Is Poetry Audiovisual?

I completely missed National Poetry Month (April) but in cleaning out my aggregator I came across this lovely lady Bassey Ikpi (H/T WriteBlack):



Which reminded me of this, passed along to me by Littlest Sis a few weeks ago. Embedding is disabled but her name is Zora Howard, she is performing at the Urban Word NYC Teen Poetry Slam and you can also find here here in this short film by Lisa Russell.

To me these are two interesting and different examples of how poetry can speak. Bassey's poem is powerful spoken. But I would have also liked the time and private space to read it on the page, digest it with my eyes, ruminate and return to this line, or sit back and reflect on how that word fits into the entire stanza and the page. Whereas Zora's poem could possibly be read. But then you lose the power of this little dynamo, the energy of her breath, the movement of her body and the physicality of her "bi-racial hair." Just as reading Bassey on the page you could remove her--slight, black, roundly and delightfully pregnant and singular on the stage--from sight.

If read, the audience/reader stops being confronted with Bassey's body and the immediacy of the poem, the black baby boy soon to be born, recedes. Or at least, our assumption of immediacy--because, of course, that poem could be old, that boy could already be born, he could already be grown, that could actually be a daughter, or it could even be a baby suit which would make it a complete farce and the visual becomes just another prop, a part of the performance of the poem.

If spoken, we lose the opportunity to consider Zora's historical anecdotes. She deserves footnotes.

I love both versions--page and stage.

Still, what do we (the audience) gain and lose in each version? Are there poems that work well in both forms regardless? Are there forms that work better for women (of color) than for men? And how should we (the artist) navigate the intricacies of whichever form we choose?

Happy Mother's Day

Because I was born of a matriarchy.....

...because I have bi-racial hair and while Nunez Mom is a non-violent mujer, Nunez Matriarch definitely gave me a swat or two with her chinelas get me to sit for its combing....

...because they are the reason for my being....

Happy Mother's Day...to Nunez Mom...and to Cuqui, Ma-ma...to Premonition who is a momi-to-be (in a matter of days)...and to all the other querida blogging and real world mommies, too many to mention.

(Picture Credit: "Hija de Yemaya y Ochun" by Yasmin Hernandez, a super bad, political, activist, rooted in raices y la tierra Boricua artista. Read about her here and support her site here.)

ETA: Took out the italics on my Puerto Rican. So I guess I'll owe a post about why soon. (Evolving Boricua Latina Caribeana mindset is the short answer...)

Mariposa, "Diasporican"

H/T Sofrito for Your Soul

Favorite line: "Yo no nacio en Puerto Rico/Puerto Rico nacio en mi." It's got a Julia de Burgos swag to it.

Andrea Hairston's Mindscape

X-Posted @ Firewalkers

"We still yearn for a Metatheory, a God who never lies, whose simple, absolute truth will guide us from nothing to everything without once falling down. Unfortunately truths are false and lies are true. Anything we are absolutely certain of doesn't matter and everything that truly matters is uncertain."
~~Vera Xa Lalafia

Finished. Really, really liked it. And since I am still stuck in the Lull and am apparently incapable of constructing a coherent paragraph much less a review essay, here are the bullet points. (Never fear--no spoilers ahead). Mindscape:

• Confirms for me that the best hard sci-fi is the kind that openly lusts for magical realism and leaps of fantasy.
  
• Confirms that science fiction looks very different when it takes takes seriously 1) that a hero can be female and still sexy, violent, flawed, vulnerable and triumphant 2) a female hero of color can be all of these without being junglefied or mammied 3) people of color can play roles that aren't just witty, "ethnic throwback" sidekicks or helplessly tormented victims.
  
