Mosaic 31

AFROSURREALISM

NNEDI OKORAFOR

AFAA MICHAEL WEAVER

EDUCATOR LESSON PLANS

Legendary Inside the House Ballroom Scene

Fall/Winter 2013 $6.00 MosaicMagazine.org

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The powerful new memoir from the National Book Award–winning author of Salvage the Bones.

“One mighty virtuosic, bluesy hymn.”

—Oscar Hijuelos, author of Thoughts Without Cigarettes

“Raw, beautiful, and dangerous.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“A haunting and essential read.”

—Natasha Trethewey, U.S. Poet Laureate, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

“Burns with brilliance.”

—Harper’s Bazaar

“Heart-wrenching . . . A brilliant book.”

—Los Angeles Times

“A fresh new voice in fiction.”

—O, The Oprah Magazine

“This is a memorable, powerful novel and Mitchell S. Jackson is a genuine talent.”

—Victor LaValle, author of The Devil in Silver

“Powerful . . . Jackson’s prose has a spoken-word cadence, the language flying off the page with percussive energy.”

—The New York Times Book Review

AVA I L A B L E W H E R E V E R B O O K S A R E S O L D 2

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Interviews Nnedi Okorafor by Kameelah Rasheed ...................................................... 10 Afaa Michael Weaver by Randall Horton .................................................... 20 Gerard H. Gaskin by Justin Allen ................................................................ 30 Excerpt Kabu Kabu by Nnedi Okorafor ................................................................... 18 Review Ancient, Ancient by Kinii Ibura Salaam ....................................................... 28 Mosaic Lesson Plans ........................................................................................ 38 Afrosurrealism lesson plan for high-school educators Designed by Eisa Nefertari Ulen Mosaic’s lesson plans give high-school educators ways to connect literature to history and social studies while also serving to increase the importance of books and reading.

Essay Afrosurreal Manifesto: Black Is the New Black by D. Scot Miller ................. 46 Around Town by photographer Marcia E. Wilson ............................................. 52

Photo credit cover, pages 8, 26, and 30: Gerard H. Gaskin, Legendary: Inside the House Ballroom Scene

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contributors Justin Allen is a northern Virginia native studying poetry at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts. His writing has been featured on AFROPUNK, The Studio Museum in Harlem’s blog and queer culture blog Catch Fire. He also collaborates with friends Yulan Grant and Brandon Owens on BDGRMMR, a zine focused on queer artists of color.

Randall Horton is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of New Haven. An excerpt from his memoir titled Roxbury is published by Kattywompus Press. Triquarterly/Northwestern University Press is the publisher of his latest poetry collection Pitch Dark Anarchy.

Writer and educator Tracey Lewis-Giggetts is the author of six books including The Integrated Church and The Unlikely Remnant. She is a professor of writing and publishing at Philadelphia University and Rosemont College.

D. Scot Miller is a Bay Area writer, visual artist, teacher, curator. He sits on the board of directors of nocturnes review, and is a regular contributor to The East Bay Express, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Popmatters, and Mosaic. He is completing a book of poems, his Afro-surreal novel, Knot Frum Hear, and has recently published his old-fashioned manifesto simply titled: AfroSurreal. www.dscotmiller.blogspot.com

Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a photo conceptual artist, writer, and educator. Her first solo show, No Instructions for Assembly debuted in 2013 at Real Art Ways and she has participated in residences such as The Center for Book Arts (2013) and The Center for Photography at Woodstock (2012). She is a Senior Editor of Art and Interviews at Specter Magazine where she has interviewed writers such as Kiese Laymon, Victor LaValle, Nnedi Okorafor, and Wendy C. Ortiz. You can view her work at www.kameelahr.com Eisa Nefertari Ulen is the author of Crystelle Mourning. She has contributed to numerous publications, including The Washington Post, Ms., Health, Heart & Soul, Vibe, Black Issues Book Review, Quarterly Black Review of Books, and CreativeNonfiction.org. Ulen graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and earned a master’s degree from Columbia University. A founding member of Ringshout: A Place for Black Literature, she teaches English at Hunter College in New York City. www.EisaUlen.com.

Born in London, England; Marcia Wilson’s photography has documented many writers of the African Diaspora. Her photos have appeared in Vibe, Publishers Weekly, Black Issues Book Review, LA Weekly, and QBR. She has exhibited at The National Black Writers Conference, Medgar Evers College, New Haven Public Library, New York Public Library (Flatbush branch), and Air Gallery. She currently resides in Brooklyn. Visit www.WideVisionPhotography.com for additional information.

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Editor & Publisher Ron Kavanaugh ron@mosaicmagazine.org FB: mosaicmagazine /Twtr: mosaicliterary Mosaic Literary Magazine (ISSN 1531-0388) is published by the Literary Freedom Project. Content copyright Š 2013.

No portion of this magazine can be reprinted or reproduced in any form without prior permission from the publisher.

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nnedi OKORAFOR A teacher as well as a student of literature, Nnedi recounts her first experience reading Octavia Butler in 2002: ”I read the first page and my eyes nearly popped out. The main character had an Igbo name and she was in Nigeria and she could shape shift! I bought that book and read the hell out of

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by Kameelah Rasheed

The American-born daughter of Igbo Nigerian parents, Nnedi Okorafor’s speculative fiction maps new territory for all readers. Taking inspiration from the likes of Octavia Butler, Ngugi wa’Thiongo, and Hayao Miyazaki, Nnedi’s stories are vivid and brave. In this interview Nnedi discusses why she writes with a “close up” view of local cultures rather than whole nations, the evolving inspiration behind her work, her deconstruction of the term “African American,” her collaboration with Wanuri to translate Who Fears Death into film, and her writing process which includes long piano fingers dancing across a worn-down keyboard from 1998.

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it and my mind was blown…It showed me that I wasn’t alone and that what I was writing was ok. Octavia gave me strength.” Giving her the strength to write beyond existing parameters, the young girl who once desired a career as an entomologist has now garnered accolades such as the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature, shortlisted for Parallax Award and Kindred Award, finalist for the Golden Duck, and nominated for a Locus Award.

Kameelah Rasheed: You grew up between Nigeria and the States. I’ve read some interviews about how while you were dealing with racism in your small South Holland, Illinois community, you were being taken back to Nigeria to visit family. Two questions–your parents immigrated here back in 1969, what was their motivation for taking you and your siblings back to Nigeria? And second, how is this shuttling back and forth between the Nigerian political and social landscape of the 1980s to the climate in your Chicago suburb reflected in your work?

Nnedi Okorafor: My parents wanted us to stay connected, so they kept taking us [my siblings and me] to Nigeria. Plus they, too, wanted to see everybody and that set a strong example for us. On top of this, neither I nor my siblings have European names (first or middle). Most Nigerians do. Though my parents weren’t out there protesting or anything, there was definitely a strong thread of subversive-ness in them. My parents wanted us to be what we all eventually became- strong Nigerian-Americans who never questioned who we were.

KR: One of the first African writers I fell in love with was Ngugi wa’Thiongo. I read Petals of Blood and loved it.

But it wasn’t until I met him in Johannesburg in 2007 and read Wizard of the Crow that he fully satisfied my taste

for the speculative fiction. What about wa’Thiongo’s work inspires you?

NO: Ngugi wa Thiong’o inspires me in a plenitude of ways. I love that he faces politics head on in his work.

There was an article in the Guardian that said, “Ngugi has dedicated his life to describing, satirizing and destabilizing the corridors of power.” Yes! He is the only African male author I’ve read who consistently creates realistic conflicted strong independent active female characters in his African narratives. I love that his stories are African stories and thus the magic, witchcraft, and sorcery in the stories are so natural, so deeply infused in his tales that you can’t do anything but accept them and move on. I love that his prose is lean; his stories are so rich that there’s no need for literary acrobatics. He is a storyteller. First and foremost, I love that he writes in Gikuyu first and encourages other African writers to write in their native tongues. That’s a powerful thing.

I’m a speaker at a convention next year where he will be the guest of honor. I am hoping that I can maintain my composure when I meet him.

KR: I noticed that your work does not necessarily deal with whole countries. Instead you are very “local” in that you explore the minute details of an individual culture.

