Mosaic 23

o s a ic M ISSUE TWENTY THREE FALL 2008

RELEVANT LITERATURE

SIX DOLLARS

KALISHA BUCKHANON

THE NEW NEW LIT OPAL PALMER ADISA SOMEBODY SCREAM

1

New fiction that’s

naughty� ���� nice�

2

In the steamy sequel to the Essence bestseller Sinful, devious Dior is back—and she knows what she wants: the married Pastor Richard Allamay. She won’t stop until she’s “first lady” of his megachurch. But the Lord works in mysterious ways….

From the author of the #1Essence bestsellers Church Folk and Second Sunday comes a hilarious and affecting novel about a Godloving, 40-something woman battling to save her community from an unscrupulous developer…and find her one true love.

“A sexy and twisted story…culminating in a shocker of a conclusion. Eric Jerome Dickey, watch out.” —Publishers Weekly

“It will have you laughing, crying, and praising all at the same time….This is a must-read for some good, clean, Christian humor.” —Birmingham Times

mosaicmagazine.org

Available in trade paperback and as eBooks www.hachettebookgroup.com

Hachette Book Group

23

no. Content

The Holistic Writer An Interview with Kalisha Buckhanon ................................ 10 by Tara Betts The Darker Mask Allegory for a New Literature ............................................. 26 by Christopher Chambers Healing Words an Interview with Opal Palmer Adisa ................................. 32 by D. Scot Miller

Excerpt Conception by Kalisha Buckhanon................................... 16 Poems by Opal Palmer Adisa Breaking Point I ............................................................... 35 Breaking Point IV ............................................................. 37

Cover photo: Isadore Howard

3

Reviews ................................................................................................ 18 Conduit: Poems by Khadijah Queen Akashic Books Gomer’s Song By Kwame Dawes Akashic Books Kinky Gazpacho By Lori L. Tharps Atria Gentleman Jigger, A Novel of the Harlem Renaissance By Richard Bruce Nugent Da Capo Say You’re One Of Them By Uwem Akpan Little, Brown and Company Slumberland By Paul Beatty Bloomsbury Somebody Scream!: Rap Music’s Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power By Marcus Reeves Faber and Faber When the Black Girl Sings By Bil Wright Simon & Schuster

4

mosaicmagazine.org

HOLDING PATTERN STORIES BY

JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN

THE STREETS OF CHICAGO: REAL AND LUMINOUSLY IMAGINED “Jeffery Renard Allen’s poetic vision is stunning, tragic, wildly funny and most of all alive. He is the rare writer who, by creating a wholly unique and surreal dreamscape, illuminates human reality on the deepest level. He is also the rare writer who borrows from no one and doesn’t pander to anyone.”

—MARY GAITSKILL JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN is the author of the novel Rails Under My Back and two collections of poetry. Allen was born and raised in Chicago. He teaches in the Writing Program at the New School.

Available at bookstores and online

“Subtly otherworldly, each tale is electric with the rising tension that proceeds stormy weather; each tale is a veritable boxing match, as characters trapped in impossible situations feint, jab, and retreat.”

—BOOKLIST (STARRED REVIEW) “The prodigiously talented Jeffrey Renard Allen is without question one of our most important writers. His novel, Rails Under My Back, kicked ass, and these tough beautiful stories are a gift. You cannot finish this collection without being dazzled by Allen’s manifold talents.”

—JUNOT DÍAZ www.graywolfpress.org

5

Managing Editor Felicia Pride Short Story/Poetry Editor Sheree Renee Thomas renne Thomas Copy Editor Tawny Pruitt Publisher Ron Kavanaugh Communications Coordinator Precenda Griffin Mosaic Literary Magazine (ISSN 1531-0388) is published four times per year by the Literary Freedom Project. Content copyright © 2008. No portion of this magazine can be reprinted or reproduced in any form without prior permission from the publisher. Individual Subscriptions One year: $15.00 | Two years: $22.00 Subscribe online: MosaicMagazine.org Institution Subscriptions EBSCO 1.205.991.6600 Contact the editor We welcome letters and comments. Send us an e-mail, [email protected] or a letter: Mosaic Literary Magazine 314 W 231 St. #470 Bronx, NY 10463. Please visit Mosaicmagazine.org for submission guidelines. Colophon Layout Software: Adobe InDesign CS Graphic Software: Paint Shop Pro 12 Mast Typeface: Zanzibar Regular Editorial Typeface: Zapf Humanist Computer: Dell XPS 400 POSTMASTER Please send address corrections to: Mosaic 314 W. 231 St #470 Bronx, NY 10463

Mosaic is made possible with public funds from the Bronx Council on the Arts through The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Greater New York Arts Development Fund Regrants Program and The New York State Council Arts Decentralization Program. Program support was provided by Poets & Writers.

6

mosaicmagazine.org

New York Times Bestselling Author

CARL WEBER There is always someone who’s up to no good…

AVAILABLE

FEBRUARY

2009!

I

n true Carl Weber tradition—“the Prince of Literary Drama” introduces you to a deliciously dysfunctional family in a drama-filled, straight-up novel with the right blend of sex, scandal and humor. DON’T MISS his other New York Times and Essence ® bestsellers in paperback!

Dafina Hardcover • $24.00

Sign up for a sneak peek sampler with an excerpt of Up To No Good at www.kensingtonbooks.com/CarlWeber today! 7 An imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.

FOR CONTESTS, GIVEAWAYS, AND MORE, VISIT WWW.KENSINGTONBOOKS.COM AND WWW.CARLWEBER.NET

SUBSCRIBE TO MOSAIC Name Address City/ST/Zip  One-Year Subscription: $15.00

 Two-Year Subscription: $25.00

 MAKE CHECK OR MONEY ORDER PAYABLE TO Literary Freedom Project 314 W 231 St. #470 Bronx, NY 10463

SUBSCRIBE TO MOSAIC Name Address City/ST/Zip  One-Year Subscription: $15.00

 Two-Year Subscription: $25.00

 MAKE CHECK OR MONEY ORDER PAYABLE TO Literary Freedom Project 314 W 231 St. #470 Bronx, NY 10463

SUBSCRIBE TO MOSAIC Name Address City/ST/Zip  One-Year Subscription: $15.00

 Two-Year Subscription: $25.00

 MAKE CHECK OR MONEY ORDER PAYABLE TO 8 mosaicmagazine.org Literary Freedom Project 314 W 231 St. #470 Bronx, NY 10463

Contributors

J. A. Barnes is a novelist, playwright, blogger, and freelance writer living in Central Ohio. She has published several novels for young readers and won first place in the Atlanta Film Festival screenwriting award. Her most recent work is a novel about the Civil War published as a blog. Adisa Vera Beatty* is a writer and educator living in Brooklyn, New York. Her poetry has appeared in Callaloo, The Painted Bride Quarterly and L-I-N-KE-D, the online literary journal of Spelman College. Tara Betts teaches creative writing at Rutgers University. A longtime contributor to Mosaic, Tara’s poetry has appeared in Essence, Callaloo, Drum Voices Revue and several anthologies. Jada Bradley (jadabradley.com) is a Washington DC-based writer who enjoys telling stories in formal and informal ways. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post and online. Georgetown University professor Christopher Chambers is the author of the Angela Bivens crime novels as well as short stories published in magazines like Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope All-Story. His upcoming work includes the historical novel Yella Patsy’s Boys, the novella Amos n Andy and the graphic novel Gangsterland.

C. Chekejai Coley is a freelance writer and the director of 2nd Rising Publications. She has written poems, plays, reviews, short shories and artist bios. She assisted in the editing of a newly released African American history textbook and is currently working on the publication of her first children’s book. Athena Dixon is currently an adjunct professor at several schools in southern New Jersey. Her poetry has appeared in Pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Culture, blossombones, The Amistad and The Penguin Review. Sidik Fofana has written several publication including the Source, Vibe, and allhiphop.com. His work appears in the recently released The Black Male Handbook: Blueprint for Life edited by Kevin Powell (Simon & Schuster Rachel Finn is a Chicago-based food writer. She is currently working on a project about identity and the Food of the African Diaspora and writing a book about dates (phoenix dactylifera). D. Scot Miller is Bay Area writer, teacher, and visual artist. On the board of directors to noctunes review. Writes for many publications. The afro-surreal Knot Frum Hear, first novel. Just completed a book of poems: TBD.

9

the Holistic Writer\\ an Interview with Kalisha Buckhanon by Tara Betts

When I was growing up in Kankakee, Illinois, Kalisha Buckhanon and I crossed paths in so many ways. We were both looking for ways to accomplish something. When I was on the way out as a high school senior, I remember seeing her onstage at our high school’s auditorium and saying that girl is going places. I remember chatting with her outside the Kankakee Public Library where I had my first job, and communicating over the years while she attended University of Chicago and I was on the north side attending Loyola University.