  
• POC humanity can be fundamental parts of the plot without the story collapsing into racial polemics, masochistic Afrocentricity, ambiguous mestizaje, or a melting pot of Latinidad. Translation? The history, culture, politics, and, hell, the people-dom of people of African, Latina/o and Native American descent should not only be a part of the story that is told but that people-dom should be critiqued and created with the same rigor as majority (Anglo or European) societies. That means asking what is it that poc nickname God? Was it the color of their skin only? Was the rhythm of the drums/beat/scratch? Was it the distribution of political and social power between men and women, elders and age-grades? Was it the lyric and spiritual? The curve of clay forms? Was it a kind of prayer or a way of speaking? And where do you then place histories of slavery and genocide, how do your characters feel that as spectre even as they walk in worlds three, four or five thousand years ahead of today?
  
  
• You don't have to say your characters are any color for them to be that color. (Proof again that putting the humanity of people of color into sci-fi is more than just taking a brown crayon to your cookie-cutter hero or heroine)
  
  
• Just because you don't give your characters a color doesn't make them "everyman" or "everywoman" (Proof again....)
  
  
• Gender is as much a myth as race and should be interrogated and respected just as is explained above. Sexuality is the same deal. And the absolute best sci-fi out right now is flipping both of those way on their head and them thrusting them into another dimension before bringing them back and commiting them to paper.
  
  
• Ooooooh on the way that really, really good sci-fi can take things that are absolutely normal today, magnify them, and make them absolutely otherworldly and yet frighteningly prescient. (I can't say more without spoiling...but ooooohhhhhh!)
  
  
• Ooooooh on the way that afrofuturism deplores the happy ending. After all: "Anything we are absolutely certain of doesn't matter and everything that truly matters is uncertain."
  
  

That is all, at least until I am a real writer again. If you have free time, read the book. If I had free time I would start a TechnoAfroCats Book Collective or distro (yay, I just learned what that is!) or something.

Hmm. Actually, interesting thought. I might have to consider that....

Yes! For Colored Girls on Broadway!

Oprah brought The Color Purple, Whoopi brings back FCG.

Oprah brought The Color Purple, Whoopi brings back FCG.

Spread the News! Official Press Release (from TwoMindsFull via Tayari)

http://forcoloredgirlsbway.com/

For Immediate Release, Please ~ June 25, 2008

* * PERFORMANCES BEGIN TUESDAY, AUGUST 19 * *

WHOOPI GOLDBERG

PRESENTS

TWO-TIME GRAMMY AWARD WINNER

INDIA.ARIE

IN A NEW, RE-ENVISIONED BROADWAY PRODUCTION OF THE

GROUNDBREAKING WORK FROM CELEBRATED PLAYWRIGHT

NTOZAKE SHANGE

CHOREOGRAPHED BY

THREE-TIME TONY AWARD WINNER

HINTON BATTLE

DIRECTED BY

SHIRLEY JO FINNEY

OPENS MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2008
AT BROADWAY'S CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE THEATRE

http://forcoloredgirlsbway.com/

Whoopi Goldberg and DreamTeam Entertainment Group are pleased to announce that two-time Grammy Award winner India.Arie will make her Broadway stage debut this fall in a new, re-envisioned production of Ntozake Shange's acclaimed play, FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF.

Directed by Shirley Jo Finney and choreographed by three-time Tony Award winner Hinton Battle, FOR COLORED GIRLS... begins preview performances on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at Broadway's Circle in the Square Theatre (1633 Broadway at 50th Street). Opening Night is Monday, September 8 at 6:45 p.m.

Performed by a cast of seven, FOR COLORED GIRLS... is a stunning and explosive series of prose poems and stories illuminating the identity of black women in America, as they reveal themselves, their lives, triumphs, hardships and ultimately their discovery of inner strength and love.

This re-envisioned production of FOR COLORED GIRLS... will feature new and updated material from Ms. Shange. Complete casting will be announced soon.

FOR COLORED GIRLS... originally began Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in May 1976, before transferring to Broadway on September 10, 1976. That production played the Booth Theatre for 876 performances and became the top-grossing dramatic play on Broadway that season.

Praised by The New York Times as "a play that should be seen, savored and treasured," the original Off-Broadway production and Broadway transfer was honored with an Obie Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award, as well Tony and Grammy Award nominations. Following the success of that production, FOR COLORED GIRLS... went on to tour throughout the U.S. for two years.