Beyond, I guess, the notion that the national borders being artificial, is there any other reason why your lens is focused on an individual culture, rather than an entire nation?

NO: Yes, the other reason is that I get really bored when you pull the camera too far back. Once you start referring to whole nations and whole armies, whole this, whole that, the characters get lost and I lose interest. This is why I dislike reading history but love reading memoirs.

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In history books, they talk about whole groups of people and then only focus on the kings and queens and generals, etc. People get left out. I’d feel like it was all a lie or an illusion or a sterile summary that shaves off the rough edges. An “army” doesn’t defeat another “army”.

It’s thousands of individual people killing thousands of other individual people in thousands of different unique horrible ways with millions of consequences. It’s billions of stories, not one story. I think a story about any kind of history, real world history or the “real” history in stories, is best told from up close because that’s the way it really happens.

KR: I see that Who Fears Death is becoming a movie which excites me even more. What role will you have in the making of the film? How do you imagine this text “shape shifting” in Wanuri’s hands? Is there anything you hope the audience gets from this film that they may not have captured from the text?

NO: I’ll be a consultant to Wanuri for the film. I know a bit about what she plans for the film. Yes, the story will shape shift and I couldn’t be more excited about that.

Stories are natural shape shifters. Wanuri and I operate on the same wave-length, so I have complete faith in her vision. I hope that the audience will enjoy actually seeing a future Africa on the big screen- one that is full of old ways and new ways, an honest Africa from an African perspective. I hope that the audience will also see a deepening of the main character Onyesonwu and many other things they haven’t seen before.

KR: Somehow, when I imagine you sitting down to write, I think about, for lack of a better phrase, “a magical process”. What does your writing process look like

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and more specifically, how did you come to create Who Fears Death?

NO: I have long skinny piano playing fingers. I type pretty fast. And I type without looking at the keyboard. My keyboard is an ergo keyboard that is so old, that many of the letters have rubbed off (I’ve had it since before ’98). I like silence when I write (except for the sound of creatures like birds, katydids and squirrels chattering in the trees) and white walls. I shut my eyes and let it pour.

Writing Who Fears Death was an eerie process. There were scenes in that novel that I did not know where going to happen until my hands wrote the words. They deviated from my outline; they went in the opposite direction of what I wanted. Some of the scenes shocked and terrified me. A few delighted me and satisfied my taste for justice and revenge. It really was like having a story dictated to me.

KR: On Twitter, you mentioned that one reviewer at Cold Iron & Rowan Wood noticed something about Who Fears Death that few other reviewers noticed: “Another interesting—and entirely appropriate—representational issue is that there are no white people (except one, Sola, whose milk-colored skin and flat lips mystify & repulse Onye) and no legends of white people.” This was intentional, I am sure. Why the absence of white characters?

NO: It’s not “intentional;” not in that way. My story takes place in West Africa in the future after something has happened. Need I say more?

KR: I’ve noticed a couple times on twitter that you’ve mentioned that there are “no Black people” and “African Americans are not a race.” Can you talk a little more about this? I feel like your 140-character comment had

a lot of more subtext than a simple dislike for labels and categories.

NO: Well, it’s pretty simple. I was merely commenting on the fact that the labels for people of African descent all suck. The term “African American” needs to go away.

1. It makes people assume that all blacks who are American citizens are the descendants of those Africans stolen hundreds of years ago and forcefully brought to the US as slaves. My ancestors were not dragged here on a slave ship; my parents came here on an airplane. Though I was born and raised here in the US, my history and the way I relate to the Slave Trade is slightly different. I am of the Aro people who participated in the sale of enslaved Africans. That’s a fact I live with every day.

2. I notice a lot of Americans calling all people of African descent “African American.” They’ve called “African American” a race. That’s just wrong. Not all blacks are American, duh. I’ve heard people use the excuse of trying to be “politically correct”. Oh, so in order to be “politically correct” you are factually incorrect? No. 3. The term “black” is an ugly exaggeration. I’m not black at all. I’m brown. Literally. And we all know the stigma the word “black” has in the English language, and in most other languages.

At this time, however, I’d rather be called “black” because it’s the only term we have that encompasses all people of the Diaspora. That satisfies the pan-Africanist in me, at least.

KR: After Akata Witch, I was thinking about how much I

wish I’d taught high school English instead of History so I could teach this book. Even as a World History teacher, I am thinking about ways to integrate it into my curriculum. Akata Witch focuses on Sunny, an albino, and the struggles she has as an outcast. Some of your other work looks at characters, particularly young people with socalled “abnormalities” that cause them to be outcast.

Specter Magazine prides itself on pushing the work of outcasts and invisible people which seems like is what happens in your work–the invisible and the outcast are made hyper-visible and present. Why does this happen in your work?

NO: Because I am an outcast and I dwell on top of many borders in so many ways, I guess. Oh, let me count the ways. I embrace and own these things rather than try to hide them, regardless of what society tries to push on me. It shows in my work.

KR: I love Octavia Butler. Kindred was the summer reading for my college back in 2002. I remember hearing her speak and thinking to myself that this woman crafted this whole world inside these book pages. How did you first encounter Butler? How has she influenced your work?

NO: I first encountered Octavia Butler in 2000 while I was at the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. I was in the bookstore during one our breaks and I was perusing the science fiction and fantasy section. I’d never heard of Octavia Butler. At the time, however, I was writing a story about an angry, trouble-making promiscuous woman in pre-colonial Nigeria who had the ability to fly. I saw a novel with a mysterious-looking black woman on the cover. That was why I picked it upbecause of the African woman on the cover of a book in the Science Fiction and Fantasy section. I read the first

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page and my eyes nearly popped out. The main character had an Igbo name and she was in Nigeria and she could shape shift! I bought that book and read the hell out of it and my mind was blown. Wild Seed showed me that the publication of the type of stories I was writing was possible. It showed me that I wasn’t alone and that what I was writing was ok. Octavia gave me strength.

KR: For some reason, I expected (or secretly desired) for your work to talk about “space”. Maybe I listen to too much Sun Ra, but space and otherworldly bodies fascinated me at a young age. In a July 15 blog post, you wrote, “I’ve always had a hard time writing about space. I am very much an earthling. I don’t see myself ever leaving this planet while I am alive (I may be more adventurous after I die, heh). There is so much yet to discover (and fix) on earth, why look elsewhere? And my spiritual beliefs and the systems of magic I’m attracted to are earth-based, born and rooted deep in the soil. They are not in the “heavens.” Also, when I write about something, I have to get and feel close to the subject. I never feel close to “space,” no matter how much research I do.” You end that post saying that now that you’ve witnessed a shuttle launch, “I think I can write about space travel now.” What kind of work should we expect from you regarding “space?”

NO: I’m not sure yet. I’m processing.

KR: I know you have a daughter and I am constantly thinking about the creative energy that is shared between a mother who is a writer and a young imaginative child. How has motherhood shaped your work? Anyaugo and Dika (your sister’s son) are featured on your site which has to be a bit amazing for them. What is Anyaugo interested in and do you imagine any future collaborations with her?

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NO: Anya just finished her first novel yesterday. It was Zahrah the Windseeker. I didn’t give it to her to read.

One day, she just picked it up and started reading it.

Soon, she was engrossed. She fell in love with the book.

For three weeks, she’s been raving about every detail of the book. The creatures, the Greeny Jungle, Zahrah’s journey (both inner and outer), her energetic friend Dari, the world of the novel. I can’t fully express how utterly awesome it was to hear that from her and watch her read with such relish.

She watches me write all the time. Asks me questions.

Reads over my shoulder (which can get on my nerves, haha). There have been plenty of suggestions she’s made that I’ve used. A collaborations is only a matter of time.

I wouldn’t say motherhood shaped my work. I am a mother and I am a writer. Those two things are forever enmeshed.

KR: I think as writers we sometimes run from what is uncomfortable. What advice would you give to emerging writers who are scared to write, scared of their voice, scared of what might be exposed?

NO: Buck up and stop being such a ‘fraidy cat. Then sit down and write. Deal with the consequences when you are done.  This interview originally appeared on Specter Magazine, www.spectermagazine.com/five/okorafor, January 2012

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Bakasi Man

An excerpt from Nnedi Okorafor’s short story collection Kabu Kabu

Hunchbacks are very expensive. But, this was not why we killed Bakasi. And what happened to him after his death was part of some darker politics. *** You must understand, hunchbacks are not normal people. Even when they die, security has to be stationed at the grave site for at least the first year, to prevent robbers from digging them up. It’s the hump that people want. A hunchback’s hump is said to be the source of his or her great power.

