soul-of-sam

Movie Review: 'Rita Working Title' looks at the relationship between a writer and her words

2008-05-03T19:18:00.002-04:00

Creative writers are devoted first to their words. It is a relationship that, like others, must be watered in order to grow and then nurtured in order to develop into its own. Michal Bat-Adam’s Rita Working Title is about this relationship and how, if a writer does not know herself well enough, the relationship can circle around going only where it’s already been. Or it can just stop. Words can divorce a writer.

Rita Working Title is not a cop-out by Bat-Adam to avoid the lame and unforgiving “untitled” for the film. Although it could benefit from a colon after Rita, the intrigue of not having one is kind of nice; it adds to the exploration of the film. Rita, the woman, the screenwriter, is the working title. The movie she cannot seem to write, or complete, is also the working title, for how easy is it to name what has yet to be born? Since a writer often becomes what is being written, since a writer writes best when she writes what she knows, Rita and her work are working titles.

The whole thing really is quite nice, charming even. In the course of this 100-minute production, Rita manages to write, for the audience to watch come to life, four different screenplays, none complete because she says she’s tired of writing the same old story of desire unfulfilled. Though for the viewer, the lack of fulfillment comes when the story is abandoned just when it starts to get good.

In each script, Rita plays the main character, yet another indication that she truly is this working title, lost if you will. It’s not until her best friend, a terribly attractive professional actor named Gadi discovers that he has no idea who or where he is, for, as the co-star in her script attempts, he plays a taxi driver, a mechanic, an accordion player and a bachelor with a broken heart. Gadi decides he cannot go on like this.

Of course, it is up to Rita to write them both out of the mess she created. And no, the film is not a let down. Rita does in fact clean up her mess, and she does it in the way that most creative writers do. She divorced the words.

Movie Review: 'The Path of the Skeptics': an art gallery on film

2008-05-02T13:33:00.005-04:00

The Path of the Skeptics was like viewing an exhibition in a museum more so than watching the film it actually was in the Landmark Theatre Thursday night. Perhaps it was that, having been my first experience with a short film (it ran exactly 30 minutes), I obsessed over every frame. I was taken by the extreme amount of grace given to each shot and the amount of care given to those things in the shots.

By Italian filmmaker Filippo Feel Cavalca, The Path of the Skeptics (La passeggiata dello scettico) displays just how significant some meetings are. The story is Danilo’s, an agnostic philosophy student, on the anniversary of his mother’s death. His mother, Celeste, was an artist, which explains why the film could be made into a series of stills and sold as framed art. As Danilo remembers it, she was “enraptured in blue.” Throughout the short, blue flower pedals, very much alive and very much a symbol of her, rain down turning the screen into a spring dance.

When the priest, Don Luciano, comes to bless Danilo’s house, the two find that they share not just a common love for philosophy but a need for God as well. And so their paths cross, putting both men’s existence into context: “Freedom can frighten a man,” says Don Luciano. With that, they are both left with a choice.

Cavalca didn’t let one minute go unused in The Path of the Skeptics. A film done so well is like stepping into the rooms of an art gallery, for if the gallery also uses the entire potential of its space, the visitor is left open-eyed and full.

Movie Review: Newton I. Aduaka's 'Ezra' is a film about Love as much as War

2008-04-27T21:57:00.006-04:00

There is much to be taken away from a film in which, in the first 15 minutes, a child, no more than nine years of age, is shot and killed as an example for the other children to do as they are told.

Ezra is a Nigerian film about the 11-year civil war in Sierra Leone; it is about the real and the abstract: child soldiers, blood diamonds and AK-47’s, fire, and community—its ancestors, elders and the village—love, war, remembrance, forgiveness. It is especially about forgiveness, about love and war, about the three as experienced by the children, the child. Ezra.

He is the 16-year-old soldier who cannot remember killing his parents or others’ during the attack of his village. His story is fragmented, a collage of stolen lives told in flashbacks. His sister, Onitcha is witness to parts of his truth. Through the siblings’ accounts, Ezra is both boy and man.

His walk is so tall and hard, for everything and for nothing; the fire in his eyes is more a ravaging blaze than a rising sun; the gun he carries is an extension of his arm, less a symbol of manhood than a telling of childhood. But despite what he has seen and done, despite the war around and in him, he is found. Her name is Mariam, or Black Diamond. A soldier herself, though for a different camp, she chose this life. She also chose Ezra.