* * *

Ntozake Shange (en-toe-ZAH-kee SHANG-gay) is an acclaimed poet, playwright, novelist and performer who first garnered national attention with FOR COLORED GIRLS... . Since then, she has written a number of celebrated works, including three novels, four volumes of poetry, several screenplays, essays and numerous stage plays. Among her many awards and citations, Ms. Shange has been honored with the Columbia Medal of Excellence, The Los Angeles Times Award for Poetry and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

India.Arie, the highly acclaimed singer songwriter who impacted music in the new millennium with her unique acoustic soul sound and profound lyrics, has won numerous awards including two Grammy Awards, 16 Grammy nominations and three NAACP Image Awards among others. She is currently working on her fourth studio album, Testimony: Vol. II, Love & Politics.

Shirley Jo Finney has directed in theatres throughout the country including the McCarter Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse, Goodman Theater, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Cleveland Playhouse and The Mark Taper Forum, among others. She has been honored with an NAACP Image Award and an L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for her West Coast production of Yellow Man at the Fountain Theatre. FOR COLORED GIRLS... marks Ms. Finney's Broadway directorial debut.

Celebrated choreographer and Broadway veteran Hinton Battle is a three-time Tony winner for his performances in Sophisticated Ladies, Miss Saigon and The Tap Dance Kid. A recipient of the NAACP Image Award and The Fred Astaire Award, his choreography can be seen in the recent films Idlewild, Bolden and The Great Observer, and on ABC-TV's "Dancing with the Stars."

With musical direction by seven-time Tony-nominated orchestrator Harold Wheeler (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Hairspray, The Full Monty), the new Broadway production of FOR COLORED GIRLS... features set design by Tony Award nominee Scott Bradley (Seven Guitars), costume design by Tony Award nominee Paul Tazewell (In the Heights, The Color Purple), lighting design by Victor Tan (As You Like It, Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet on Broadway) and sound design by Mitch Greenhill.

Visit for http://forcoloredgirlsbway.com/ more information and updates.
*********************************
TICKETING AND PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
*********************************
FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF will play on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theatre (1633 Broadway at 50th St.).

Beginning Tuesday, August 19, the regular performance schedule is as follows:
Tuesday evenings at 7 p.m.
Wednesday through Saturday evenings at 8 p.m.
Wednesday and Saturday matinees at 2 p.m.
Sunday matinees at 3 p.m.
Tickets are $98.50 (all ticket prices include a $1.50 facility fee) and are available by calling Telecharge.com at 212-239-6200 beginning Saturday, July 19.
Tickets may also be purchased in-person at the Circle in the Square Theatre Box Office beginning Monday, August 4. Regular Box Office hours are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and noon to 6 p.m. Sunday.
**********************
PRODUCTION BIOGRAPHIES
**********************
INDIA.ARIE (Performer). The world renowned award winning singer/ songwriter India.Arie makes her Broadway debut with this production of For Colored Girls... . Coming onto the national music scene in 2001 with her Universal Records debut Acoustic Soul, she followed up in 2002 with her sophomore CD Voyage to India and in 2006 released her third album, the more personally expressive Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationship. All three releases have received critical acclaim nationwide and made her a respectable and noted artist in a very short amount of time. She has sold over eight million copies worldwide and has received numerous awards and nominations including 16 Grammy nominations, two Grammy Awards and three NAACP Image Awards, along with awards from BET, Billboard Music, Radio Music, MTV, VH1, Vogue Fashion, Essence Magazine and others. She has received critical acclaim from USA Today to VIBE Magazine, and has graced the cover of Entertainment Weekly, Jet and Ebony to name a few. A voice initially heard by women around the world with her song "Video" has developed into a voice heard by people around the world with her song "There's Hope." The New York Times says "Ms. Arie's music only further enhances her reputation as an artist of substance; centering on her acoustic guitar and confident but restrained vocals, it recalls such soul masters as Stevie Wonder and Roberta Flack." In between touring and writing music, India.Arie finds the time to help promote things close to her heart. As a U.S. Ambassador for UNICEF she has traveled to Africa several times addressing the AIDS crisis there. She has met with Nelson Mandela and was featured in the VH1 documentary "Tracking The Monster: Ashley Judd & India.Arie Confront AIDS in Africa." She has played alongside Stevie Wonder, Sting, Elton John, Bette Midler, Michael McDonald and others. She has written with Stevie Wonder ("A Time for Love," the title track of his last album) and has been featured on various songs including John Mellencamp's Grammy winning "Peaceful World." She has performed on such prestigious TV specials as "The Kennedy Center Honors," "The NAACP Awards" and "The Grammy Awards." An animated India.Arie has even appeared on "Blues Clues' BluesStock" and she has danced with Elmo on "Sesame Street's" home DVD Healthy Happy Monsters. She has had several songs featured in motion pictures, including "Good Man" in A Soldier's Story, "Get it Together" in A Shark's Tale, "Eyes of The Heart (Radio's Song)" from the motion picture Radio, "Purify Me" from Diary of a Mad Black Woman, and most recently "Heart of the Matter" on the Sex and the City soundtrack and trailer. Just this year she started her own music imprint called Soulbird Music and between appearances has been working on her fourth album, Testimony: Vol. II, Love & Politics scheduled for release in early 2009 on Universal Republic Records.