10

mosaicmagazine.org

Cover photo: Isadore Howard

We managed to stay in touch. She curated readings with the likes of Sonia Sanchez, attended school, worked, and wrote at night. I curated readings and taught while performing and studying at night. She came to New York City to work on her MFA in creative writing. We talked about our love for James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk, shared meals and couches on the East Coast and in the Midwest. After releasing her two novels Upstate and Conception (both on St. Martin’s Press) and in the middle

11

of pursuing her PhD, Kalisha Buckhanon took a moment to talk with me about her work, young people, our hometown, black drama, and approaching the page. Tara Betts: I remember you saying that you kept notebooks as a kid. What was writing like for you when you were a little girl? Kalisha Buckhanon: It was more random and intuitive. Like now, I wrote based upon my emotions, but my imagination had not yet allowed reality into it. I didn’t realize that an imagined world could involve me and the world I experienced or that I could just write one to involve myself. Consequently, those early stories are really playful and convoluted, often with characters who weren’t black, simply because I rarely encountered books with black people in them when I was little. TB: What were your first encounters with black people in books? I know I always think of discovering Raymond Andrews, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Sport of the Gods and for colored girls who’ve considered suicide at the Kankakee Public Library, and Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks being the two black poets in our high school’s textbooks. KB: I must shout from the rooftops that I discovered The Bluest Eye in the Kankakee Public Library

12

mosaicmagazine.org

and it changed my life forever. I was a voracious reader, but my options were almost always books about white people, characters, their culture, language and speech. The little girl on the cover looked like me. The people inside talked like me and my people. That was when I realized that I, too, had stories to tell. TB: How has working with young people informed your writing? KB: I love our black children, but because of my life trajectories I don’t have the occasion to be around large groups of them that much. During the rare occasions when the atmosphere is just right in a classroom, teaching imagination is the way I like to play. It’s nice to get back to the basics of storytelling the way children make you do. “The dog is...the man looks...” I can’t walk into a room full of kids and not be reminded of the elegant simplicity of poetics. Unfortunately, it’s hard to teach writing and language arts in schools because both activities involve the intellect and fairly invisible mental processes. Not only do kids not read nearly as much as they used to, adults don’t either. What was once one of the most pleasurable and one of the simplest leisure activities one could undertake is now met with a lot of disdain in the classroom. As a civilization we don’t even have to read real letters and cards anymore— we have IM chat and quick texts instead of words on a page. It’s sad that so much of what makes us

human—that ability to communicate and transmit to one another using language—has been eroded. One of the reasons that spiritual motivation, personal accountability, and drive are always character builders for me in my work is that I see so much of that lacking these days in not just children but adults as well. I’m not always perfect myself in those areas, but I do wish as a whole we were more conscience of these traits. The gift of being able to teach writing is that if you’re good enough to pull it out, most children are good enough to express themselves and those drives to you. TB: Since your book has had positive reception from young readers, what responses have you heard from them? KB: They love the books! Usually, when I speak to kids, they are very specific about details and scenes when they ask questions. While I hate being caught off guard with something I can’t remember, I am always impressed! As a doctoral student, one of the requirements of my oral examination is close reading of a number of books. These children exhibit skills that make me proud when I am able to talk to them, in detail, about my books because they prove they can retain information and be provoked by a text. I’m not just proud because they are my books, obviously. I’m also proud that these kids will actually think hard about literature when they have

something they really want to read. They can and will get into a story that is not on the big screen, TV, or the internet. It is still possible. TB: In Upstate and Conception, you make an effort to share the voices of both the male and female character as the main focus of the book. What was it like to write in the voice of a male character versus a female character? KB: I don’t really think that there was a huge discrepancy between them in the way that their voices came to my head. Of course, I was pulling from different experiences in order to capture those voices. Many of my own young crushes and boyfriends certainly came into play, because I do love the language of black men. They can talk that talk like no others can! It was a real challenge to keep the story going by playing off two characters, often making quick switches in my head. I think it worked in the final product. TB: I enjoyed that both novels featured Natasha and Shivana speaking and acting like girls that we’ve known. What are some challenges that you experienced in doing justice to their voices? KB: They speak like little girls we’ve known because I was once one of those little girls. I did not experience many challenges writing them. They were both joys to write, straight from the heart. Very close

13

to me and my heart. In my head both of them always look like those girls people never bother to look at. It was nice for me as an older, more mature writer to recapture the emotional and psychological fragility of that age, and bring an understanding to these girls’ lives that is not necessarily there for them. Ironically, Natasha’s name in Upstate was Shivana, and my mentor Sapphire was heartbroken when I changed it to Natasha because she felt is was too Russian and not African American. She was right, but it sounded great with Antonio. I am so happy that I was able to bring that name back in Conception. TB: I remember seeing early beginnings of Conception, but I’m sure people would like to know where you got the idea to explore the different voices of unborn children. KB: Yes, I remember you were the first person that I ever gave pages of Conception, back in 2005, before you moved to NYC. And I appreciate that early encouragement on the story because it helped. But I am privy to the situations facing many of our children. I know what they are going through. A lot of it I have been through myself. “What happens to a dream deferred?” It’s such a cliché, but Langston asked a question for the ages. From the opening of the book, I hope that it is clear that I am exploring the miracle of life and how too many children I have observed do not understand that they are

14

mosaicmagazine.org

miracles, partially because adults don’t understand it. It is time for us as adults to step up and get more involved in the lives of these children. It’s time to mentor a child, spend more time with your own, send a nice card to a kid who has accomplished something, or even just set a positive example for the young brothers and sisters on the block by watching language on the street or modeling courteous behavior. We have lost our sense of royalty as a people, and the unborn child is holding on to that secret for those who don’t know it yet. TB: As a result of your first novel and volunteering as a mentor for the PEN Prison Writing Program, you have often been asked about the prison industrial complex. What observations became clearer or paralleled the situations you wrote about after Upstate was released? KB: After the book was released, it pretty much has been the same old observations for me. Nothing changed except at least I had a platform in which to talk about something that had been on my mind for a while. And to think that given our upcoming presidential election, the powers that be have a large constituency of potential Obama voters right where they want them. This is an ongoing problem and situation. What I, and everyone else, can immediately do is get involved in the life of someone you see heading in that direction so that the horrenContinued on page 44

The

Literary Freedom Project e is a not-for-profit arts organization that supports the literary arts through education, creative thinking, and new media. Towards this goal, we publish Mosaic; develop literature-based lesson plans; and host the Mosaic Literary Conference, an annual literature-education conference. li te ra ry fr ee do m. or g 15

MA AND I fought before I got pregnant; I left because I knew it would get much worse once she found out. I never planned on getting pregnant when I was fifteen; it just happened. But isn’t that just how it always is? At least if you’re young and Black, or old and Black for that matter. Planning pregnancy was for White women; every woman I had ever known just got caught—caught up in some man to the point where she was foolish enough to drop a load for him, believe all that “carry my seed I’m gonna love you and my child” sweet talk. You can keep foolishness and stupidity a secret, but a belly swelled will always tell the truth even if it isn’t a whole one. The whole truth is that the child was an even bigger accident than the relationship. And a pregnant woman or one who already has kids by a man who’s no longer thinking about her never, ever tells that truth—not even to herself.

16

borhood regulars that he “got a shorty coming.” He buys her ice cream, comfortable walking shoes, and a thick pink robe to sit on soft skin he rubs down with the real baby lotion, after she takes the Calgon bubble bath he ran. When he makes love to her, he’s soft and careful. They lay tight like two spoons in a squeaky bed, listening to Luther or the Isley Brothers or Chaka Khan when she was still with Rufus, and when she starts crying because she’s turned away from him and she thinks he won’t know, he can tell she’s scared he’ll leave her just from the tension stiff in her back. So he massages her spine and her doubt, wipes away her tears, and whispers, “Baby, I promise, I ain’t going nowhere.”

I knew the story well. I had seen it, heard about it, been warned about it; my own father left so I was a victim of it. Any gathering of two or more women made me a silent witness to the deep wounds men left behind. Later I was guaranteed to be kept up well into a night listening to my hardened mother, still young, who vowed a crowbar couldn’t get her stiff legs open again—let alone a man.

He might mean it... until she swells so much from both water and baby that she couldn’t pull her grouchy lips in if she tried. Or until she has it and her wrinkled, dark, sagging stomach won’t snap back to that smoothness he used to love to bump up against. I’ve seen them stay until the baby’s first blown-outofproportion birthday party or maybe even later, but something about being called “Daddy”—never mind husband—seems to choke men these days. They shove off their women and kids like suffocating pillows smashed against their faces, cutting off not only their air and vision but the rest of their lives.

The story was always the same. At first he cooks her breakfast in the mornings, rubs her feet at night, pinches her cheeks like she’s his child herself, and rubs her belly every time she walks by. He stands outside with his chest stuck out and brags to the neigh-

At least when somebody’s suffocating, you can tell: you see their faces turn blue, their lips quiver, their eyes buck, and their throats jerk. But when a man is mentally packing his bags, the suitcase is never out until he’s already standing on the other side of the

mosaicmagazine.org

door. He suddenly gets shy whenever they have a little time alone, silently fusses with the food on his plate much more, if he’s even still eating her cooking at all. Then his nights at the corner bar start dragging on longer than they used to, well into the hours they used to be shattering headboards and calling each other’s names. Suddenly the mama he complained about when they first got together becomes strangely needy, and she starts hearing the excuse a man gives a woman he wants to have sex with without having to spend the night: “I gotta do something for my mama.” Exactly what is never explained, but she looks at him with puppy-dog eyes anyway and says, “Okay, baby, take your time.” It’s all over by the time she starts first dropping hints, then actually saying, “You need to start bringing some more money into this house.” If the kids are lucky (and I wasn’t), they’ll be too young to remember the arguments filled in by the swish sound of flying objects, the lightning-bolt crack of slammed doors, and of course the face slaps. Finally the story ends when a Greyhound bus or loaded-down car hits the highway, and the woman is left staring into a window rather than out of it. I know the exact moment my baby came inside me: it was on October 11, 1992. That was the night I met Rasul, and the night Renelle Washington came home early from work with a new surprise birthday cake for her husband Leroy. An Entenmann’s German chocolate cake, thirty-six candles standing up sharp and wicked like pitchforks.

The whole sixth-floor apartment still held on to the burnt stink from Renelle’s earlier attempt at “homemade” cooking. Three months into another birth, she had tortured a Duncan Hines chocolate box mix into volcanic rock that morning; its nasty failure predicted the baby’s fate. Leroy and I whispered about the cake while he lay on top of me on their black leather living-room couch, finding his way, unprotected, into my silky young softness for the second time that night. We had been doing this behind his wife’s back for months. He made my heart beat fast and my blood race through my body so strong and hard my baby’s heart started beating too. My baby screamed and glowed red when it roared to life inside me, but Leroy and I didn’t see or hear or know. “Forget that burnt cake... this all the chocolate I need right here,” Leroy whispered to me, and I didn’t know how to respond. I was just fifteen then, still spoke only when spoken to, tried not to curse in front of grown folks or wear clothes that hugged my shape too tight. I still wanted to be a child, but my body just wasn’t having it. So I said nothing at all. I just lay there in a slick mist of our sweat Copyright © 2008 by Kalisha Buckhanon. All rights reserved. 

17

18

mosaicmagazine.org

Reviews

Slumberland By Paul Beatty Bloomsbury Review by D. Scot Miller

and black expats shortly before the fall of the Wall. He comes seeking his hero and potential co-signer to his perfect beat; an avant-garde jazz musician known as “The Schwa.”