It is easy in the 110-minute production to forget that the story unfolding is the story of so many. The film points out that just eight years ago, nearly 120,000 children were serving as soldiers in Africa. Director and script writer, Newton I. Aduaka based the film in fact, and he did well to script and show not just the face of a child ripped from childhood and recast as a soldier but the spirit of this child as well.

A film so full of what war does can leave a viewer with many how’s and why’s, but this may not be Aduake’s sole purpose. Ezra is also about love. Represented unconditionally in Ezra’s sister Onitcha who receives a beating when she attempts to follow her brother instead of go home, love is reason enough to fight, to dance, to live.

In one scene, he sits with a sketch pad in hand drawing Mariam, now his wife. She leans into him, smiles, and whispers what his next action shows: On his pad, he makes round what was initially her flat belly. The scene reality-checks the viewer, reminds him or her again that this is a story of the boy who is also the man named Ezra. A smile floats past his lips as he looks down, too humbled to look into her, an act that suggests that love can be ageless and care not for lives taken, that it’s only to be received.

And, yes, with much to be taken away from a factual film as this, the softer side should not be discounted though the questions should come. Love that reaches beyond what was stolen or forgotten is reason enough.

Listening to music differently

2008-04-07T11:16:00.002-04:00

There’s something in the blues that moves my everything—my skin, my spirit—in that familiar, Langston Hughes lazy sway kind of way. But this morning, I noticed the music, though it sounded the same, still running over with the yearning of a drought-plagued South for rain in July, its affect on me was different. The blues pulls at the heart, paints over pain as a lover, bitter but sweetly, says good bye to her love. My body still swayed, my fists still clenched to almost white, but my heart did not move beyond me. I have been heading to this place for some time—this place where music can be enjoyed and felt without having a direct connection to my current state: I don’t have the blues. My man loves me, lays with me, and the sun shines through his smile. There is no wish in me for the blues to burn, for the love to be returned or loved harder. I only want to continue to feel, to move as the current of a lethargic, forgotten body of water, to listen as the river speaks to me through the weary, I-been-born-to-roll-on-and-die, just-feel-me-cuz-ain’t-nobody-else-feelin-me blues. Because what beautiful shades of blue.

just a thought

2008-03-21T22:07:00.005-04:00

Poetry has become a type of reward. I do my work. I work hard and well. I maintain focus, though it is at times like pulling teeth. Becoming a critic is an interesting thing, especially considering that, as a poet, I have only ever wanted to appreciate. The effort is there. The writing is getting better, tighter. The effects can be seen in the lines. Let me say to you or to me, I mean, this is my blog, that my relationship with poetry is the most sincere, most intimate, and perhaps the most sacrificing I have ever been in. Forrest Hamer, my sweet friend and mentor, he knows well of this. Apparently, it's normal. But I'm running here. I just touch keys to say that I am smiling inside. There is a poem behind this screen and freelance articles to be revised. I am a working writer who knows well of love. It is learning to maintain it, in all of its moods and colors, that I still must learn to know better.

Lizz Wright's The Orchard gets prose poetry out the wannabe critic

2008-03-01T21:55:00.003-05:00

Being moved by good music is like being loved by a good man. I should know. My man is love, is music. And when my man’s words love me, ain’t no sound more better, more like life. I hold my breath sometimes just to hear them, feel them, feel him better. I do the same thing when it comes to good music. Cuz ain’t nothing between me and these songs but the same kinda distance that’s between my man and me, so I hold to these songs, their words like I hold to the smell of him, like without it, I just, I just fold in on myself, curl my body around the memory of him cuz he was once in the this very space and in this very space I didn’t really curl my body around him right, enough. I just get moved by good music, by Lizz singing those sexy come-lay-with-me blues: I wanna make love to you/when the lights are low/scream to you babe/just to let you know/all I want/is just a little touch from you/just a little bit attention/you know is gonna see me through . . . . and I smile cuz I got a good man lovin me whose good lovin hands I’ll be fillin soon. I smile. I smile and I manage to keep myself together as her blues become mine and mine never mind the feelins. They get a voice so good, my lips part as the music steps out of me to sing words I can hold on to.

Why Black History Month

2008-02-03T21:11:00.000-05:00

"If the branch is to flower, it must honour its roots." Titinga Frederic Pacere

I was told by a “diluted” Caucasian (her word, not mine) that there should be no Black history month. I tried to listen, to be open to her ideas, but I couldn’t. I shut her down with the Black hand side before I even shook my head in uncertainty to what I’d actually just heard tumble from her lips.