NTOZAKE SHANGE (Playwright). For her acclaimed play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Ntozake Shange received an Obie Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award, as well as Tony and Grammy Award nominations. The subsequent PBS teleplay adaptation was nominated for an Emmy Award. Since then, Ms. Shange has gone on to write a number of celebrated works: three novels, four volumes of poetry, screenplays, essays, and numerous plays including Spell #7, A Photograph; Lovers in Motion, Boogie Woogie Landscapes and The Love Space Demands: A Continuing Saga. Ms. Shange's novels include Sassafras, Cypress & Indigo (for which she was nominated for a Pen-Faulkner First Novel Award), Betsy Brown and Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter all received with critical acclaim. Her other stage works include A Daughter's Geography and an adaptation of Mother Courage & Her Children, for which she received an Obie Award. She is the recipient of several prestigious awards and honors, including the Columbia Medal of Excellence, The Los Angeles Times Award for Poetry and a Guggenheim Fellowship. A "performing poet," Ms. Shange gives public readings of her work and directs performances of her choreopoems. Other published works include an anthology she edited, titled The Beacon Best of 1999: Creative Writing by Woman and Men of All Colors, and an essay in the collection The Playwright's Voice. Ms. Shange has also published If I Can Cook/You Know God Can (Beacon), I Live in Music (Stewart, Tobori & Chang), Float Like A Butterfly: The Muhammed Ali Story (Hyperion Books) and Daddy Says (Simon & Schuster). She is currently working on stage adaptations of the film Sparkle for Freedom Theatre in Philadelphia, her novel Liliane for Rites & Reasons Theatre in Providence Rhode Island, and The Lulu Plays for the Public Theatre in New York. With photographer Kris Kristofferson, Ms. Shange is completing Midnight Cowboy: Black Rodeo Now as well as collaborating with the Karnoinge collective of photographers on The Sweet Embrace. She is working on a novel with Ifa Bayeza titled Some Sing, Some Cry, an intergenerational history of black music. Ms. Shange is a professor at the University of Florida, Gainesville.

SHIRLEY JO FINNEY (Director). An award-winning director and actress, Shirley Jo Finney has directed in theatres throughout the country including the McCarter Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse, Goodman Theater, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Cleveland Playhouse, Crossroads Theater Company, Actors' Theater of Louisville Humana Festival, The Mark Taper Forum, The American College Theatre Festival and The Sundance Theatre Workshop. In 2005, Ms. Finney premiered a new play based on Whoopi Goldberg's hit children's book "Alice" at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., which subsequently toured the country. She received a Los Angeles Theater Ovation Award nomination, the NAACP Image Award, L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award, Backstage West Award and L.A. Weekly Award for Best Director, all for her production of Yellow Man. Other directing awards include three Drama-Logue Awards and Chicago's Jefferson Award. Ms. Finney has directed several episodes of the UPN series "Moesha" and has received the International Black Filmmakers Award for the short film Remember Me. She has also directed for the Naked TV Project for Fox Television. Ms. Finney was featured in Infiniti in Black, a national ad campaign for Infiniti. She is an alumna of the American Film Institute's Director Workshop for Women and holds an MFA from UCLA. She is also a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, The Director's Guild and the Screen Actors Guild. She has been an Artist in Residence at Columbia College in Chicago, and a guest director and lecturer at USC and UCLA.