Though he was one of the first stand-out stars of the Nuyorican scene before the term “poetry slam” was a part of the zeitgeist; and his work has been published consistently, though discretely, for the past twenty-plus years; and his first book of poems, Big Bank Take Little Bank, simultaneously grabbed the attentions of Allen Ginsberg and Ice Cube, is there a black male American writer more slept on than Paul Beatty? The author of three books of fiction, two of poetry, and one anthology gets so little mention in the annals of contemporary literature.

Within the first twenty pages, through Darky, Beatty calls almost all black male actors over the last two decades Uncle Toms, proclaims the death of hip-hop, and declares black people passé and obsolete. Somehow, these polemics do not come across as a pop culture hodge-podge, but the backstory about one man’s search for perfection, love, and acceptance. And this is where we get our first clue towards Beatty’s warm receptions as a writer and scholar. For over twenty years, many black American writers have been feeding sacred cows and bringing long-festering wounds to light. What has been woefully missing in the dialogue of black letters is the power of satire. Beatty’s 2005 anthology, Hokum, shows him to be a studied master of black humor and radical imagination and Slumberland is laugh-out-loud funny. There are passages here that make me blurt out, like some people laugh at jazz concerts when an impresario pulls out an amazing aural stunt. I’m constantly impressed with this writer who’s not afraid to say NIGGER in all caps.

His latest novel, Slumberland, which has gained little notice as it has oozed its way into the collective unconsciousness, may give some clues to how the author has managed to walk the tightrope between blowing up and going pop, and have fun doing it. DJ Darky is a sub-genius sommelier for a jukebox in a West Berlin Bar, Slumberland, a hot spot for miscegenation between buxom German frauliens

19

As the Berlin Wall falls, and secret agents and ragmen emerge, Beatty remains pitch perfect in his critique of black/white America, Germany, and western civilization to date. So much so, that acerbic insight becomes commonplace and the “been there, done that” uber-hip-ness exuded by Darky and his growing cadre never comes off as smarmy or condescending. It’s this lack of self-seriousness that causes many readers to miss the serious intent of Beatty’s work. Since his first novel, White Boy Shuffle, there has been an apocalyptic foreboding, a sinister grin, a lonely ache for connection and validation that has permeated his work. There is a tension in Slumberland that recalls the monologues of Richard Pryor in his heyday; where folly and despair collide with race consciousness and self-destructive impulse, causing us to relate to frailties so deeply that only laughter makes sense. This is a fun book with more truth than most Americans can bear, though, like his previous novel, Tuff, Beatty can get lost in atmospheric description that distracts rather than emphasizes his scenes. In Slumberland, the description of the bar itself and the various characters who frequent it can serve as foils and the urge to skim becomes greatest during these passages. But it’s a small price to pay for the overall impact of Beatty’s wit, emotion, and keen observation of human behavior in all of its fragility and pathos.

20

mosaicmagazine.org

There is a confirmation in not only Slumberland, but Beatty’s entire body of work that, no, you’re not crazy. There are folks out here who see the same absurd shit you do.

Gomer’s Song By Kwame Dawes Akashic Books Review by Adisa Vera Beatty In his fifteenth poetry collection, Gomer’s Song, Kwame Dawes comes up on the reader like an insistent scent, haint, or force of nature. Giving voice to Gomer, the saved harlot wife God told the prophet Hosea to marry, we are taken on a sojourn of desire, forgiveness, and freedom with a woman unlikely to be forgotten. In the span of forty-four poems Dawes simultaneously resurrects and creates a mythic woman with such poignancy that you never doubt her existence. And so with lines like, “I was born for this story” Dawes anoints the reader a believer. Told in three sections, Gomer’s Song begins with the widely accepted and comfortable knowledge about Gomer; she was a loose and unrepentant woman. What we are not comfortable with is all that Dawes brings us with Gomer’s Song; the difficulty of need, the price of freedom. In the poem Repentance Gomer contemplates the well-traveled path she’s allowed her desire to blaze:

Then the blood begins to return to stiffened limbs, and the room grows, curry yellow before the brown of regret. In this hiatus, I am clean as a confessor, able again to rebuild that new fiction of redemption. And sated like this, it is easy o say this will be the last faceless man’s basic desire, the last pathetic stranger to seep into me; that tomorrow a new woman will begin to rebuild the wreckage of her life. But helpless and victim are two things this Gomer is not. Dawes plots out the complex geography of his Gomer who is at times an audacious and haughty conjurer who uses her sexuality like she’s working a root. Then at other times she reveals what is beneath her surface; that no one knows her or her true story. Gomer was given the title of wife and mother, was shown mercy, but only she can give herself salvation. We stumble with Gomer like all sinners do as she shrugs the place she has been assigned from her body like an unwanted garment. By section two there is the acknowledgement of damage, shame, and the relief that comes with receiving mercy. In poems like “Certified,” “Hus-

band,” “Times Seven” and “The Wounds I Have Made” Gomer not only confesses to seeking something outside herself, but also has difficulty accepting that she is worthy of forgiveness in spite of her failings. “Times Seven” alludes to the Bible and God’s command that you should forgive times seven. And it is forgiveness that this Gomer rails against and leans into. TIMES SEVEN The woman coming through the trees, the speckled light of dusk on her skin, is your love returning again to be forgiven with tears in her face; embrace the broken woman.

When we leave Gomer she continues to linger with us like the memory of her past deeds remains with her. In the poem “Punishment” we see that Gomer cares deeply for what she once devalued; her husband, children, herself. “Still I battle my appetite with fasts and carry the weight of guilt on me. But this is not freedom, not the birthright of bloodshed and broken flesh. I receive the bargain of ages and turn to face my fragile

21

collateral: the husband, the children, these words, still intact, still within my reach--against this debt I cannot repay.” Gomer’s Song is a lyric of love, self-love, and the give and take of forgiveness and liberation.

Conduit: Poems By Khadijah Queen Akashic Books Review by Athena Dixon Claudia Rankine writes in her introduction to Khadijah Queen’s debut collection, “Hers is a poetic sensibility that denies the poems transcendence and conclusion.” Throughout Conduit, Queen weaves between the concrete and the air. Readers know there is solid ground beneath their feet, but also know there is something to reach for above their heads. It is through her poetry that she guides the audience between what they’ve known and what they’ll learn. When readers come across an image to grasp onto, the poems ballast them below the surface and beyond. However, those handles are not to be relied upon. Instead, readers are pulled to focus on the shadowy, the less than clear aspects of the collection and expand rather than remain stagnant. These poems are both opaque and sparse in their construction, and it serves the collection well.

22

mosaicmagazine.org

The strength of Conduit is its use of language and form. When Khadijah Queen writes in “Return via Two Renaissances to a Distinct Unmasking,” “You love the idea of voice as an instrument, that two/Is not two, but dissonance” you have been invited into the heart of the collection. The voice of these poems is certainly an instrument, but the melody isn’t always sweet. She creates pitches that keep readers off kilter, harmonies from themes that readers may not have considered alongside tones that are freshly new. This is a skittish new jazz full of possibilities. With ample white space and succinct word choice, there is more than enough room for each poem to flower to its full potential. There is no crowding on the page to distract from the craftsmanship of the collection. It is quite clear the poet knows that space is at a premium and she uses it wisely. In its weaker moments Conduit relies too heavily on the aforementioned shadows. Yes, the poems’ turns remain sharp and interesting, but there is a softness missing in the collection as a whole. This is not to say the poems should be diluted, but at times the reader yearns for the melodies to mesh, for the dissonance to be quieted for a moment. Lush lines such as “I have counted the thousand thirsty buds/ burrowed in the black/bulk of your loosened/hair” from “Four Suggestions” or, “Poised for the stirring of small miracles” in “Suspension Tactics” are the rounded corners the collection needs more of. This addition would highlight the crispness that is

the hallmark of Conduit while allowing additional entries into the poems. Without them, some readers may feel like they are on the outside looking in, knowing there is something wonderful to be had but unable to wrap their minds around it. This is a weakness in the collection, but again the possibilities of these hard-edged poems lie within the same breath. “The Ofrendas Rojas” section of the collection is the softness sought. Here the careful construction is layered with quietness. Balanced between the starker sections “Distance as the Root of Olive Trees” and “Suspension Tactics,” “Ofrendas Rojas” is more accessible, more concrete. The opening poem “La Katrina” is what the book’s best is comprised of. It is appropriately complex while remaining open enough for a cross section of readers to enjoy. This is where readers are firmly planted on the ground while still searching what resides above. Queen writes, “Art is a leap through time.” At the end the questions form. Where will these poems leave us? Will we be moved forward? Most certainly. By the conclusion of Conduit, readers are now with the poet between the concrete and the air. As Khadijah Queen pens, these pages are truly “wide and vibrating.”

Kinky Gazpacho By Lori L. Tharps Atria Review by Jada Bradley Many people ignore or forget childhood longings that call them to do or be something other than what they are. Lori L. Tharps is not one of those people. She followed through on her childhood attraction to the country of Spain and takes readers through her inner and outer journeys to make peace with her place in the world. Tharps, a writer and editor whose work has appeared in publications like Essence and Glamour, goes from someone who tries in vain to keep her color “under wraps” to a woman on a mission to get to the root of the African presence in Spain. Although the book has been placed in the travel category, it is not strictly a travel diary. Tharps does not begin with her first journey to Spain. Instead, she sets the stage with her childhood interest in foreign cultures. In high school she visits Morocco and has a brief romance with a Spanish exchange student—events that will foreshadow her experiences in Spain. Growing up in Wisconsin, Tharps alternately struggles with and is at peace with what it is to be one of the few black children in a mostly white environment. Readers with similar backgrounds will relate

23

to her dismay at feeling she has no culture to display at her school’s cultural day, or her mortification at classmates’ brushing aside of a game called “nigger pile-on.” These themes continue during Tharps’s time in Spain where her attempts to dress like a Spaniard don’t allow her to blend in and she must endure racially charged taunts from children in her host family’s neighborhood. One of the book’s greatest strengths is Tharps’s engaging voice. It is hard not to root for her as she struggles to make sense of what it means to be black in and out of America. In our rather confessional age, her candor is authentic and not vain. She does a good job of inviting readers in, although occasionally she does forget to clarify things when a reader would need to know. There is an entire chapter called “Sally,” and Tharps waits until the following chapter to explain that Sally is her nickname for Salamanca. While at the University of Salamanca, Tharps develops a crush on a student in her German class. With the help of friends, she is able to meet Manuel, a Spanish classmate, who is an NBA fanatic. This Spaniard who will eventually become her husband had childhood dreams of America and of marrying a black woman. Their union inspired the book’s title—the author represented by “kinky” and her husband by “gazpacho.”