So you see why the evil man we call Bakasi was so feared yet respected. Not only was he bent over, his twisted spine snaking up into a profound hump, but he had one green eye. Green as the treetops during rainy season. In a place where eyes are always brown, Bakasi’s green eye was a thing of much talk.

Rumor has it that when he was young, he was always at the top of his class. Some say his powerful hump bestowed this great intelligence upon him. Others believed his teachers gave him the highest scores because they were terrified of him. Whatever the reason, Bakasi went

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on to study medicine, specializing in midwifery and endocrinology.

I cannot imagine such a man bringing babies into the world and curing skin ailments but apparently he was a different man back then. I have a few friends who were delivered by him, one of them who is even Agwe (the very tribe he’d come to despise so much). People say he was full of love and had excellent bedside manners.

Bakazi even came to be called the Man with the Magic Hands. I don’t know what happened to him along the way but whatever it was made him more crooked than his spine. It must have been the fact that his truest passion was the most crooked business of all: Politics.

He got his chance to pursue his dream when the elections for state secretary came around. He was also a great orator. Wherever he spoke a large crowd would gather.

Some came to see his great hump, hoping to glimpse its magic. Many believed that if the sun shined directly on it, you could see green sparks softly popping from it.

Others came to hear his deep resonating voice. It was so strong that even with the largest audience, he never needed a microphone.

Others came because he spoke of lifting up the community, bettering the schools and hospitals, instilling methods that would bring more business to the community.

His goals sounded so logical and realistic that people would leave his speech glowing as they did after a spirit-

excerpt

filled Sunday mass. He wasn’t scapegoating us Agwes in the in the beginning. He was elected and promptly began to work toward a better Ndi State.

His work as secretary must have shown him how powerful my people are. Well, not powerful but hardworking, resourceful and organized. There are few of us but we are ambitious and industrious. There is nothing cruel, clannish or greedy in our ways, not more than any other group of people’s. If no one will stick up for us, I will.

is the most secure place, where no one can hear our hushed voices. For if any of the Bakasi Boys or their many spies heard how we spoke of Bakasi, they’d have burned down our house, murdered our loved ones and slandered the names of our ancestors and future children in the newspapers and market.

Bakasi the Hunchback had become a murderer, a worker of black magic, a dictator. ***

When Bakasi decided to run for Ndi’s Head of State, his speeches took on a different flavor, a flavor that reflected what many in the greater community of Ndi State were thinking. Suddenly the Agwe became his reason for All of Ndi State’s problems. We were greedy, miserly, nepotists, the scourge of Ndi State. We were few, so our votes amounted to little. He won by a landslide and that was when the trouble really began. ***

Three days ago, he gave a speech.

We knew he would because there were riots three days prior at one of the state’s biggest markets. It would have looked bad for him to stay quiet. What happened at those riots? Some Agwe were fed up and went crazy. Ten people were killed, even more injured.

It was time.

Bakasi had come to hate us and began to openly say so.

And his hate was contagious. To make a long story short, things became very bad for my people.

You will never understand what it’s like to walk in my shoes. You will never be in my shoes.

My father and I often sat up late at night talking about him. Always, in the room at the center of our house

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Photo by Catherine Laine

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afaa michael weaver I first became familiar with Afaa Michael Weaver while immersed in an MFA program at Chicago State University through his poetry collection Talisman. What Talisman did was dissect the back family unit in relationship to the black male, confirming a humanity rarely investigated within this social construct. To be certain, Weaver is an extremely important poet whose literary work helps bridge the connection between the 20th and 21st centuries in terms of class. The fact that Weaver is blue collar—nuts and bolts from East Baltimore—a fifteen-year factory worker, offers a certain necessity to contemporary poetry that at times is missing. These days Weaver is the Alumnae Professor of English and director of the Zora Neale Hurston Literary Center at Simmons College.

In addition, he is Chairman of the Simmons International Chinese Poetry Conference. We sat down in an artist loft in Manhattan to talk about the influences of the Chinese language and Xingyi, which seeks to improve the body in relationship to trauma. We also discussed these influences that helped create a trilogy of work, which includes: The Plum Flower Dance, The Government of Nature and City of Eternal Spring. This is perhaps the most candid Weaver has been in addressing memory, trauma and his Chinese influences.

Randall Horton: I was wondering if you could talk about how you came to be interested in Chinese language? It would seem this interest has had a major impact on how you approach the poetic process.

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Afaa Michael Weaver: I was in Baltimore. It was 1984. I had been doing Tai Chi for about 6 years, and I took an interest in the language. There was a Chinese community association downtown, and the lady who ran it was a Miss Lillian Kim (she has since passed away) but there were weekend Sunday classes. Chinese communities usually have a Sunday school for kids, and most ChineseAmerican kids I know hate the school, but they have to go. So, they had an adult class, and I went there on Sundays. I did that on weekends for about 6 months. During this time I received an NEA Fellowship, and I was still working in the factory. When the fellowship came I quit and went to France. When I went to France I stopped the weekend lessons. But it was out of general interest because I was doing the Tai Chi for 6 years at that point.

Then I went to Taiwan in 2002 on a Fulbright, so that little weekend Chinese I had before wasn’t getting it. I realized that right away. I was 50 years old then, so I decided to start more intensive formal study. I did 2 years at Simmons as a faculty audit. You can take one class for free when you’re a faculty member. I started in the Fall of 2002 when I came back from the Fulbright Fellowship.

I was in Taiwan that spring. I did the first year and the second year. When I ended the second year, it was my sabbatical, so I went to Taiwan for 8 months and I lived over there because I knew I needed to be there.

RH: I would say that translation is critical in imagining a global world. Sometimes I think we as Americans are too insular in our approach to poetry. We don’t think in the context of outside our own narcissism. I was wondering if you could talk about translation and what it has meant to your own poetic process.

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AW: When I translate I also take into consideration language acquisition because I’m studying at the same time I’m doing the translation. But in the process of studying the language, I also write poems in Chinese. So, there is that question that’s becoming more and more prominent which is “what’s the difference between writing in an acquired language and translation?” In other words, someone will say to me where’s the English version of your Chinese poem? And I say there is none. Which really frustrates some of my Chinese friends sometimes.

They say well, there must be an English version and I say no, I did the draft in Chinese.

There is a time when you’re studying a language where you’re thinking about what to say, you’re actually translating. But then there’s this bridge you go over where you reach the first step of fluency, where you’re just talking and you’re not scrambling trying to translate things.

You’re always going to be doing that to some extent.

There’s a physiological level to another language especially when it’s as difference as Chinese.

For example, the word for fish. There’s a funny way of learning how to say the word for fish. The word for fish is ‘yu.’ We don’t have that mouth formation in English.

We don’t say ‘yu.’ My teacher said to me “Make your mouth like a fish.” If you do that, you can depress the tongue and pull the ‘yu’ back so it doesn’t become ‘you’ which is not a fish. There is a physiological component to learning the language.

So when I came back after 8 months, I realized I was writing English with Chinese word order. I was getting frustrated with the western alphabet. I said to myself: this

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is just like computer language. It’s analogic.

RH: Also, I am thinking about Walter Benjamin and his essay “The Task of the Translator,” where he writes: “Translation thus ultimately serves the purpose of expressing the central reciprocal relationship between languages. It cannot possibly reveal or establish this hidden relationship itself; but it can represent it by realizing it in embryonic or intensive form.” Would you tend to agree with that assessment or is there anything to add for your own experiences of translating.

AW: I would agree with some of that, but also Benjamin sort of ignores the readers in ways that are a little bit problematic. He also says the best translations are done when there is a shared truth and he talks about sacred texts and a pure language. It’s useful in terms of a pure language, the idea of a pure language. He also talks about accuracy. He says the greatest accuracy can be had when you have something close to a sacred text which you’re translating. But I don’t think Benjamin spent a lot of time thinking about cultural differences between Asia and Europe.