HINTON BATTLE (Choreographer). At 16, Hinton Battle starred as The Scarecrow in The Wiz, which launched a very successful career on Broadway starring in Dancin', Dreamgirls and Chicago. Hinton received Tony Awards for his performances in Sophisticated Ladies, Miss Saigon and The Tap Dance Kid. He is also the proud recipient of the NAACP Image Award, The Fred Astaire Award and the Ira Aldridge Award. His film and television credits include These Old Broads, Dreamgirls and the ABC biopic "Child Star: The Shirley Temple Story" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." His director/choreographer credits include Associate Choreographer of the Academy Awards and commissioned works for Baltimore School of the Arts, Washington Reflections Dance Company and Philadanco. His choreography has also been featured in the film Idlewild and on "Dancing with the Stars." On stage, Battle has had three hit productions running simultaneously: the musical adaptation of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead at the Diesel Theater in Toronto and at New York's New World Stages, and Respect - A Musical Journey of Women at the Gem Theatre in Detroit. He just completed choreographing two feature films, Bolden and The Great Observer with original music by Wynton Marsalis. He is the author of That's My Man, a stage comedy with music starring Grammy winner Stephanie Mills, which is slated to tour the African-American theatre market this fall.

WHOOPI GOLDBERG (Producer) is one of a very elite group of artists who have won the Grammy (Whoopi Goldberg, 1985), the Academy Award (Ghost, 1991), the Golden Globe (The Color Purple, 1985; Ghost, 1991), the Emmy (AMC's "Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel," 2002) and a Tony (Thoroughly Modern Millie, 2002). Whoopi has appeared in such films as Jumpin' Jack Flash; Clara's Heart; The Long Walk Home; Soapdish; The Player; Sarafina!; Sister Act; Made in America; Corrina, Corrina; Boys on the Side; Eddie; The Associate; Ghosts of Mississippi; How Stella Got Her Groove Back; Girl, Interrupted; Kingdom Come and Rat Race. Her myriad of television credits include "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (five seasons), "Bagdad Café" "In the Gloaming" (HBO), "The Wonderful World of Disney's Rogers & Hammerstein's Cinderella," "A Knight in Camelot," "Alice in Wonderland" (miniseries), "Whoopi" (also Exec. Producer), "It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie," "Good Fences" (also Co-Producer), "Whoopi's Littleburg" (Nick Jr., also Producer) and currently appears as moderator on ABC's long-running talk show "The View." Her other producing credits include the acclaimed Lifetime series "Strong Medicine," the Emmy-winning "Hollywood Squares" (1999-2002), the Lifetime movie "What Makes a Family," Showtime's "Ruby's Bucket of Blood" the TNT Original Movie "Call Me Claus" and the Showtime original "Good Fences." Whoopi's Broadway and Off-Broadway producing credits include the hit musical Thoroughly Modern Millie, George C. Wolfe's Harlem Song, her own Whoopi...The 20th Anniversary and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (in which she also starred). In 1997, she garnered rave reviews on Broadway in the revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Whoopi received Emmy Award nominations for hosting the 66th, 68th and 71st Academy Awards telecasts and returned to host the 74th Academy Awards in 2002. She is the author of three books: Alice, Book and Whoopi's Big Book of Manners. Her fourth book, Sugar Plum Ballerinas, will be out this October. This year, Whoopi hosted the Tony Awards for the first time.