24

mosaicmagazine.org

Marrying into a Spanish family means Tharps will continue to visit Spain and grapple with the ways in which Spain’s overt and subtle racism pours salt on the unhealed wounds she bears as an African American. Though Manuel is open-minded and willing to enter into discussions about race and prejudice, his family is not always so interested. Nevertheless, with a few exceptions, the family accepts Tharps into the fold. Attitudes about people of African descent are contradictory all over the world, and the mix of fascination and prejudice combined with the denial of racism in Spanish-speaking countries can be mystifying. Starting in Cádiz, Tharps decides to take on the challenge of clearing up some of Spain’s ambiguity about its slaveholding past. She doesn’t do this to prove anyone right or wrong, but for her own personal edification. The book, which up until this point has been a delightful memoir, takes a turn into more journalistic territory. This is still Tharps’s journey, but the storytelling changes, and the book loses some of its entertaining qualities. Even in unearthing some historical truths, Tharps finds mixed messages. She hears that slavery in Spain was not all that bad, that it was just domestic servitude and that blacks in Spain were not universally despised. At the same time she learns that when they arrived in Cádiz, slaves received a brand on their cheeks with a symbol that represented the

Spanish word for slave. Despite the unpleasantness of slavery, Tharps finds that her investigation into Spain’s past helps her because it points to an overlooked African presence in the culture she was drawn to and joined by marriage. In the end, Tharps finds that although Spain doesn’t always embrace her, it is up to her to embrace Spain.

Gentleman Jigger, A Novel of the Harlem Renaissance By Richard Bruce Nugent Da Capo Review by J. A. Barnes Richard Bruce Nugent, one of the young artists of the Harlem Renaissance, never completed the roman à clef he began in 1928. When he died in 1987, he left several drafts, and from these, editor Thomas Wirth constructed Gentleman Jigger, A Novel of the Harlem Renaissance. It is risky business to cobble together a writer’s unfinished manuscript to create the novel the author intended. In the effort to “remain faithful to Nugent’s intent and…style,” Wirth admits, “[c]opyediting was kept to a minimum.” The result is less than satisfactory as literary art. Loosely structured, disjointed, verbose, and ultimately unsatisfying, Gentleman Jigger is still a valuable contribution to the literature of the Renaissance for its insider’s look into issues of race, color, class, and,

especially, sexuality among the various constituents of Jazz Age New York. Nugent does little to disguise his alter ego in the novel, Jerome Stuartt Brennan, a “vagabond poet” who comes to New York from Washington and lands within the inner circle of the young lights like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, and Wallace Thurman. As an inhabitant of “Niggeratti Manor,” who reportedly had an excellent recall of people and events, Nugent recants the daily doings of the talented and well-connected, the inhabitants of Harlem and the downtown whites who found Negroes so fascinating. In a sometimes disjointed narrative and wordy passages of exposition, the novel follows the young, light-complexioned homosexual Stuartt from Harlem to Greenwich Village to Chicago and back to New York as he challenges the conventions of race and sexuality at a time when revelations of homosexual relationships would have been groundbreaking and shocking. Nugent was the first African-American man to write openly about being gay, in his prose poem for the magazine Fire!!, “Smoke, Lilies and Jade.” Gentleman Jigger, says Arnold Rampersad, “radically alter[s] the landscape of Harlem Renaissance literature…mak[ing] it impossible to evade or suppress the central role of gay writers in this cultural period.” Continued on page 39

25

26

mosaicmagazine.org

the

Darker Mask Allegory for a New Literature

by Christopher Chambers Our hero saga begins in a comic book shop, in a southern metropolis which, yes, we’ll call “Metropolis” in the state of “Y’all.” And the shop’s not some innocuous strip mall storefront manned by aging hippies or meth-addled teenagers. It’s gleaming, glitzy, glorious. Stocked with all of the titles and toys and Xbox/PlayStation/Wii games which Hollywood has now kidnapped and blasted into the American consumer’s psyche. Indeed, many of its patrons are grown children who captain some the biggest companies in Metropolis. They, in turn, bring their small children, on whom they lavish expensive action figures and the newest, bloodiest or most life-like computer games… In walks Cristobal, Stevie, and Sujata. Cristobal is 28, Stevie and Sujata are eight and fraternal twins. They’re the kids of Cristobal’s girlfriend. None are imbued with obvious superhero powers other than curiosity and imagination. Their usual bonding exercise is to browse

27

the latest comics, graphic novels, adventure books, sci-fi collections…and of course the toy collectibles to fire the blood of all true fanboys and girls. Cristobal is Latino, the twins are African American. Cristobal asks the shop clerk—a freckle-faced dude wearing a tall-tee “wifebeater” and baggie denims pretty much matching Cristobal’s own—which books and comic books feature Hispanic heroes, black heroes. And not necessarily costumed crusaders who shoot Lord-knows from their fingertips, or can fly or breathe underwater or summon the power of heaven (or hell). Regular folk. Folk the captains of Metropolis, Y’all, regularly ignore… The shop clerk eyes the pair. He’s seen them before and they drop a lot of coin in the shop, yet each time he thinks they’re only indoors to escape the sun and muggy air, or use the restroom. He shrugs his shoulders at Cristobal’s query. He’s not racist. The black guys he hangs with at school love him for he “talk like them;” he skateboards with two Mexican dudes in the convenience store parking lot every Sunday afternoon when it’s warm out. Of course he dryly recites the usual fare: old “Blade” stories, Marvel’s new “Black Panther-Storm” wedding arc—but he asserts a couple of white customers consider it too “soap opera” or even reverse-racist! The Green Lantern is black in some issues…oh, and there’s a “Spawn” collectible…and as for prose books, well, he’s never heard of the late Octavia

28

mosaicmagazine.org

Butler, Steve Barnes, and a host of other writers of adventure, suspense, sci-fi, even history, mythology: black, Hispanic, Asian—female. Kyle Baker’s graphic novel Nat Turner? Nope. Phillipe Smith, the young brother who writes and illustrates Japanese manga? Sure, there’re goo-gobs of manga titles—G rated and adult—splashed all over the aisles. Unhunh, never heard of him. Dwayne McDuffie…surely you know him? Even Stevie chirps that McDuffie works on his favorite TV cartoon, Ben 10. “Huh? Who’s Dwayne McDuffie?” Stevie squints at the clerk, puffs out a lip. Sujata tugs on the hem of Cristobal’s tall-tee. But rather than sigh in dejection, she muses, “Okay, then we’ll have to tell our own stories.” And her brother chimes in, “Good ones that everyone will like.”

...

In 2006, I passed this anecdote (the names and location are above changed to protect the not-soinnocent) onto crime author and L.A. legend Gary Phillips. He was visiting the East Coast for a conference and I drove up to Baltimore from D.C. for several beers. Two writers talking shop. We’d already bandied about ideas for something like The Darker Mask over email. Less comic book or graphic novel, more a homage to the pulp fiction and adventure stories which birthed the characters, plots,

and themes in modern four-color comics. But we needed a tipping point. For me it was the exchange at the glittering comic shop. Like the saloon in the 19th century and Starbucks in the late 20th, comic shops are now the cool place to hang. And if they sell/rent computer games, they’re even more plugged into a multi-billion dollar multi-media entertainment enterprise. One in which people of color are increasingly making their presence known. Unfortunately, whether readers or creators, we fight the same superhero battles against the evil forces of commercialism that we do in films, music, TV, and in the traditional publishing realm: too few of us as gatekeepers and editors, too many others pushing stereotypes and fluff. Or there’s the old bromide—too often passed by publishers and authors of more conventional African-American fiction—that people of color won’t accept adventure stories, or “literary” graphic novels. I knew Gary was already ensconced in the graphic novel version of Angeltown, featuring his hardboiled black detective Ivan Monk. Like him, I grew up on pulp fiction, on old tales of adventure like James Fennimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, to the contemporary collections like New York Times bestselling author Michael Chabon’s McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, featuring Aimee Bender, Neil Gaiman, and of course Stephen King. In them I even see the digital/virtual derring-

do of the game HALO’s Master Chief. Master Chief is a brother, if you didn’t already know. Concurrently, a few traditional authors were beginning a foray into the comics medium, as with Hurston-Wright Award winner Mat Johnson’s scripting of Papa Midnite: Djimon Honsou’s character in the film Constantine, from the Hellblazer comics series. Mat was also noodling over what would become the criti-

L.A. Banks, Mat Johnson, and Gary Phillips

cally acclaimed 2007 graphic novel about lynching in the 1930s American south, Incognegro. I was ruminating over how to serialize the stories of unsung heroes and real people into sequential art (the technical term for comics and graphic novels; “prose” is the catch-all for just book print), a la the 9-11 Commission and Malcolm X, in which Coretta Scott King Award-winning artist Randy DeBurke breathed vivid life. Of course there was Kyle’s seminal Nat Turner, as a model, and groundbreaking horror collections like Brandon Massey’s Dark Dreams series with stories by such diverse authors as Zane or Eric

