and perception. So when M Nourbese Phillips (she is actually only the ship that carries the story) undoes time and space in Zong! and takes us all down into the refracted light of water, we understand that words are not just signifiers of matter itself, but actually generate it [Incantations].

All this aside, for this class we've had to consider the work of Sophie Calle within this conversation about performances and their remains. I first came across her work when I was constructing the conceptual framework for The Landlines Project. How she photographed eruvim in the Jewish settlements of the West Bank. Then I went on to discover her other projects/pieces/performances (project = bound; pieces = fractured; performances = audience + time + ...), The Sleepers, The Address Book, The Hotel, Sweet Venitienne... Sophie Calle is, essentially, a stalker of remains, traces, of moving bodies in space and time. Today, I am in conversation with her work in another way. Let me explain.

For some reason, I attract stalkers, people who obsess over whoever/whatever they think I am to them. I am not who they imagine, but that is besides the point. I don't think this is an arrogant claim. I've had over five stalkers in my life. I've had restraining orders issued to two of them. The others were just unstable. One of them I met before I made a six-month trip overseas. We were "dating" right before I left, but let's just say it was not that...eh hem...serious. I leave, I come back. She calls, asks to get together for brunch. That she has something for me. Perhaps I should have said no. After all, I wasn't looking to continue what had been started. But I didn't. I agreed to brunch.

And when I arrived, there it was innocently wrapped up in natural tissue paper. There were three silver rings along one edge. And the cover had a world map on it. How cheesy, I thought. But, I merely smiled and said, "You shouldn't have." I was going to leave it at that, thinking the pages were empty. And feeling more tender about the cover considering how unexpectedly thoughtful she was being: this was an album for me to fill with photos from my journey. But just as I went to put it away, she insisted, "Open it. Look inside."

And I did.

The contemporary me would get up from the table at this point and run out as fast as possible. But the 20 year old me was concerned about other peoples' feelings. Even when those feelings were so completely distorted that there was no semblance of sanity within them. So, I looked through the "album".

"Wow. What is this?"

"I took photos of myself for every day you were gone. On your birthday, I tried to commit suicide, and so I took a photo of my arm."

And indeed she had. There was the proof: a 2x2 inch polaroid image of a long red splice down the neat, pale skin of her inner forearm. I couldn't handle anymore.

"I have to go. Thank you so much for this book."

I kept my face free of expression, not wanting to incite any psychotic responses. I paid for my brunch and excused myself with a white lie about having to be somewhere else (umm, my best friend's house). I took the album with me. I left and did not look back.

I have often wondered why I did that. Why I accepted this album, those photos. Why I held onto it for two years. Maybe part of it was a fascination of the performance this woman had engaged in over a period of six months. Or maybe, I wanted material for jokes a la Cruela. Maybe part of it was wanting to understand how or why someone would use me as a vehicle for their obsessions (by using themselves as a vehicle to obsess about my absence). But, for reasons beyond my comprehension, I kept it. For two whole years.

Finally, one day on a late summer afternoon two years post-brunch, when I had tired of having the object in my possession, I tore out all the pages and threw them into the sink. I felt nauseous as the photographs of her filled the space in front of me, no longer bound by two covers (which I also threw in). I poured lighter fluid over them and lit everything on fire. The kitchen filled with blue and green smoke from all the burning Polaroids. I thought, "That was dumb. I should have burned them in a trash can outside." But it was too late. The remains lined the kitchen sink. The cabinets were black with smoke. The photographs, every last one of them, were gone.

Perhaps this was my own sort of performance. A marking of the unmarked. A reclaiming of myself by eliminating that which marked my absence. I wondered for a moment if I had done the right thing by burning those photographs. I would never be able to look at them again. And yet, the fact of their departure meant that the traces of their existence had somehow been embedded in my memory - as fractures, as colors, as charred remains. I walked away from the kitchen and sat down in the living room to think about what I had done.

When my roommate came home, she asked me what happened. All I could say was,

"I was cleaning."

2009-10-29T22:11:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I think I horrify younger, aspiring organizers.

I have often found myself standing in front of younger organizers from very privileged backgrounds, similar though distinct from my own, who are trying really hard to do the right things in the right way. I feel like some mean old witch of the west when I open my mouth. Like I'm going to really burst their bubbles.

"Yeah, before a core group of bad ass immigrant rights organizers laid it on hard, unions were notorious for their racism. Did I say, were?"

"If you want to truly understand yourself as an organizer in this country - and you're from the northeast, go to the midwest, move to the south and then - if you can survive all of that as a yankee, then go to california."

"Boston is the most segregated city in America."

"Unions are amazing, AND why did my friend who dedicated hella years of her life to being a union organizer then get dropped by the union when she asked for domestic partner health benefits for her partner who was diagnosed with cancer?"

"I prefer southern racism to northeastern liberalism."

The young babes stare at me, their mouths agape. I feel horrible. Like I've dropped cold water on a hot plate and it's just jumping back all over the place. It's not that I'm being a grump, really it's not. It's just that...well, it's complicated. It's wrong to go into organizing thinking that things are simple. They're not. They are messy. I'm thinking about messiness as an organizing principle. Being willing to deal with the mess. How do we reconcile these histories of disenfranchisement? of selling out the ones who threaten what little we hold onto? How do we enter spaces of practice without the arrogance that is SO characteristic of the northeast that it's a stereotype?

And it's not that I'm burnt. I mean, I am. I was burnt years ago on the whole model of organizing that guides most efforts in this country (read: Alinsky. read: suck the marrow out of the young. read: models that are not sustainable for the long haul). AND, I still think collective action is the most powerful tool we have.

I came into organizing in the northeast, was disturbed by the west and found home in the south. Go figure. It's not that I'm okay with segregation, but I don't like being around racist people. So, if it means that I live with people who hold similar values, yay. I don't like that Texas has five police forces, but I love Texas. I do. I love that Texas is a state of people of color, and even though we do not yet hold all the strings, we are fierce and present and strong, and change is deep and felt when it happens. Take Fuerza Unida as just one example.

The poor babes. I went on a diatribe tonight, about 40 minutes I think, about Texas. I'd had two glasses of Shiraz. It wasn't pretty. The two 20 something union organizers were flabbergasted when I suggested that unions are not the only, nor primary, structure to serve communities of color. And they were equally flabbergasted with my assertion that the northeast is more segregated than the south. Oh, and that unions have a history of anti-LGBT politics. oops.

Layer onto all of this the irony that earlier in the evening, I had been sitting downstairs looking for the gays - I found the theatre party instead, which by the way was full of gays - but I digress...

I was sitting at the bar down stairs looking for the gays. I see two black women with dreds at the counter. I think, maybe? But I watch, listen, observe. No. They are not gay. At all. In fact, they are with the two men on either side of them. Pedro Martinez comes on the screen. The Yankees are playing the Phillies. I text JM as a moment of irony, since she's a die hard Mets fan and actually almost stopped talking to me when she found out I like the Yankees (watching the yankees! thinking of you. lol. just kidding. love you. xo) One of the women goes, "Now where is he from?" Cause, of course, Pedro is sporting the jerry curls (can someone get it out on the APB that even though the 80s came and went and came and went and came and g-d why don't they just GO, jerry curls were ALWAYS a bad a idea???!!), and he sticks out as strictly not...i'm letting you complete this sentence.

So, I assume her partner says, "D.R." cause next thing you know the woman is talking about the D.R.

"D.R.? I've been there. You can buy any girl you want there."

I can't hear the men. Only the women.

"Me, no I wouldn't buy a man, but I'd sure have sex with one if someone else bought him."

Really? Really?

Really?

So, I just watch, listen, think about the fact that we're in The Study - this upscale hotel with an upscale pretense of a bar in the middle of New Haven on a Thursday night and really I'm just looking for the gays when I know they are down the street at the working class bar called Partners where I've hung out every time I go straight crazy, and listening to two black women talk about how they would sleep with a bought ANYTHING.

I'm not against sex work. Really, truly I'm not. I just think it's intense how casual it can be to talk about buying anyone. And how flesh is once again reduced to sex.

Wha-what?!!

So, I watch the rest of the baseball game, actually enjoying it, and then infiltrate the Yale Rep after party. I feel at home in the midst of all the theatre folks. I am at home. After my brief "What the fuck am I doing in a PhD in Anthro?" moment, cured by the satay and the first glass of Shiraz, I actually start a conversation with one of the theatre folk and have a blast. I could almost believe that I had found the gays, since so many of the theatre folk were of that inclination. Alas.

And then, it's over. And I start heading out the door. And then I see them: the non-theatre gays. They are really there. Turns out, they were in the PENTHOUSE. Of course. How could I have made such a mistake?

So I head upstairs with AL, who has agreed to join me in my debut entrance to Yale gay anything. And there they are. The doors to the Penthouse open, the view is stunning and the room is full of...boys. And then I see them.

And I proceed to horrify them over my second glass of Shiraz. And then say goodnight.

I stumble home across New Haven streets up to my apartment where I text AL. She had to leave for the sake of homework. I stayed, talking about something. Feeling old. Like some drunken organizing veteran sharing war stories.

I think next time, I'll just stick with the theatre gays. Leave the Penthouse organizers to their own conversation. Oh, and talk about something else.

2009-10-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

A music video by our girl Bessie Smith (1929). Who says MTV broke new frontiers?

2009-09-12T22:56:00.000-07:00

What do Victorian undergarments, Yemanya and Spaceships have in common?

Everything if you are in Atlantis. Halfway through the performances and music, I realized that I was witnessing Atlantis come rise up to the surface: music and the Zulu Nation, Afrika Bambaata playing witness to the Aleijuan violin syncopating blue red Bjork lights. The Shape Shifters Specimen Monstah Black, Yozmit reigning on the stage as dj lynnee denise and sabin blaizin parted waters the trailing voices of imani uzuri, karma and hanifah carrying us all across the depths.

I love house music. And I love art. I love the Monstah coming out, his spaceship carrying him through the depths dancing with jellyfish trailing up to the surface to greet us with his shark jaws. I love the freedom of black brown beautiful bodies emerging from their victorian tresses, and the shaking of starlight and star dust onto the surface of our mother earth.

Axe to the ascendent Atlantis supah stars who brought us home tonight.

2009-08-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

I think, in my mind, I have officially become an adopted Tejana. Meaning, the bad-ass folks in Texas have brought me over to the other side of the Texas-US border and I really love it in nepantla land. I really do. Sure, I was only in Texas for three years, but they were a meaningful three years. I'm going back. I decided that's where home is.

For those who know me, this is quite a HUMONGOUS statement. The fact that I call anyplace, geographical place, home, is first of all unprecedented. That, combined with the fact that it's Texas, and not some big city...well, yes, I admit: I'm a country girl. I am. I like being surrounded by trees and creeks and hills and stars and cows. I like slow traffic when I'm not in a rush. And I like that people ride their horses to the 7-11 and that everyone says HELLO when they see you.

I'm in New Haven now. That's right. New Haven, Connecticut. I'm supposed to be here for three or five years or something like that. Getting my PhD at Yale. That part's exciting, at least. Though after picking up my course readings for my intro classes (Rosseau, Durkheim, etc), I realized that a little Vinnie Deloria was in order first. And thank G-D I have classes in such topics as Black feminism, Queer Ethnographies, etc...add a little seasoning to the cardboard (how can Durkheim still be relevant in 2009??!!!! anyways... I won't write the guy off completely. after all, I still have to read it).

I've had a weird day today. I even posted that as my status on facebook. It started off with a brass sky at 7am - I've only ever seen that color sky in Samira Abbassy's paintings. I think it was dust from the harmattan carried over by the hurricane whose fingers just gently swept past us. It was such an odd color, a color I've rarely seen that I woke up from a deep dream and stared, then freaked out about not having any stores of water therefore jumping out of bed, filling my biggest pot with water, and then nodding off again only waking two hours later to a bright white light coming through my window. The sky was blue. I stumbled into the kitchen and stared blankly at the pot of water, pouring some into a smaller pot to make coffee.

kts has asked me to write a poem for her opera. I'm not sure she'll use any of what I create - which is always a risk in creative collaborations - but I decided to give it a go today. So, I sat down, water boiling on the stove, and began reading through the heart sutra....

gone, gone
gone beyond
gone completely beyond
Praise to awakening

This is one translation of the sanskrit (transliterated below):

gate, gate paaragate paarasamgate bodhi svaaha

I was captivated, but me being me, I had to first play with the sound of the text before actually uncovering its meaning through the vehicle of poetry. It was fun. I came up with a gangsta version of Deus and Boddhi sattva coming to terms with each other, using only sounds from the sanskrit transliteration of the heart sutra and latin version of the Gloria...

Deus et Boddhisattva rasa ruupam

Et skandhaah! Sambodim tad Deus in terra “Boddhisattvas cum yathaa magnum!” Samskaaram, sama duhkha. Deus tollis, “Laudamus! Boddhisattva –yaa iha nobis terra filius te cittaavarana. Yaa gate samjnaate naandyaa. Pax yaa un gratius Altissiumus et gandha! Na. Amen. ‘ Boddhisattva, cakshuh satyam "Evem eva omnipotens, sma dharmaah Deus. Pax." et Gloria, Agnus, Shaari – et propter miserere. Peccata miserere.

You have to read it aloud to understand any of it. And yeah - it's gangsta and COMPLETELY sacreligious. I'm just warning you.

So, I spent three delicious hours writing poems, ideas for poems, concepts, uncovering my own heart and its truth, its attachments, its yearning. I came up with several silly poems, and then a couple that might actually be worth something when I'm done with them. It was only after this that I looked at the Gloria...realizing that if I'm to write about the Blessed Mother Buddha/Earth I must also write about Pater noster...omnipotens.

Oi vey.

In this raw state, I decided to put down the pen and call the truck rental company I used to drive from Austin to New Haven. New Haven is actually VERY gangsta. The Budget truck company tried to swindle me for having the truck towed from their property...and then charged me a gas/key replacement fee AFTER I turned in the key. Long story short, I had to get on the phone and the woman on the other end of the line was totally RUDE. This poor poet, in a raw and vulnerable state, couldn't hack it. I just had to ask her, "Are you having a bad day?"

If that wasn't enough, the previous resident from my current apartment showed up asking me - no wait - telling me to take care of her mail...so WEIRD. And then, I left the apartment. I won't go into details. It was bizarre. Some guy in the store making shady deals with his landlord

"Look, I need to take a shower. You need to turn the hot water back on. I have a wedding at 4pm."

and then

"I know, but I don't have time for this. What do you need?"

"Okay, 6 bags of cement. I can find that. 6 bags cement and you'll turn my hot water back on? Fine. It's a deal."

WHAT?!!!

At least, I hope, everybody in that deal's gonna be happy and nobody gets hurt, right?

Well, I decided that I needed to chill out - avoid any further business kinda interactions. My vulnerable poet self was not feeling up to people. So, I went home, packed up a picnic and a couple of books and went to the New Haven Green for the Jazz Festival. Does Austin have a Jazz Festival? Well, it looks like one's in the planning stages...but the one today, here in New Haven, was great. Shawn Monteiro was singing when I got there - she has a voice rich and deep like Nina Simone's. It was pure joy to sit on the grass and listen to her. She sang some beautiful songs. Even made the breeze pick up.

And it stayed good - Hamiett Bluiett played - and he's a light that just bounces all over the stage. He was dressed all in white, moving here and there, talking with musicians, playing in this mic and that one. He was a lot of fun to watch. I read Alexis De Veaux's "The Tapestry" while the groups were on break. And then the night closed out with Bobby Sanabria...THAT was awesome.

Bobby opens up with a prayer to Yemanya and enter audience right none other than Yemanya herself - a big, Mandinga queen wrapped in a white sheet dancing to Yemanya in front of all the stupified New Haven crowd. S/he just tore it up, shimmying shoulders, greeting the children - oh s/he was so BEAUTIFUL to watch. I was sad when the police chased Yemanya out of the park - just reminded me our kind is not always welcome, that our genderqueer black bodies are constantly under surveillance. S/he was dancing so beautifully, and unexpectedly. I tried to rationalize it all by praying for the child's safety. And then Bobbie brought out Ogun with a full percussive jazz rendition of Olu Talade. If that wasn't enough and the incredible, legendary percussionist Candido - who is 88 years old, walked out with a cane and then played like he was 15.

I left with when the band was playing a traditional merengue and danced back to my apartment - happy to be alive, and feeling a whole lot better about the day. Now I'm here - ready to write another poem, to settle into the night.

2009-07-26T18:20:00.000-07:00

Wow. It's been ages since I've posted. I haven't really had time. That's always arguable, but really: in my case, it's true. I've been swamped with work. Part of it has been my choice to spend an hour in the garden versus an hour in front of the computer, blogging. I love gardening. I love the garden here at Alma de Mujer Center for Social Change.

And speaking of change...my life is about to become something I can't even imagine. I got into a PhD program at Yale University up in New England. It seems I have some New England karma to resolve. I'm bracing myself for the cold, but also making plans to migrate South for days, weeks, months at a time. February is such a short month, I may sneeze and watch it pass. But on the up and up, I'm getting excited.