DREAMTEAM ENTERTAINMENT GROUP (Producer) is comprised of principal partners Dr. Victor Leo Walker II, Harold Wheeler, Keryl McCord, Ned S. Goldstein, Fredric D. Rosen and Peter B. Knepper. The company was established and incorporated in 2003 to engage in the business of producing live theatrical events, audio and video entertainment productions (including film, television, CD, DVD and webcast) and the creation, manufacture, marketing and selling of products including video games, action figures, digital entertainment devices and other commercial products. By drawing upon the very best technological, artistic and human resources, DreamTeam Entertainment Group is quickly becoming a global force in the entertainment industry. It is achieving this by developing and producing innovative, entertaining, cutting edge properties with the entertainment industry's top national and international artists and producers in film, theatre, television, music, animation and video game technology.

Dedicated to....

...una india Taino de Utuado....

...una mujer boriquena de Nueva York...

...dos ninas de color de Chicago....

because
our/people were never stolen/we/were never your slaves
just reluctant martyrs

because
we were made to dance like apostles
until miracles fall back to earth

because
we are the ones that birthed it
we are the ones that birthed it
we are the ones that birthed it
and we nicknamed it....



God.



[and thank you to the Firewalker who passed it my way]

Possibility

New self care (feel free to RSS subscribe to the page...)

Sing a Black Girl's Song: Body Image

For the last few weeks I've been working with fifth and sixth grade girls of African descent making collages, scrapbook pages, and whatever else you can imagine doing with magazines, glue sticks, and some poetry.

The first week or two the girls were pretty creative, but notice anything?



You guessed it. Light skin, long hair, slim to skinny figures. Yes, there are women of color in the last collage. But put in context with the other two (which are representative of the whole) it is both the exception and blatantly unexceptional. At the end of the day, all of the women look very much the same. When I took my girls work home and took a look, the glaring truth was disturbing and painfully obvious. Asked to find "positive" images, and when given no other guidance, they unerringly choose women who looked nothing like them.

But I took the responsibility on myself. After all, it was my mistake to give them mainstream magazines like Lucky and InStyle to choose their images from. So I went on a metaphoric dumpster dive for positive images and I gave them more specific instructions. On a canvas of pre-selected images of women obviously of African descent--with dark skin, kinky hair, and some with a little more bump to their rump, although that last was hard to find even in an Essence--the girls would add positive words from the same magazines, little pictures, and words/phrases from the poem "Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou and "Let it Go" by Keyisha Cole.

I rubber cemented their images on cardstock and in class this week I passed them around.

Initial reaction --> "Uh UH! I don't want that one!"

Now, I let that slide. Normally I do let them choose their own images so it seemed logical that they would cry foul when I gave them what would be their main image. And, accordingly, when I made it clear that this was what they had to work with, most settled in.

But a couple of students were adamant. "I DON'T want that one. I don't want those!"

These were students with the images of the darkest women. One was what I thought was a shadowed image of a long, lanky woman with dark, velvety skin in an ad Johnson's Baby Oil. The other was an editorial page but the featured image was Angie Stone.

So I tried diplomacy. "Well, what's wrong with those images?"

"I don't want them. What about this one?" The one with Angie Stone flipped it over. Hers was one I'd forgotten to glue to cardstock. On the back was an ad with Beyonce Knowles at her tragic mulatta loveliest for American Express. I rolled my eyes inside. Jeez.

"No, not that one. In fact, here." I corrected my mistake, glued her image down, leaving her with Angie's dark eyes smiling at her. "Here you go."

"No!"

Meanwhile, across the table, the student with the Johnson's ad was cutting out a full page Herbal Essences ad prominently featuring an ambiguous Latina. "What are you going to do with that?," I ask. Diplomacy.

"I'm going to cover it," she smiled. And proceeded to place the ad, the entire full page, on top of the darker woman.

No way. Diplomacy, I saw, was going to have to go out the window. Not that I am one to crush creative impulses, but this was getting ridiculous. In actuality, I was beginning to feel a little helpless and frustrated.

I shook my head. "Nope. You have to use the image I gave you. You can add around it if you want."

She glared at me. When I looked up again, she'd cut out some words like "Beautiful" and "Feel Good."