29

Jerome Dickey. Gary and I decided to marry sequential art with printed fiction the way it was done old school: prose, with illustrations. Yet we still lacked a spiritual center. That element came in the voice of Walter Mosley. It was he who said we needed this Darker Mask. We, as in all readers, particularly folks of color. Not writers. Readers. Stories for regular people, about regular people. Ignored, abused, reviled, forgotten people. Not even the cheerleaders or comfortable suburban housewives you see on ABC’s Heroes. In Walter’s universe, these “new” superheroes where not copies of white, male counterparts featuring some contrived character flaw. The women were not to be clones of large-breasted white glama-zon zombie killers: the rubric of adolescent male imaginations. We wanted nuance, edge. And reality. From that creed—an ingredient spicing the work of most writers and artists of color—we crafted our thesis for The Darker Mask. As Gary expounds, “My job is to try to bring some verisimilitude to the page and present a story that the reader will take away something of value; that they didn’t blow their [money] on ya-ya.” Mindful not to offer ya-ya, we went about recruiting our own legion of super heroines and heroes: Sleepers author Lorenzo Carcaterra, who’s also scribed gritty dialogue for bestselling computer games (and

30

mosaicmagazine.org

who hasn’t seen the movie version with Pitt, DeNiro, and Hoffman?). Bestselling and Edgar Awardwinning author Naomi Hirahara. Peter Spiegelman. Private eye master Reed Farrel Coleman. Suspense bestseller Alexandra Sokoloff. Women-in-comics pioneer Annie Nocenti (creator of Dare-Devil). Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes, fresh with their collaboration with Blair Underwood. Vibe, The Source and XXL journalist Mike Gonzales. Gary’s L.A. partner in crime Gar Anthony Haywood. Adventure-fable writer Wayne Wilson. Comic book author Doselle Young. Literary award winners Mat Johnson and Victor LaValle. Bestseller and book club favorite Leslie “LA” Banks. Walter Mosley, the mentor. And the late Jerry Rodriguez—playwright, filmmaker, scion of all things Nuyorican, Bronx, and Brooklyn and cool, already famed from a threebook deal with Kensington before his death from cancer. The artists are not to be messed with either: Shawn Martinbrough of Marvel, DC/Vertigo, and the author of How to Draw Noir Comics. Stars like Brian Hurtt and Sean Wang. Legendary magazine illustrator and painter Jeff Fisher. Nevertheless, the advice from marketing mavens was and is to invite rappers or perhaps even video vixens to pen these prose stories or comics. Politely, we demurred. True, many rappers, including Method Man, are contemplating their own comics lines and they look damn good; hip-hop is a perfect compliment to the sequential art form. Yet recently at the

phenomenon known as Comic Con in San Diego, even Method Man decried the silly, watered-down commercialization of his art. So while we didn’t approach rappers for The Darker Mask (maybe we will—stay tuned), we do have a story by hip-hop journalist Mike Gonzales, “The Whores of Onyx City,” illustrated by Sean Wang. And in this and other contributions you see our themes in action. “I’ve been drawn (pun intended) to comic books since I was a kid growing up in Harlem,” Gonzales relates. “I can remember going to a newsstand around the way every week and falling in love with the fourcolor fantasies that depicted my favorite heroes Batman, Daredevil, and the Hulk.” Some of Gonzales’ first fiction purchases weren’t just Chester Himes, or even Donald Goines or Langston Hughes’ poetry, but horror books like House of Mystery, House of Secrets and Creepy. Indeed, Gonzales credits influences such as “blaxploitation actresses, new wave flicks, Wu-Tang albums, the fiction of Chester Himes, David Goodis, and Paul Auster, as well as the crazy crack heads that populated my hood for over a decade” as inspirations for his story, and Wang faithfully interprets the flow in his artwork. Speaking of urban artistry and flow, there’s PEN/ Faulkner finalist Victor LaValle’s character Tony Flow, who, as a young black man in Brooklyn, has got no memories of his childhood, “but [has] some spectacular powers and in this story he finally learns to embrace the more heroic aspects of himself.

Which bodes well for the world, I guess.” And for young potential heroes and heroines like our Stevie and Sujata… LA Banks is already a veteran of the phantasmagorical with her wildly successful Vampire Huntress novels from St. Martin’s Press. African-American females supposedly are cold to horror/fantasy, to sci-fi, and adventure. Strange monsters and myths. Though Banks also counts herself as a romance writer, she’s gleefully smashed that particular myth about black women’s reading habits to atoms. Indeed Professor Jennifer Ryan asserts that adventure prose and graphic novels present an “important literary forum for black women’s voices.” Thus for Banks, it’s always a pleasure for her to attend the Hollywooddriven and supposedly white male geek-dominated Comic Con. “It was a total sensory overload of all things sci-fi, paranormal, and fun!” she gushes. “It’s like one of those things you can’t believe or fathom until you see it—sort of a human version of the running of the bulls.” Banks opines, “People like to read about others that have overcome vast challenges and dramas because that’s what they identify with. What about tension and struggle... what is heroic about being completely invincible? You might as well be God and then there’s no issue, right? Not interesting at all.” That’s why she works so hard to create a body of work for the grown-up versions of little Sujata. Continued on page 38

31

Healing Words\\ an Interview with Opal Palmer Adisa by D. Scot Miller Dr. Opal Palmer Adisa is a literary critic, renowned storyteller, author of thirteen books, and tenured professor at the California College of the Arts. She also does workshops on writing, using literature to examine sexism, racism, and homophobia. Born in Jamaica, Professor Adisa connects with the griot tradition to involve audiences, and her book of poetry, Tamarind and Mango Women, won the

32

mosaicmagazine.org

33

1992 American Book Award. Her novel, It Begins with Tears, was recommended in Great Books for High School Kids: A Teacher’s Guide to Books that Can Change Teens Lives. As a mother of three and former artistic director of Watoto Wa Kuumba, an Oakland children’s theater group, she has spoken and taught on issues of parenting, going as far as to host a regular show on the topic at Pacifica Radio station KPFA. With a first-hand understanding of the Caribbean storytelling tradition, Dr. Opal Palmer Adisa has brought tales, songs, and musings from Africa and the African-American experience to Oakland and the world for over thirty years. We were fortunate to catch the busy and influential writer/mystic for a phone interview. Even over the phone, Dr. Adisa weaves personal narratives that traverse time, space, and experience with a rare candor. D. Scot Miller: When did you come into the griot tradition? Opal Palmer Adisa: My tradition developed from my grandfather, my grand aunt, and growing up around people who told stories. My maternal grandfather was a storyteller, not an official storyteller, but he would tell us stories. My mother used to send our sister and me out to the country for about two or three weeks and

34

mosaicmagazine.org

my maternal great aunt, who died four years ago at 102, was a consummate story teller. Jamaica gained its independence in 1962. We didn’t get TV until 1962. And it would come on in the evening and go off at midnight. What Jamaicans did at that time, what most people in the world did before TV, they would tell stories. Even after TV came out, we would sit down and tell stories. At that time, the most popular kind of stories were duppy or ghost stories. She would tell us stories and I was so afraid I wouldn’t want to sleep by myself. I didn’t want to go to the bathroom by myself! I came to the states a little before I was sixteen. My brother had graduated from high school and moved to New York to be a journalist. I left Kingston and did my last year-and-a-half in New York and attended Hunter College. When I was there, I had a wonderful teacher who had storytelling classes on Saturday where we would work with children telling familiar stories and changing the ending. It occurred to me that I had duppy stories and Anansi stories that were not being told. I went back to Jamaica in 1975 and worked there as an education officer and TV producer for children’s shows until August ’79. I wanted a masters in creative writing because I was writing and being published regularly between ’76 and ’79. I was looking for the poets and there was Kammau Brathwaite and Mervyn Morris. I contacted them, showed

BREAKING POINT I the knife slips severing the finger which hangs attached by a willowy muscle the day’s stress snaps the mind which clings to any thread of meaning the wound with its vulgar blood draws loud sympathy the mind struggling for meaning is greeted with indignation

35

them my work, and established a relationship. Kammau Brathwaite was my mentor. He published me in his magazine, Clavicle, and got me published in the states in Nimrod when they had a special Caribbean issue. DSM: Is this where you first got involved with radio? OPA: I had one of the first poetry radio shows in Jamaica in the ’70s, and when I went back, I had a call-in show for teachers. Though my degree in education media focused on television, radio is still exciting in the Caribbean. In rural areas, a radio show is the best way to communicate. There are so many talk shows that people listen to and call. DSM: How do you feel about Oakland right now? OPM: The Bay Area has been wonderful to me. I lived in San Francisco for a year and through a guy I was seeing, I came to Oakland. I could not imagine living anywhere else.It’s nurtured my creativity. The temperament of Oakland just felt right for me. I entered my masters as a poet. I started out as a storyteller in the griot tradition. While I was waiting to get in at San Francisco State I took a class at

36

mosaicmagazine.org

City College with Lesley Simon who taught a poetry class. She asked me, “What are you doing here? You’re not at the level of these students.” She told me about Poetry for the People and asked me to become a member and teach the class. She recommended me. I was the only black in the program at that time, there were a lot of North Beach poets. This is where I met Jack Hirschmen. Each of us produced chapbooks of our work at the end of the semester. John Kerr asked me to get my best poems together and he showed me how to do it. They published my first chapbook, “Market Woman.” It gave me my entrée in to the poetry scene in California. I took a short story class at State and realized there were these stories from Jamaica I wanted to tell. Stories I had from Jamaica that were not being reflected, and it was from that class that my first book of short stories went on to get published. All of the stories I started in that class got published in that first collection, Big Face and Other Guava Stories. It was the first Chelsea Street book to be reviewed in the New York Times and ended up being taught in schools in South Africa, England, and Italy. And that really surprised me. I’m always surprised because I look at the stories and am surprised that I wrote them. I’m amazed how long the stories have lived. It’s four stories about four rural Jamaican women. Continued on page 47

BREAKING POINT VI the slightest comment causes my eyes to smart i pretend the wind has blown something my way i fix on an idea search through my jig-saw mind if i can find words with which to test the idea if words don’t abandon me as many have i know i will be fine it will be rough going but i’ll make it through as long as i have words words which repel those waiting to pounce on me i can find my way back to the beginning where this unraveling began words my true only friends

37

Author Mat Johnson, who burst upon the traditional prose universe with the acclaimed novels Drop and Hunting in Harlem, expands this notion of hero as ordinary brotherman with Henchman, also illustrated by Sean Wang. Ain’t it Cool News fetes Henchman as one of the more creative works in The Darker Mask, yet for Johnson, the story’s genesis is fairly simple. “In a lot of stories of this genre, you always see these endless hordes of henchman and they’re anonymous, their lives are expendable and they have no stories, so I also wondered what they were about. I figured, in today’s economy, they would have to be temps, no more loyal to the company than your local Wal-Mart clerk. Also, my story is a riff on Batman, and what I find interesting about that character is the class dynamic he brings: here is this billionaire who wants for nothing beating the hell out of guys whose lives have been distorted by poverty, who are just trying to get by and have a better life. Morally, it’s actually really troubling. In that sense, the Joker is actually the hero: the performance artist who sees through the rich guy’s self righteous big-game-hunting bullshit and exposes his absurdity to the world.” We couldn’t agree more. Do you have to be black or Latina or Latino or from India or a woman to offer such tales to fans and newcomers? Not necessarily. James Patterson and Jeffrey Deaver invented Alex Cross and Lincoln Rhyme; Frank Miller of 300, Sin City, and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns gives us the justice-doing young sister Martha Washington. The creator of cult-favorite manga hero Afro Samurai (now a cartoon voiced by Samuel L. Jackson) is Japanese. Yet we can’t entirely rely on others to tell and produce or publish our stories.