RH: In a talk that you delivered in Beijing, China you talked about the goal in studying Xingyi has been to improve the whole health--body, mind, and spirit in relation to trauma, especially as a kid growing up in Baltimore. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the practice and perhaps how it relates to writing about memory and trauma. Have you noticed any connections?

AW: It’s an internal system. When we say internal we refer to the fact that the power in the system is devel-

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oped internally. So for example, if you’re doing what we call Wai Dan, which is external power versus Nei Dan, which is internal power, Nei Dan includes Xingyi Quan, Tai Ji, Ba Gua and so on. And that’s based on developing what people often refer to as chi. But it’s directed by the mind.

When you’re doing Xingyi Quan there are five fists or five basic movements. The first movement is primary because it exists in all the others. It’s what we call pi. The pi represents the eagle and the bear in conflict. The bear doesn’t attack unless it really has to. But eagles love to fight. They live to fight. They’re entirely aggressive. So the pi action is a grabbing like the talon. Rise, drill, and overturn. That’s basic in all five. If you order those five fists in a creative path, like I write about there, you have that pi. Then you have that drilling. Then you have the beng which is smashing. Then you have pounding which is the heart. Then you have what we call crossing. You’re supposed to do those every day.

When you do those things, there are correspondences between the yin organs and emotions and positioning within the elements. The pi, which is called splitting, corresponds to the lungs and I describe it as grief. You’re moving out of the non-moving position, which you do with some reluctance. This actually is sadness, corresponding with the kidneys. And the adrenal glands sit on top of them. The pituitary glands form a triangle of connection. The interaction between, as I explain in the paper, the pituitary glands and the adrenal glands is what controls your mood: depression, anxiety, mania. Those things are controlled by a triangular interaction. We’re going to leave that under the realm of body-mind the-

ory but antidepressants target that reaction. This is the spleen, which is anger. Fire can correspond to love and this is a settling, a kind of a coming to terms with things and you end there.

According to Chinese philosophy, you should, with practice, come to understand that you can identify the elements and their movements in human interaction. That’s kinesthetic knowledge. It comes with practice. You will identify, for example, the splitting or the anger, and you’ll sense that in people’s interaction, but you’ll feel in your body a kinesthetic realization of philosophy. There’s a lot more to practice, but that’s the basic thing.

RH: I have to admit when I read about this I immediately thought about your book Talisman because there are specific moments where one could say a child was traumatized, and I am speaking specifically about the poem where the narrator is unclothed in front of his aunt and discussed in terms of sexual prowess. When I read on, it was interesting to see how I was right in terms of what this book means in that regards.

AW: I wrote the manuscript in 1994 in the summertime.

The book was published in ‘98 and when I read that poem “Little Girls,” the only poem where the word Talisman is used, then I remembered out of body experiences, and started to connect things and was able to draw a kind of map of the trauma, if you can call it that.

One of the most immediate effects of it was anger. A mismanagement of anger.

I can tell you a story about Xingyi Quan is notorious for its cruelty and viciousness. You do what they call the

phoenix eye. It’s done with full body impact, and if you do it with specific points of the body, you can kill someone, with no weapons. The story is that someone who is proficient, a Xingyi person, is given a job to do, to take this person out. What you do is you go to the place where he lives, you knock on the door, and if there’s no answer, you kick the door down and search the place. If he’s not there, burglarize it and burn it to the ground and go to the next point. When you find him, kill him. Now that’s extreme. That would be a hitman. A police officer would use that skill to go get someone and arrest them.

The key to all of this is that you never come out of control. It’s cold and sublime. So Mao Zedung outlawed Xingyi Quan when he came to power. There’s an understanding that Tai Chi has that hidden in it. That same ability, but it’s hidden. In Xingyi it’s out front. I told my teacher I want to dig deep into this Xingyi because I want to come to terms with anger issues, which I knew were coming from the trauma. And I knew from growing up in Baltimore—you know, it’s a very violent place. That’s when I began to see that I could tease this out. I started Xingyi in 2000. So, when I got to Taiwan, I had been doing it for a year. It’s a nasty art.

RH: In assembling the poems for The Plum Flower Dance, you organized an existing body of work according to your knowledge of the effects of childhood abuse, trauma, as reflected in your work. What did you come out of this process learning?

AW: It was clarity. It gave me a view of where I was going with my poetry. Because when the traumas came out full force, when the first big chunks came out, I actu-

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ally stopped writing. It was 1997 and I was at Bucknell as a poet in residence. I used to have, a more or less, daily or regular, writing schedule, and in 1997 I stopped, and I didn’t really pick it up again for almost 8 years. I just wrote sporadically. But now I’m back to my writing schedule.

Another part of that was I had had congestive heart failure in 1995. The doctor said he didn’t expect me to live very long so I started collecting things. That’s why I pulled Multitudes together because I figured well I can see that before I pass away. These other two books, they all just came out within a year. But then I kept on living.

It gave me a chance to see what had been driving my work, what had been driving my need for mother figures in my work, and also how I had had trouble with some issues of expressing anger or violence in my work.

Although this poem is not in the book, there’s a poem of mine which I call my credo and it’s a poem called to “Malcolm X on his Second Coming” and it’s in the African American Review along with a bunch of other poems of mine—about 1998, 1999. I worked on that poem for about 18 years. It’s funny. Now I look at that poem and it’s a nationalistic poem, but it’s also a poem of a somewhat unconscious trauma survivor.

And it was interesting to me to find that there was some evidence in the letters of Malcolm X that were discovered that he wrote when he was 12 or 13. There was an innocence and a softness to that boy that got lost. So the Malcolm X that people saw had been traumatized somewhere along the path. Of course, the loss of his father, that was trauma. But there was something there that had

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hardened him. I identified with him. When I look at that poem today, I can still sort of touch some of those feelings of anger. Racially, but then I know this stuff is being driven on a more personal level.

RH: I want to go come back to trauma for a moment.

Have you ever been able to make a correlation between your trauma, and the trauma that derives from being African American and knowing that history? How can the two connections serve your exploration into the past?

AW: I think about it a lot. As a matter of fact, I teach this survey course in African American Lit and I use a book on cultural memory and identity by that Scandinavian scholar. I can’t remember his name right now. I’ve used it the last 2 years, and I think he’s dead on. It helped to frame what Du Bois was working with in The Souls of Black Folk, and I think about Of the Coming of John, but I also think about Howard Thurman, The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death, that little book. Melvin Dickson wrote an essay on the black spirituals and slave narratives that draws on Howard Thurman’s book, but Howard Thurman’s book is the book to read.

Chris Rock. Chris Rock said being an African American is like being raised by your abusive uncle. He put it right there. For me, that becomes super-imposed. Because this uncle of mine was my favorite uncle. That was a repression from when I was a child. What happens is, in a personal situation like that, to use Chris Rock’s statement: you’re idolizing the very thing that is destroying you. So for African Americans, there’s this question of— we call it keeping it real, or how black are you. But it’s much more complex than just saying that. It’s a com-

plexity of the failures and the contradictions and the hypocrisies of American democracy.

It’s that, and it’s trying to forge a culture inside that space. I think if you look at the cultural trauma of racism and look at African Americans. Say that they were not abused. The impact of living in this society comes home with you and affects you in a way that becomes personal in a way. But then if you’ve got personal inside of that, it becomes a rhythmic pulse between two forces that can tear you apart. It can tear you apart, or it can make you entirely dysfunctional and sociopathic. I think that’s the challenge.

For me, I was saved by tragedy. When I was younger and experienced a tragic first marriage, I had to be hospitalized for psychiatric reasons. But that pulled me out of the track of everyone else in the neighborhood. So being in that track pulled me out of the track of what happened to cousins of mine. Younger cousins of mine got hit really hard.

We have this mythic representation of this situation we’re referring to. One of them is that one of my Uncles who was not abusive, God bless his soul. Uncle Frank said to us one day “You know, you better stay in school because the white man never sleeps. You go to bed, he’s up at his desk, checking his charts, getting his papers together, making sure the plan’s going ahead. Ya’ll messing around out here drinking wine and carrying on—he’s sitting up at his desk, even while you’re sleeping.” That was a mythic representation of the adversary. In the context of that mythic representation of the adversary you have these tracks that black men are put into.