Two weeks left working here at Alma de Mujer. Just two weeks. And I leave Austin on August 12th. AAH!! I can't believe it. It finally hit me yesterday. I started packing today, starting with the books, of course. It was wild to pass my hand over books I haven't looked at in years. It seems that I always go back to the old favorites when I'm in need of comfort these days. I dusted off the cover of Petals of Blood and then ceremoniously placed it inside a brown box put together just for this purpose. I did the same with the other several hundred issues.

And then, I was tired. So I came out to the land and danced for a little bit, watered the garden and then sat outside to enjoy the sunset.

New Haven, what secret spots will you offer in the dead cold of winter? Will your leaves grace my cheek in the Fall? Will my heart jump with the joy of flowers in the Spring? Can you beat a daily summer high of 108 degrees, like my new found home of Austin?

Austin...I will miss Austin. We've had a drought for two years, but I remember when there was water in the river and Flower & I would go in the afternoon and swim in its currents. I've recently discovered kayaking. I'm going tomorrow. It's awesome. And then, there are the breakfast tacos. And the Red House happy hours. Austin has given me theatre. And amazing friends. Amazing people in general. I'm going to miss it.

2009-07-05T12:17:00.000-07:00

Save the date, pass the word:

THE MAJESTIC

Saturday July 18, 2009 - 8pm

at the historic Victory Grill

1104 E. 11th Street, Austin, TX

$20.00 (includes after-party)

a play about house music, that is:

dancing and loving as though your life depends on it

love groove magic

THE MAJESTIC

Written by Ana-Maurine Lara
Co-directed by Matt Richardson & Ana-Maurine Lara

Featuring:

Dino Foxx as Mother Majestic

Her Children:

Saray Rosales as Parker
Wura-Natasha Ogunji as Essex
Alix Chapman as Ms Opal
KT Shorb as Flash Gorgeous

Liz Westbrook & Mel Cofer as Thugs

and, of course

DJ Lynnee Denise as The DJ
http://www.myspace.com/djlynneedenise

Meta(physical) production by Sheree Ross. Choreography by Annelize Machado. Dramaturgy by Jennifer Margulies & Surabhi Kukke. Costume Design by Senalka McDonald.

With thanks to ALLGO for their support.

For more information, contact the artist at zorashorse_at_yahoo_dot_com

2009-03-30T08:04:00.000-07:00

From the website about the film "Sugar Babies".

It is estimated that there are 280,000 ethnic Haitians living in the Dominican Republic with no form of identification. (United States Agency for International Development)
*

It is estimated that 30,000 Haitians illegally enter the Dominican Republic each year to work in the sugar industry, facilitated by the Dominican government. These live in migrant labor camps called bateys under “horrifying” conditions. (Miami Herald)
*

Currently, there are 400 bateys (migrant labor camps) in the Dominican Republic. (Amnesty International)
*

Sixteen percent of the bateys registered in the State Sugar Council do not receive any type of medical assistance. (The United Nations Development Programme)
*

Only seven percent of registered bateys have a dispensary or rural clinic. (The United Nations Development Programme)
*

Children in one third of the bateys lack access to education. (The United Nations Development Programme)
*

One third of batey inhabitants do not know how to read or write. (The United Nations Development Programme)
*

Two thirds of batey inhabitants lack access to a water filtration system and direct access to a river. (The United Nations Development Programme)
*

In the batey, the pay – instead of salary – is…insufficient to provide even one dignified meal per day, and children many times must eat the very cane cut by their parents in the sugar cane fields. Their undocumented state renders them unable to leave the batey territory, the only place where…Dominican immigration authorities do not enter to check on immigration status, nor threaten batey residents with deportation. (Miami Herald)
*

An immigration law passed in 2004 – and later upheld by the Dominican Republic’s Supreme Court – denies citizenship to children of Haitian migrants by forcing parents to fulfill a considerable number of nearly impossible requirements. (Amnesty International)
*

The lack of identity documents – leaves the children socially immobile and unable to gain access to education, unless it’s to the severely limited batey schools where studies beyond a fourth grade level are practically non-existent. (Miami Herald)
*

In the last ten years, the Dominican government has expelled tens of thousands of Haitians and dark-skinned Dominicans thought to be ethnically Haitian, rounding up in the bateys and on the streets (Amnesty International)
*

Two out of every three spoonfuls of sugar consumed in the United States was produced by the Fanjul Group, which is the majority shareholder of Domino Sugar.

2009-01-21T21:43:00.000-08:00

Note: This is the correct version. Peace.

Praise Song for the Day

A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration

Elizabeth Alexander

Each day we go about our business,

walking past each other, catching each other’s

eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is

noise and bramble, thorn and din, each

one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning

a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,

repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,

with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,

with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky.

A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words

spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,

words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark

the will of some one and then others, who said

I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.

We need to find a place where we are safe.

We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.

Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,

who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built

brick by brick the glittering edifices

they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.

Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,

the figuring-it- out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,

others by first do no harm or take no more

than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,

love that casts a widening pool of light,

love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,

any thing can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

Copyright © 2009 by Elizabeth Alexander. All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. A chapbook edition of Praise Song for the Day will be published on February 6, 2009.

2009-01-15T11:04:00.000-08:00

I feel sometimes that my blog has become a running obituary. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Jorge Macchi, for example, used the obituary pages from the Buenos Aires newspaper to construct a city of paper in which stars and crosses were all that remained. And loss is part of life. It’s all that strange ying/yang cycle of creation. But I am surprised by how easy it is for me to not visit this place, to forget to chronicle life’s thoughts – I’ve been so busy. I never thought I’d hear myself say that.

In any case, I’m going to stop beating around the drum. I’m very sad about the death of Ana Sisnett, tocaya, artista, poeta, activista, elder, grandmother, drummer, Scorpio.

She was to be featured in the Austin Salon this past November, but was ill. We drummed for her instead. She’s been fighting ovarian cancer since 2006, when she was diagnosed. Like most artists, she was uninsured, and like most artists, was at the mercy of her community’s goodwill. Luckily, the City of Austin provided good services for her and her community has loved her very much.

My friend K.M. first told me about Ana, and that I should meet her. That she too is an Afro-Latina artist and writer. S.B. showed me a painting she had done of two mermaids. When I was first in Austin in Spring 2006, there was a poetry reading and fundraiser for her, but I didn’t get to go. And so it was that I met her in the Fall of 2006. We met at Chango’s and had tacos together and learned about each other’s work and history. At a fundraiser for Ana later that Fall, I first heard Lourdes Perez – an extraordinary Boricua folk singer with a long history in Austin and I first saw how much Ana is dearly loved. She started freenet – an organization devoted to providing access to technology to low-income people. She believed, deeply, in the power that art has to give life. Not to save it but to give it. Her paintings and poetry alike are bright collages of color and flavors, of energy coming together in a dance of memory, place, love and body. Ana was an elder. She always made a point of showing me her daughter and her granddaughter’s paintings, of listening to their music, of understanding the importance of the generations.

When we first met, we laughed about being tocaya – connected by name, and thus by spirit. I recall how many times, J.M. has told me she was sending me a text that ended up going to Ana Sisnett instead or vice versa. That is the tocaya essence – it is easy to be confused.

Last Saturday, as I stood next to her, I said Tocaya loudly, whispered into her ear, “I love you, Ana.” and kissed her goodbye. In that moment, I realized that I was also saying goodbye to all the women ancestors in my own family with whom I did not have that opportunity. And that soon, Ana would be joining them, and maybe, just maybe she could carry some of that love to them, too. Here is a poem for Ana.

Tun-tun

Baila the rhythms of Panama and Barbados

Tun-tun

Caribbean salsa dancing in your bones

Tun-tun

as smoothly as mainland heat

taka-ta

as easily as sweet plantain

ta-ta tata ta-ta

and rice and peace

Tun-tun

Baila the rhythms of paint on canvas

Tun-tun

of pen on paper

Ta-

of hand on drum

Ta-ta

of laughter and a raised eyebrow

Tun-tun

step back, shake a shoulder

Takiti takata

shimmer and shine with that sexy groove

Tun-tun tuku-tun Tun-tun tuku-tan

Takiti Takiti ta

Tun-tun taka ta

Tun-tun tuku-tun

Takiti Takiti Takiti

Ta Ta Ta.

2008-12-29T16:21:00.001-08:00

Today was the last day of the Art Year. Wah. It was tough. I kind of lost steam in the last quarter of the year. I was sleeping through winter or something...but we made it. We made it this far.

xo

Penz, It's Pronounced Pants

2008-12-16T10:54:00.001-08:00

And I thought 40 degrees was cold. This j-setter puts me to shame!

2008-12-02T20:11:00.001-08:00

She Lived Alone as an Adult until she was 118, Passes at 120 Years of Age

By: Clara McLaughlin, The Florida Star, The Georgia Star Newspapers

Pearl Gartrell was born in Tillsdale, Georgia on April 1, 1888 as
one of the youngest of 15 children. She lived in Jacksonville,
Florida for almost seventy years. She died on Sunday, November 23,
2008.

The Baptist lady gave birth to eight children and has outlived all
but one of them. Yet, she refused to move to a facility for the
elderly and until two years ago, proved that she did not need anyone
to live with her. Actually, no one lived with her totally, but her
relatives would alternate their time with her even though her great
granddaughter, Doris King, spent much of her time with her trying to
make sure things went as her great grandmother wanted them to go.

On Tuesday, November 11, Ms. Gartrell became ill and was taken to the
hospital. She was placed in Hospice care on November 13 and died on
November 23, 2003.

Ms. Gartrell did not have a copy of her birth certificate since she
was not born in a hospital. Her birth was recorded in a family
Bible. The Florida State ID card did not show the exact year of her
birth because the computer would not activate the year, 1888.
However, the Florida Department of Elder Affairs acknowledged that she
was perhaps the oldest person living in Florida until the time of her
death.

Ms. Gartrell was very careful about her food and did not like to eat
in restaurants because she could not be guaranteed that the workers
washed their hands.

The lady did have one habit that she would not give up - her can of
sweet snuff that she kept inside of her bottom lip. At 120 years of
age, she still had most of her own teeth.

Ms. Gartrell was not a person with sickness but she did have some
bouts of illness. In fact, the doctors thought she would surely die
in 1991 when she contracted pneumonia at the age of 103 and refused to
be hospitalized. She did not like to take medication so when such was
prescribed, she would hide it under her mattress. Family members
learned to watch her closely when medicine was prescribed for her, to
make sure she followed orders.

Ms. Gartrell broke her hip and cracked her pelvis in 1998. Once her
surgery was completed and the pin in her hip had been installed, she
insisted upon going home, and she did. Within months, she was walking
again.

Pearl Gartrell raised her great granddaughter, Lolitha Hill and some
of the other relatives. When she talked about her younger days, she
talked of her mother, who was a midwife, and worked for the town's
white doctor, of their deep-cooking fireplace and the time her mother
covered the faces of all of the children with black soot and had them
to hide in the back of the fireplace when the KKK came. She also told
of the one-room school house that was attached to the Baptist church
in Tignall, Georgia, near Athens.

Pearl Gartrell married at the age of 14 but says she cannot remember
her husband's name. This memory loss may stem from the fact that her
father, brother and husband were killed in her small Georgia town.
What she also remembers of her younger days was when she was forced
to be submissive and gave birth to two children by a white man in that
town. But, she did not harbor hate, even though she was still very
shy when it came to white people.

Ms. Gartrell was filled with wisdom and love. She kept strong
belief in God and even though she had cataracts, she always wanted the
paper, and always wanted The Florida Star, from its first days.

Pearl Gartrell not only raised her children, she helped with the
others that came along and remained a God fearing woman. Of her eight
children, one died at birth, three died of heart attacks, two had
cancer, one son was murdered and found in the St. Johns River and Tom
Gartrell still lives in Jacksonville in a nursing facility.

Mrs. King and Mrs. Hill said their great grandmother was the
foundation of their family, all the days of her life, and they are
eternally grateful. She will truly be missed.

Funeral arrangements for Ms. Gartrell has been handled by Sarah
Carter Funeral Home and services will be held at 11:00 a.m., Saturday,
November 29 at The Worship Place located at 2627 Spring Glen Road,
Jacksonville.

Contact: Clara McLaughlin, (904) 766-8834, P. O. Box 40629,
Jacksonville, FL 32203

2008-11-09T14:32:00.001-08:00

2008-10-23T08:16:00.001-07:00

2008-10-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

Layers upon layers upon layers. And yes, we're all connected.

2008-09-24T20:04:00.000-07:00

And here's your one stop shop for getting in touch with your representatives and letting them know how you feel.

http://www3.capwiz.com/c-span/

2008-09-21T10:04:00.001-07:00

A 24 hour day in the life of zorashorse:

7am: go to supermarket and buy cabbage for that salad that R.T. likes
8am: package herbs and label for herbology class
9am - 1pm: herbology class on concept, health and methodology
1pm: run home
2 - 5pm: Austin Salon featuring Samiya Bashir
5pm: run home again
6pm: use third-world sensibilities to sense myself to a fundraiser for Resistencia; after finding the house, enjoy conversation and good music.
8pm: girlfriend tugs sleeve "it's getting late."; head out to neighboring town for A.J.'s Birthday party
9.30pm: talk about art and activism with friends and make connections that will probably change our lives forever
12midnight: almost win at dominoes and end up losing by 10 points when W.O. locks the game
12.30am: girlfriend tugs at sleeve - "Don't you have to go and pack?"
1.15am: get home and crawl upstairs to whine about packing.
2am: finish packing, and watch half an episode of the most recent TV (internet) addiction. Fall asleep at 3am with hand on mouse.
5.45am: Wake up and move around in some semblance of wakefulness.
6.15am: Go through airport security, run into friend, have a mumbled half-asleep conversation, fall into chair and wait to be called onto plane.
7am: up in the friendly skies, a day closer to the equinox

2008-08-27T17:32:00.000-07:00

2008-08-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

WHA-WHAT!! We won - Stamp Lab won this year's ArtSpark Theatre Festival competition. Phew.

It was quite a journey. We were given a work of visual art and a music composition from two artists, and were given 12 weeks to write, produce and direct a new play/performance. After the first performance and talk back, we were given two weeks to completely change the play and do it again.

I learned a ton. And then, last night, we won! We couldn't have done it without the love and support of our community, without the amazing staff at HBMG Foundation, without the volunteers who showed up and helped us pull it all off. And without love, which is really the foundation for it all.

From L to R, back to front: Wura-Natasha Ogunji, me (Ana-Maurine Lara), Cheryl Coward, Sean Medley, Melissa Recalde, Mr. Wesley, Ashleigh N Stone, Florinda Bryant.

Check out our website: Stamplab.org to learn more. We're planning for some more stuff down the road.

Peace.

2008-08-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

Ego.

In psychoanalysis - Freudian - the instinctual or subconscious constitutes the "id"; the organised part of the psyche that reacts to the outside world is the "ego," and the critical and moralizing part - the thought police - is the "super-ego."

In the dictionary, ego also means: the “I” or self of any person; a person as thinking, feeling, and willing, and distinguishing itself from the selves of others and from objects of its thought. It also refers to egotism or conceit The ego is connected to our self-esteem and self-image, our feelings. In philosophy, the ego is the part of ourselves that is -a posteriori - aware of and knowledgeable about experiences.

When someone tells us something truthful we don't want to hear, most often our egos are getting bruised. It is up to us to determine how we handle truth. And to learn how to distinguish truth-telling from manipulation.

And then there is the ego that is based on a false sense of self-importance, on conceit, self-centeredness and selfishness. This particular kind of egotism, or ego, is so deeply entrenched in so many parts and pieces of our society and social structures, and yet I always find that I'm surprised by its appearance.

In my adult life, I've learned some key things about power, authority and ego.

1) Ego, and egotistical behavior, is often a result of self-doubt, self-loathing, insecurity and a history of trauma.
2) When people operate out of a place of ego, they're not able to see anything outside of themselves, and therefore are unavailable for constructive change, collaboration, etc.
3) True power is about how we walk day-to-day and treat the people around us. Kindness and love are two of our greatest personal powers.
4) People who are self-confident and self-loving, as well as clear about their desire to succeed and to walk with other successful people, generally work without egotistical behavior and are able and willing to listen to others, to take responsibility for their actions, to compromise on decisions without comprising their integrity and to learn from their mistakes.
5) English has many powerful words. But I think there are two specific phrases that can change the course of things in seconds: "I don't know." and "I'm sorry."
6) Egotistical behavior often leads to abuses of power in positions of authority.
7) The most visionary and radical uses of authority are often in the service of love for other people motivated by a deep belief in humanity and in self-love.

On the last point in particular, I am always inspired when I see this in the world around me. My favorite artists all work with the specificity of self-love, a deep humanity and love for a beautiful world. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about.

2008-08-04T11:58:00.000-07:00

Ugh - so here I am. It's August 4th. I haven't been on This Road in ages. At best, as sporadic as the rains have been this summer here in Austin. I can't say it's for any other reason than time and loss of it. I've been busy. It's been good. I've been gardening *yay* and also working on a play with the ArtSpark Theatre Festival. The first run was this past Saturday. It's called HUSH, and the team is called Stamp Lab. Check out our website and blog. It's pretty.