38

mosaicmagazine.org

At the very least we can expect this new universe, these better stories, to be in full bloom by the time Cristobal’s charges, Stevie and Sujata, are old enough to buy and read many titles on their own. And Cristobal will see and read about people who look like him, struggle as he does, and not through the eyes of someone who can only guess how Cristobal feels. So here’s a hint of what’s to come in heroic literature by people of color. While I lay up in my sickbed this past July, Gary Phillips and Doselle Young sat on a panel at Comic Con echoing these very themes of gritty reality, of ageless stories. To everyone’s surprise but not shock, the crowd was huge and diverse and wanted more. Our panel in turn complemented another panel, this one perhaps more hyped and glamorous, moderated by Michael Davis. This dais’s guests included Method Man himself, Dwayne McDuffie, actor-filmmaker Rusty Cundieff (Sprung, Tales from the Hood, Fear of a Black Planet), John Dokes from Marvel. BET’s Denys Cowan and entertainment chief Reginald Hudlin. Poet Faith Cheltenham gave The Darker Mask a shout-out, true, but the focus quickly shifted to future, not a grim past or uneasy present. There were comments like “leave hopeful,” and that these stories—whether literature, sequential art, film, and TV are meaningful for everyone—and not merely for a “niche market” of black folks. We all need them, such stories. Probably more than ever. Almost every book or graphic novel or comic or clip reviewed in Rich Watson’s blog Glyphs on Popcultureshock.com, or studied by academics such as Jennifer Ryan and Professor William Fuller, II are about struggle and aspiration. These are the elements that make even superbeings human, as LA Banks says. Moreover, independent publishers are pumping out titles like Stagger Lee, or Southside Nefertiti,

or Harlem Spider. We can expect more literary titles like Mat Johnson’s Incognegro. Gary will offer the street parable High Rollers through Boom!Studios. Artist Shawn Martinbrough, former DC editor Joe Illidge, and I already have joint sequential art projects ready to launch through both traditional prose and comics publishers, including the 1930s true-life Harlem crime story, Gangsterland. Like our heroes little Stevie and Sujata said: our own tales. Better ones. Not just for fantasy junkies or comic/gamer fanboys and girls. For us all. That’s why we donned The Darker Mask. 

Reviews The novel reveals little more about the Renaissance that readers of Hughes, Hurston, and Thurman don’t know already. Considered a satire in the same vein as Thurman’s Infants of the Spring, it is not as biting as that work. Readers get little of the sense of the jazz in this Jazz Age novel. While the characters frequent the uptown nightspots, we learn more about their drink orders than we do about the entertainment. Neither are the characters well formed. Rusty (Thurman) lives with Stuartt and appears frequently in the first part of the book, but Tony (Hughes) and Nona (Hurston) drift in and out of the story, their characters remaining flat and static. Nor does Gentleman Jigger clear up any questions about the sexuality of these fellow writers, particularly about Hughes. The focus is on Stuartt, the Gentleman Jigger (a very light Negro who could pass for white).

Stuartt shares an apartment and a bed with Rusty, but it’s not at all clear that the relationship is physical. The novel is more frank when recounting Stuartt’s sexual involvements with Italian gangsters in New York and Chicago. The intelligent, lively poet and artist charms his way into bed with dangerous men who outwardly profess scorn toward “queers.” Stuartt manages to stay alive and unhurt even when he upsets his lover Orini, said by Nugent to be based on Lucky Luciano. Stuartt provides Orini his first experience of gay sex. Afterwards, Stuartt tells him, “You’re one of the handsomest people I’ve ever seen, and your hair is lovely. But you’re still Orini to me,” and the Chicago gangster in anger says, “You lousy little punk.” Stuartt’s intelligence, quick wit, and moxy soothe Orini’s temper and later allow even Stuartt’s discarded gangster lovers to remain friendly. These qualities in Stuartt provide the most engaging aspects of the novel. Through little effort of his own, Stuartt becomes a successful artist and wins his place in the pantheon of Renaissance artists. Equally as effortlessly, he emerges as an intriguing character, especially as he provides a look into the life of Nugent himself, one of the lesser-known Negro artists from the period. Although it is a novel in need of editing, Gentleman Jigger provides readers with a new experience of and a new voice from the Harlem Renaissance, and is therefore a valuable resource and an interesting read. >>>

39

Say You’re One Of Them By Uwem Akpan Little, Brown and Company Review by Rachel Finn

stifling heat of the shack they call home. Slowly, both the reader and the oldest child Kotchikpa begin to understand the horrifying truth: Fofo Kepe, their uncle, plans to sell them into slavery in Gabon.

“When they ask you,” she says sternly, without looking at me, “say you’re one of them, OK?” “Who?” “Anybody. You have to learn to take care of Jean, Monique. You just have to, huh?” (p. 327)

Three of the other stories are set against the backdrop of violent religious and ethnic conflict. “Luxurious Hearses” follows sixteen-year-old Jubril as he comes to terms with his faith, Islam, and learns the value and meaning of tolerance during the course of a fateful bus ride across Nigeria. “My Parents’ Bedroom” set in Rwanda offers a heartbreaking glimpse of a family shattered by the violent ethnic strife and genocide of the 1994 war, giving a human face to the incomprehensible crime of genocide. In “What Language Is That?”, perhaps the most touching story, is also the shortest in the book. Set in Ethiopia, it is the tale of two young girls, one Christian and one Muslim who have become best friends. It is told from the point of view of an outsider recounting the girls’ close friendship. The story poignantly shows the absurd nature of conflict based on religious differences—from the opening scene where the girls are having lunch in a local café, to its sad yet hopeful ending. Finally there is the bleak “An Ex-Mas Feast,” the tale of an abjectly poor family living in the slums of Nairobi. The parents of twelve-year-old Maisha rely on her earnings as a prostitute to keep the family afloat while forcing their other children out into the streets as beggars. In one scene, while waiting for Maisha to return with Christmas dinner, the mother offers her son Jigana, a bottle filled with glue to sniff in order to kill his hunger pangs after breathing in the fumes herself and passing it to other family members.

These are the haunting words uttered by the Tutsi mother to her ten-year-old, multiethnic daughter (Hutu-Tutsi) living in the time of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 from which Nigerian author Uwem Akpan’s collection of five short stories draws its title. Set in Kenya, Benin, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Ethiopia, the various stories depict the tenderness and cruelty that seem to exist in tandem in the lives of the characters, giving the reader a child’s eye view of the chaos that greed, mismanagement, and indifference have wreaked on lives throughout the continent. In the story, “Fattening for Gabon,” a brother and sister in Benin cope with the consequences of their uncle’s indecision about selling them into slavery. The story starts with the startling opening lines: “Selling your child or nephew could be more difficult than selling other kids. You had to keep a calm head or be as ruthless as the Badagry-Seme immigration people. If not, it could bring trouble to the family. What kept our family-secret from the world in the three months Fofo Kpee planned to sell us were his sense of humor and the smuggler’s instinct he had developed as an abero, a tout, at the border. My sister Yewa was five and I was ten.” (p. 39) Akpan’s storytelling leaves the reader breathless as he moves slowly through the days and nights in the

40

mosaicmagazine.org

Akpan’s exquisitely written stories enkindle the reader’s emotions and allow space for us to reflect upon the whys and wherefores of his characters’

lives. The legacy of colonialism haunts these stories and as moving as it is to view these worlds through the eyes of children, it is even more fascinating to consider what drives the adults whose careless actions set the tragic events of the five tales in motion and put these children at risk. The book also begs the questions: who bears responsibility and who must be held accountable for the turmoil, self-hate, and vicious inhumanity that plague Africa today? And while one would be remiss in giving an overly simplistic answer to that question, Say You’re One Of Them helps make it clear that there is no one who can change Africa but Africans themselves.