And she'd placed them on top of the dark woman's face and thighs in preparation for gluing them down.

I moved quickly. "Whoa, buddy. Now what are you doing?"

The girl wrinkled her nose. "I'm trying to cover her! She's naked!"

"She's not naked. You can't even see anything. Just that beautiful brown skin." I said it deliberately. And she and her partner jumped right to the bait.

"Uh uh! She's not brown--she's CRISPY!"

"Yeah! She's BLACK!"

I smiled. "Oh yeah? You're right. And that's a Johnson ad, so she's all oiled up and beautiful. Something wrong with that?"

The girls blushed, smiling, shaking their head, shrugging--didn't know what to say. And I was thanking God that at least they didn't immediately respond that, "Yes, there IS something wrong with that." Because I don't know what I would have done.

So I tapped the image, deliberately moving the words out of the way. "She's got beautiful skin, don't you think? You should move the words around it to highlight that. And highlight her face."

Groans. Aww mans. Ahh, c'mons. But they moved the words around so that Beautiful floated (just below the face, dangerously close) gently along the woman's arm and Feel Good was tattooed on her thigh.



Meanwhile, the girl with Angie Stone was busy cutting out Beyonce and placing her beside Angie on her picture.



I watched warily, but decided there was only so much I could do with their creative license. I'd at least succeeded in stopping both of them enacting internalized oppression violence on the women's faces.

I spoke too soon.

One of my more promising students, a serious, creative girl who'd actually taken herself away from the group into the corner to work, came over with a smile. "I'm done!" I smiled back. I'd given her a fashion couture shot of a dark brown woman with braids coiled in a sophisticated coif around her head. I was excited to see what she came up with.



Beautiful. And violent. "This is really great--but why did you write across her face? And put "Rise" across her nose?"

This student had the presence of mind to blush. She shrugged. "I dunno. I messed up."

I was grinding my teeth inside, because I didn't want her to think she messed up! Darn it self-denigrating-youth-of-color!

"No, just think about it for next time. Try to find images that would frame her beautiful face. Especially the contrast with her clothes, how it highlights that lovely brown." Word choice deliberate. But she still looked a little flustered so I pointed out that the strawberries were a nice, clever touch. She went back to her seat smiling.

The rest of class was uneventful, or at least the events ran along similar lines. But by the end I was exhausted. I'd thought by giving them images of black women with no option to skate around them that they would simply transfer the positive from the white/mixed race to the dark. I thought it was an issue of lack of option.

But it was much more complicated than that. From outright erasure to discrete vandalizing, these girls did their best to remove themselves from identification with the images, to deny the beauty and humanity of the photos, and to replace/rewrite/retain the stereotypes of beauty/good/healthy/nice as white/light that they'd been socialized into. And they were prepared to argue with me on the matter! Although, like I said, at least they weren't so bold as to say directly to me, "Kinky hair is ugly and black skin is too."

Man. Kenneth Clark would have a field day.

And I won't lie--I felt personally attacked. Although I know they didn't mean it, here I sit, in solidarity with them, dark brown just like they are dark brown, kinky haired just like they are kinky haired (albeit some with relaxers) and the first image they reach for is lighter skinned, long haired Beyonce or Christina Milian. And, even more frightening, the first image they reject is dark skinned, curly haired Angie Stone. Where then does that leave us, my darlings? What do we think of ourselves if we are ready to paste newspaper over own arms and thighs to cover up the color, if we are ready to scrawl permanent marker across our faces, slam white paper over our flat noses to mask the sight, if we are read to tear out an image of a white woman and glue it wholescale over our entire SELVES because we don't like what we see?

The choosing of one the white image I was prepared for. The absolute rejection of the black one I was not.

And I'm not prepared, at all, to deal with this. How do I approach this issue in a way that is not going to squish their creative juices but is also going to challenge them on a deeper level to CRITIQUE these ideas of beauty that they are already indoctrinated into?

Any ideas? Comments welcome, necessary. Help me sing a black girl's song....