And, I've had my head in theatre for 10 weeks now! I had no idea it consumed so much time. Writing a novel is time consuming, but it's all on my time - not requiring collaboration and scheduling with others. I just choose a time, pick a seat in a quiet place in the world and write. Same with poetry - in fact, poetry is all about that dream state thing. Not so with theatre. No. Theatre is all about real time.

So, only two weeks left in the Festival. And then, I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. Oh yes - I know - go to my other writing. Of course!

I decided to take some classes at the Institute of American Indian Arts, too. Online courses. I'm really excited about that. One class - how cool is this - is all about storytelling through iconography. Oh the not so inner nerd is happy.

Penz is past it's halfway mark - if you can believe that! That means we're closer to the end of the year than the beginning. And, I know, I know - August is the 8th month after all - but still, I feel like I just started with my Penz. Really. It feels that way. I'm onto whole other ideas right now. It's just wow.

And speaking of other years, other ideas...I'm very excited for what 2009 is going to bring in terms of performance work. I'll be announcing some stuff later this year. I can hardly sit on it. But I will, for now. I need to know about the world before I say anything.

Peace.

2008-07-14T14:48:00.001-07:00

Cave Canem 2008 Photo

So many beautiful, amazing people. I can hardly stand it.

2008-06-29T14:03:00.001-07:00

I'm back from my second year at Cave Canem and as the Reverend White says, "My cup is full." I am cleaning house, though right now I can barely drag my tired, deliciously lived in body forward to do so. I am leaning left into the wind, and it has carried me from Greensburg, Pennsylvania - where I was just this morning - back West to Austin, Texas. My cup is full, I am ecstatic.

A body of people moving together in rhythm, hearts reaching for each other, through fear, through veils as Black Girl so aptly named this - this gauze that we place over our wounded hearts that keep us from seeing each other, holding each other - going so far as touching each other, literally. It is a beautiful thing when the gauze falls off, and we hold each other unpretentious and unafraid, completely aware of all that we have to lose and still willing to stand and demand love.

There are a hundred ways to take care of a body, to care for a soul. I am reminded of the balance between solitude and congregation.

The past several weeks, I have been so busy that even checking email was impossible - my communication limited to one or two sentences in response: yes, no - can I get back to you? It's a wonderful kind of busy, full of laughter and creativity, of visioning and activity. Kind of like my past week at CC. Writing a poem a day is a particular kind of focus. By Friday, I was drained. Didn't know if how when what I would do to string words into a coherent image/concept/poem. Poem? Poem...between pushing my own understanding of what constitutes a poem, to actually crafting something that reflects my voice within that entire conversation, adding content and form, I decided to rely on the subliminal state that arrives somewhere between 1 glass of wine and 5 a.m. in the morning: a state which creates a wonderfully high sensitivity to fears, which in turn, serves poetry.

I had fun. Read Tarot. Walked down creek before sunrise. Danced. Laughed. Had intense discussions about walls and starlight. Felt heart beats next to mine. Opened my eyes to Rachel Eliza Griffith's eyes. Breathed. Remembered. Played basketball...like a girl.

And now, I get to continue dipping into this crescendo. This year has just been like that, and I don't see why it should continue to be this way. It's wonderful. It's what I asked for. It's what's mine to do with as I wish. To command into my future. And the ever present present.

Peace.

2008-06-01T19:05:00.000-07:00

I can't say much, except to share this news. Wow - what a year of loss we've had.
I suppose that's what life is, right: birth and death. But still...every death
feels like a small part of me has died, too. Maybe that's what Buddha was getting at.

peace.

From: Patricia Smith (beloved friend)

Date: Fri, May 30, 2008

Place: Albuquerque, NM

Subject: Paula Gunn Allen

Paula Gunn Allen, b.1939, Laguna Pueblo/Sioux/Scots/Lebanese New Mexico native, passed away peacefully on the night of May 29, 2008 at her home in Fort Bragg, California, after a long and courageous battle with lung cancer. Family and friends were at her side.

This poet, philosopher, scholar, and teacher grew up in Cubero, New Mexico. She received her doctorate in American Studies from UNM in1976. The dissertation evolved into The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions(1986), a pioneering work in
Native American, feminist, and GLB studies. She also edited the benchmark book for the MLA about teaching Native Studies: Studies in American Indian Literature: Curriculum and Course Designs.

She was also a prolific writer of poems, fiction, essays; her last scholarly book, on Pocahontas, was a nominee for the National Book Award. She retired from UCLA in 1999, but always checked back into New Mexico, never stopped being a teacher and mentor, never stopped
cracking and appreciating outrageous jokes and bad puns. (The last one she and I shared, about 3 weeks ago, was "Well, you know what they say: What happens in the Zuni Mountains stays in the Zuni mountains"---Oh,my, her laugh. )

Her posthumous volume of poems, America The Beautiful, will be published by West End Press within the year.

2008-05-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, we just need beautiful music.

Thanks CC!! Props to you for this song.

2008-05-06T07:39:00.000-07:00

What happens when you're facing the person who pulled the trigger, pushed the button, relished in the moment after bombing? What happens when you see the expression on their face, one of joyous memory.

"The thing I miss most about being in the (U.S.) Army is the sky after a bombing. The color..."

and I finished,

"Yes, the color red. The way everything's in focus and there's dust in the air. And the light is red?"

I was thinking of times when I'd experienced bombings - like during the first Gulf War, or when I was in Lebanon when the U.S. was bombing back in 1998. The way the sky lit up a bright red from the dust. I was recollecting the fear, and the taste of fear: it's bitter, like sweat gone rancid. The smell of a bombing, too, is singed, bitter, like burnt coffee. But worse, cause it's followed by the taste of blood in your throat.

I looked up at her; she was reminiscing. A big smile on her face. The way the sky looks after a bombing. After she, or someone in her unit, had pushed a button, pulled a trigger. And I was not smiling, thinking of all the innocent people who'd been killed as she was coming out of the bunker, thankful to see the sky.

And there we were, facing each other.

2008-04-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

Unarmed people shot at, abused or killed by NYPD. Find the original at NYTimes.com

Eleanor Bumpers

Abner Louima

Antoine Reid

Amadou Diallo

Patrick Dorismond

Ousmane Zongo

Timothy Stansbury, Jr.

Sean Bell

And, thanks R.H. for adding writer Henry Dumas (age 33), shot and killed by NYC Transit Police in 1968, in a case of 'Mistaken Identity'.

2008-04-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

This happens to me sometimes. My worlds collide. I remember when I lived in Boston YEARS ago, one Saturday morning, I got on the T - the red line - to ride into town and five people from five different parts of my life were in the same car. I just rode the T all the way to South Station, got on a train and went to New York for the rest of the weekend. I was young, couldn't handle the collision. Needed the anonymity of the Big A.P.P.L.

But yesterday was different. I flew to Louisville for a one day meeting at the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which is doing AMAZING work in Kentucky and supporting incredible people doing AMAZING work. When I got in the car, who was there in the front seat but Lauren Austin - who I met a year ago to the day at the Atlantic Center for the Arts where she's the Community Artist in Residence. I was excited to see her, as meeting her was a turning point during my stay at the residency and it was joyful to learn about her work. My host (who happens to be cousins with my friend here in Austin, K.G. aka Trevor - yeah!! so excited to meet your incredible family) dropped me off at the lovely Columbine B & B. When I stepped in the door of this beautiful place, Rich takes one look at me and says, "Didn't you live in Jamaica Plain?" All the while, I'm trying to locate him and then we REALIZE we know each other from 10 years ago - when his partner was my supervisor (Hey Bob :)!!!

I about fell out. But then I didn't. Because I'm older now and these kinds of things just don't surprise me anymore. But they do move me. And it was wonderful to see people who I have been moved by, or who are close to people I love or who I have kind feelings for. It's awesome.

And, I got to meet new beautiful people, too - like Sue Massek of the Reel World String Band - who shared with me the joy of Paula Nelson's music and the fact of her great grandfather's banjo.

Life holds deep surprises sometimes. Who would have thought I'd be a Dominican American girl living in Texas, running into folks in Louisville, Kentucky.

It's beautiful, really.

2008-04-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

I can't believe almost a month has passed since I last posted. Time is flying this spring' the cardinals and herons are flying with it.

Aime Cesaire has passed. Last week, in fact. Here's a news clipping about it:

Aime Cesaire, voice of French Black pride, dies

Thu 17 Apr 2008, 13:18 GMT

By Astrid Wendlandt

PARIS (Reuters) - French Caribbean poet Aime Cesaire, founding father of the "negritude" movement that celebrated black consciousness, died in his native Martinique, France's Ministry of Culture said on Thursday.
Cesaire, 94, who was mayor of the island's main city Fort-de-France for more than half a century, was admitted to hospital last week suffering from heart and other problems.

His writings offered insight into how France imposed its culture on its citizens of different origins in the early part of the 20th Century. The theme still resonates in French politics today, as the country continues to struggle to integrate many of its residents of African and North African origin.

In 2005, Cesaire refused to meet then French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy (now French president) over concerns that Sarkozy's conservative UMP party had pushed for a law which proposed to recognise the positive legacy of French colonial rule. The law was eventually repealed.

Cesaire and African intellectual Leopold Senghor -- later president of Senegal -- founded "The Black Student" in 1934, a journal that encouraged people to develop black identity.

ANTI-COLONIAL VOICE IN THE 1960s

The Caribbean writer rose to fame with his "Notebook of a Return to the Native Land", written in the late 1930s, in which he says "my negritude is neither tower nor cathedral, it plunges into the red flesh of the soil."

His poems expressed the degradation of black people in the Caribbean and describe the rediscovery of an African sense of self. In his "Discourse on Colonialism" , first published in 1950, Cesaire compared the relationship between the coloniser and colonised with the Nazis and their victims.

He was a mentor to fellow Martinican author Frantz Fanon, and their anti-colonial writings were a major influence in the heady intellectual climate of the 1960s and 1970s in France. The negritude movement was a counterpart to the Black Pride movement in the United States, though it has been criticised for not being radical enough. Cesaire was also a friend of the French surrealist poet Andre Breton who had encouraged him to become a major voice of Surrealism. Cesaire's anti-colonial rhetoric did not prevent him from having a long-lasting political career.

After becoming mayor of Fort-de-France in 1945 at the age of 32, he was elected deputy of parliament a year later, a post he held until the early 1990s.

A graduate of the prestigious French Ecole Normale Superieure -- unusual for a black Martinican in the 1930s -- he remained a member of the French communist party until the Soviet Hungarian repression of 1956. Cesaire was born in 1913 in the small town of Basse-Pointe in Martinique. He married Suzanne Roussi in 1937, a gifted writer in her own right, with whom he had six children.

Just FYI, Martinique is still a French colony (excuse me, "department"), along with Guadalupe, Reunion, and French Guiana (different from "les collectivites", which include: French Polynesia, New Caledonia, San Martin, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Pierre, Wallace and Fortuna, Miquelon and Mayotte).

I had the honor to meet Aime Cesaire in 1995, when I was working in the Dominican Republic. He was visiting, along with Raphael Confiant, and speaking as part of a conference on negritude and creolite in the Caribbean. At 19, I was too shy to have a real conversation with him, but I remember how he handled the audience with such deep, loving grace. Especially when the members in the audience began to spew out Dominican discourse on race ideology. He responded with the attitude that said, "Brother, you may question your own Blackness, but I know you're Black, and because I know you're Black, I will love you and because I love you, I will ask you to be more than this."

A la prochaine, Aime.

2008-03-28T17:38:00.000-07:00

Last night, Angie Cruz, Nelly Rosario and I read as part of the Hemann Sweatt Symposium at UT-Austin. From Island to Mainland: Three Authors from the Dominican Diaspora in Texas. The Symposium is focused on relations between Black Americans and Latin@s in the U.S., particularly in Texas. For me, this was a very special event - it was a moment to sit in our politics, and our visions as artists in the world.

But, one of the questions that stuck with me actually came from a comment Angie made right before we started. She was talking about asking her students to identify major events from their lifetimes - aka the 1990s - and today, I spent the entire day recalling major world events from the 1990s. So here's my challenge to you: today, name 10 major world events from the 1990s that you recall. I'll give you my list, too:

1. The First Gulf War (1991)
2. The assassination of Rabin (1995)
3. The Rodney King beating & L.A. Uprising(1992)
4. Internet boom (1998 - 2000)
5. HIV Drug Cocktails (1996)
6. Contract on America (1996)
7. Ollie North ran for office
8. Rwanda (1994)
9. Mandela was freed (1994)
10. East Timor declared its independence (1999)

Go on - what do you remember?

2008-03-27T09:18:00.000-07:00

Small victories loom large:

PHILADELPHIA - A federal appeals court on Thursday said former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal cannot be executed for murdering a Philadelphia police officer without a new penalty hearing.

Article by KATHY MATHESON, Associated Press Writer

2008-03-25T16:05:00.000-07:00

What I did this past weekend:

Garden at Alma de Mujer

Gardens need a lot of love and tending and attention. This past weekend, on March 22, 2008, about 15 students (and their friends as well as their professor) from UT-Austin came out to Alma and worked their butts off. I've posted some "before and after" shots so you can see all the work that was accomplished:

2008-03-16T12:23:00.000-07:00

Ana-Maurine Lara, Lenelle Moise, Solimar Otero
photo by Eddie Harris

It's been a little over a week since I returned from Baton Rouge, where I read at LSU along with Lenelle Moise & Solimar Otero, fierce phenomenal women poets/performers/scholars/thinkers. It was such a great time. Our hosts: Myriam Chancy & Kristen Hogan showed us around Baton Rouge, and I even had the opportunity to watch a performance of Eduardo Machado's Broken Eggs, directed by Femi Eumi.

Myriam Chancy Kristen Hogan

photos by Eddie Harris

Now, the amazing thing about Baton Rouge itself is - and this was my first visit there ever - the way in which the city sleeps next to the Mississippi, its trees sagging and dripping over the streets and colonial style houses. Near the Capitol building the trees were covered in Mardi Gras beads.

Photo by Alex Brandon, AP

The beads could have easily been misconstrued as trash, but something about the way they looked made me think of lights and bottles in trees - which I like. I like the ways lights look in trees. And I like the way the beads look in the trees. Like magic. Weeks after Mardi Gras, and shining in the rain.

That was on our way back from going up to the deck in the Capitol building, from where we could look out over Baton Rouge. Over the Mississippi River, over the oil refinery and its clouds - all the way out to LSU. There, we discovered stuffed animals - tigers, alligators (no panthers), and a decks of playing cards. There was a row of them: Civil War Regalia, Civil War Battle Sites, etc., etc. At the very end of the row was a set titled "Black Women in American History". The older Black gentleman behind the counter informed us, after we asked him if it was any good, that "Sure it is - if you don't know your Black History."

Pënz, Art Day 17, Twilight

So, this past week, just yesterday actually, I went to the Jorge Macchi show at the Blanton. I had learned about it from Jen's blog, and decided to go check it out. And I'm SO GLAD I did.

I love conceptual art. Whether its in the form of words, music, visual material, video, etc, I LOVE IT!!! And Jorge Macchi is brilliant at conceptual art. He's obsessed with the infinite. As with parallel realities, which could possibly be read as a non-Euclidean application of theories of the infinite. I couldn't decide what thrilled me more (as an artist and an audience): his music box piece - a continuous loop of cars on a highway, in which the cars formed "notes" on the "score" put to sound OR his piece "Parallel Lives" in which he broke two pieces of glass - and their breaks are identical. Say what?!

So yeah. That's the goings on along the road. This coming week is the Spring Equinox, and with it, the world will shift again.

Peace.

2008-03-08T14:28:00.000-08:00

From Mama C. And no, not late at all.

2008-03-07T10:55:00.000-08:00

Eight. Seven. Thousands. Millions. I'm losing count. I know I shouldn't. I know that Yom Hashoah will soon be upon us, and the names will be read so that we do not forget. But I'm losing count. Of all the bodies becoming sand, becoming mortar and sedimentary layers to this bloody colonial and post-colonial history. How could the earth not revolt with all the blood feeding its soils, soils which are then quickly cemented over like tombs? How could the skies not open up with all the ashes of ancestors reaching for the Sun, like faces turned to warmth in the darkness? How could the water not revolt, with all the weights in its depths.

I haven't lost sight of my ideals. A world where everyone can have food to eat...more importantly, that we all have a space of land in which to grow this food. Clean water. A shelter that keeps us warm. Access to the wonders of knowledge, history, art and human exchanges. Healers to tend to our wounds. These are not, at first glance, seemingly impossible. And then I recall Israel-Palestine. Lebanon. Iraq. Afghanistan. The Sudan. South Africa. Nigeria. Colombia. Haiti. The occupied United States. And I remember the thousands. millions (I'm losing count) of people without food, clean water, shelter, or access to knowledge, history, art or healing medicine. For whom these ideals don't just feel impossible, but right now, actually are.

I wish my heart's desires could outweigh the desires of those who wage war in my name. Yes, this is the idealist in me. But, I'm also clear it's just a wish.

How to restore the spirit? I learned from a wise friend, that sometimes, in addition to the fight, I must also remember the celebration.