Somebody Scream By Marcus Reeves Faber and Faber Review by Sidik Fofana In Somebody Scream, hip-hop adopts a broader role in the context of African-American history. According to Marcus Reeves’s book on the storied genre’s major movements, hip-hop seceded the Black Power Movement of the 1960s as a cultural force for minorities in the United States to latch on. Of course, Reeves discusses the rise of acts like Public Enemy and Run DMC, but his analysis takes into account COINTELPRO, Assata Shakur’s murder trial, and other key political events that have fueled their post Civil Rights aesthetic. He depicts rap music as a natural evolution from these watershed moments. No book about hip-hop history is complete without a thorough study of Public Enemy and the haloed ensemble’s contributions to rap music. Although Reeves starts his analysis fairly early in the book, he is careful to avoid sanctifying the group. Whereas

most written accounts paint Public Enemy’s music as a perfect amalgam of angst and intellect, Reeves shows instances where the group’s political fervor was misguided. In the chapter entitled, “Stumbling through Black Power Revisited,” he writes about an anti-Semitic comment that band member Griff made during an interview for The Washington Times, “The explosive fallout began a month later following a reprint of Griff’s comments in The Village Voice. Jewish groups like the militant Jewish Defense Organization began protesting against P.E. The mainstream media began shining an anti-Semitic light on the group, helping to strain black-Jewish relations as folks began to take sides in the debacle.” More importantly, Somebody Scream shows that Public Enemy and other hip-hop artists were not in an ageless vacuum when they conceived their masterpieces. On several occasions, the book makes the distinction that these groups were not making protest music just because it was cool, but in response to the tense social climate of the day. Reeve writes about Reaganomics, Yusef Hawkins’s murder, and Jesse Jackson’s 1988 stint for presidency under the guise that these events motivated hip-hop’s lyrical content. To him, this on-record activism is akin to the militant efforts of the Black Panthers and other Civil Rights organizations. Just as early hip-hop transitions from the Black Power Movement of the 60s and 70s, Somebody Scream notes the point when the conscious music of Public Enemy shifts to the gangsta rap of Death Row Records. Reeves dedicates two chapters to Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur, documenting the rise of hardcore west coast hip-hop. Yet, Reeves does not spare the aggressive music from having its own share of political undertones. This connection is not all too far-fetched given that California rap’s

41

prominence coincided with the Rodney King beatings and the L.A. Race Riots. In “Gangsta Chic,” Reeves points out that, “As the L.A. riots placed the city at the epicenter of American political discourse by turning black Los Angeles into a worldwide symbol of oppression, black rage, and victimization, they also turned the gangsta and the gangbanger into emblems of strength, fearlessness, and streetlevel empowerment.” Whereas gangster rappers were once vilified by the media, these social circumstances turned them into urban soothsayers, reporting on the uproar of their own communities. Somebody Scream’s final movement documents hip-hop’s marriage to capitalism and extreme commoditization. These chapters perhaps represent Reeves at his strongest as he wields through an era that he does not necessarily hold in the highest regard. Sean “Puffy” Combs headlines Reeve’s discussion of the genre’s developed obsession with diamonds and shiny suits. Although the multimedia mogul is often blamed for adulterating rap’s political message with meretricious showcases of wealth, Reeves reminds readers that Combs is foundationally as hardworking and relentless as anyone in the music business. The chapter, “Ghetto Fab Rising” refers to a celebrity/benefit basketball game Puffy threw at City College in New York in 1991 during which nine people were killed in a stampede. Instead of letting the public relations nightmare deter him, Reeves writes, “…Puffy resurfaced the next year as a musical dynamo.” He grants each period in hip-hop its share of recognition and acknowledges its contributions to the history in whole. Somebody Scream is not a nostalgic glimpse back in the golden age, but rather an objective document of hip-hop defining epochs and the social milestones that influenced them. The painstakingly researched

42

mosaicmagazine.org

book is now required reading for a class at Brooklyn College and is being compared to Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop in terms of its thoroughness and wide-ranging subject matter. With this book, rap’s archives have grown that much more stronger as Reeves, with his culturally astute eye, records the timeless hands of hip-hop history.

When the Black Girl Sings By Bil Wright Simon & Schuster Review by C. Chekejai Coley Bil Wright takes on the complex issue of transracial adoption in When the Black Girl Sings (WBGS). WBGS is about an eighth-grade African-American girl named Lahni who was adopted by white parents who are, incidentally, in the midst of a separation. Throughout the book Lahni is witnessing the downfall of her parent’s relationship and is struggling to deal with their inevitable divorce. This is compounded by the anger that she feels for her adoptive father, Tim, while trying to be a support for her mother Ursula. In this time she is also confronted with a white boy’s taunting and his perverse attempts to get her attention. To add to the challenges Lahni is also working on a singing competition in school. Overall, Wright’s work gives some credence to the idea that despite racial differences there can be some level of success in transracial adoptions. There are some things, like a mother’s desire to protect her young, to be affirmative of them, and to encourage them that are just human expressions of love. All of these things come into play in the relationship between Lahni and Ursula. Even during the turmoil of the separation from her husband,

Ursula assures Lahni of her love and commitment to her. Alternately, Wright also highlights the social and personal challenges of children in these arrangements and the inability of parents of one race to truly nurture a child of another race through a “color-blind versus color-conscious.” In the color-blind approach to raising Lahni she often recognizes her displacement because she is often misunderstood by those closest to her. Lahni lacks exposure to African-American culture in virtually every area. She does have an expressed desire and need to connect with others more like her and is unable to come to terms with who she is as an African American in her predominantly white settings. Ursula decides that she and Lahni should attend church—in part because she thinks that Lahni may be able to meet some other African-American youth. The church they attend is nondenominational and although the congregation is racially mixed, the choir is predominantly black. There are no other AfricanAmerican youth for Lahni to meet but miraculously, she experiences a turning point during the service when she is moved by the choir’s rendition of “Amazing Grace.” She finds some inspiration and is prompted to then join the church choir. The book falls short in some areas. In many ways it’s predictable, non-progressive, and it reinforces stereotypes about blacks. For example, although Lahni wears Afro puffs as an assertion of herself, she refers to her hair as “woolly.” Woolly is a term that is often used by those who have accepted the negative reference to the hair of blacks (it falls along the lines of “peasy.” “nappy,” “bad” and other like terms). It was also used quite a bit in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Another limitation in the book is the introduction of the idea of homosexuality where the choir director, Marcus, is concerned. When Lahni first meets him she surmises from his attire that he may be gay. There is never a real examination of his sexual preference and the relationship that develops between Lahni and Marcus is purely musical. The mention of his sexual orientation is almost pointless. Ultimately, although there are constant reminders of race throughout the book, there is no real resolve for Lahni in this area. In the end she has no positive exposure to black culture—not even through the church experience. She does expand a little socially through her relationship with the church choir, but there is no real development in terms of gaining racial or cultural understanding. What tends to be sad to the point of tragic in the book is that she doesn’t develop any real relationships outside of the realm of music. As expected, Lahni does win the competition—a “happily ever after,” anti-climatic and predictable finish. While singing the song “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” during the competition, she has an epiphany of sorts. She comes to the conclusion that she has been “divinely” protected and gathers a cerebral understanding of protection by a higher force. It is as if the musical experience coupled by the cerebral understanding of protection by a higher power supersedes the prevalent issue: Race. But even her musical odyssey does not bring her much closer to a real understanding of herself. Though the songs have been sung, and quite well, by blacks in black churches, the songs “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” and “Amazing Grace” are not actually African-American spirituals. One of the songs was written by an enslaver—the other, also written by whites, is often played at funerals. Did someone die? 

43

dous numbers of black people locked up steadily declines in the same way it steadily rose. TB: Since we both grew up in Kankakee, Illinois, do you ever see our hometown popping up in your writing? I felt this sense of place and speech, even though neither of your novels features the town. KB: Well, I am who I am. I was shaped and molded there. It pops up in every word I write. Most of my observations about love, death, sickness, hardship, and love again were shaped there at a very young age because I grew up with a very large family on both parents’ sides. I was used to being around a lot of adults even though I was young. And they loved to talk and tell stories, which I still remember. Of course, there are certainly environmental factors which contribute to the ultimate psychological template one develops, but for the most part human nature is fairly, predictably consistent—regardless of place. Certainly, the impact of jail and prison on people’s lives was a subject I was passionate about because people will pay attention to an injustice or disproportionate number of convicts in Harlem, but little pockets of our country such as Kankakee, simply go uncharted and unnoticed in these discussions. One of the strongest memories informing Conception for me was the way in which pregnancy, abortion, and contraception were handled on a government level in a poor community with a consistently high teen pregnancy rate. There will always be a little girl from Kankakee, Illinois, inside of me throwing in her two cents. I can’t really separate myself from it at this point. TB: Speaking of place, you won an award for an excerpt of a novel that you wrote before Upstate. Would you please talk a little bit about that

44

mosaicmagazine.org

work? KB: I wanted to write rather than work 80 hours a week consulting after I graduated U of C. I was a medical secretary by day for almost a year and writing my little heart out at night. The book took a while to finish because it was my first, but I was blessed to have had agents fighting over me when I sent it out. I won a 2001 Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship in Prose for my first stab at a novel. It was entitled The Junction, and that was the nickname of the tiny circular neighborhood where I grew up in Kankakee. It was at a railroad junction, with a graveyard right in back. I liked the name because it connoted distance, journey, travel, a change, which could be applied in so many ways metaphorically and character wise. So, I wanted to write a historical novel about three generations of a family who had migrated south to a northern place called The Junction. And even better, our annual Summerfest picnic in Kankakee is where a crime is committed in the early 1920s that informed the rest of the century for the family. The novel was actually shopped on the market in 2001, well before my first book, but it was passed on for reasons that are now much clearer to me since I am more experienced as a writer and a published author. I made the mistake so many novelists make with that first work—they think it will be their only work. It was a massive book, with more tangents than I could reasonably engage and fulfill. I have actually borrowed some writing from it because since it was my first time, I can really see some passion in a lot of it. It was a joy to write because more than anything I’ve ever written, my hometown was hands down the model for setting. It will always be my baby, even if it never sees the light of day. TB: With all the talk of MFAs and PhDs and

how difficult it is for writers to find work in this economy, do you think it has impacted your time at the University of Chicago? Do you think it’s a valuable experience for writers? KB: Writers should not approach the academy or a degree program thinking that they don’t have to work and will be flouncing around writing. A degree program should be a well-thought out strategic move, which will allow your knowledge and hopefully bank account to increase. But getting back into the mentality of being a student is not easy and there is a lot of work, all of which will harm most creative writers’ productivity. If you are a real writer you will always write no matter what, but your mind does slow down after having to write so much for school. I wanted my MFA in creative writing because after The Junction, despite the rejection of it for publication, I was not going to give up on my dream of writing. I had always wanted to live in New York City; I felt that is where the heart of publishing was. I wanted to be there so I matriculated to the New School. I first began to think of a PhD with a concentration on black female culture when I was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. I was recruited to a program funded by the Mellon Foundation to work towards a career in academic research, and mentored by black studies professors who are still mentoring me to this day. I learned a lot of what other people wanted me to learn at U of C, but I was able to develop the tools to go out and learn what I wanted to learn through academic research. That appealed to me, but I was not ready to commit because I knew that the dream of writing would nag me until I felt I had proven to myself that I could do it. I got two novels out of the way before I went back for a PhD, and the first draft of Upstate was actually my thesis for the