I believe her explanation was something like ‘Black history being American history and having a month set aside for something that is the whole country’s is silly.’ But like I said, I turned from cool, unthreatening Sam to a force to be reckoned with, to much darker than my yellow skin suggests. I turned into a representative, something I have never quite been fond of but this girl who refers to herself as diluted, who actually gave voice to such self-hatred, while I’m thanking my white momma every day that she married daddy and birthed ain’t-too-proud-to-speak me.

I spoke. Of sober mind and body, I spoke to the very sweet though very ignorant girl. I asked her what she knew about Black history that didn’t involve the physical enslavement of my people (no way the girl had a clue about mental bondage though she was obviously dying of it herself). I asked her what she could tell me about Black history that didn’t involve Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, or Malcolm X. I asked her to name me five, just five, Black authors. She sat in silent ignorance, my voice smothering her bliss, the confines of my car holding it to her face to smell. She knew she stunk. She knew she misspoke. She has been overly sensitive ever since.

A Walk Through Jesus: A Critical Look at the Church as a Tourist Attraction (or could it just be Black Privilege?)

2008-01-31T17:58:00.003-05:00

The church door is opened by an oak colored woman. She greets you with a smile while saying, “Where are you visiting from?” Good morning to you too my Sister. Your feet touch the traditional red carpet, eyes look for the perfect red pew to receive the Lord, but in stepping closer to the sanctuary, you are bum rushed by ushers in black. God’s got secret service agents and they go to church in Harlem. They turn you toward the stairs.

Three flights of concrete later, the nose bleed section, and you are among your Harlem church family: A sea of wide-eyed, white faces seated in at least 12 rows all the way up to the ceiling. You notice anticipation in their eyes, realize those visitors are here for a show. Who’s Jesus anyway? You’re corralled and seated like a cow to a stable.

Segregation? Yes. Black privilege? No. Couldn’t be... Yes, it could. You blink hard and hold it for a moment, force your eyes away from that shocking portrait of sameness and try to make eye contact with the man at the podium. He never looks up from the first-floor, you assume members-only congregation. He never makes you visible, never acknowledges that you came from afar, paid good money to be in the house of Lord. Except you didn’t pay; the tourists behind you, chatting as if 200 whispers can’t be heard, did.

The choir makes a grand entrance. You forgive cliché and finally understand what angels sound like. Tears well up and go down your face. And those tourists, well, they herd out immediately after the concert, before their formal welcome: A sister speaks of being a visitor, a stranger, in God’s house. She shouts out at least seven countries represented this Sunday morning and welcomes them all, even though their representatives have already left. She closes with Hebrews 13:2, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for some have entertained angels unawares.”

Momma says don’t knock blessing, can’t blame a church for knowing the same. And so you see. Yes. You see. More than a child of God, here to receive blessings from the word, you are a butt in a seat. You are a spectator. Or maybe you were just caught up, present with the wrong color of visitors. But never mind. You were entertained, and wasn’t that the point, or at least the church’s point?

Either way, part of you wants to come back next week, alone, see if you can slide into a pew on the first floor just to trick the man. The other part of you can’t help but wonder how much a group rate is at such an establishment. Too quickly, you hope the choir gets a cut of whatever is the tourists’ mighty dollar and you opt to leave early, knowing you can pray and praise well enough alone. Besides, it’s first Sunday, and you’d rather thank God for coffee than communion.

Your Average Black Chick

2008-01-23T22:26:00.000-05:00

It's snowing in Central New York this evening. Syracuse to be exact.

I know because I just ran out with the trash when something begged and begged me not to run back. My hair was uncovered, as black as the sky where the snow is falling from. I realized on the walk back to my apartment, some 50 feet away, that I'm just your average black chick. Despite what the profile pic may suggest with that hair, that wild and free hair. It was part of my Halloween costume. I went as a poet; for me, the hair fit. Not to mention I was coming well past due for a perm; the hair just kinked and curled by nature. But it's not my usual. I'm a roller wrap kinda girl. Always have been.

The point is that under my night-black, iron-pressed wig, I, your average, homegrown black chick, actually stopped in the snow. The snow. Snow hits like water, and I was taught well, hence why I ran to the dumpster.

But on the walk back, it came to me: running in the snow, as if I could run from it, dodge it in some superhuman way, is such a silly action and an even sillier idea. Why not walk? As a sista, I've been running from rain damn near my whole adult life. And I mean running for real, like an escape convict with other folks' eyes at every window and sirens in earshot. So crazy, right.