Last night, I went to a talk with Analouise Keating - someone who has arduously documented and discussed the works of Gloria Anzaldua. Last night she spoke of "status quo stories" and "nepantla". Keating came up with the notion of "status quo stories" - stories/narratives that are spoken to justify things as they have always been. Like, "We've always used water from that well (even though now it's toxic) because that's just the way it's always been." And then she spoke of Anzaldua's "nepantla" - a Nahuatl word for the site, the body, the space in which bridge-crossing happens, in which transformation becomes possible, in which borders are crossed. Keating was discussing the need for a transformation in (inter)disciplinary thinking in the academy. But I think her concepts are useful in life: when do we make the choice to retreat behind our borders, and when do we choose to cross into an un-defined center, a space in which all is possible?

This talk came at a time when I am finally able to put language to my aesthetic: My aesthetic is that of transgression. Transgression of rules, norms, forms, expectations, history, and all of that. An aesthetic that lives in the undefined cracks. Yes. That's where I like to live. I'm finally clear about that.

After Keating's talk, I went to a student production of Machado's "Broken Eggs". It was a hard play to watch, here in Baton Rouge. Knowing that the Director, Femi Euba - a highly lauded Nigerian Director - had probably struggled with the young, white cast for a basic respectability. His staging was fantastic. The play's text is brilliant - highly critical of class, gender, heterosexuality, race, anti-Semitism and nationalism. Yet, I sat in my chair aware that the actors were not able to be vulnerable enough to give the Latin@ characters dignity. And that the audience was laughing at moments of anti-Semitism that were actually not intended to be funny, but rather, were moments meant to illuminate and critique the ways in which whiteness has been constructed in this country.

Oh, I could go on, but my hosts here in Baton Rouge are preparing an egg salad sandwich and I'm going to go help them make it. And try to keep my idealism in tact. Even though I've lost count. I've lost count.

2008-02-29T18:27:00.000-08:00

Andrea Smith was denied tenure.

INCITE! wrote:

Andy Smith, co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, is a brilliant Native American scholar and organizer. Her scholarship, research, and activism has impacted tens of thousands of Indigenous people worldwide (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Northern Europe) and her work provides a critical contribution to women of color movement building. Andy is the author of three books on Native American socio-history, and co-editor of the two recently published INCITE! anthologies. The Women's Studies Program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she teaches, recently denied her tenure. The students and faculty at U of M are organizing the response below to this decision as well as to the status of women of color in academia. Native Feminism Without Apology! FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 25, 2008

Statement of University of Michigan Students and Faculty in Support of Andrea Smith's Tenure Case

CONTACT: TenureForAndreaSmith@gmail.com

On February 22nd, 2008, University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA) issued a negative tenure recommendation for Assistant Professor Andrea Lee Smith. Jointly appointed in the Program in American Culture and the Department of Women's Studies, Dr. Smith's body of scholarship exemplifies scholarly excellence with widely circulated articles in peer-reviewed journals and numerous books in both university and independent presses including Native Americans and the Christian Right published this year by Duke University Press. Dr. Smith is one of the greatest indigenous feminist intellectuals of our time. A nominee for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Smith has an outstanding academic and community record of service that is internationally and nationally recognized. She is a dedicated professor and mentor and she is an integral member of the University of Michigan (UM) intellectual community. Her reputation and pedagogical practices draw undergraduate and graduate students from all over campus and the nation.

Dr. Smith received the news about her tenure case while participating in the United States' hearings before the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Ironically, during those very same hearings, the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decisions that restricted affirmative action policies at UM specifically were cited as violations of international law. At the same time, there is an undeniable link between the Department of Women's Studies and LSA's current tenure recommendations and the long history of institutional restrictions against faculty of color. In 2008, students of color are coming together to protest the way UM's administration has fostered an environment wherein faculty of color are few and far between, Ethnic Studies course offerings have little financial and institutional support, and student services for students of color are decreasing each year. To

Support Professor Andrea Smith: The Provost must hear our responses! Write letters in support of Andrea Smith's tenure case.

Address email letters to ALL of the following:

* Teresa Sullivan, Provost and Executive VP for Academic Affairs, LSA, tsull@umich.edu

* Lester Monts, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, LSA, lmonts@umich.edu

* Mary Sue Coleman, President, PresOff@umich.edu

* TenureForAndreaSmith@gmail.com Write letters in support of Assistant Professor Andrea Smith's tenure case by MARCH 31ST 2008!

Voice your ideas on the web forum at http://www.woclockdown.org/

To Support Women of Color at Michigan and the Crisis of Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies: Attend the student organized March 15th Conference at UM!!!! Campus Lockdown: Women of Color Negotiating the Academic Industrial Complex is free and open to the public.

Speakers include renowned activists and scholars Piya Chatterjee, Angela Davis, Rosa Linda Fregoso, Ruthie Gilmore, Fred Moten, Clarissa Rojas, and Haunani-Kay Trask. For more information and to register, visit: http://www.woclockdown.org/.

TALKING POINTS YOU CAN USE IN YOUR SUPPORT LETTER:

• Smith is author of the following books:

- Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide

- Native Americans and the Christian Right: The Gendered Politics of Unlikely Alliances

- Sacred Sites, Sacred Rites

• Smith is editor and/or co-editor of the following anthologies:

- Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology

- The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

- Native Feminisms Without Apology

- Forthcoming on theorizing Indigenous Studies

• She has published 15 peer reviewed articles in widely circulate academic journals including American Quarterly, Feminist Studies, National Women's Studies Association Journal, Hypatia, Meridians, and the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

• Smith is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards from organizations such as the Lannan Foundation, University of Illinois, Gustavus Myers Foundation, Ford Foundation

• Smith was cited in the U.S. Non-Governmental Organization Consolidated Shadow Report to the United Nations

• A co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations, she has been a key thinker behind large-scale national and international efforts to develop remedies for ending violence against women beyond the criminal justice system. As a result of her work, scholars, social service providers, and community-based organizations throughout the United States have shifted from state-focused efforts to more systemic approaches for addressing violence against women. In recognition of her contributions, Smith was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

• As of June 2007, Professor Smith's book, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (2005) had sold over 8,000 copies. Three-fourths of these sales have gone to college and university courses. In addition, the leading Native studies organization, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, organized a special panel about this book at their last annual conference (2007). The international impact of Conquest is evidenced by its reprinting in Sami (Sweden) and in Maori Institutions in New Zealand; by Professor Smith's invitation to participate in an academic workshop in Germany based on the book; and by the book's frequent use in Native Studies classrooms in Canada.

• She has also played a key role in contributing social-justice based research, teaching, and community building at the University of Michigan.

• Under Andrea Smith's mentorship, a large number of undergraduate and graduate students have grown as intellectual members of the UM's campus community. FACTS FOR DR. ANDREA SMITH'S TENURE CASE • Her intellectual work contributes to the fields of Native American Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, Religious Studies, and American Studies.• Smith is jointly appointed in the Program in American Culture and the Department of Women's Studies at Michigan.

• The Program in American Culture gave a positive recommendation for Smith's tenure, while the Department of Women's Studies gave a negative recommendation. After the tenure recommendations were released from the two departments, the College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts reviewed the tenure file and also gave a negative tenure recommendation.

• She is currently the Director of Native American Studies at Michigan.

More blog discussion here:

http://brownfemipower.com/?p=2362

http://brownfemipower.com/?p=2361

2008-02-29T16:30:00.000-08:00

Pënz hits New York City!!

I'm actually in New York City for an Astraea Board meeting. Yes, the word is getting out: I'm now on the Astraea Board. I'm very excited to work with this incredible foundation that has been at the forefront of feminist, social justice based philanthropy for the last 30 years. It's an honor, really.

While here, I'm taking the opportunity to perform Pënz, and to visit museums. Today I went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art - which I try to go to when I'm here - and saw the Ghada Amer exhibit. I'm disappointed the museum didn't put out a catalogue of her work, but it was amazing to see her paintings in person - the way the threads hang down like paint across a canvas. She also had photo stills from several installations from around the world. One in which she made a sandbox that spelled out: 70% de los pobres son mujeres - something like that, which was installed on the Rambla Raval in Barcelona.

Beautiful work.

Well, I'm off to eat some sushi from Kiku.

Peace.

2008-02-20T09:18:00.000-08:00

Source: BBC.com

2008-02-19T10:40:00.001-08:00

After awaking to the announcement that Castro has officially stepped away from leadership in Cuba, I walked dazed and confused into my kitchen to drink some coffee and contemplate a world without Castro's leadership. I've actually been thinking about this since August 2006, when he first got sick and I was in the D.R. wondering what kinds of shifts and destablizations might arise in the waters around us.

Ultimately, I have concluded in my short life time that the deep seat of radical social change does not rest in placing power with the nation state, but rather with the people. Call it what you want. Anarchy. Socialism. Whatever. I believe in the power of people organizing in small communities. And I don't believe in borders or the nation-state. It's not that I have always stood in this place. I would say I've been here for about 14 years. I used to be a huge nationalist - it came with the political territory in which I was raised. But, after emerging and standing on my own two feet, I have come to determine that the nation-state can only move us so far before it falls into a replication of the colonial framework that gave rise to it in the first place.

Cherrie Moraga's Mexican Medea examines this very tension between political identity and the nation-state, spiritual practice and religious ideology.

I am grateful to Castro for what he set into motion, along with the hundreds of people - including black and indigenous people - that were fighting alongside him. And, I have been disappointed with the Cuban nation-state policies and how they have affected black Cubans, and queer Cubans - best exemplified with the Marielitos. Any reading of history that reaches for truth, I believe must address the complexities, achievements and inadequacies of our deeply human social-political and economic systems. Thanks to Castro and Guevara, and the EZLN and and and all the revolutionaries throughout the continent, we have evidence, models and examples of revolutions against capitalist economic structures. And, still, I believe: we must move into even newer, more radical analyses.

All this passed through my brain as I drank my Bustelo laced with cinnamon. And then I got in my car and the first news report I heard started like this (Renee Montaine - NPR):

"This morning we look at the history of Presidents' slave chefs, and the history of African-Americans cooking for U.S. Presidents."

Huh?

And I heard his name: Hercules. Sharron Conrad goes on to discuss how Hercules cooked for the first president of the United States, George Washington. Jessica Harris states how he was noted for being a dandy (really?). And how, when George Washington returned to Mt Vernon (NY) from Washington DC, Hercules ran away. Well, yeah.

This was after the interview with Zephyr Wright, still living, who cooked for LBJ who, she states, "The first night that I met President Johnson, he was late as usual. He was always late for meals .... Now there have been times that he'd get on the phone himself and call me and ask me how long would it take to get something ready for the whole Cabinet and sometimes he'd walk in with them and you didn't even know he's coming." She goes onto to re-tell how when LBJ moved back to Texas, he expressed his regret that she wouldn't be joining him.

So, are we to remember our rightful place: as cooks in the White House? See, it's more complex than a simple binary reading of history. For one, I think it's fantastic to give name/face and place to the rich legacy of African-American chefs. But, at the same time, knowing the complexity of a time when African-American leadership is still questioned as a viable reality really makes me wonder what the producers at NPR were thinking with this segment.

Hmm...2008 - a year of many, many changes.

2008-02-18T15:33:00.001-08:00

I'm so excited. Last year - this month - I read with Lenelle Moise and now we shall read again in a couple of weeks, in Baton Rouge as part of the Under the Radar speaker series at Lousiana State University. How awesome is that? Not only have we read together, but we're also both poets who have been featured in Torch.

If you're in Baton Rouge on March 7, 2008, you've got to come check us out. The venerable Afro-Latina scholar Solimar Otero will also be with us. Yeah!

2008-02-15T12:28:00.000-08:00

The ceremony is stained on my skin
traces of smoke
forming trails in my turning.
Fire sparking night,
your visage just a step
behind the evidence of
your passing. There is a raven
in the coals,
a fly in the coffee.
None of this alters
the infinite pause of gesture
awaiting your arrival.

2008-02-14T10:44:00.000-08:00

In case you ever forget where I come from, take good note of these photos. We cannot underestimate the innovation that comes from limited resources. One day, I might write an ethnography on the contemporary mule: the motorcycle. I might have to dig up the photo I have of two brothers carrying a cow on the back of theirs one dawn (where they got the cow at that hour, I don't want to know!). So, next time you get the urge to put down the urban cowboy, remember that his/her motorcycle is his mule and s/he can get anything anywhere with it.

Back in the days when I had roommates, I always used to say, jokingly, "Don't forget I'm third world." whenever they stared in shock at my use of materials or tools in unexpected ways. And I am. And I appreciate the lessons from my upbringing in places with limited industrial resources (as opposed to natural resources, of which there are usually many). The original recycling. So yeah - here's one for non-linear approaches to problem solving! To innovation and the mother of all inventions: necessity.

Peace.

2008-02-13T14:17:00.000-08:00

So much happening today. The Prime Minister of Australia, PM Kevin Rudd - sworn in on Tuesday - issued an official apology to the Aboriginal Indigenous people of Australia. Here are some excerpts from the Parliamentary speech, which I found on the bbc.com:

Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
We reflect on their past mistreatment.
We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations -
this blemished chapter in our nation's history.
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of
the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted
profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families,
their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left
behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and
communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is
offered as part of the healing of the nation.
For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be
written.
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all
Australians.
A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to
close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic
opportunity.
A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches
have failed.
A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.
A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and
with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.

I agree with activists that it can't stop here, with an apology. The change must move from breath into form. And, if Australia can do this, why can't other nations do it? See, it's not too hard.

The weight of this official apology does not escape me. Especially today, following news of the loss of raulsalinas, a leader of the people who fought for most of his life for the dignity of the incarcerated, indigenous peoples, Chicanos/as, people of color and consciousness, and for a more just world.

From breath to form to breath again, we (are) transform(ed).

2008-02-13T09:24:00.000-08:00

In tribute to the visionary leader and as Rene Valdez so aptly stated, our tender warrior raulsalinas, who transitioned this morning here in Austin, Tejas.

There are millions of people who
will say, "I knew raulsalinas."
And yes, they will all have known him.
And I have known a man
who welcomed me into this home
his arms open,
saying
we are one, you and I,
we are fighting the same fight
you and I
walk with me
know you and I can walk
with honor
with passion
with tears
with joy
with anger
this is all ours to walk with
remember
we are one
and
we remember
we are one.

I have been informed there is an altar at Resistencia Books. I am grateful.

2008-02-11T16:23:00.000-08:00

Super size it, please...

On the way home from yet another random temp gig (which I will write about in ONE second), I was listening to the folks on NPR go on and on about superdelegates. I feel like I generally have a good memory, but why don't I remember superdelegates in prior Democratic primaries? Probably because this electoral process has done more for creating transparency than vinegar does for glass. Or maybe because this is the first time, as an unaffiliated voter, that I can vote in a primary and so I'm actually tuned into the process in a different way.

It's so fascinating.

I was in East Timor in 2000, when he stole the U.S. elections. I remember sitting around with colleagues trying to explain the, eh-hem, embarrassing truth about American electoral politics.

"What do you mean there is no direct representation?"

"Well, you see, you vote and then those votes are what direct representatives to vote and then it's called..."

And they fell out of their chairs laughing.

"You mean to tell us the most democratic country in the world has no direct democracy?"

And then I felt compelled to explain the Prison Industrial Complex and the disenfranchisement of voters of color throughout U.S. history. At which point everyone got very quiet and took small sips from their cans of VB. And then when they asked if I had voted, I had to tell them about how my absentee ballot didn't make it on time...to the New York address. That still didn't take away from the sudden realization that we might all be screwed with dude-as-president.

So, I came home and looked up the superdelegates for Austin, Texas. Not only did I find them here, I found the ones who've already pledged to a candidate, and to whom. There are some who may still be persuadable (so much for direct democracies, right? anyway...), especially those Congresspeople who, alas, are to be accountable to the electoral public. Here we go:

Ruben Hinojosa Congressman Clinton
Silvestre Reyes Congressman Clinton
Henry Cuellar Congressman Clinton
Solomon Ortiz Congressman Clinton
Gene Green Congressman Clinton
Sheila Jackson Lee Congresswoman Clinton
Sue Lovell DNC Clinton
Senfronia Thompson DNC Clinton
Norma Fisher Flores DNC Clinton
David Holmes DNC Clinton
Jim Wright Former Speaker of the House Clinton
Denise Johnson Appointed by DNC Clinton

Moses Mercado Appointed by DNC Obama
Al Green Congressman Obama
Charlie Gonzalez Congressman Obama
Eddie Bernice Johnson Congresswoman Obama

Oscar Soliz County Official Unpledged
Chet Edwards Congressman Unpledged
Nick Lampson Congressman Unpledged
Ciro Rodriguez Congressman Unpledged
Lloyd Doggett Congressman Unpledged
Robert Martinez Appointed by DNC Unpledged
Boyd Richie State party chair Unpledged
Yvonne Davis DNC Unpledged
Al Edwards DNC Unpledged
Jaime Gonzalez Jr. DNC Unpledged
John Patrick DNC Unpledged
Betty Richie DNC Unpledged
Bob Slagle DNC Unpledged
Bob Strauss Former Chair of DNC Unpledged
Linda Chavez-Thompson Labor Add-on Unpledged
Roy LaVerne Brooks State party vice- chair Unpledged
David Hardt Young Democrats Add-on Unpledged

It changes all the time, so it's a good idea to go here to get updates: 2008 Democratic Convention Watch.