Malcolm X talked about the church of the street but how do you manifest your manhood, however you define that, whatever that means for you? There are places where it goes, there are tracks for it. A white man said to me, sharing an in-house white joke, that inner-city schools have no windows because they’re being prepared for their destiny. There’s a deliberateness that is undeliberate.

Then you have that systemic reality of abuses—that the system is formed inside human behavior. There’s denial, there’s repression, all of these things. These are your constraints as opposed to laws that say you can’t do this or that. So you have a set of invisible restraints and visible restraints. That’s the way I see that. So I think then, that when Nat Turner walked down the street that day, that he essentially zapped out. He couldn’t take it.

RH: You have always been proud of your working class background, working in a mattress factory if memory serves me correct. I have always believed that poets need to have a variety of experiences. This is not to understate the power of reading and the transports that happen through great literature. How would you say this background prepared you for your literary career?

AW: Actually, in late April 1970, I landed a job at Bethlehem Steel in Baltimore, and subsequently dropped out of the University of Maryland. The steel mill granted me leave in December 1970 so I could do my basic training for the military out at Ft. Leonard Wood. I completed my basic training and returned to the steel mill in midMay 1971. I landed the job at Procter & Gamble in Balticontinued on page 54

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Ancient, Ancient

by Kiini Ibura Salaam Aqueduct Press Review by Tracey M. Lewis-Giggetts It’s possible that science fiction as a genre could be misconceived as being narrowly defined; viewed as simply stories about techno-bots and dystopian worlds. This, however, is not as likely when it comes to science fiction literature from the African diaspora. These narratives tend to reveal spiritual and/or supernatural characters and storylines where the metaphysical is allowed free reign and where there are minimal limitations when it comes to character traits, plot and setting—despite the fact that the core themes of a story are clearly recognizable to the reader. The late Octavia Butler (Kindred, Wild Seed) laid the foundation for this kind of expansive way of writing the fantastic into the real, and the short story collection, Ancient, Ancient by Kiini Ibura Salaam, upholds the standard set by her.

The title short, Ancient, Ancient, tells the story of Asima, a woman who has a secret to share with her friend Roger but finds herself drawn to and later consumed by a vengeful ancestral spirit seeking a kind of redemption from what it calls the “flesh dwellers.”

Salaam uniquely presents three narrators in this story, each with a voice that reveals a specific element and more importantly, a specific “character” journey. There’s the voice of the spirit who is seeking a body to inhabit. There’s also the voice of the narrator who is telling Asima’s story. The third is a somewhat odd but deeply appropriate voice that tells the story of the “wandering

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review

ant.” Nearly allegorical, this third voice metaphorically reflects the actions occurring parallel to its narrative in the rest of the story.

In the migration of ants, there is always one that can be distracted. One whose biological imperative hiccups, if only for a moment and allows it to wander the track, into some new delight or danger.

The distraction of this ant as told by this third voice perfectly mirrors the action of Asima noticing the activity of the spirit who inhabited a lamppost nearby. Her attention is drawn to this lamppost, not casually, but almost instinctually; as if there is something deep in her desires that is inextricably linked to the spirit. This is one of several points in the story where the three points of view converge and the reader can make clear linkages between them.

In reference to transitions, there are some minor challenges in the story where clarity is lost momentarily as one is going back and forth between the voices while attempting to grasp what’s happening to the characters.

However, this vagueness is only a temporary—though possibly structural—stumbling block in an otherwise intriguing tale.

Salaam’s ability to firmly ground the idea of the spirit world coexisting with what we might perceive as normal or real, is a theme throughout the collection.

slave trade is the supernatural experience of a young man who, as punishment for disobeying his grandfather and fighting in the Battle Royale (yes, that one. Although it’s not overtly stated, it seems as though the narrator in this story is the same unnamed narrator from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man), is forced to travel back in time to inhabit the body of an enslaved African.

I look at the person speaking to me and almost gag. I look away, but a glance around the room sickens me further. The room is crawling with mangled people. No facial feature is where it should be—limbs are attached at odd angles on all the wrong parts of the body. I force the muscles in my face to be still. Then I look again.

The use of descriptive imagery here (“crawling with mangled people,” “limbs…attached at odd angles”) to describe the way Africans were packed onto cargo ships is not only vivid, it captures the distortion of perception held by someone who knows a degree of freedom yet is being forced to experience bondage for the first time.

All in all, readers will find themselves captivated by this fascinating collection of stories and enthralled by the author’s ability to elevate our notions of what is real or not in a way that’s nuanced. Each story in Ancient, Ancient makes us believe, if only for the time it takes to read them, that there could be something more to our own life narratives. This is the mark of good fiction. 

This is also done brilliantly in the story, “Battle Royale.”

Entrenched in the horrific realities of the transatlantic

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ballroom

GERARDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S BALLROOM

by Justin Allen

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In 1993, photographer Gerard H. Gaskin embarked on a journey that would take him to various U.S. cities and into a subculture of queer, predominantly Black and Latino individuals known as the ballroom scene. These nighttime pageants are unique for gender-explorative categories, elaborate make-up and costumes, boisterous energy, and the sharp and elastic dance form known as voguing. Legendary: Inside the House Ballroom Scene, an award-winning book that includes over ninety photographs, presents the fifteen years Gaskin spent documenting the culture.

In 1990, Madonna’s hit “Vogue” mainstreamed voguing, and Jennie Livingston’s film of the same year, Paris is Burning, documented the scene from which the dance form emerged. However, both instances, many feel, overlook or fail to accurately communicate the complexities to which to attribute the scene’s distinct beauty.

These complexities Gaskin attempts to address with his photographs.

For those unfamiliar: participants competing in balls are often members of houses, familial collectives commonly named after fashion houses, such as the House of Blahnik or the House of Mizrahi. Each consists of a mélange of members––mothers, fathers, and children–– that lend community and structure in the shadow of the socioeconomic marginalization queer people of color often face.

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Because of this marginalization, the scene has witnessed the loss of many significant figures, remembered for their talents, innovations, and irreplaceable presence.

Of those that have passed, in our conversation Gaskin recalled the following: Paris Dupree, Danielle Revlon, Gerald LaBeija, Octavia St. Laurent, Jennifer Evisu, Arbert Santana Evisu, Eric Christian Bazaar, Marcel Christian and Mystery Dior. In the book, Gaskin pays tribute to the aforementioned and countless others, living and deceased, and shows us what it means to be legendary.

Justin Allen: You went to your first ball in 1993. Where was it and what were your first impressions?

Gerard H. Gaskin: It was in an after school center behind Lincoln Center, and it was petrifying because there was this huge fight afterwards. I thought, If this is what it’s about, then I’m in trouble. The first year photographing the balls was difficult because Paris Is Burning had recently been released, and a lot of people had issues with the movie’s representation of the scene. I needed the community to say —We’re OK with you photographing.

It took about a year to do that. It wasn’t smooth or easy, but did I want to do it? Yes. I saw Paris is Burning and disliked how it played with the idea that these people were interested in becoming white or wanting of white things.

I feel it’s more complex than that.

JA: How would you amend Jennie Livingston’s interpretation of the scene?

GHG: The movie makes it seem like everybody is down-

trodden. I wish it would have shown the people in the community celebrating themselves. That’s the complexity I’m much more interested in discussing and showing.

This also isn’t to say, however, that the movie is completely off. I don’t agree with every aspect, but she made an amazing piece. The scene with Junior LaBeija is incredible, him talking about the culture. That’s real and that’s beautiful. But when she starts ad-libbing, that’s what I dislike.

JA: You talk about this apprehension in ball participants to be documented. You were advised to ask for permission before photographing people. What were some initial reactions?

GHG: People were resistant, so I shifted my approach.

Douglas Says, who is a clothing designer and makeup artist, used to design clothes for the girls. All the major femme queens and transwomen of the day, especially of the early 90s, Douglas designed for them. Since he knew them, I started photographing portraits of femme queens. Others then allowed me into the scene. They were also mothers of houses at the time, so because I was ushered in by the mothers, I started developing relationships with the fathers of their houses, and they introduced me to their children.

JA: Did having to ask for permission change the way you photographed?

GHG: No, because I’ve always photographed with the same method. I need to be close to people. I want to be

there long enough that they just assume I’m taking pictures, then they let their guard down and become more natural. I almost have a way of being invisible, but part of being invisible is being close. The closer I am, in some ways, the more invisible I become.