I stood in the snow for longer than a moment. Felt its flakes kiss the crown of my head, and even muscled the audacity to look up. To let the cold, white pieces of longevitiy kiss me, as a friend who is also a lover would. I smiled, embarassed and upset with myself that I had been running all this time just too proud to be your average black chick.

Silly me. As if beauty can be seen ducking and dodging and running from rain and its cousin, the snow. Silly me. Beauty is best seen when she is standing still.

Podcast: Full Moon of Sonia

2008-01-21T21:49:00.000-05:00

. . . Because I'm still on Sonia, a podcast reviewing her spoken work cd, Full Moon of Sonia. It's an amazing performance collection and a reminder that poetry, always meant to be read aloud, can, when read by the right person, jump into our ears and move our souls to better.

An article about a concert of the cd in NYC from Dec. 2004
http://reviews.aalbc.com/fullmoon.htm

An article about the cd, with track samples

http://cdbaby.com/cd/soniasanchez

Sonia Sanchez at AWP this year

2008-01-16T21:02:00.000-05:00

Prose Is Poetry

Sonia Sanchez’s 1984 poetry collection Homegirls and Handgrenades won an American Book Award the next year, though these years aren’t especially vivid for me. I was born in ‘83. Nonetheless, I read the collection with a degree of familiarity bubbling over in my mind, leaving my cheeks damp with tears. She is telling me about myself, about my experience and the people of and in this experience, this black experience. The content of Homegirls and Handgrenades is so familiar that this year’s reprint, its first, couldn’t be more appropriate.

In 88 pages, Sanchez lays out what Langston Hughes, in his essay “The Negro and the Racial Mountain,” would call our “beautiful, and ugly too”—meaning that a black artist must be comfortable with all truths of black life. That as a people, we are both beautiful and ugly, and expressing this should not be feared or cause shame.

Sanchez’s smiling face covers Homegirls and Handgrenades. Beyond the cover is her range as a writer, displayed through poetic blues and haiku forms, free verse, and prose that is similar in sound to memoir. These literary mediums form the strong tie of the poet’s purpose; however, it is her prose that best illuminates the worlds of black love and life and the struggle to maintain the two.

Her prose is more than just words to associate with. There’s no sign that Sanchez has fallen into the all-too-common trap of being too poetic (fluff over meaning). She simply writes of people, people that have laughs and ways, have lived and have lessons. The ugly of it is how or where their living took them, and beautiful are the lessons, and joy even, in their living at all.

In the story “Just Don’t Never Give Up on Love,” Sanchez records her own vulnerability as a woman wanting to find love. She meets the 84-year-old Ms. Rosalie Johnson in a park. Ms. Johnson speaks to Sanchez about love, pretty men, and her second husband, William (she “wuz christen’ with his love”). Before the story ends, Sanchez is crying for herself and “all the women who ever stretched their bodies out anticipating civilization and finding ruins.”

It is the beautiful construction and ugly truth of lines like that one that evoke a reader’s emotions. Her word choice is exceptional and unwavering; it is the result of what many poetry professor’s see as poetry’s number one rule: No images except in things.

She addresses teenage pregnancy through “Norma,” a girl from her childhood who was the brain in especially Algebra and French. Norma “laughed only with her teeth,” but with an education full of teachers lacking control over their students, her story is just as prevalent now as it was in the '80s. Idle hands and body: Norma, mother of four.

And there’s “Bubba,” the hustler, who Sanchez believes “gave his genius up to the times.” I could only read “Bubba” once initially; his story was too real. I closed my eyes and Sanchez’s words projected him onto the backs of my eyelids—yet another young black man caught up in the hustle, planting himself on a corner of the concrete jungle just to get ahead of his world, his ugly world.

But Homegirls and Handgrenades is not without hope, another reason its reprint is timely. In “A Letter to Dr. Martin Luther King,” Sanchez’s voice as a believer in all the beauty and ugly of her people shows through as vivid as a dream in color: “It was black in the universe before the sun; it was black in the mind before we opened our eyes; it was black in the womb of our mother; black is the beginning, and if we are the beginning we will be forever.” Her prose is poetry.

To Be Real: Beads, Weave, and Curtains Be Art A Review of "Kori Newkirk: 1997-2007"

2008-01-09T19:20:00.000-05:00

2004. "Younger." 228.6 x 243.8 cm. The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

I was seven or eight years old when my Aunt Joyce broke my tender head. She rattail-parted through my hair, tightly braided its strands, adding plastic gold pony beads to the bottoms. When I looked upon my bright yellow, almost white, scalp for the first time down to the ends of hair crowned with gold, I was awe-struck. Yes, there were friendship bracelet beads in my hair, and it was divine.