So, of course on the way home from my INCREDIBLY BORING temp gig, I got all fired up by Terri Gross. Hard to imagine, I know. It's a really boring temp gig.

BUT, I must say this: I realized, as I entered data about evil insurance companies in slow, aching streams for hours, that in the past year, my temp gigs have exposed me to all kinds of random information. I've learned a ton about insurance companies and how the stock market and natural disasters, war, epidemics, etc work together. And the loveliest part about it? It's all public information! You can download everything you ever wanted to know about how dividends rise or plummet in value. And you can even find out how many billions of dollars came home in the last quarter of 2007. It's amazing!

Or, like, the business aspects of eating off the backs of poor people who have to work to take care of their children - my job: to handle frantic parents' calls when they missed a payment and didn't know what they were going to do with their child that afternoon. I tried hard to understand the side of the business owners (it goes something like this "This is a private service, and if they don't make the payment, we can't help them. Imagine how much money we would lose if every parent who couldn't afford day care slipped their kids in?"). I think it's why I'm only a good capitalist when I play Monopoly.

Or, packing hookahs. HOOKAHS!! Why do I know how to handle a hookah? I do. Now I do. I swear that I just packed them and shipped them off with lovely scented tobacco. The warehouse employed mostly folks coming out of the criminal justice system (how FREAKING ironic is that?) and a few of us dopes who just ended up working there.

I also have learned about import-export from a purse warehouse: i.e., you're paying too much for that bag that was made by tiny, tiny hands, but anyways...cute bag.

And, lumber. So, one of my gigs was at a lumber company. I learned about seventeen different kinds of hardwoods used in construction, eight different kinds of decking (treated or not), and about where the wood originated. I had nightmares and flashes of barren, stripped forests, but hey - someone needs to supply all the tremendous amounts of construction going on in Austin's gated communities, right? And, I have to admit, I was thinking about 4 cedar log walls of my very own, too...so corruptible! I'm so corruptible!

And, it's not that I'm bitter. Working at a temp gig means I still have space in my brain for thoughts, and I get chunks of time off around particularly important deadlines. I love that about temping. It's just that - what do you do when you're a writer with a deep sense of social justice and you have to pay a light bill (cause, by the way, I don't have solar energy people)? I was in agony on Thursday when I realized that somehow, in some jacked up indirect you work for the man but in a non-committal kinda way, Halliburton is paying my temp gig salary! Excuse me - I have to go barf now.

I am a U.S. citizen living in the heart of empire after all, aren't I?

Yeah, ...in the meantime, I'm just going to keep on collecting random ass information about the world of pseudo work. Maybe write a poem about it all someday.

And this all brings me back:

Go call your Congress people, dammit. Get a semi-sane President in the White House while we have a Democratic Majority in Congress. Get the troops out of Iraq. Shut down Halliburton and put me out of a job! Get social programs refunded and get lots of artists wonderful jobs. Get green cars and more bikes onto the road so we can get to those jobs. Put some right in the righteousness.

Or somethin'.

2008-02-08T16:08:00.000-08:00

Almost off to spend Shabbat with the JJ's: Wow. And might I mentioned Chinese New Year: the Year of the Rat?

I just got word that Samiya Bashir published her Haiku collection, Teasing Crow Haiku, online. Check it out. I read the haiku's while listening to Marvin K White's "In the Village". It was an extraordinary experience. The music, the words...

yes. It's 6pm on a Friday and I am ready for poetry.

2008-02-04T14:17:00.000-08:00

It's Black History Month in the U.S. of A. Here are some of the things I've been noticing/thinking about. Some of the amazing things.

Tisa Bryant's book, Unexplained Presence. This book, a collection of cultural criticisms and peeks of fiction woven together has changed the way I view films. Here's what the San Francisco Bay Guardian had to say about it:

Investigating the symbolic construction of identity and myth from the angle of art, Tisa Bryant's Unexplained Presence takes up "black presences in European literature, visual art, and film." Fusing criticism, film theory, and fiction with a keenly poetic ear, Bryant reenters cultural artifacts to open up these symbolically loaded but structurally silenced or backgrounded characters and motifs. Her stories trace the ways in which black subjectivity is distributed or denied within pictures and plots, between viewers and artworks and artists, and in acts of conversation and debate, of queer identification or refusal to see. What is most remarkable is how Bryant transforms these elisions into acts of imagination, restoring or reconfiguring partially glimpsed subjects via fleet and surprising sentences that traverse the distance between representation and meaning.

The language of "unexplained presence" entered my vocabulary - both conceptually and literally - about two years ago when Tisa first started talking about her book. Here's an excerpt to illustrate both from her piece, "In Melville's Jungle":

"The gait of the predator measured in matte fashion. Precise gray two-piece suite, brieff gloss on black leather lace-up shoes, his hand raching up in signature style to hone the edge of his brim. He's sharp, this samouri, a tiger in his solitude. Camouflaged by surfaces, masked by color palette. He lies on the bed in his shirt sleeves, ankles crossed, cupping a hot Gauloises. The walls, sheets, floor, the caged bird singing contentedly, all complement in cool earth tones before the indirect glare of white light obscuring the outer landscape, filling the window frame like a blank movie screen. The only motion we see is a snaky cloud of smoke rising from white shirtsleeves into white light toward a black-shadowed ceiling.

Young Jean-Pierre Grumbach watched White Shadows in the South Seas, listened to the first words ever heard in film: "Civilization. Civilization," and decided that he too would adventure in the human landscape and create worlds."

Add to this that Unexplained Presence was published by Leon Works Press: a press for experimental fiction and new narratives and that Leon Works is run by the brilliant Renee Gladman, author of Juice and The Activist and her new book: Newcomer Can't Swim. Evie Shockley writes:

Imagine yourself in a world in which you have to know who you are to know where you are—or is it the other way around? Welcome to Renee Gladman's Newcomer Can't Swim, a textural world that configures issues of personal agency and social relations in geographical terms. Gladman confronts us with a landscape that is constantly shifts and morphs, sometimes within the space of a sentence. Brilliantly astute witty challenging, Newcomer Can't Swim reenvisions the dangers of living, as Stevie Wonder would say, "just enough for the city."

Uh huh. I also heard that Robbie McCauley's coming to Austin on February 21st at the Off Center, to perform her piece, "Sugar" as part of the Throws Like a Girl Theatre Festival. "Sugar" examines McCauley’s struggle with diabetes as connected to slavery, war, work, romance and food. I want to see the artist who has so inspired Daniel Alexander Jones and Sharon Bridgforth. I can't wait.

Also in Austin will be Wole Soyinka's play "Death and the King's Horseman", showcased by Pro Arts Collective, February 13 - 24th at the Mary Moody Northern Theatre. And down on the Gulf Coast, the Lake Jackson Museum is hosting an exhibit on enslaved Africans in Latin America. I might have to go to the sea.

More to follow. For now, I'm off to do what I'm here to do.

Peace.

2008-02-01T15:54:00.001-08:00

"I have no intention of retaliating or looking backwards. We are going to forget the past and look forward to the future." Jomo Kenyatta, 1964 made following Kenya's First National Elections

Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first President and a member of the Kikuyu people was also one of the forces behind the establishment of the Pan-African Federation (along with Kwame Nkrumah).

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o is a Kikuyu novelist in exile from Kenya for both his political work and insistance on writing in his native tongue, Gikuyu. He was first arrested by then Vice-President Daniel arap Moi in 1977 for his play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), also written in Gikuyu.

These are two of the visionaries whose narratives are embedded in the language of the Kenyan nation, whose live are inextricably linked to a legacy of revolt against British colonialism. Who suffered, have suffered persecution for their thoughts. I first and foremost bring their names into the circle.

Today I was talking with Mama C. We were talking about Kenya and both the language and reality of ethnic cleansing. That genocide and ethnic cleansing are terms that have entered our language as symptoms of a modern era beginning with the onset of the Spanish Empire 516 years ago is heartbreaking. That we are now faced with the language of ethnic cleansing with regards to yet another African nation is devastating.

How to speak of connections born of chance and circumstance? Having spent a significant part of my childhood in Nairobi, I cannot make claims to understanding the deep intricacies of Kenyan nationality, culture or politics. However, I recall my family's friend A., a member of the Luo people in Western Kenya, calling us to tell us her two eldest sons were dead. They were both poisoned by local Kikuyu authorities after their full scholarships to universities in Sweden became public. And I recall other incidents gathering in the wind, whispered to my parents at parties when the adults thought the children were not listening. Of Luya, Luo intellectuals being poisoned. Of Kikuyu sent in their place. I remember the various trips that we made across the country, and the landscapes the Masai had come to inhabit - by force: dry, arid lands. Savannah covered in flies. This was not Masai native land. The Kalenjin were also displaced by Kikuyu eager to occupy the skeletal remains of British colonialism: the homes and farms of former British merchants.

How then to understand the rage that leads to hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu fleeing Western lands, in the trails of severed limbs and charred remains? Is this a pent up rage released after 30 years of slow, spotted deaths? Who is rushing to Kenya's aide, and with what conditions? Is this a strategic political violence aimed at forcing a shift of power into the hands of another people? Is this violence funded? By whom? Or is this hunger? I repeat, is this hunger?

We cannot accept what the media has given us as truth anymore. We must search for deeper truths and more complex renderings of history. We must, must, must! I rarely speak in imperative terms, but with regards to our information and what we receive, I am becoming increasingly uncompromising about the necessary act of searching for multiple viewpoints and deeper histories.

I cannot help but wonder what will become of the brokered talks and deals proposed by Kofi Annan (to date, I have found no information of his affiliation - reports merely read "former Kofi Annan - is he speaking on behalf of the African Union? the Global Humanitarian Forum? as a member of the Global Elders? or as an independent agent brokering his power?). Will deeper truths come to light? Will the talks uncover the deeper tensions that seem to be a latent symptom of the post-colonial nation state? Will ethnic cleansing be avoided, unlike what occurred in Rwanda? Will Kenya be linked in the imaginaries of the American public to Barack Obama at this critical point in U.S. electoral campaigning in ways that are unconscionable?

Ergh. I would be lying to say I walk into this weekend without Kenya on my mind. I hold peace and a light for truth in my heart for the people of Kenya.

2008-01-30T18:21:00.000-08:00

Another jewel from my research on Afro-Latina Lesbians:

What kinds of conversations do we, as black women of the diaspora, need to have that will end these “wasteful errors of recognition”? Do we know the terms of our different migrations? Each others’ work histories? Our different yearnings?... To which genealogy of Pan-African feminism do we lay claim? Which legacy of Pan-African lesbian feminism? These conversations may well have begun. If so, we need to continue them and meet each other eye to eye, black women born in this country, black women from different parts of the continent and from different linguistic and cultural inheritances of the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific who experience and define themselves as black, for there is nothing that can replace the unborrowed truths that lie at the junction of the particularity of our experiences and our confrontation with history.

From Pedagogies of Crossing by M. Jacqui Alexander

2008-01-29T15:00:00.000-08:00

Toni Morrison's Endorsement of Barack Obama, posted yesterday Monday January 29, 2008:

Dear Senator Obama,
This letter represents a first for me--a public endorsement of a Presidential candidate. I feel driven to let you know why I am writing it. One reason is it may help gather other supporters; another is that this is one of those singular moments that nations ignore at their peril. I will not rehearse the multiple crises facing us, but of one thing I am certain: this opportunity for a national evolution (even revolution) will not come again soon, and I am convinced you are the person to capture it.
May I describe to you my thoughts?
I have admired Senator Clinton for years. Her knowledge always seemed to me exhaustive; her negotiation of politics expert. However I am more compelled by the quality of mind (as far as I can measure it) of a candidate. I cared little for her gender as a source of my admiration, and the little I did care was based on the fact that no liberal woman has ever ruled in America. Only conservative or "new-centrist" ones are allowed into that realm. Nor do I care very much for your race[s]. I would not support you if that was all you had to offer or because it might make me "proud."
In thinking carefully about the strengths of the candidates, I stunned myself when I came to the following conclusion: that in addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it. Wisdom is a gift; you can't train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace--that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom.
When, I wondered, was the last time this country was guided by such a leader? Someone whose moral center was un-embargoed? Someone with courage instead of mere ambition? Someone who truly thinks of his country's citizens as "we," not "they"? Someone who understands what it will take to help America realize the virtues it fancies about itself, what it desperately needs to become in the world?
Our future is ripe, outrageously rich in its possibilities. Yet unleashing the glory of that future will require a difficult labor, and some may be so frightened of its birth they will refuse to abandon their nostalgia for the womb.
There have been a few prescient leaders in our past, but you are the man for this time.
Good luck to you and to us.
Toni Morrison

2008-01-29T14:55:00.000-08:00

I'm finally posting a photo of the beautiful Rooted crew, from our retreat at Alma de Mujer:

Photo credit: Anel Flores

Standing from Left to Right: Senalka McDonald, Samiya Bashir, Sharon Bridgforth, Matt Richardson. Maria Limon
Sitting from Left to Right: Jennifer Margulies, Wura Ogunji, Ana-Maurine Lara, Cheryl Coward, Anel Flores

And missing is the beautiful Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano

2008-01-24T14:26:00.000-08:00

Headline from the Harvard Gazette:

Human History Precedes Writing

Wow.

2008-01-23T19:36:00.000-08:00

The new TORCH is out:

And it is beautiful. Featuring the works of brilliant African American women.

2008-01-23T19:28:00.000-08:00

Shit'll just come and bite you in the ass every single time. So, I decided to submit an erotica piece to "Ultimate Lesbian Erotica", right. Yeah, and I thought - let me do it under a pseudonym. I don't know why I thought this was a good idea, except that I remembered all the bad, bad, bad erotica I published when I was in my early 20s and thought - maybe I get to have a little distance from my work, and maybe I get to have another identity. My erotica identity.

So the book arrives today (yay!!). The story's in there. Let's not talk about my really bad, bad, bad pseudonym (it's "Scion Tenta" okay? and not after the car, either). But then, Wura says,

"Too bad you published under a pseudonym. Otherwise you might have gotten a bio."

I turn to the back.

"I do have a bio."

And why, WHY is my author's bio there with my pseudonym. So apparently, Scion Tenta published Erzulie's Skirt among other things. After we recovered from laughing so hard that we both fell on the floor and had to call at least five friends, I decided I just needed to take it a step further and just come out with it.

Oww. My ass hurts. In a good way. And...so much for an erotica identity.

By the way, the story's really good.

2008-01-23T14:07:00.001-08:00

Picture of the Day:
One wall down. Three to go. Photo from BBC.com - the knock down of the wall between Palestine and Egypt.

2008-01-23T13:29:00.000-08:00

From E-Drum: INTERVIEW: ben okri/amy tan featured in The New Internationalist
============ ========= ==

MIXING IT
As part of her BBC radio series Devout Sceptics Bel Mooney interviewed novelists Ben Okri and Amy Tan. They talk here of their eclectic spirituality and how bereavement affected their beliefs.

BEN OKRI:

I was born in the north of Nigeria, but my father and mother are from the mid-west of Nigeria. I came to London around the age of a year and a half. I was here until about seven. While here I lived, in spiritual terms, on three levels. School and its [Christian] religious education. My parents’ [African] traditional and religious beliefs. And then there was the world of my childhood, my reading and thinking...

My own form of spirituality is different from religion. One has to do with an institution, and the other with the self’s quest for the highest meaning that life can offer. It’s also quite eclectic and had to do with travelling between cultures. This made me open myself up to other religions and to other spiritual ways such as Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism. I took an interest in all these eastern forms. Much later I took an interest in some aspects of Judaism, and Islam, because I found something that runs through all of them and they all seem to resonate with one another.... It’s very hard to know where to seek comfort when great pain, great tragedy falls upon you, because it tends to turn your world upside down, it bursts it wide open. All the certainties that you had, and all the places that you thought could help you, don’t. And many, many things are exposed for not being deep enough in the way they were meant to help us cope with the more extreme vicissitudes of the human experience. When my mother died, for example – it was such an appalling experience, an appalling moment in my life. It was like there’s an earth inside the soul, inside the spirit.

It gets taken away completely and you're standing absolutely on air, on nothing... It is quite the most emptying experience I have ever been through. I remember at the time finding myself having to hold on to solid things like walls and lampposts, and found they weren’t solid enough. I’d lean against a tree and find it wasn’t solid enough.... All the physical things, all the things we
turn to for sustenance and support, I found to be quite hopeless and quite empty.

What it actually did was make me ask questions again about the true sustainers of the human spirit. What is it that, when these things befall us, we can rely on, we can turn to?

And it’s a really difficult question... It stripped me apart utterly, and it began a new and important journey in my spiritual and intellectual life. The religious structures, the church, helped, but not as deeply as I thought it would. This is a terrible thing to say. The reason is because at the time I experienced something very peculiar. I realized that the pastor, the priest who was speaking to me about grief, spoke to me from a book but not from experience, so he could not speak to the grief in me. He couldn’t speak to the emptiness in me because, at the time, he hadn’t gone through it himself. I can say this now with a certain amount of tranquility because about four years later his mother died and he wrote to me and said: ‘Oh my goodness, I didn’t know. That’s what you were going through at the time.’