JA: Many of the scenes you photograph capture moments of elaborate narrative. How do you communicate a story?

GHG: I come out of a school called The Decisive Moment. There’s a really famous photographer named Henri Cartier-Bresson who coined this term that suggests that when all things come together, an image can tell so much—the idea that an image is worth a thousand words. I told you I try to photograph very close to the performers, and this is also because I feel the closer I am, the more information and energy I can put into an image.

JA: How do you communicate a story compositionally?

GHG: One way, I often play with the idea of simultaneous blur and stillness. Blur is excitement and masquerade. I’m trying to deal with these two ideas: blur that is mystery and fun, and the stillness of the focal point. It’s the image of Vanessa in the corner with the blonde hair, but it’s also the image where Danielle is blurred, pointing at Vanessa, so the viewer sees the energy of what Vanessa is doing.

JA: Do you think your photographs make ballroom cul-

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ture understandable to people unfamiliar with it?

GHG: Understandable, yes. I want to celebrate the fact that this is a space that the community created, where they can deal with ideas that pertain to their lives without the judgment of the outside world. And who’s judging now? Participants are judging themselves. And that’s the fundamental reason I wanted to, with these photographs, comprise a book. Here’s a place that they created where they can play with sexuality and play with any role they want and be judged by their peers, not some outside entity.

JA: You photograph balls in different cities and at different venues. How much do your photographs focus on physical bodies versus physical location? Do you find them both equally important?

GHG: Spaces are important because they tell a history. If a ball participant sees an image from the Marc Ballroom in New York City, they know when the Marc Ballroom used to have balls. It was during a certain period of time.

The same for, say, the YMCA in Philadelphia. There are specific places that used to have balls on a regular bases that don’t have them anymore. As for physical bodies, I focus more on people. My images are a history of the scene. A really amazing thing that Frank Roberts, who wrote the afterthought in the book, discusses is how a lot of notable figures in the scene have passed away. As people who have created the scene, that is what most interests me. Yeah, I’m interested in photographing bodies, but I’m more interested in photographing people who made the scene that is now a global phenomenon.

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JA: In 2005 you transitioned to digital photography. How does this differ from using film?

GHG: When I shot film, I was much more cautious about shooting. Film costs a lot of money to buy and develop— much more than digital. And with digital I can just shoot haphazardly, and keep shooting and shooting then sort through the files and post them online and email them to the people I photograph. Back in the day, I had five rolls of film that had to last a whole ball—and I’m talking about a ball that would last about 10 hours. I’d shoot about 200 photos in one night. Now, I get a few cards and I shoot 600 to 1000 pictures in a night. But one of the reasons I started photographing digitally was because people started asking what it looked like in color, about the colors of the costumes.

JA: You’ve also said you look at a lot of current magazines to keep up with photography trends. Do trends you see affect how you photograph?

GHG: Always. I take a certain picture because I see the world a certain way, but it’s important that I know what other people are doing. I want to know what Annie Leibovitz is doing, or Herb Ritts. I want to see what André Leon Talley is putting in Vogue next month and who is shooting the pictures. I’m interested in how war and documentary photographers take pictures. It’s also important for me to see how young people see. A 20-something now sees the world differently than I see the world, with Facebook and the internet. That’s how I keep current and evolving.

JA: Speaking of the internet, I know you’re familiar with Ballroom Throwbacks, which documents balls on YouTube and Facebook. GIFS, or moving images, taken from video footage of balls are also popular on such websites as Tumblr. With these more current modes of documentation, what makes photography distinct and important?

GHG: I like a still image. Maybe that’s just me being an old-school person, but that’s what I grew up on. Not to say I’m not interested in other mediums, because I watch everything Ballroom Throwbacks puts out, and what they do is amazing in itself. But with a photograph, you need to put everything in that one still image. With a video you have more outlets to tell a story. A still has to create mood without sensory details a video has access to.

JA: And why do you think documentation is important?

GHG: We watch so much reality television today and are so caught up in glamour and what celebrities are doing despite the real issues we have to deal with. What’s going on in Kentucky that we don’t know about? What’s going on in South America? There’s massive upheaval in Brazil. The government is spending millions of dollars to build stadiums for the Olympics, and people are starving. But, in context, the average Joe doesn’t even know that that’s going on and needs to be informed. To me, that’s what documentation is about. 

Photographer Gerard H. Gaskin

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L ITERARY

MAGAZINE

Fall/Winter 2013 MosaicMagazine.org Mosaicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lesson plans give high-school educators ways to connect literature to history and social studies while also serving to increase the importance of books and reading.

Designed by Eisa Nefertari Ulen

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Lesson Plan

Young readers are consuming Speculative Fiction at high rates, with YA series, movies based on these books, and websites devoted to loyal fans garnering high numbers.

From best-seller lists, to box office numbers, and Nielsen online measurements, it is clear middle and high school readers love Speculative Fiction. This issue of Mosaic examines Afro-Surrealism, a genre of the Black literary tradition rooted in oral folk tales, voodoo conjuring, and the folk wisdom born of generations of dispossession.

These lesson plans can not hope to introduce young people to Afro-Surrealism - they already know the stories of our people, and they have heard the fantastic, bizarre, weird, and wonderful from elders all around them. What these lesson plans hope to do is help the thoughtful teacher guide students to a deeper understanding of AfroSurrealism. From the status of Native American werewolves in the Twilight movies to a blue-eyed Black man who is Almost Human on FOX TV, the lessons hope to elevate the discourse around the representation of brown people in popular media. Study of Bob Marleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s creation story, Redemption Songs, helps deepen student awareness of the ways Black Code communicates the story of our struggle - and our triumph.

The lessons also aim to personalize that triumph, with opportunities for students to identify the powerful forces that circumscribe boundaries around our communities, become the superhero, and save the day. If they can imagine wizards and spells to save Hogwarts, perhaps they can also imagine the same to save the places where we live. These lessons hope to spark the creative genius in each child to imagine worlds unlike our own.

I. Understanding Speculative Fiction A. Topics for Discussion 1. Consider this definition of Speculative Fiction, taken from Wikipedia: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird fiction, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction,

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and alternate history.” What forms of Speculative Fiction have you already read? a. Which fantastical fiction genres would you like to read? b. Come up with a definition for each genre listed above based on the name. For example, what do you think Weird Fiction might be?

2. With Speculative Fiction, authors speculate about worlds other than our own. a. What kind of world do characters in the Harry Potter series inhabit? How is that world different from our own? In what way(s) is this world similar to our own? b. Think about the Twilight series. How does our world compare to the vampires in that series? How does our world compare to the lifestyle of the werewolves in that series? i. Think about the fact that all of the vampires in lead roles are White and all of the werewolves are Native American. Does race play a role in whether you identify more with one group or the other? Why or why not? ii. Think about the kind of house the vampires have and the houses the werewolves live in. Which type of house is more like your own? iii. Consider the fact that the vampires do not change into animals, yet are cold and immortal, while the werewolves (who do shape-shift to become animals) are more human in their warmth and mortality. Do you think any of this is significant? iv. If you were forced to make a decision about where you would live for the rest of your life, which of these two communities would you choose as your

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own? Why? 3. Michael Ealy co-stars as an android on the FOX TV crime drama/science fiction program Almost Human. a. What makes us human? What are the characteristics that separate people from animals? What are the characteristics that separate people from androids and robots? b. The product used to make Michael Ealy’s character experience emotion is called Synthetic Soul. i. What is Soul Music? ii. What is Soul Food? iii. What is a Soul Train line? iv. Define the word synthetic. v. What do you think about the use of this term, Synthetic Soul, on the show?

B. Essay Idea Choose a book (like a novel in the series), a television program (like Almost Human), or a movie (like Avatar) that features people of color. Write a review of the book, show, or film that you select. In your review, examine the use of people of color. Are people of color leaders, or do they act more as side-kicks who follow leaders who are White? Do characters of color make decisions on their own? Are the people of color obviously Black or Native American, or are they given a different skin color (like the color blue)? Other than their darker skin color, what are the aspects of these characters’ lives or experiences that let the reader/viewer know that they are not White?