It was also art then, and so still believes Kori Newkirk, an artist on exhibit at the Studio Museum in Harlem through March 9, that it is art now. Newkirk is known for beaded curtains strung with braided synthetic hair hung along aluminum brackets. I didn’t look to see if he burned the ends. I imagine he did, though, since his choice media are practical, things like the beads and even hair grease, and burning is the practical way to keep synthetic hair braided.

The curtain installations range in size but bring to mind the expanse of bay windows, and as would a tapestry or an afghan, Newkirk’s beaded pointillism creates focused and detailed landscapes. In “Breaker,” one of the five curtains on display, a sky of clear beads to floor is interrupted by a two-dimensional tree standing tall in its middle. The leaves, stems, and trunk are hues so convincing I had to step closer to see that the beads were still manufactured, not painted to be different greens or browns.

The range of colors in the curtains struck me just as I had been as a child. To think that something so simple and so often cast as merely a cultural norm could support more than that Garvey-ism, “black is beautiful.” Newkirk’s work takes an every-childhood thing, pony beads, and manages them into scenes that are specifically human in experience. And that is more than divine. That’s real.

Exhibition and Museum Information:
Studio Museum of Harlem
http://www.studiomuseum.org/
144 West 125th Street New York, NY 10027
212.864.4500 phone

What else does the Studio Museum of Harlem have in store?
Exploring Kori Newkirk. Hands-on workshop.
http://www.harlemonestop.com/organization.php?id=3

And what about the man behind the beads? Check out this interview from Vibe.
http://www.vibe.com/juice07/2007/08/kori_newkirk_npg/

Movie Review: The Great Debaters

2008-01-04T20:20:00.000-05:00

In Character, Washington Displays What Words Can Do

The Great Debaters is a movie for a reason: It reminds us now what had to be endured and overcome then, and it does so with a black man just as fearful of being lynched as the next. Written by Robert Eisele, The Great Debaters is called Oprah’s movie because she produced it, and it’s tagged as yet another for Denzel Washington to star in, never mind that he also directed it. And although he does shine, as does Forest Whitaker, they do so softly. The movie is not concerned with famed faces. It’s concerned with the actual man that brought about a need for these faces to tell a story in the first place.

Set in 1935 in the Jim Crow South, The Great Debaters is about a black college debate team, Wiley College, in Marshall, Texas. The team is pitted as the underdogs, but the coach, Professor Melvin B. Tolson (Washington), didn’t believe in being under anything or anyone. At most times radical and at all times passionate, he wanted more for his team, more for his people, and more for his community than the South wanted to give, and as a result, it is Tolson that projects this story, this movie forward.

An inspiring teacher, activist, and man, he separates the Wiley College debate team’s story from the others involving the struggles and uplifting of the black community. The team wasn’t led by an outsider, an educated and soon-to-be humbled white coach, teacher, or leader. The Great Debaters isn’t another Glory Road, Freedom Writers, or even Glory. It’s more like a Lean on Me with the megaphone-carrying, door-chaining principal, Mr. Joe Clark.

And it’s like cool water on a July day. Tolson believed in the power of words. He believed that knowledge, once gained, could never be taken away and once spoken, could never be silenced. “I am here to help you find and keep your righteous mind,” he says to his team. And thanks to Oprah and Washington, Tolson, some 70 years later, has said the same to us, for we are representative of the change he spoke, wrote, and fought for.

My Old Kentucky Home

2007-12-08T15:33:00.001-05:00

There is something quite frightening about going home in 3days. I think it is because I am looking forward to it so much. Kentucky is one of those good and comfortable places, where you can be you all by yourself or with the world, either way, there's joy: Because it's Kentucky and Kentucky is God's country. I think it has to do with the place, as a whole. Its comfort and goodness can be devastating, especially to a young thang like myself. Damn state, calls its folk back till they come back. And here I am, going back. Again. First time I left, it was for California. I kissed the ground and spoke praise to the stars my first night back in that country.

I think it is important for young people, young adult people to remember that their parent's home doesn't have to be theirs as well. I remind myself that my parents settled in Kentucky to love each other loudly and to raise a family. They have successfully done both. So well in fact, that their house is still very much my own. I remind myself, however, that this is just the holidays, this is the time to go back but that one day, going back will begin from my home, in some other part of God's country (not just His Kentucky). And I will keep reminding myself of such a fact because so I don't get sucked into Kentucky like so many folk I know, so I keep my thangs movin' in a direction all my own. . .