------------ ------

AMY TAN:

My father was a Baptist minister, as were my grandfather and all my aunts and uncles. Twelve of them, all evangelists in China... My mother was a typical Chinese woman from Shanghai, meaning that she had an eclectic background of beliefs which I call ‘ultimate pragmatism’. She went to a Catholic girls’ school but also believed in Buddhism, ancestor worship, ghosts, curses, whatever worked. The beliefs that my mother had, particularly in ghosts, were kept hidden from me and she didn’t speak about them in the family until after my father died. Well, actually, when my father and brother became ill with brain tumours. That’s when she believed that the curses had fully come into force in our family, and so she couldn’t help but speak about them...

Up to that point I was very, very much involved with the Church. And I used to go to the beach on Saturdays, to Santa Cruz, and try to recruit children – and other students, teenagers, lying in bikinis, kissing boys – to come and discover a better life...

I think it was a good period of my life to have gone through that experience of absolute faith, as a truth that’s handed to you, because then I can compare with the other experience, when I lost my faith so completely.

I had believed so completely that I actually thought the miracle would happen. I felt the miracle had been promised me, that my father and brother would live... Being 15 years old, I was at that ripe age when I would become a cynic about anything. So religion was the prime thing for me to reject. And I had all the reasons to reject it. When I lost my father and my brother, I realized I
could not trust in any set of beliefs or absolute truths that had simply been handed to me. I had to ask questions too.

I have to discern what the truth is for me. And whatever my truth is, it’s not one I would try to impose on anyone else, because the questions are very, very particular, very specific to me. That’s what I think.

All of us have to pay attention to how we impose our ideas on others in the belief that the consequences will be better for the rest of the world. After 11 September we all know what this means. As Americans, we can see how our views on how to improve the world – which perhaps we have imposed on others – have led to a backlash. As a writer, I don’t have any general beliefs that I would want to give anybody, any bits of advice, any absolute truths.

Reprinted with permission from Devout Sceptics: Conversations on Faith and Doubt with Bel Mooney, by Bel Mooney, Hodder and Stoughton, 2003.

Ben Okri’s books include the Booker Prize-winning The Famished Road, Songs of Enchantment, Dangerous Love, Infinite Riches and Arcadi.

Amy Tan’s books include the international best-selling The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses and The Bonesetter’s Daughter.

2008-01-21T06:28:00.000-08:00

Today, MLK's official government-recognized day (the institutionalization of protest demands???), I call out justice for the Jena 6. And I refer folks to Amanda Johnston's posting on the history of voting in the U.S. And lastly, I post word about a performance that asks us to consider exactly what citizenship means in these bodies in this day and age.

NOTE: This performance was post-poned as of Tuesday January 22, 2008!!

2008-01-18T14:05:00.000-08:00

So I'm working on a paper (among other things) about Black Latina Lesbians. It's interesting. More on that later. But one of the things I'm considering is the place of the imagination/imaginery (thank you M.R.!!) and I came across this discussion, which was a conversation hosted by the Alternative Law Forum. It's a conversation led by Naisargi Dave, with respondents Surabhi Kukke and Siddharth Narrain. I was so happy to read it, I had to share a few jewels from this wonderful conversation.

ND: People begin to become activists, because they have an ethical orientation to the world. They act because they nurture ethical ideals of what the world ought to look like. By saying that the world ought to look differently than it does, even that one law ought to look differently than it does, is an ethical orientation to the world that imagines an impossibility. They act in part because they desire the practice of new freedoms, relationships, sexual affairs and so on that they can only imagine new models for, but still strive to enable. But the political institutions that activists must engage in order to effect these transformations that they seek are far from conducive to the cultivation of these kinds of radical imaginings.

AND

ND: And he [Arnold Davidson] argues further that Foucault’s work about this ‘aesthetics of existence’ is nowhere more widely brought out than in his daily life, something that did not get enough press – about the radical potential of contemporary homosexual practices. “ Another thing to discuss is the tendency to relate the problem of homosexuality to the problem of ‘who am I?’ what is the truth of myself? What is the secret of my desire? ‘ Perhaps it would be better to ask oneself he said, ‘what relations through my homosexuality can be established invented, multiplied and modulated?. The problem is not to discover in oneself, the truth of one’s sex but to use one’s sexuality henceforth to arrive at a multiplicity of relationships”. i.e. not to figure what relationships one is supposed to have if one is gay, but to use that queerness as a reason and a possibility to invent.

AND

SK: Being queer in the 1990s meant two things. It meant that we partied really hard and that we fought really hard. By fought I mean we were a small group of really angry young people, and to bee queer was to be an activist.

Yeah

2008-01-14T15:54:00.001-08:00

There is something to learn from everyone and everything. This weekend, I learned about deep love from a group of writers/artists/brilliant visionaries as we came together and worked to plan the next stage of our creative processes...more on that later.

For now, if you're going to be in NYC at the end of the month, swing by these off the chain events featuring the works of African-American poets:

Wed. Jan. 30, 2008 - 10 p.m.

2nd Annual Cave Canem Fellows Reading
The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery, New York, New York

$10 cover charge.

Fellows Michelle Berry, DeLana Dameron, Jacqueline Johnson, LaTasha Nevada Diggs, Krista Franklin, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Richard Hamilton; Myronn Hardy, Randall Horton, Marcus Jackson, Amanda Johnston, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, January O'Neal, Ernesto Mercer, Dante Micheaux, Indigo Moor, Nicole Sealey, Shia Shabazz, Evie Shockley, and Bianca Spriggs take a poetry marathon to New York City’s literary hot spot

www.cavecanempoets.org

********************************************************************************

Thur. Jan. 31, 2008 - 6 p.m.

The Affrilachian Poets @ The Nuyorican Poets Cafe
236 East 3rd Street, between Avenues B and C
New York, New York

$7 student
$10 general

Featuring: Kelly Norman Ellis, Ellen Hagan, Parneshia Jones, Amanda Johnston, Hao Wang, Mitchell L. H. Douglas, Bianca Spriggs, Natasha Marin, Marta Miranda and special guest Rane Arroyo.

Learn more about the Affrilachian Poets at http://www.affrilachianpoets.com/.

Download the flier at: http://affrilachianpoets.com/APs_at_Nuyo

Peace.

2008-01-08T07:33:00.000-08:00

So it's a New Year. 2008. I've figured out that the year is about BALANCE. A Libra year let's say. There are a lot of things to learn about balance.

A child hood friend of mine with whom I recently reconnected shared something with me that has lingered ever since I hung up the phone. She's deaf, was born deaf, but has had hearing aids her entire life. As she's gotten older, there's a hardening of the silica in her ear that has started to affect her balance as well as her hearing. Her age is bringing out new challenges to her physicality. What really blew me away though is that she operates a bike repair shop. And rides bikes. She's always been that way - unstoppable. And completely upfront and direct about stuff, too. So she tells me she's having to learn how to balance again, because of age and the changes it's brought about in her body. And it made me think about my body and physicality and the new things I've had to learn about myself as I get older, too. Balance.

Why do we assume that the only time we learn how to walk is in that first year?

2007-12-31T06:07:00.000-08:00

If you cut off a head, what will grow in its place?

When Herakles (Hercules) was sent to cut off the head of the 9 headed Hydra, he discovered that for every head cut, two more sprung in its place. And cauterization was born. The only way to kill the Hydra was to cauterize the wounds from the sword.

Perseus cut off Medusa's head, by Athena's command. Pegasus and Chrysaor were born from her head. Her blood sprayed the deserts of Libya, becoming snakes; it also became a medicine that could kill or cure.

Azhi Dahaka - the demon of evil in Persian mythology - has two snake heads that guard him at all times. No matter how many times they are cut, they grow back to protect him. And so evil continues on in the world, only by a sea of molten metal will it be vanquished.

Shiva cut off Ganesh's head in a jealous rage; Parvati asked Shiva to fetch their son a new head and Shiva went into the forest and got the head of an elephant. In fact, nothing grew in place of Ganesh's head until it was placed there by his slayer.

The Aztec goddess Coyolxauhqui, beheaded by her brother Huitilopochtli, became the moon in the sky.

There are many monsters, gods and goddesses and mere mortals (MacBeth, Marie Antoinette, Grendel for example) who did not survive their beheadings, nor leave anything in their place but fodder for artists and historians.

And then there are those monsters and gods who beheaded mere mortals, their acts justified by their imm(p)ortality, the beheadings a ritual of mass cleansing. Such as the case with Ogun in Yoruba mythology.

Who then are the gods and monsters of our time?

What will spring up in Benazir Bhutto's place (they say her son has emerged from her blood)? What serpents are forming from the drops of red gold spilled in the sandy soils of Iraq?

Will these serpents become the moon, or is their fate to call forth the molten metals to purify our earth?

Who will betray whom and change our skies forever?

As we prepare to enter 2008, I am worried about the state of the world. No. I'm more than worried. I'm deeply, gravely concerned. And as a result, inspired. To create something beautiful, resonant, healing. Something to balance the wounds of history.

2007-12-29T18:17:00.000-08:00

So, it started today. Unsuspectingly. It started. There was food. I made crepes. And a fritata. We gathered from our various paths and agreed to join together for one year. To make art. And perform art. And conceptualize art. And commit to art. For one entire leap year. 366 Days. Well, kind of. See, someone was wanting to get ride of 350+ masonite tiles from her stock. But she made the taker promise they would do two things: do something every day and keep a blog about it. So, a group of us: Senalka McDonald, Samiya Bashir, Wura Ogunji and I agreed to do it. We said yes.

And then we got together today, Saturday December 29th and hammered out the details. Figured out what we're not going to figure out. Decided to commit. To the material. To the mission. To each other. We even came up with a name for ourselves and our blog: Penz (it's pronounced Pants). So, follow us as we go on this journey. Oh and by the way - not only are we committing to making one piece of art a day for 366 days and posting on the blog every day for 366 days, we're going to be involving others. Check it out.

Peace.

2007-12-27T08:31:00.001-08:00

Ugh. It is COLD in Austin today. I feel misled by the past two years of 50+ degree winter weather. I did not know below 32 degrees was possible. Except "rarely". Anyway, I'm wearing all wool today and sneezing up a storm.

Benazir Bhutto is dead. It was over 20 years ago that Indira Ghandi was also assassinated. Why couldn't it have been Margaret Thatcher? That's all I want to know. Bhutto's leadership has been under constant controversy - some of which I believe is political baiting and some not - but she at least aimed for military reform. And then it's fucked up that one of the few female political leaders in the world has been assassinated. Yes. That's right. ASS-ASS-IN-ATED. Bomber, shooter, I don't care. Someone supplied the weapon.

Suffice to say, there aren't that many female political leaders in the history of nation-states. And most of the women have been terribly conservative. Here's a list I've started to compile of female political leaders. Not all of these women were democratically elected (and we can contest this as well), but I've tried to identify those who were by an (*):

Sirimavo Bandaranaike (Sri Lanka, Prime Minister, 1960 - world's 1st Female political leader)
Indira Ghandi (India, Prime Minister, 1966 - assassinated 1984)
Golda Meir (Israel, Prime Minister, 1969)
Margaret Thatcher (United Kingdom, Prime Minister, 1979)
Eugenia Charles (Dominica, Prime Minister, 1980)
*Vigdís Finnbogadóttír (Iceland, President, 1980 - world's 1st Female elected President)
Agatha Barbara (Malta, President, 1982)
*Corazon Aquino (Philippines, President, 1986)
Gro Harlem Brundtland (Norway, Prime Minister, 1986)
*Violeta Barrio de Chamorro (Nicaragua, President, 1990)
*Mary Robinson (Ireland, President, 1990)
*Aung San Suu Kyi (Burma, Prime Minister, 1990 - democratically elected; denied post)
Hanna Suchocka (Poland, Prime Minister, 1992)
*Kim Campbell (Canada, Prime Minister, 1993)
Tansu Ciller (Turkey, Prime Minister, 1993)
Sylvie Kinigi (Burundi, Prime Minister, 1993)
Agathe Uwilingiyimana (Rwanda, Prime Minister, 1993 - assassinated 1994)
*Chandrika Kumaratunge (Sri Lanka, Prime Minister, 1994)
Jenny Shipley (New Zealand, Prime Minister, 1997)
Mary McAleese (Ireland, President, 1997)
Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan, Prime Minister, 1998 - assassinated 2007)
Jennifer M Smith (Bermuda, Premier, 1998)
*Vaira Vike-Freiberga (Latvia, President, 1999)
*Megawati Sukarnoputri (Indonesia, President, 2001)
Angela Menkel (Germany, Chancellor, 2005)
Yuliya Tymoshenko (Ukraine, Prime Minister, 2005)
*Ellen Johnson Surleif (Liberia, President, 2006)
*Michelle Bachelet (Chile, President, 2006)
*Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (Argentina, President, 2007)
*Pratibha Patil (India, President, 2007)

This list is not exhaustive. It's what I could gleam from the lists available online. I'm not altogether pleased with the fact that I could do this over a two hour period or less. Damn. Damn. Damn. I'm upset with the circumstances of Bhutto's death, too. More than anything else.

On another note altogether, though also not so happy, Lisa C. brought to my attention this article by Tom Christensen of blog.rightreading.com on small presses and the current challenges faced by said small presses as a result of large media conglomerates. Here are two small excerpts:

"Now, you might say, publishing companies are sold and merged all the time. Why does any of this matter? It is true that such changes in its landscape have been a part of publishing since the Renaissance. But:

Never before has such a large percentage of the publishing market been in the control of so few organizations.
Never before has so much of American publishing been accountable to foreign owners.
Never before has publishing been a piece of giant entertainment multinationals that control not just book publishing but to a large degree its promotion and distribution"

AND

"Today 80 percent of U.S. publishing is controlled by five giant multinational corporations. In my next post we will take a closer look at who they are and how their activities affect the way books are published in this country."

I've been trying to follow what's going on since the merger of distribution companies earlier this year. It's a little overwhelming, and as a strong supporter of small presses, I immediately think of all the implications. How many small presses will close this year? How many magazines? Because of lack of distribution (note: those big chain stores only carry books that are available through distributors), or resources to print. What does it mean for emerging authors, such as myself or others who are trying to get their FIRST book published? What are the implications for our social-cultural landscape if only a few multinationals are controlling the output and production of books (not all literature)?

I'm really not trying to be morose. It's just a cold day. You know?

2007-12-24T14:32:00.000-08:00

A week late, but right on time.

Lakota withdraw from treaties, declare independence from U.S.

The Lakota Sioux Indians, whose ancestors include Sitting Bull, Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from all treaties their forefathers signed with the U.S. government and have declared their independence. A delegation delivered the news to the State Department earlier this week.

Portions of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming comprise Lakota country, and the tribe says that if the federal government doesn't begin diplomatic discussions promptly, liens will be filed on property in the five-state region. Here's the news release.

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," said Russell Means, a longtime Indian rights activist. "This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically Article 6 of the Constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land.

"It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the U.S. and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent," he added during a press conference yesterday in Washington.

The new country would issue its own passports and driver licenses, and living there would be tax-free, provided residents renounce their U.S. citizenship, he said, according to a report from Agence France-Presse.

The Lakota say the United States has never honored the pacts, signed with the Great Sioux Nation in 1851 and 1868 at Fort Laramie, Wyo.

"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children," said Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977.

Means said the "annexation" of native American land had turned the Lakota into "facsimiles of white people."

In 1974, the Lakota drafted a declaration of continuing independence. Their cause got a boost in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. The Bush administration opposed the measure.

Article in USA Today Blog.

To find out more:

www.lakotafreedom.com
www.commondreams.org
www.wikipedia.org

Let's see how this all progresses.

2007-12-22T08:36:00.000-08:00

Do it. Learn new words. Give rice. 20 grains = 1 teaspoon of rice. 1000 grains = a bowl.

2007-12-21T14:00:00.001-08:00

Last night I watched the documentary "The Price of Sugar" directed by Bill Haney, and featuring several nameless Haitian/Dominicans (any configuration thereof) and Father Christopher Hartley - who is the "hero" and main protagonist of this film. It's an important film, and their website is designed as an action site. Thanks to M.P. & C.M., we were able to project the film on a big white sheet in their living room and then hold a conversation afterwards.

I remember the first time I ever spent time on a batey. I gave up sugar for almost 2 years. Because of what I witnessed. And then I went to work in an ice cream shop and became nearly diabetic from eating so much ice cream (gelato, really - gianduia gelato, mango sorbet, the works). And I drink coffee with sugar - especially if it's office coffee. And when I lived in NYC, I used to be on the J-M-Z line and would watch the billows of smoke coming from the Dominos sugar factory on my way into work in Manhattan.

It always stank to me even though we couldn't smell anything from the train. That's cause I grew up driving past the ingenio in San Pedro de Macorix in the D.R. where they process sugar cane and make it the white stuff. It stinks. Like rotting meat. Makes you wonder, huh? And then when you drive past San Pedro you cross train tracks where all the workers on the plantations (bateyes) load the cane onto boxcars. Crates, really. And then you get to La Romana, and when you drive north of La Romana, all you see is cane. All the way to the mountains. Acres and acres of cane. No people. That's because they're on lockdown inside.