MFA. My vision for myself is to contribute to the establishment and visibility of black women’s studies for young minds that are interested, but have not been exposed. A PhD makes sense for me because I am earning my entrance and respect in that environment to make the impact I want to make. If it were not for my desire to change institutions and the visibility of black women’s studies, then I would probably be wasting my time because this is not a trust-funded pursuit! As long as the objectives are clear, and people are not going into it thinking that they are fancy free to write and waste time, the universities are provocative, inspiring, and resourceful environments for writers. TB: I know you’re balancing critical and creative writing now, so could you talk a little more about those projects and how you create the time and space for writing? KB: I’m taking it easy with creative writing right now. I think I have proven myself for now. I have a lot on my plate with trying to work towards a PhD in literature and promote the two works that I have out there. I also moved back to Chicago to work on the degree, and I have family and friends in Illinois who love me. Those relationships are important to me so I don’t have the same level of reclusiveness that I achieved in New York. I’m also devoting more time to cooking whole foods, exercising, and dating, so it’s hard to get insanely deep into a creative writing project right now. I am always writing a little something something. The caveat for me, at this time, is holding back from obsessing over a work or idea because I just don’t have the time and space to obsess about what’s in my head right now. Reality is a bit more immediate at this time. That is what is hard to communicate at this level. Unfortunately, the public has been conditioned to associate writers and writ-

45

ing with product; the question more often than not is “Are you working on a new book?” rather than “Have you been practicing your writing?” The latter is a more considerate question because down periods can be frustrating. The way I and most writers I know cope with that is by making sure that we do a little something when we can, even if it is a couple of paragraphs or lines. This is a lifelong practice for me. My goal as a writer is to stay healthy and whole, not to push myself to the point that what I produce is not even worth reading. I can’t tell that popular lie and say I write every day because I don’t, and I really don’t want to despite innumerable writers telling me that’s the way. I view the best characters and stories as gifts or guests who take a long time to get here and finally wear out their welcomes once they do. Given that, I’m more than content to relax and just wait for them to show up when they want to. TB: I noticed that you’re focused on black female dramatists. I’m wondering who intrigues you and why? KB: I want to do some fun research in the long run, and theater is usually fun. I don’t know where my interests will ultimately land or what the subject of a dissertation will be at this point, but I know that I am committed to illuminating the brilliance of as many black female artists as I can. Classes or conferences are never built around black women who write plays. Although I love them, there has been more than Suzan-Lori Parks, Lorraine Hansberry, Pearl Cleage, Anna Deveare-Smith, and Ntozake Shange. There has been Alice Childress, Beah Richards, most people don’t even know that Denise Nicholas (author of Freshwater Road) was an actress and noted playwright of the 1970s. After the Depression, the number of community theaters spearheaded by black women increased phenomenally.

46

mosaicmagazine.org

Many of those theaters are still running. As writers and theater developers, black women have certainly impacted the American theater scene in a way that is not talked about, so why not be the one to talk about it? It is an exciting time for black theater right now, it is really growing and major stars are developing. It’s a great time to resurrect a lot of that information and see how far we’ve come. TB: Since you’ve been working on critical writing and dramatic work, what are some of the differences in the genres? How does it feel when you are writing in each one? KB: You know, I just love to write. Even my emails and text messages are long! I truly love the written word. I would like to master all its forms. It’s easier for me to talk about what these forms share over how they’re different, because that’s a whole other story. They all share the challenge of facing a blank page, harnessing your mind and translating your silent, ever-changing ideas into a format that others can understand. That’s a tall order no matter what genre you are working in. The actual labor of the process is the same for me no matter what it is. It’s frightening and daunting, but alive and hopeful at the same time. I love writing dialogue, so I’ve found it a little easier to tangle through dramatic writing. Sometimes it’s tiring, especially when it’s late and you can’t remember what page had that very important fact or detail that you need to remember for another page! Critical writing can be more frustrating for me, a lot more scientific in the sense of making sure all your t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted. It involves organizing a massive amount of information, connecting and contrasting that information, while also including others’ information in your conclusions,

not to mention the stylistic and technical tenets of the discipline. The standard language in academic disciplines, and learning that language has been a huge challenge for me because it gets just about as erudite as it can at this level. I hope that my experience as a creative writer will allow me to ultimately translate my discoveries about our culture to mass audiences who don’t normally pick up scholarly work. Angela Davis, bell hooks, Dorothy Roberts, Harryette Mullen, and Farah Jasmine Griffin are guiding examples of that important work. 

When I came to the US it was the height of the Black Power Movement. My brother and his friends were students of Black Power. I grew up with Afros and big earrings, and as a result of the Black Power Movement there was a deep appreciation for things Caribbean because it’s about reflecting on your own life. DSM: How did you become an authority on parenting? OPA: When I came out to California in 1979, I didn’t have any money. I had to work. I could teach part time but I didn’t have a teaching credential. So before I went for the masters I decided I would get a teaching credential in early childhood. I was a head teacher for a while, which is where a part of my sensibilities around parenting developed. When I was working with black parents in and around the Presidio, I noticed that many did not have the skills to be a parent. I partnered with a sister named Marsha King, who used to be the head of childcare in Oakland and Fruitvale who had asked me to do storytelling. I did a series of storytelling for her and we ended up forming a very successful children’s theater company for about four years with seventeen kids. I did all the writing and the drama about Caribbean and African history. In 1980, we were the first to do a Kwanzaa piece in the Bay Area. I started to look at what it meant to be a parent. When I had my own kids people would ask me for advice. A social worker asked me to a workshop and I never say no to anything. It was very successful, so I did another. That’s how I ended up doing the parenting show for NPR for four years. DSM: You never say no to anything?

47

OPA: I don’t. When an opportunity comes to me, if it’s not utterly offensive, but something that’s going to give me an opportunity to grow and exercise in a way that I haven’t, I’m going to say yes. I’m going to learn what I need to know to master that and be successful at it. I tell my kids that. I know that Caribbean people are known to be resourceful—my mother was a very resourceful woman. She raised us by herself, and back then, people didn’t just throw away things; if something was wrong, you learned how to fix it. My mother would tinker with things that other women would not because they had husbands. So she learned how to fix things and she never said no. She played the organ at church, started a drama group for the cane workers, and she started a credit union. If someone was in need, she never said no. She went ahead and did it. I get that trait from her and I’ve passed it on to my kids. DSM: Have you been involved with the arts community a lot the last few years? OPM: I used to be very involved in community projects, but lately I’ve wanted to get more writing done. I didn’t feel like I was being as productive as I wanted to be. A lot of my friends who were much older have died without finishing projects. Writing is the most important thing me now, and I wanted to get some stuff out, which is why I’m going to Jamaica. I want to leave work behind. Right now I just want to do the work. DSM: How would you define craft? OPM: Craft is having the time to make your sentences shimmer. I look at Jamaica Kincaid. I may not always agree with her point of view, but her sentences are incredible. She’s a wicked sentence constructor! She has been fortunate that she came

48

mosaicmagazine.org

here as an artist, married the grandson of a founder of the New York Times and has the luxury and time to write full time. I look at Diaz’s book The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, and I love the humor. I love the voice. He has had the time to be a fulltime writer and it shows. Alice Walker had the time to write full time. I think it makes a big difference in what you write, how you write, and how much you produce. It took me four years to finish my first novel because I was raising kids, teaching, working in the community. My sister took my kids for two weeks for the three summers I finished my first novel. One week, I wrote twelve hours a day. I got a residency in North Carolina and wrote for twelve hours a day. That made a big difference in the flow. I wasn’t trying to catch up or remember. No kids banging on the door. I’m proud of my first novel, but it took four years. When I have the summer or three months, I think it affects the quality and flow of what I write. It affects the craft. DSM: What do you think is the power of the word? OPA: For me it’s healing every time I write, regardless of what I write about. Every time us, as black people, write about us and our stories it’s part of a quilt that is making us whole. Our entrance into the new world was fragmented, the middle passage did that, and writing is about healing that rupture, that kidnap, that breakage from history, that one-third human we’re still trying to throw off. The word is balm. The word is healing. The word is the thing that is making us whole. 

SUBSCRIBE TO MOSAIC Name Address City/ST/Zip  One-Year Subscription: $15.00

 Two-Year Subscription: $25.00

 MAKE CHECK OR MONEY ORDER PAYABLE TO Literary Freedom Project 314 W 231 St. #470 Bronx, NY 10463

SUBSCRIBE TO MOSAIC Name Address City/ST/Zip  One-Year Subscription: $15.00

 Two-Year Subscription: $25.00

 MAKE CHECK OR MONEY ORDER PAYABLE TO Literary Freedom Project 314 W 231 St. #470 Bronx, NY 10463

SUBSCRIBE TO MOSAIC Name Address City/ST/Zip  One-Year Subscription: $15.00

 Two-Year Subscription: $25.00

 MAKE CHECK OR MONEY ORDER PAYABLE TO Literary Freedom Project 314 W 231 St. #470 Bronx, NY 10463

49

SUBSCRIBE TO MOSAIC Name Address City/ST/Zip  One-Year Subscription: $15.00

 Two-Year Subscription: $25.00

 MAKE CHECK OR MONEY ORDER PAYABLE TO Literary Freedom Project 314 W 231 St. #470 Bronx, NY 10463

SUBSCRIBE TO MOSAIC Name Address City/ST/Zip  One-Year Subscription: $15.00

 Two-Year Subscription: $25.00

 MAKE CHECK OR MONEY ORDER PAYABLE TO Literary Freedom Project 314 W 231 St. #470 Bronx, NY 10463

SUBSCRIBE TO MOSAIC Name Address City/ST/Zip  One-Year Subscription: $15.00

 Two-Year Subscription: $25.00

 MAKE CHECK OR MONEY ORDER PAYABLE TO 50 mosaicmagazine.org Literary Freedom Project 314 W 231 St. #470 Bronx, NY 10463

51

AALBC.com, The African American Literature Book Club The #1 Site for Readers of Black Literature.

AALBC.com can help you find that next great read or advertise your book to an audience of avid readers.

Troy Johnson, President of AALBC.com, is available to answer your questions. (866) 603-8394 - [email protected] 52

mosaicmagazine.org