Who saves the day and emerges as the hero in the book, show, or film you select? Are people of color featured as heroes? Most important, how does the book, show, or film make you feel? When you think about the ways

people of color are featured, do you feel proud?

C. Additional Activities 1. Make a chart or graph to show which genres listed as kinds of Speculative Fiction (above) have been read by people in your class. Research definitions for each type of Speculative Fiction listed and make sure you include each definition on your chart.

2. Watch the show Almost Human on Fox TV. Think about the bigger issues this crime/science fiction series tackles. List those bigger issues. Then ask yourself this question: What does it mean to be human? Free-write your answers to that question. Develop your own teleplay based on this television program. Give Dorian and Detective John Kennex a crime to solve, an obstacle to overcome as they work toward the goal of solving the crime, and dialogue that grapples with some of the bigger issues you listed. What aspect of our humanity will this crime-solving team examine in your episode?

3. Speculative Fiction often relies on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) as a crucial element in the story. Without STEM, the story doesn’t exist. Think about what you are studying in science class right now, and write a story that uses STEM. If you are studying our solar system, then write a narrative set in space that uses the facts you know about our solar system. For example, knowing how hot our sun is, could you write about a character that travels to Mercury? What technology would a human space traveler need to walk on Mercury? Think about the distance Mercury is from Earth, and, using your math skills, write how long the journey in the space shuttle is. What interesting things could hap-

pen to your character in the time it takes her to travel to this destination? As another example, if you are studying plant life, then write a story about super plants. What kind of pistil, stamen, and petal does your super plant have? Use those STEM-related terms in your story. Let’s say you’re studying magnets and want to write a story about a robot gone rogue. How does your understanding of positive and negative charges impact the plot and theme of your story?

II. Understanding Afro-Surrealism

A. Topics for Discussion 1. Synonyms of the word surreal include unreal, bizarre, unusual, weird, strange, freakish, unearthly, uncanny, dreamlike, and phantasmagorical. What surreal experiences have you had?

2. Think of all the ways we use variations of the term Afro, from the Afro-American newspaper (published in Baltimore, Maryland), to AFRAM festivals and concerts, to Afro-Sheen hair products. Why is use of this term important to African Americans? What community or place does this term distinguish Black people from? What community or place does this term connect Black people to?

3. Consider this line from the essay “Afro-Surrealism,” which was written by D. Scot Miller and published in the Fall/Winter 2013 issue of Mosaic Literary Magazine: “Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is

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our job to uncover it.” a. What “invisible world” have you heard about in your own family? Do relatives ever talk about family members who have crossed over or passed on? Have they ever talked about those ancestors crossing back to visit in the form of visions, scents, or dreams? Are those ancestors who cross back visible or invisible?

How do people in your family talk about ancestors? b. Have you ever seen, felt, smelled, or heard a ghost, haint, alien, or something else you couldn’t really name but knew was around you? c. Think about the way we sometimes talk about new things happening in our community. Someone might say, “They’re putting up a new building.”

Or, “They put a new light on our street.” Or, “They raised the prices on gas and groceries again.” Who is this “They”? Why does this “They” have the power to do so much? If we don’t name the “They,” then how can we see it and understand it? What name would you give to the “They”? Is this “They” invisible, and, if so, what else can we do to see it?

B. Essay Idea Write a story about something or someone who is invisible. Is the invisible person or thing powerful or powerless? How does the invisible become visible in your story? Start with these ideas, and let your imagination take you from there.

C. Additional Activities 1. Think about an important issue in our communities. It might be Stop and Frisk policing, the experience of Driving While Black, or high crime or murder rates among young people. On a piece of paper, write the issue you

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choose. On one side of the paper, list the things related to that issue that are real. On the other side of the same paper, list the things related to that issue that feel surreal.

Draw a line connecting the things that are both real and surreal.

2. Using old magazines and newspapers, make a collage of images and words related to the issue you choose.

Feel free to make your collage as illogical, strange, and disturbing as you wish, as these are terms sometimes used to describe art that is surreal.

3. Research the work of artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kara Walker. Think about the Afro-Surreal elements of their work. a. What makes the work illogical, strange, and/or disturbing? b. What elements of the invisible have the artists made visible? c. Think about the synonyms of the word surreal listed above, and write the ones that you think describe their art to a copy of the art itself. d. Create your own art in the tradition of Basquiat’s paintings or Walker’s silhouettes.

III. Understanding Ralph Ellison’s “The Battle Royal”

A. Topics for discussion 1. How do the definitions of Speculative Fiction and Afro-Surrealism apply to Ellison’s narrative?

2. In what ways does the nameless protagonist’s grandfather haunt him? Why do you think this ancestor insists on crossing back over to become visible in the nameless protagonist’s dream?

3. Identify important symbols in the narrative, including the circus images, the American flag on the dancer’s belly and the colors red; white; and blue on the dancer’s face, the smoke and mirrors, and the bloody saliva in the shape of a continent on the nameless protagonist’s prize briefcase.

forced to fight each other even today. They would point to things like gun violence, drug sales, and competition over jobs. Do you agree or disagree? Are young Black men still pitted against each other in a mad scramble for “good hard American cash!”?

C. Additional Activities 1. Create your own surreal painting or collage based on the symbols in “The Battle Royal.”

2. Think about the powerful “They” discussed above.

Ellison identifies this “They” in his narrative, including merchants, bankers, the school superintendent, even “one of the more fashionable pastors.” List all the community leaders, or system controllers, that Ellison identifies. Next to each, write the name of the real-life person who fills that role in your community today.

4. Battle Royals like the one described in the narrative did take place in this country. White men would force Black men to fight to the death. Does this information make the narrative more real – or more surreal?

5. Why is the young man invisible? Who is unable, or unwilling, to really see him? Think about the smoke coming from the black cigars that the prominent White men in the room have.

B. Essay Idea Write an essay that examines the ways the 10 boys in the battle are forced to fight each other. Although these battles don’t take place the way they once did in this country, some might say that young Black men are still

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IV. Other Activities to Help Develop Student Understanding of Afro-Surrealism

A. Bob Marley’s “Redemption Songs” 1. Wikipedia defines the Creation Myth “as a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it. By far the most well-known creation myth is the Genesis creation narrative. While in popular usage the term ‘myth’ is often thought to refer to false or fanciful stories, creation myths are by definition stories which cultures take to be true to varying degrees.” Consider the first verse of “Redemption Songs.” In what ways is this ballad offering a creation narrative for Africans in the Americas? a. Who are the “pirates”? b. Who is “I”? c. Why does Marley call the slave ships “merchant ships”? d. Could the “bottomless pit” be the place where Africans were contained on the slave ships? e. Why does Marley use the word “rob” to describe capture from Africa? f. How do you feel inside when you hear Marley sing “But my hand was made strong by the hand of the Almighty”? g. What are the triumphs of “this generation”? List the triumphs that belong to you.

action of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment.” Which definition applies to this song? Do both definitions make sense when you think about the creation of African Americans? Why? 4. Write your own Song of Freedom.

B. Octavia Butler’s Kindred 1. In this story, Dana must travel back in time to save the life of a young White boy, Rufus, on a Maryland slave plantation. What would you do or say to your ancestors if you could travel back to a slave plantation to meet them?

2. Write a letter to your 19th century ancestors telling them what you want them to know about your life now.

If you could ask them to change something about the past, what would you tell them you’d like them to do differently?

C. Talk about the title of Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

1. In the context of slavery, can infanticide and suicide be considered acts of revolution? Is revolution an expression of love?

2. Is it possible that Sethe’s act of infanticide is the greatest expression of love in the novel?

3. What does it mean to Be Loved when one is enslaved?

2. Examine the lyrics of the second verse as closely as you did the first.

3. Redemption is defined as “the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil” and also defined as “the

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4. Examine the surreal aspects of the title and the fact that the narrative is based on a real experience.

D. On one side of a poster-board, use magazine images

to create your vision of a utopian society. On the other, create a dystopian version of that same society.

E. Create a visual diagram of the pantheon of American superheroes. Consider the Avengers, the X-Men, the Justice League, and/or others. Remember to include good guys, bad guys, and good guys who turned bad.