But, you gotta watch the movie to learn more about that. And oh yeah - and remember to watch the film with the critical eye it deserves. For even though Father Hartley's work is important, it's all of the nameless Haitian/Haitian-Dominican/Dominican laborers whose bodies are literally on the line.

Peace.

2007-12-17T08:58:00.000-08:00

Every time I open my in email inbox I have a lovely little gift from the Word of the Day. Today's word: unfledged.

unfledged \uhn-FLEJD\, adjective:

1. Lacking the feathers necessary for flight.
2. Not fully developed; immature.

I always wonder how writers stumble across language and then somehow make it theirs and then release it all again. I think of Octavia Butler's "Fledgling" and of the birds that nest in the trees outside my window. I think of children who are not children anymore, and yet they are unfledged. The children.

I collect these words of the day. I put them all in one place and then from time to time I stare at them, trying to make sense of my love for them. There's no apparent logic to my attraction. Except maybe the sound of the word. The way the letters look together. And maybe then, after that, their definitions. Unfledged just sounds like a word that's wanting to take off, but is somehow grounded.

These words don't end up in my every day vocabulary. They are a private pleasure. I rendezvous with them at haphazard times, consider their completeness and openness. They are beautiful.

2007-12-13T10:20:00.000-08:00

Life is becoming.

This past Saturday, a group of us came together and worked with Wura-Natasha Ogunji on a series of videos she's creating. She made us fathoms - threads in the colors of our deepest powers - and in S & K's backyard, we discovered the depths of ourselves. We moved and spoke with each other wordlessly. For hours. For days, it seems, since I'm still reverberating with the vibes from the experience. And then, we got to see some of the images. And it was so beautiful. The artist hasn't released stills or videos yet, otherwise I'd post some here. And when she does, I will.

Besides that, since being back home I've been working on a performance piece and on transcribing conversations. Absorbing the winter sunshine. And petting my fluff Friends on Facebook. I'll admit it. I can waste SO much time with facebook. It's amazing.

Marvin K White's in town, and he's performing on Saturday at the Victory Grille. Yay! Don't want to miss a chance to see him in his brilliance.

Peace.

2007-12-12T10:18:00.000-08:00

In honor of Ike Turner's death.

2007-12-03T11:26:00.000-08:00

New York, New York.

I spent a little time in New York City on my way back to Austin. Not enough time to do everything, but enough time to go and do some research at the Center for Jewish History archives, which houses the collections of the American Sephardi Federation among other collections. I had a great time. Spent two days reading about Sephardi literature and Jewish Caribbean history. There's not much out there right now, that I've found so far. But, I feel like maybe I'm not looking in the right places. Anyway, what I did find was fantastic, and very exciting.

I also got to attend the workshop Tongues of Fire, led by the fabulous r. Erica Doyle and meeting at the Audre Lorde Project. Which leads me to the fact that this week there is GENIUS AT WORK.

Tonight December 3, 2007, Ernest Hardy will be reading from Bloodbeats, Vol. 1 A at Columbia University in uptown Manhattan.

Then Thursday, the participants of the Tongues Afire workshop will be reading at the Audre Lorde Project from 7pm on.

And Friday, to end an already fabulous week, Tisa Bryant will be celebrating the release of her new book: Unexplained Presence [Leon Works Press].

A note about the significance of these three events this week. For one, I have often found myself complaining about the fact that there is just not enough cultural criticism. But between Ernest and Tisa, I find that there's great hope. Ernest's collection of essays on pop and hip-hop cultures are brilliant, insightful, critical, compassionate and they remind me of the complex social and political context under which we've been living for the past 20 years. Tisa's writings are a combination of fiction, critical literary and arts theory. Not only was I refreshed by the form in which she writes, but I was led to think about art and literature in a completely new way - her analyses lend themselves to a new way of reading visual art, film and literature. And she reaches deeper than thirst.

Now that in between the end points of these two brilliant is the Tongues Afire reading. When I visited the workshop (thank you to all the participants who so gracefully welcomed me), they were working on Manifestas. Here's an excerpt of a manifesta by A. Naomi Jackson, for flava (she's not speaking for the whole group; it's an individual writing piece that mentions the group):

The Tongues Afire collective is a group of women writers creating the change they want to see in the world.

In the face of efforts to deny our collective voice, we stand up not as consumers or shareholders, neither as militants with guns and spears, but as writers motivated by our desire to share the word.

We know we are the ones we have been waiting for, the blossoms whose sweet smell we hope to awaken to.

We believe that the future generation needs our stories. We hope they will be encouraged by knowing that their stories began with ours, and knowing that they do not struggle alone.

And the poet/performer Sandra Ramirez shared a manifesta, with the line: "I measure twice, cut once" in reference to love, relationships and joy. I think that line is beautiful, and telling and powerful and a guide for us in doing this work.

So, I come back to Austin fed - intellectually, culturally and in all other ways - knowing that good things are happening in the world.

Peace.

2007-11-24T16:33:00.000-08:00

During my last few days in Barcelona, I took advantage of my metro day pass and my articket to visit several tourist sites and museums in town. Usually I stay as far away as possible from tourist sites, but I had visited the Sagrada Familia in 1998 when it was still covered in construction cloth and wanted to see what had been done with the Cathedral in the past nine years. The one really amazing thing about El Bruc was the Montserrat mountain range and surrounding landscape, which really revealed Gaudi's influences.

The Sagrada Familia in and of itself is quite an architectural feat. Replete with multiple styles enveloped into the nooks and crannies of the Basilica, the towers and all the adjoining Cathedral structures. I also went up to Parc Guell in the northern part of the city and walked up high above Barcelona. From where I stood I could look out over the entire city all the way to the Mediterranean sea.
Parc Guell is really beautiful. The trails are lined with cactus and palms, cedar pines and local trees I'm not familiar with. And entering from the Infinite Staircase on the western end of the park, I walked through and arrived in Parc Guell from the back. Gaudi's mosaic architecture, the colors and the green just make this a really fun park to visit and to be in. Just spending time there made my exit from Spain really, really wonderful.

On my penultimate day I made a point of visiting Barcelona's Jewish Quarter, or what used to be known as the Call (it still is). It's the site of Spain's oldest synagogue, dating back to the 3rd century of the Christian Era. What remains are ruins - the walls, the doorway, the windows...and dye baths from when it was turned into a "tinteria" (dye factory) after its destruction in the 14th century, when a massacre wiped out a large portion of the Jewish Quarter. Anyway, I went to visit the Quarter to try and get an understanding of the emotional weight, and physical appearance of where Jews were living prior to the Inquisition. What must it have been like?

Well, I know what it was like when I went. A very charming man (I didn't get his name) informed me that the donation would cover a tour of the synagogue. So, I gave him my 2 Euros, and he pulled back the curtain to reveal... the synagogue! Complete with chairs covered in plush red seating for the (apparent) services. Enough for a minyan, of course (that's 10 people). He spun in place to the right and showed me the dye baths, spun in place to the left and showed me the ancient walls. Informed me of the history of the Torah and then left me to my own devices.
It was great. And I could imagine the synagogue packed with people on Fridays and Saturdays...and for bar mitzvah's. It was sweet. And I also sensed this combination of vigilance and a knowing....the knowing that comes when your people have been living somewhere for a long time; the vigilance from histories of persecution.

That same day I went to the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB)'s show on Apartheid. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. Amazing exhibit. Similar to my MACBA experience, the curators of this exhibit created a multi media space that engaged the historical, scientific, artistic and political dynamics and contexts of Apartheid in South Africa. The show specifically discussed the development of the concept of race and racism, originating in African colonial contexts and extending to the Holocaust. For example, the "African Village" zoos that were so popular in the 1920s and 1930s throughout Europe (not to mention the Worlds Fairs), and specifically the proliferation of the Venus Hottentot imagery. The exhibit also included references to U.S. racism, the Holocaust and the U.S. Black Power movements. Two of my favorite quotes from the sections detailing South African resistance to Apartheid:

"Strijdom, you have tampered with the women. You have struck a rock, you will be crushed."
by Lilian Ngoyi when she and Helen Joseph led 20,000 women in a protest against the amplification of the national identity pass system (August 9, 1956)

"Africa my beginning and Africa my end...they lay their sponges over the soil and soaked the resources to fill their coffers..."
by Poet Ingoapele Mandingoane in an underground gathering in the Miholti Black Theatre, Soweto, 1978

And this image, titled "The People Shall Govern" (photo by Eli Weinberg, from the Robben Island Mayibuye Archives) stopped me in my tracks for a good minute:

As an artist, Spain revealed its weighted history to me. I loved Barcelona, and was fortunate enough to be hosted by wonderful friends. I also came to understand the importance of specific criteria for creating new work. Not all residencies are the same, and Can Serrat, while very jovial, is a good place for people who work well with lots of distractions. Who can focus in the middle of a storm. The visual artist studio spaces are also fantastic.

I'm glad to be back in the Americas, though I look forward to future trips over the Atlantic. Always a powerful experience, though the flight is the same as if I was going from New York to Califorina. Something about crossing water, though, always strikes me. Always.

2007-11-09T07:02:00.000-08:00

So yesterday I left the shelter of the mountains of El Bruc and headed into Barcelona - the great city of Catalunya. Those who know me might be shocked by the fact of my having left a residency space to enter a big city with all of its distractions. Well, I needed some envelopes and the local papeleria "La Vanguardia" doesn't have any right now. So, I headed into Barcelona. While I was there, I visited MACBA - the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona - to check them out. That in and of itself made the trip in worth it. Next time I'm in the city, which will probably be when I leave, I might go back and I'll definitely be checking out the Centro Cultural Contemporani de Barcelona - which is right next door.

So what was so great about the MACBA? Well, I happen to love the tail end of the modern/formalist arts movements. They had an exhibit titled: Sota la bomba. El jazz de la guerra d'imatges transatlantica. 1946-1956 which can be translated as "Dropping the bomb. The jazz of War, Transatlantic images from 1946-1956". It was a brilliantly curated exhibit which took full advantage of the MACBA's architectural layout - a maze of rooms with walls that open out to the building's glass visage where you can catch glimpses of the brilliantly graffitied walls of the church on one side, and the crumbling walls of another church-turned-gallery along a large plaza on the other. And the exhibit itself featured works of French, Eastern European, U.S., and Spanish artists from the post WWII period, with an emphasis on French-U.S. artists. Sure there was a lot of Jackson Pollock, who I cannot stand as an artist or historical persona, but there was also a great deal of work by Antoni Tapies, and Franz Kline and Mark Rothko and William de Koonig. The paintings were accompanied by video - not just artistic videos but movies and films (like Hitchcock's Rear Window) - and by historical texts, newspapers, journals and the materia prima of cultural production from the times. All aspects of cultural life were explored, and interrogated. It was fascinating.

Right next door, as if it wasn't enough to stand in front of Kandinsky's "Ascension Legere" for 15 minutes (which it wasn't), was an exhibit on Joan Jonas' work. Quite out there. Incredibly self indulgent and typical of that early 70s performance art aesthetic (yes, okay, DEFINING), BUT the video pieces were fascinating. I sat and watched them, amidst the performance debris, for a long time. Trying to capture all of the distinct visual layers simultaneously occupying two and three dimensional space.

So, though I was really, really glad to come back to El Bruc at the end of the day and lay my head down in the comfort of a warm bed amidst the quiet of the mountains, I'm glad I went in for my envelopes and art. I also walked and saw a couple of Gaudi's buildings. Eeh. Interesting, but I saw a ton of his work when I was in Barcelona in 1998. So, it doesn't move me in the same way anymore. Though it's definitely beautiful and definitely interesting. Just not Kandinsky.

Anyway, I'm off to try and find a form in which to write some poetry.

Peace.

2007-11-07T06:53:00.000-08:00

Yay! UC Irvine's Department of Spanish and Portuguese announced it's 2007 33rd Chicano/Latino Literary Prize winner in the genre of Novel. I received Third Prize for the unpublished manuscript, Anacaona's Daughter, and the other winners were:

Silvio Sirias – Meet Me Under the Ceiba (First Prize) and Gary Winters - The Deer Dancer (Second Prize).

Congratulations to the other winners. I am very honored to be a prize winner in the 33rd year. Thank you to the Prize committee and the judge, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith.

2007-11-07T03:08:00.001-08:00

Hell yeah. If you're in NYC on November 8, check it out:

Thursday, November 8, 7PM

Cosponsored by Poets & Writers

Wouldn't quit the day job--but you love poetry nevertheless. A panel discussion with Alice Quinn, (Poetry Society of America/The New Yorker), Deborah Garrison (poet/Alfred A. Knopf editor), and Joseph Legaspi (poet/Kundiman codirector), moderated by Quang Bao on getting your poems and manuscripts edited and published.

A frank conversation about creating a life as a poet, including residencies, mentoring, anthology projects, self-publishing, MFA programs, teaching and public readings. A conversation about the mechanics of getting published--and expert, friendly advice about maintaining a life in the professional world of poetry.

@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)
New York City

$5 suggested donation

Call 212.494.0061 for more information or check http://www.aaww. org

2007-11-06T02:28:00.000-08:00

An interview with A. Van Jordan in The American Prospect, November 2, 2007. An excerpt from: Where Physics, Poetry, and Politics Collide.

Clark: With Quantum Lyrics as your third poetry collection, how has the cross-cultural, cross-racial communication evolved? Any surprises?

Jordan: If physics had a Race Theory, my hypothesis would be that we have more to fight for together than we have reasons for which to fight each other. The older I get, the more I see the proof. It's always been there. Any strides made in civil rights came from a joint effort between blacks and whites, men and women, straight and gay. Einstein embodies this theory. Who would think that a Jewish immigrant from Germany and Switzerland would be a champion of civil rights in America before World War II? Einstein had great foresight in this way.

He gave up his German citizenship as a teenager before World War I. Adults living in Germany during World War II couldn't see the horrors ahead, but he intuited it. I think he saw the same conflict coming in America with the '60s, which he never witnessed. It's one thing to think of how prescient Richard Wright was with Native Son and Black Boy before the '60s, but he felt the sting of racism his whole life as a black male living in Jim Crow, pre-Civil Rights, pre-Brown v. Board of Education America. Einstein had a very comfortable position as a Princeton professor and international acclaim and respect as a genius. He didn't have to have the empathy that he expressed. It's as preternatural a gift as his insight into relativity.

Clark: In "Quantum Lyrics Montage," you note the controversy over the paper in which the equation E=MC2 first appeared. The lead-in reads, "... in a Russian publication, both (Mileva) Maric and Einstein's names appear; in subsequent printings, only Einstein's." What do you think about poetry's role in collective memory, of drawing out voices that were erased through sexism, racism, and other forms of discrimination?

Jordan: I think those voices are beating hearts beneath the floorboards. They clearly exist, but many want -- and, more accurately, really hope -- that they will just go away. Poetry has a long tradition of chronicling the history and culture of society. In this way, I suppose these voices are working in this tradition.

Clark: Also in "Quantum Lyrics Montage," we see Einstein at a forum held by Philip Lenard, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who denounces "Jewish physics." How is that dangerous mix of intolerance and science present today? Who, like Einstein, might be able to say: "Let them taunt; my mind is taut"?

Jordan: Unless he runs for public office again, I think Al Gore will be able to quote that line. Like most great leaders, I think he's most effective when he isn't beholden to a political party but dedicated to a cause. I read his book The Earth in Balance long before An Inconvenient Truth, and it's clear that Gore is a futurist. He can forecast what needs to happen long before the need is evident to others; that's a sign of genius, as I see it.

Wynton Marsalis will be able to make this claim because he understands the importance of keeping tradition alive, while pushing to extend the boundaries of it. I hear a lot of criticism of the Lincoln Jazz Orchestra and of Marsalis as an ambassador for jazz. The truth is, jazz would become an art form held sacred in Japan and Europe more than America if it weren't for the work he's doing. It is our national music. Period. It's for America what classical music is to Europe. By keeping a finger on the pulse of its tradition, we never lose its direction. Blood on the Fields is one of the most underrated jazz albums of all time.

Spike Lee and John Sayles would round out my top four. Both of these filmmakers allow for a discussion of race in their films that most Americans are afraid to have in their communities, classrooms and churches. Their work is cathartic for the entire nation: those who dare watch them in the dark, those fortunate enough to have a theater in their community showing their films. There's a near pathologic fascination with the horror sub-genre of slasher films, which is as feebly plotted as a porn film for gratuitous misogyny. The slasher film and the hyper-violent, Tarantino-esque films are packing theaters, but despite the important films both of these filmmakers have made, I don't think they have a blockbuster between the two of them. If Lee and Sayles had the following of James Cameron or Steven Spielberg, the country would have a more truthful conversation about race, which is still a source of tension as we can see by the Jena 6.

Clark: Have you written poetry about the Jena 6?

Jordan: : No, I want to, though. I need space between these events to write about them. I'd need to talk to people from there, too, people involved. I don't write poems about events like these and simply imagine the voices; I approximate the emotion as much as possible when the primary source is unavailable. In this case, the people are alive and vocal. So, I'd have to ask why I would write a poem about it, first. That's a heavy responsibility. What can I say in a poem that they can't say themselves better. At that point, the poem would have to transcend that daily conversation and live up to my definition of poetry: the highest form of communication. For that to happen, though, I'd need time to digest this phenomenon of Jena and the varied responses to it. I'd want to get it right. My mother went to that school, so I'd probably start by interviewing her and move forward through time.