Throwback piece from October '05:

Homecoming
I am nervous.
I am 20 stories above
snapshots of you
in my head and ready

to belly-up myself,
my harvested complexion
yielding to your nature.

But I am fighting the wind
with punches
as if it can feel my blows,
as if I have strength enough

to knock
the wind out the wind. Ha.
Nervous talk.

Because we both changed
since I left.
We fell forward into change.
You call it season.

Miles Davis

2007-11-30T20:12:00.000-05:00

I learned through the incredibly knowledgeable Theo Cateforis, my History of Jazz professor, something about Miles Davis the man more than Miles Davis the musician. And can you believe it was actually through a fantastic bootleg documentary? Yeah. Bootleg can be all right.

A bright-skinned drummer in the Miles Davis Quintet (his name escapes me but for this blog he can be Drummer) spoke of a show in which Davis was real sick. This was during the fusion between jazz and rock, and so Miles was playing and pushing and playing and pushing his trumpet and his quintet further than the extremes of the music wanted to allow. But of course, it was Miles Davis. And the music allowed the pushing and the playing.

Anyway, Drummer said that on this particular night, Davis was so sick that it was all he could do to play ballads. Miles played ballads at a time in his musical career when ballads just weren't "hot" as we young folk like to say today. Eventually the set got to be too much for the sick Miles and he had to step down. This bright-skinned Drummer went with him.

And Miles looked to Drummer, says Drummer as he recapped for the camera. And Miles said, "Hey Drummer, you know why I don't play ballads anymore don't you?" And Drummer answered, "No" (an answer he would have given even if the truth had been yes. me too.). And Miles said, "I don't play ballads anymore because I love playing ballads." Drummer went on to explain the depth of such a comment, though I would think its water would be obvious.

There's no murkiness in a statement like that. A statement like that is a blue more clear than a Mississippi blue night sky. So clear: Give up what you love. For the sake of better. For the sake of growth. Give up what you love.

"Freedom Sings" and mourns and rejoices

2007-11-21T21:24:00.000-05:00

As a poet, I am certain that words often fail. It is a sheer love of them that keeps a poet writing--love of words, craft and purpose. Poets are people that have something to say, and what is especially a joy is when poetry is the muse for other arts. Words may fail but often only because they cannot be the only justice a purpose or a people receive.

I say this because attending "Freedom Sings" last week, I am more than proud to call myself a poet. The concert, a 2-hour exploration of banned music throughout America's history, is a call (and reminder) to action. We have a right to speak, to sing, to express--as Dudley Randall did in 1965, two years after the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham that killed four beautiful little black girls.

"Ballad of Birmingham": http://www.ctadams.com/dudleyrandall4.html

His poem reads as it should. Solemn. And with much importance. It was for the little girls, Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Denise McNair (11), and Carole Robertson (14). It is for the girls and in their remembrance. But I think it is important also to note that poetry is not an expressive medium often chosen by the masses (here I send thanks to the heavens) but music is. And if done correctly, for craft's sake, the two together are hard not to hear.

The song: http://www.balladofbirmingham.org/

Randall's "Ballad of Birmingham" was set to music in 2004 by three students at Tennessee State University. The poem is given only a piano and the voices of two women. The piano is quiet, never in the way of the interpretation and never too loud to hear and understand every word. When poetry and music occupy the same realm, affect is inevitable.

And of "Freedom Sings," well, yes it does. It also mourns and it also rejoices. God bless the souls of those little girls who maybe knew too much of their time, who wanted freedom as much as the grown folk around them. May God continue to hold them and their spirits, as well as all our fallen, in the palm of His hand. . .

Nashville Public Radio talks to the TSU students behind the song "Ballad of Birmingham": http://faculty.tnstate.edu/hmaddux/balladofbirmingham/Nashville%20Public%20Radio%20-%20Welcome.htm

Langston Hughes wouldn't have liked me

2007-11-17T15:04:00.000-05:00

I was twenty, a junior in college, when I first learned of Langston Hughes's Racial Mountain. The essay, The Negro and the Racial Mountain (http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/299.html), is still one of my favorites, especially as a black poet. But upon the initial reading, I didn't get through the first section before I began to wonder if Langston would have even liked me. I have grown into one of those black folk who loves being black, but I was unsure whether this would have mattered much to him.