Boricua Human Rights: Crimes Against Humanity, A Play

Produced by the National Boricua Human Rights Network and Batey Urbano.

Written by poet and activist Michael Anthony Reyes Benavides and former Puerto Rican political prisoner Luis Rosa, the play confronts the physical and mental torture these prisoners endured for more than 27 years. We gaze into their cell and experience the loss of parents, the transition of children into adulthood and feel the physical brutality and torture of a government out to make an example of them. We see them as they refuse to be victimized and objectified, confronting their hardships and adversities while maintaining their dignity, and upholding their humanity.

If you are in Chicago, check it out. Upcoming shows will also be in New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Hartford, Washington D.C., Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.



(Thanks "C"!)

Junot Díaz Wins Pulitzer Price (Fiction)

"I'm just this Dominican kid from New Jersey," Díaz said. "If anybody deserves this, it's all those people who dragged my giving-up, depressed [expletive] over the finish line" -- among them his fiance, Elizabeth de León, and his agent, Nicole Aragi, "who spent 11 years telling me, 'You can do this.' "

Click here.

*Thanks "B" for passing it on.

Puerto Rican Women Writers

For those like me, who are searching...I am sharing....
Autorretrato VIII, by María de Mater O'Neill

From the introduction, by Consuelo Lopez Springfield:

This special issue of Callaloo is a colective effort by art and literary critics, translators, teachers, artists and writers to make Puerto Rican art and writing accessible to a wider audience. Inspired by its editor, Chalres Rowell, whose commitment to promoting the creative accomplishments of colonized peoples is exemplary, Callaloo is the first publication to offer outstanding art, photography, literature, interviews, and critical essays by and about Puerto Rican women. It is also the first feminist publication to unite exiled and island women in intellectual debate and artistic exchange on such major themes as the sexual control of women, the nature of identity, race, and class in colonized societies, and the challenges of bicultural life.

Check your local college/university collection. (If only I could post the articles here and not break copyright laws, I would!)

Visualizing the Black Church

More fantastic images over at Sojourner's Place by artist Annie Lee.

Kara Walker v. Betye Saar

Intense.



NPR's News and Notes blogged recently on Kara Walker. Walker's work fascinates (and revolts) me on the same level that Betye Saar's work tantalizes and seduces me. The first reminds me that I'm a woman of color in a country that has a history of this....

Kara Walker, Camptown Ladies (1998)

And this...

Kara Walker, You Do (1993-4)

These are the mild ones. The video has more graphic silhouettes.

This art is troubling in the esoteric sense of the word. You look at them, and you shrug, or you look and you look away...but something is wrong. Something makes your stomach turn over. Something makes the bile rise. It is like Kara Walker gives you a real glimpse at the underworld of our modernity, our national belonging, our most racist and exploitable possibilities.

But Betye Saar....

Betye Saar, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972)


Betye Saar, Sambo's Banjo (1971-2)

Betye Saar, Midnight Madonnas (1996)

Saar steadies the world again. She hands Aunt Jemima a gun. She makes Sambo's guitar a fetish with the power to kill. She lifts black womanhood up to the sacred instead of defining it as the common denominator of virtuous whiteness.

At the end of the day. We need both...

"Let's face it. I am a marked woman, but not everybody knows my name...My country needs me, and if I were not here, I would have to be invented." --Hortense J. Spillers

...but, to be honest, I don't feel like Kara Walker speaks my world. Maybe it's because that world is too scary. But, actually, I think its just that the black experience is about more than the obscene. It is also about taking your gun, taking your gris-gris, kissing your cross up to La Virgen, and stepping outside your door to struggle another day. Even when that struggle is in the form of dissemblance and signifyin' dat monkey, which it usually is. That is still insurgency, it is still resistance.

Betye Saar, Black Girl's Window (1969)

This is me. I'm the black girl in the window dreaming freedom dreams without which this history, this space, that memory, that moment would not exist. I'm the kindred and the wild seed. I am angry. I'm sweet, like honey. And "I've got the shotgun on your back."

I'm more than the world's beast of burden. I'm also its greatest inspiration.