2007-11-03T12:52:00.000-07:00

I'm at Can Serrat in El Bruc, 40 minutes north of Barcelona, Spain. El Bruc, and the artist residency is at the base of the Montserrat mountains and monastery. The air is crisp, cool and Mediterranean. Cold at night. Looking at Montserrat, Y.C. and I observed that Gaudi's work makes complete and total sense. That in essence, it's in conversation with the landscape here. The mountain seems to have flutes of rock plunging up from the earth. In the late afternoons, it's coppery - a shift from the cool green snakeskin color it has in the mornings.

I'm here to work on a novel and some poetry. On the way over from Austin, I stopped in New York City and did some things. I had a wonderful time giving several workshops - two at the Little Red School House and one for the Living Out Loud! series - at Washington Irving High. It was fun. The young artists and thinkers were inspiring as usual.

I also got to check out the Caribbean Art Show (Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art) at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. That was really wonderful and fascinating. Some of the themes of the show were transnationalism/globalization and identity; religion and spirituality; pop culture. I think my favorite pieces were: Raquel Paiewonsky (b. Dominican Republic 1969). Levitando: A un solo pie (Levitating: On One Foot), 2003; Christopher Cozier (b. Trinidad 1959). Tropical Night, 2006; Kawtchou, by Maxence Denis; and a piece about Bronx Boricua gangs in the 1970s (I have to look up the artist and content so later on details). And what was most fascinating was that the show was having a conversation with the Caribbean Biennials of the past few years - one I saw in Santo Domingo and others that I've seen catalogues for. There is something really deep happening in the Carib sea waters.

It was certainly a lift from seeing the exhibit: Eternal Ancestors - The Art of the Central African Reliquary exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That was such a disturbing exhibit that I've decided I'm going to dedicate an entire blog page to discussing it. So, not now, but later.

Anyway, I'm off to read for a bit. To get inspired to work tomorrow.

Peace.

2007-10-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

Chris Rock says, “I love rap, but it’s getting a lot harder to defend.” I often feel that way. I love old-school hip-hop and rap. I love rap that makes me think. And, honestly, even though I won’t dance to the Thong Song, a much better beat might make it a minute before I realize what’s being said. I don’t think it would hurt artists to work on their lyrical abilities, but anyway…that’s not where I’m going with this.

Following the wave of national debates on the language of hip hop, there’s a powerful film that addresses commerce linked to hip hop: BLING: A Planet Rock – an off the hook documentary by former Editor in Chief of One World magazine Raquel Cepeda (and fellow Dominican) that looks at Sierra Leone and asks us to analyze our connection to (un)fair and (in)humane conditions and legacies associated with the diamond trade. In her own words:

"I felt that Sierra Leone was more than an article, because I saw these fascinating parallels," Cepeda said. "It was formed by freed slaves, and just at the time hip-hop started to become commercially successful here in the United States — in 1991 — [the Los Angeles district] Watts was burning, and this bloody civil war was beginning in Sierra Leone. So as the conflict was ending, and the aftermath was everywhere, I felt like it would be an interesting social experiment to have some rappers go there as goodwill ambassadors. Because hip-hop has affected every crevice of the world, and I wanted rappers to know that."

From: [http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1536572/story.jhtml, July 18, 2006]

What I like about the film is not just that it places the conversation specifically within a hip-hop lens, it places three very distinct hip hop artists (Raekwon from Wu-Tang Clan, Tego Calderon and Paul Wall) as the subjects of the film. I thought it was really smart that she chose three people from such different eras, locations and styles of hip hop. And, that Q-Tip and Kanye West also back the film, providing their own insights both on and off camera (Kanye West released his song: Diamonds From Sierra Leone last year, just before the film was initially released, and Q-Tip was apparently the one who set the whole question off). Cepeda also included the insights of former child soldier Ishmael Beah within the discussion of not just the war itself, but on the role of U.S. based hip hop artists within the war (for e.g. – some rebel factions using Tupac T-shirts as uniforms) and as a form of creative outlet and inspiration for Sierra Leone based hip hop artists within their own work. The film deftly maneuvers the complexities of the hip hop industry, the power of individual artists to affect entire communities and the ways in which consumer values in the U.S. end up impacting us here and people in the rest of the world.

Now, keep in mind, I have been impressed and disturbed FOR YEARS about the role of the U.S. media, and particularly the portrayal of people of color within U.S. media on shaping the imaginary throughout the rest of the world. For one, I think it’s hot that hip-hop has been embraced as a powerful transnational form of expression of blackness and resistance. But, because of its transcendent power, I’ve also been really upset by the ways in which sexism, homophobia and straight up violence have been portrayed and perpetrated. Cepeda deals with this dynamic as a true lover of hip hop, and we as viewers watch as Raekwon realizes how Wu-Tang affected an entire generation in Sierra Leone – in both very positive and painful ways. One Sierra Leone hip hop artist states, “We saw U.S. hip hop artists talking about using guns on one another, and so we felt justified in using ours against each other.” Simultaneously, hip hop provided an outlet for peace in 2001, when thousands of rebels entered Freetown to watch Sierra Leonian hip hop artist Jimmy B give a concert.

Yeah. It’s complex. We are powerful, us artists. And while we can never anticipate how our art will transform or affect others (throughout the world), we can be intentional about how we create work.

Oh yes, and one last thing. I forgot to mention the setting in which I viewed the film, something which struck me as kind of ironic. Kinda. I received an email from a friend telling me about the free viewing of the film – the email included the youtube video excerpt I’ve posted below.

So, Wu & I went to the Austin Alamo Draft House – a movie house that serves food and drinks. Scion was handing out goodie bags with XXL T-shirts, hats and tons of promotional material. I skipped the bags, but then went back and got one anyway when I found out there was a hat inside (I know – I’m easy). We got two pink tickets. When we sat down, the woman sitting next to me told us, “Those tickets are for free drinks. You can order any drinks on the menu.” Free film? Free drinks? Hell yeah. We ordered wine. A DJ was spinning house & hip hop music to old footage of the TV Dance show “Graffiti Rock” while we waited for the reel to start. Right before the movie showed, Scion reps came and took photos of the audience. I know they took photos of me and Wu because we were two of 5 black people in the audience. And the guy sitting next to Wura was South Asian. So you know – DIVERSITY. Everyone else in the audience was white.

The film itself was preceded by an awful 10 minute short documentary about homelessness in Los Angeles (quote of the year: You just put your gloves on and help.” Um. Yeah.). After muttering a 10-minute commentary under my breath, I finally hushed for the film itself. I watched, moved and awed as folks around us ate. I couldn’t help think: wow – what’s the logic behind the marketing of this film – a film about people suffering and giving out freebies? Sip. Hmm.

Following the Q&A session, we all filtered out of the theatre (it was about 12.45am at this point). Wu and I stood outside and watched the two cop cars drive off after they realized it was mostly a white audience. Yeah. So, you see, it’s complex. Watching a film about black people at war with each other – a war fueled by the diamond trade’s practices – and just outside, the cops are ready to take us.

Peace.

2007-10-15T10:01:00.001-07:00

Photo courtesy of Sharon Bridgforth.

On Friday the Rooted Workshop gave a reading/presentation at Resistencia bookstore. We were honored by the presence of raulsalinas, and by the hard work of the Resistencia staff and volunteers: Rene, Lisa and Gaby. Thank you.

The reading included works by Anel Flores, Cheryl Coward, Matt Richardson, Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, Maria Limon, Samiya Bashir, Sharon Bridgforth, Jen Marguiles, and myself as well as a performance on knitting by Senalka McDonald and a video presentation by Wura-Natasha Ogunji.

It was packed, and off the chain.

What an amazing group of people.

2007-10-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

This is the latest ridiculousness. This announcement's already from last week, which I know, in the popular imaginary is ages ago. And, normally I don't even like to think about reproducing images/events such as this in my sphere. But, I was so shocked with the racist, colorist, sexist implications of all of this that I had to. It just resonates so deeply with how racism plays out in the Caribbean. I also had to include brilliant responses, like the "news article" (fictional) written by Francine Harris, posted below.

Francine Harris's response

DETROIT – Following a party promoters' call for "light-skinned Libras" to populate a night club for a dance night, protestors across the metropolitan area today dumped tens of thousands of paper bags at local dumping grounds and filled a barge that sailed the Detroit River this afternoon.

"The paper bag test is dead here" said local hip-hop legend and party promoter, NightRise, referring to the admittance policy among African-Americans. His venues have blown up lately for their decision to add other nights to Ladies Night, including: Gentlemen's Night for the ladies, Poet's Night where freestylers get in for free, GenderBender Night where people of both sexes come in drag, and Family Night which are alcohol free and kid friendly. "Overall, man, we're just brown-giddy. Brown folks coming to my clubs down here – automatic superstars!"

The youth in Detroit are also voicing their concerns. "I just hate that people think we don't love ourselves" said Novena Derrick, a 13-year old ninth grader, posing with a ripped up paper bag and a Macintosh apple in her mouth. Derrick is best known for her tri-color Blacker Berry flag, a spoof of the Michigan flag. The traditional elk and moose in the Michigan flag bear a banner of an armed man defending his land, under the word Tuebor (latin for "I will defend") and stand protected by the United States Eagle.

Derrick's version of this flag still features the elk, moose and eagle, but the animals frame a banner of a happy clan of African-Americans, of various shades, laughing in the sunshine. As Derrick likes to point out: "We took it back to its original black color …plus the diaspora replaces the mean man with the gun".

Color-struck promoters were unavailable for comment on the protests.

2007-10-11T07:38:00.000-07:00

Jóvenes del Liceo Técnico Hermanas del Rosario Torres marchan
para repudiar las drogas y actos delictivos en el sector
Guachupita de la zona norte del Distrito Nacional.

Youth in the sector of Guachupita, one of the poorest urban communities in the Dominican Republic, made a call to end the drug related violence in their neighborhood. Between the ages of 11 -16 they staged a peace march; over 250 youth have been engaged in discussions and problem-solving organizing meetings for the last month. The problem of drug related violence has gotten so bad that many children report not being able to go to the colmados - corner stores - to buy food items. Sending children to the corner stores is a common thing to do (me, my brothers and all my cousins were always being sent to the corner store to buy everything from dinner bread to a cigarette for my aunt). However, children getting robbed on the way there or back is a new thing.

It says a lot when 11 year olds are heading a march for peace. I hope this process also opens the way for creative, community developed solutions. I have faith that it already has.

2007-10-10T08:51:00.000-07:00

Slavery a reality, here and now
By KATHLEEN PARKER

When you say slavery, most Americans think about what ended with the Civil
War. With relief, we think: That was then.

But slavery is, unfortunately, now.

We call it "human trafficking" these days, an almost innocuous- sounding
term, but it is slavery by any other name. And the numbers are stunning. Around
the world, as many as 1.1 million human beings, mostly women and children, are
"trafficked" across international borders and sold each year into slavery,
according to the U.S. State Department.

If one counts all the people forced into servitude -- from farms in India to
charcoal mines in Brazil -- the numbers reach into the millions. Even the
United States has become a major importer of sex slaves, with estimates running
between 14,500 and 17,500. Of those, 80 percent are women and half are minors.

Although the United States has been monitoring trafficking since 1994 -- and
Congress passed a trafficking victims protection act in 2000 -- slavery hasn't
seized the American imagination the same way apartheid once did, or as Darfur
has in recent years. That may begin to change with two new films -- one a
documentary and the other a mainstream film starring Kevin Kline -- aimed at
disturbing our slumber.

They are effective.

In "Sold," a documentary by former ABC producer Jody Hassett Sanchez, we meet
Pakistani boys as young as 3 sold into service as camel jockeys in the United
Arab Emirates. We also meet little girls as young as 5 who had been sold as
sex slaves.

One of the challenges of modern-day slavery is that good people are often
unknowingly complicit. Many of the children featured in the documentary are sold
by their impoverished parents, who were promised their children would have
better lives. The reality is something different. Little girls end up as abused
prostitutes, while little boys sold as jockeys spend 12 or more hours a day
strapped onto the backs of camels, are shocked with metal prods and fed saltwater
to prevent their gaining weight.

At a screening Wednesday, Sanchez told an audience that included U.S. Reps.
Mary Bono, R-Calif., and Connie Mack, R-Fla., that she wanted to focus on
people who were working to end slavery. She followed three faith-driven people -- a
Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian from India, Pakistan and Togo, respectively
-- who have suffered threats and beatings to save women and children.

Sanchez says she hopes her documentary, which is cinematically beautiful
despite the hideous subject, will inspire Americans, especially young people, to
take action.

"Trade," which opens in theaters this weekend, is a less hopeful, if equally
harrowing, treatment of the same subject. Based on a 2004 New York Times
magazine story by Peter Landesman ("The Girls Next Door,"), the movie shines a
light on how traffickers operate from Mexico to a stash house in suburban New
Jersey.

The story follows Adriana, a 13-year-old girl kidnapped in Mexico City by an
organized crime gang, and a naive young Polish woman who left her country for
the false promise of a better life. Terror can't get any worse than what these
two endure as they are trundled through barren landscapes, handed off as
sexual favors to strangers, and ultimately put up for sale.

A parallel story unfolds as Adriana's 17-year-old brother, Jorge, teams with
Ray, a Texas cop played by Kline, to try to rescue her before she is sold at
an online auction.

This is not a fun movie to watch, nor is it likely to improve anyone's
opinion of mankind. But it's an important film that makes denial no longer possible.
While "Trade" will make you angry, "Sold" will make you want to applaud. Both
will make you want to do something.

Ending slavery won't be an overnight fix. You can't throw money at it and
make it go away, though a check to the right people will help. Ultimately,
slavery is a moral problem that forces confrontation with one's commitment to human
dignity.

Put it this way: Once you know little boys barely out of diapers are sold as
camel jockeys, or that little girls are prostituted before they can tie their
shoes -- or that any child is peddled to the pedophile with the highest bid --
averting your eyes is not an option.

Kathleen Parker's e-mail address is kparker@kparker. com.

All Times Union materials copyright 1996-2007, Capital Newspapers Division of
The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.

2007-10-09T14:36:00.001-07:00

Oh - and one more treasure for the day. Originally saw it on Samiya Bashir's Blog: Scryptkeeper. Rapper extraordinaire Roxanne Shante on royalties from the industry.

2007-10-09T12:51:00.000-07:00

Treasures, treasures beautiful treasures of historical intersections.

I received word from Alan King about the new reading series, Intersections, held at Honfleur gallery in D.C. Not that I live anywhere near D.C., but I loved hearing about it and reading about all the literal and metaphorical intersections of histories and genres.

Another little treasure, this video from Afrika Bambaata - an explosion of African diasporic intersections: Carnival, Mardi Gras, Indigeneity, Candomble, Latino-ness, Egyptology, Hip Hop, the Bronx and Queerness. Love it.

2007-10-07T17:12:00.000-07:00

The venerable Samiya Bashir, Sharon Bridgforth and me.
Photo courtesy of Sharon Bridgforth.

Well, so much, so much.

Today, Sharon Bridgforth, Samiya Bashir and I read at BookWoman here in Austin. How incredible to be in the company of these women, and under the umbrella of Lisa C. Moore's vision. Wow. Sharon read from The Bulljean Stories, and moved us and had us laughing all at once. Samiya read some new poems and from Where the Apple Falls. And I read one excerpt from Erzulie's Skirt and other excerpts from my as of yet unpublished novel "Anacaona's Daughter". The vibe was incredible. And an awesome turnout.

It also followed on the heals of a beautiful get-together last night, hosted by us here in Austin to welcome the amazing folks who've come to town. Wura-Natasha Ogunji showed her new performance videos, including "Belongings". And Amanda Johnston shared the developments of a twisted experience of racial discrimination at Borders boosktore here in Austin on Friday September 28th, 2007. The ensuing actions and reactions are astounding. As I told her:

Your story last night shook everyone, long after you and Fabian and your cousin had parted from our home. In sharing the full extent of your experience, I am humbled and deeply angered. I am humbled by the full extent of your vision, and by your commitment to a strategy that addresses the different elements of how discrimination affects us as people of color. This week of on-going, open and transparent communication is really deep to me. The Borders leadership should be honored that you have engaged them in this dialogue.

I am deeply angered because bookstores such as Borders have really caused a shift in the landscape of bookstores and the relationship that we as authors have to bookstores: the small bookstores that have historically been so critical to the development of community around writings by people of color, women, etc and have enabled us to continue doing the work, have economically suffered because of chains such as Borders. Which only adds insult to injury, when we go in to buy books, and are reminded of the depth of our losses.

I will be posting a link to your blog on my blog. Out of respect for you and for my friends who staff Borders stores throughout the country, I will also be contacting them to discuss this experience, and to hold critical dialogue around how to not have it happen where they are.

Much love,
Ana

**********************

What's sad to me is that I continued to be surprised when these things happen. And that I don't. Ya know?

In any case, the reading today was a good, heartening reminder of things that are right in the world. Things that we can work towards and be committed to as artists.

Peace, Love.

2007-10-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

Speaking as Hanifah do.