In his essay, written in 1926, Langston Hughes discusses the disdain that the black middle class had for all things non-white. He speaks of the word white and how it became a symbol of virtue in the black middle class household, and though I knew not of his reasoning preceding this statement, I knew well what followed. "[White] holds for the children beauty, morality, and money. The whisper of "I want to be white" runs silently through their minds." Yes. That was it. That was my childhood; it has become more memoir than memory (but that's a blog for another day). I found myself upset at my parents for establishing themselves before making family, because there I was black and loving beautiful, from money well-worked for but money nonetheless, and I couldn't shake the thought of Langston Hughes not liking me.

I smile as I type. To think back at such jovial thoughts incites more than a smile at my lips. I am also smiling with my eyes and down into my fingertips as they key away the contents of this blog, this blog whose importance is in establishing who I have come to be. A black woman who wouldn't dream for anything else. A beautiful black woman who wouldn't pray for anything else.

I am a blackwomanKentuckypoet who better understands this mountain to which Langston spoke of so many years ago, and I am still moved by his expressions. His love of craft, music and man is relevant to all young black artists, such as myself. We have the expression of "our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame" down pat; some may argue it comes as easy as breathing. And Langston may be quite proud of us, all of us, no matter our class or our parents' class, because, though now we may be the mountain standing in the way of ourselves, we have at least removed the urge "toward whiteness"; for it is white America now that moves, so often with such intent, toward blackness.

P.S. "We know we are beautiful. And ugly too." Now we must work on those "temples for tomorrow," building them as "strong as we know how" and without fear of asking questions if we don't.

What Be Ghetto: a book review of Ghettonation by Cora Daniels

2007-11-13T21:03:00.000-05:00

Uncle Sam is featured on the cover of the book Ghettonation by journalist Cora Daniels. He is complete with red do-rag under white top hat, a blinged-out American flag gold chain, and iced-out rings on his peace sign fingers. Or are they A-town down? Either way, an intact sense of humor graces the front cover, while the back, which gives the original definition of ghetto (as the noun it was: a Jewish quarter of a city) along with the most recent usage (and misusage: “authentic, Black, keepin’ it real”) as an adjective, suggests that the book is complete with lessons and laughs.

Ghettonation: A Journey into the Land of Bling and the Home of the Shameless examines the impact of all things ghetto. That would be persona, language, thought, and action; though Daniels is not just pointing fingers or making fun. The book is a social commentary that at times reads like memoir. Daniels exposes her own relationship to ghetto, so as not to demean the culture holding to the word so as to admit that we are in over our heads. More than saturated in ghetto, we are (so) ghetto—Ghettonation.

From noun to adjective, she takes the six-letter word further by classifying it as a mind-set. With this, she gives ghetto a new authority; no longer just a description, ghetto becomes an umbrella. And under it, too many things are trying to stay dry, too many folk are trying to keep so fresh and so clean, living for only today because tomorrow may be worse.

But before the commentary can weigh too heavily on the reader, Daniels inserts a “That’s so ghetto. . .” page where she pulls from the mind-set itself, giving examples like driving a luxury car but renting an apartment or drinking Kool-aid from a mayonnaise jar. She doesn’t skirt around any subject, not from Lil Jon and his middle-class upbringing to gold teeth, candy-colored weaves, and names, oh the names. Her support is convincing. And funny.

Daniels discusses Gwyneth Paltrow naming her daughter Apple, as if that’s any different than naming a child Alize, Diamond, or Lexus. She successfully snatches “who be ghetto” from every rung of every ladder—social, economic, and racial. Her rail on Paltrow continues in light of her claim that hip-hop has “become American culture.” Example: Paltow, the “ghetto mama” herself, says that Apple loves hip-hop, especially Jay-Z. In fact, Apple rocks her head to The Black Album and really loves “99 Problems” (as in “I got 99 problems and a bitch ain’t one”). Ghetto.

At its core, Ghettonation is a journey into the land of Black—its culture, people, music—and how the capitalization on Black (or ghetto) is further damaging the people that make it up. Because of this, Daniels’ attempt to keep all of America aboard her Ghettonation journey fails. The mind-set is supported almost entirely by examples from Black America. All-America just gets caught up in the hype. And so the book looks at America’s obsession with urban culture, which is often taken as Black culture, which is often looked at as poverty-stricken, thuggish, and dangerous.

Daniels discusses education, success, relationships, and violence in this Black community. But at times her memoir-like prose distracts from the voices she finds to tell this new, too-proud nation’s stories, like that of 19-year-old Daniel, an aspiring filmmaker. During the filming of his documentary Bullets, a gun was drawn on him, trigger pulled. The gun wasn’t loaded, but instead of delving into him and his story, allowing him to explain his understanding of success—measured by the number of days he can live, not dollars or degrees—the author mulled through her own experience of worlds colliding (college with the hood). She let the reader down as well as uncomfortably full with unanswered questions about this kid.

Though Daniels speaks objectively about ghetto, no solution besides taking responsibility is given. But, as a black woman, newly aware of my own ghetto (I’ve been known to drop the n-bomb with little regard for what forward-moving steps I blow-up in the process), I have a suggestion: These books, written in our youths’ language, with their words and about their lives, need to be in their classrooms, each idea being unraveled and action understood. Suggestion is the start of solution (a blank suggestions-for-solutions page should’ve ended the book, not a fill-in-your-own-“that’s so ghetto” page). And an educated mind can never be imprisoned.

Queen Latifah's children's book has got game!

2007-10-19T12:12:00.000-04:00

Forget Princess—Every Little Girl is a Queen

Some singers shouldn’t act; some rappers shouldn’t sing. And most people shouldn’t declare themselves authors just because they have a story to tell. This, however, is not the case for the Grammy award-winning Queen that is Latifah.

Her children’s book, Queen of the Scene, steeped in the ways of black folk and ornamented with fun, neck-twisting rhymes, snapped its way into the publishing world with two fingers and an attitude last September—and it is finally a bargain buy. Through animated, rainbow-rich illustrations, the book takes its readers back, way back, to a time before text messaging and XBOX. While reading about old-school childhood glories like double-dutch and stickball, parents can educate their princesses on queendom.

Queen Latifah and artist Frank Morrison tell of an unnamed bubble-blowin’, pigtail-with-ball-balls wearin’ little girl who proclaims herself Queen of the Scene. She has so much glitz that, even through chalky but precise illustrations, the story dazzles. Her face is confident, and sneakered children in every shade of brown wearing zigzag parts or sideways caps watch her as though she has superhero powers.

Queen of the Scene takes readers through a day in the life of this playground queen who is by far a diva. Rockin’ a powder-pink dress over jeans, she’s a firm advocate of playing hard and getting dirty. Over a two-page illustration, she declares “In any sandbox/ Nobody can be mean./ My castles are the very best—/ They’re fit for a queen,” as an afro-puffed tot looks on in amazement and a brown-eyed boy, lying in the box, stares over his makeshift triangle sand hill, far inferior to the queen’s.

The rhymes in the story are thick with black vernacular, what Scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. penned as “signifyin” to reflect the boastful humor of the black community. Queen of the Scene displays this as well as sass in narrative lines like “You don’t want to race me—/ I’m as fast as spinning dice./ If it looks like I’m just catching up,/ I really passed you twice.”

Queen Latifah’s narrative is bright from the page and complimented by her own interpretation on a CD included with the book. As one who never leaves hip-hop in the shadows, her voice is water over a soft beat and she reads for a child’s ear, with exactness and a spacious tone drenched in confidence. Yet another reason Queen of the Scene is a new goodie in children’s literature.

Jill Scott is The Real Thing

2007-10-02T19:33:00.000-04:00

R&B singer Jill Scott rocks come-do-me open-toed heals on a three-by-three inch disclaimer to her new album, The Real Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3: Eroticism is chosen over explicit lyrics, so the album plays like pages of a journal read. Recently divorced and known especially for her sensuality, Scott is stark in her expressions.

The sex-laced quickie, “Crown Royal,” is strictly for the bedroom. Over a quiet beat, Scott whispers, “Your hands on my hips pull me right back to you/ I catch that thrust give it right back to you.” The song is about that regal man who just can’t be had, not right now, which is why he’s Crown Royal (“on ice”).

The Real Thing makes “delicious” of words (shout-out Scott’s first album, Who Is Jill Scott?), even though the first single “Hate on Me” sounds like a battle between voice and band. She goes vintage in “All I,” where she talks over a beat and then with grown woman kinkiness: “I’ve been a goodie daddy/ but I don’t have to be/ if you don’t want me to/ I’ll be ya nasty baby”—lyrics that dirty up the sweet hook of “Baby when I close my eyes/ all I dream about it making love.” And Scott stays true to her poetic roots in “Epiphany,” where the spoken word is so fine listeners are transported to a blue-light café with retro mic, song complete with crisp breaths and popped p’s.

Jill Scott’s lyricism tops her expressive game in The Real Thing. Her delivery is at times playful, at others, full of pain; and though fans may have expected more organic beats, the album isn’t about how hard it knocks; with words so honest, the album’s about life, the images that make it up and the lines it can fit into.