1. Why do you think there are so few bad guys who become good guys?

2. What do you think that says about America?

3. An alter-ego is a personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s secondary or alternative personality. Create your own alter-ego superhero. a. On a piece of paper, list all the traits that make you strong. Given your individual strengths, decide what your superpower should be. b. On that same piece of paper, write the kinds of crime and criminals you would want to defeat. c. Write your own graphic novel or comic book, complete with illustrations. In it, feature yourself as the superhero that defeats the villains in your community.

V. Additional Authors

Samuel Delaney, Walter Mosley, Tananarive Due, Ishmael Reed, Steven Barnes, Jewell Parker Rhodes (Ninth Ward), Jewelle Gomez, Sheree Thomas (Dark Matter)

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manifesto black is the new black

by D. Scot Miller

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I’m not a surrealist. I just paint what I see. — Frida Kahlo THE PAST AND THE PRELUDE In his introduction to the classic novel Invisible Man (1952), ambiguous black and literary icon Ralph Ellison says the process of creation was “far more disjointed than [it] sounds ... such was the inner-outer subjective-objective process, pied rind and surreal heart.”

Ellison’s allusion is to his book’s most perplexing character, Rinehart the Runner, a dandy, pimp, numbers runner, drug dealer, prophet, and preacher. The protagonist of Invisible Man takes on the persona of Rinehart so that “I may not see myself as others see me not.” Wearing a mask of dark shades and large-brimmed hat, he is warned by a man known as the fellow with the gun, “Listen Jack, don’t let nobody make you act like Rinehart.

You got to have a smooth tongue, a heartless heart, and be ready to do anything.”

And Ellison’s lead man enters a world of prostitutes, hopheads, cops on the take, and masochistic parishioners.

He says of Rinehart, “He was years ahead of me, and I was a fool. The world in which we live is fluidity, and Rine the Rascal was at home.” The marquee of Rinehart’s store-front church declares: Behold the Invisible!

Thy will be done O Lord!

I See all, Know all, Tell all, Cure all.

You shall see the unknown wonders.

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Ellison and Rinehart had seen it, but had no name for it.

In an introduction to prophet Henry Dumas’ 1974 book Ark Of Bones and Other Stories, Amiri Baraka puts forth a term for what he describes as Dumas’ “skill at creating an entirely different world organically connected to this one ... the Black aesthetic in its actual contemporary and lived life.” The term he puts forth is Afro-Surreal Expressionism.

Afro-Surrealism is about the present. There is no need for tomorrow’s-tongue speculation about the future.

Concentration camps, bombed-out cities, famines, and enforced sterilization have already happened. To the Afro-Surrealist, the Tasers are here. The Four Horsemen rode through too long ago to recall. What is the future?

The future has been around so long it is now the past.

Afro-Surrealists expose this from a “future-past” called RIGHT NOW.

Dumas had seen it. Baraka had named it.

This is Afro-Surreal!

THIS IS NOT AFRO-SURREAL A) Surrealism: Leopold Senghor, poet, first president of Senegal, and African Surrealist, made this distinction: “European Surrealism is empirical. African Surrealism is mystical and metaphorical.” Jean-Paul Sartre said that the art of Senghor and the African Surrealist (or Negritude) movement “is revolutionary because it is surrealist, but itself is surrealist because it is black.” Afro-Surrealism sees that all “others” who create from their actual, lived experience are surrealist, per Frida Kahlo. The root for “Afro-” can be found in “Afro-Asiatic”, meaning a shared language between black, brown and Asian peoples of the world.

What was once called the “third world,” until the other two collapsed.

B) Afro-Futurism: Afro-Futurism is a diaspora intellectual and artistic movement that turns to science, technology, and science fiction to speculate on black possibilities in the future.

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RIGHT NOW, Barack Hussein Obama is America’s first black president.

RIGHT NOW, Afro-Surreal is the best description to the reactions, the genuflections, the twists, and the unexpected turns this “browning” of White-Straight-MaleWestern-Civilization has produced.

THE PRESENT, OR RIGHT NOW San Francisco, the most liberal and artistic city in the nation, has one of the nation’s most rapidly declining black urban populations. This is a sign of a greater illness that is chasing out all artists, renegades, daredevils, and outcasts. No black people means no black artists, and all you yet-untouched freaks are next. Only freaky black art — Afro-Surreal art — in the museums, galleries, concert venues, and streets of this (slightly) fair city can save us!

San Francisco, the land of Afro-Surreal poet laureate Bob Kaufman, can be at the forefront in creating an emerging aesthetic. In this land of buzzwords and catch phrases, Afro-Surreal is necessary to transform how we see things now, how we look at what happened then, and what we

can expect to see in the future.

It’s no more coincidence that Kool Keith (as Dr. Octagon) recorded the 1996 Afro-Surreal anthem “Blue Flowers” on Hyde Street, or that Samuel R. Delany based much of his 1974 Afro-Surreal urtext Dhalgren on experiences in San Francisco.

An Afro-Surreal aesthetic addresses these lost legacies and reclaims the souls of our cities, from Kehinde Wiley painting the invisible men (and their invisible motives) in NYC to Yinka Shonibare beheading 17th (and 21st) century sexual tourists of Europe. From Nick Cave’s soundsuits at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to the words you are reading right now, the message is clear: San Francisco, the world is ready for an Afro-Surreal art movement.

Afro-Surrealism is drifting into contemporary culture on a rowboat with no oars, entering the city to hunt down clues for the cure to this ancient, incurable disease called “western civilization.” Or, as Ishmael Reed states, “We are mystical detectives about to make an arrest.”

A MANIFESTO OF AFRO-SURREAL Behold the invisible! You shall see unknown wonders!

1. We have seen these unknown worlds emerging in the works of Wifredo Lam, whose Afro-Cuban origins inspire works that speak of old gods with new faces, and in the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, who gives us new gods with old faces. We have heard this world in the ebohorn of Roscoe Mitchell and the lyrics of DOOM. We’ve read it through the words of Henry Dumas, Victor Lavalle, and Darius James. This emerging mosaic of radical

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influence ranges from Frantz Fanon to Jean Genet. Supernatural undertones of Reed and Zora Neale Hurston mix with the hardscrabble stylings of Chester Himes and William S. Burroughs.

2. Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it. Like the African Surrealists, Afro-Surrealists recognize that nature (including human nature) generates more surreal experiences than any other process could hope to produce.

3. Afro-Surrealists restore the cult of the past. We revisit old ways with new eyes. We appropriate 19th century slavery symbols like Kara Walker, and 18th century colonial ones like Yinka Shonibare. We re-introduce “madness” as visitations from the gods, and acknowledge the possibility of magic. We take up the obsessions of the ancients and kindle the dis-ease, clearing the murk of the collective unconsciousness as it manifests in these dreams called culture.

4. Afro-Surrealists use excess as the only legitimate means of subversion, and hybridization as a form of disobedience. The collages of Romare Bearden and Wangechi Mutu, the prose of Reed, and the music of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Antipop Consortium express this overflow.

Afro-Surrealists distort reality for emotional impact. 50 Cent and his cold monotone and Walter Benjamin and his chilly shock tactics can kiss our ass. Enough! We want to feel something! We want to weep on record.

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5. Afro-Surrealists strive for rococo: the beautiful, the sensuous, and the whimsical. We turn to Sun Ra, Toni Morrison, and Ghostface Killa. We look to Kehinde Wiley, whose observation about the black male body applies to all art and culture: “There is no objective image.

And there is no way to objectively view the image itself.”

6. The Afro-Surrealist life is fluid, filled with aliases and census- defying classifications. It has no address or phone number, no single discipline or calling. Afro-Surrealists are highly-paid short-term commodities (as opposed to poorly-paid long term ones, a.k.a. slaves).

Afro-Surrealists are ambiguous. “Am I black or white? Am I straight, or gay? Controversy!”

Afro-Surrealism rejects the quiet servitude that characterizes existing roles for African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, women and queer folk. Only through the mixing, melding, and cross-conversion of these supposed classifications can there be hope for liberation.

Afro-Surrealism is intersexed, Afro-Asiatic, Afro-Cuban, mystic, silly, and profound.

7. The Afro-Surrealist wears a mask while reading Leopold Senghor.

8. Ambiguous as Prince, black as Fanon, literary as Reed, dandy as André Leon Tally, the Afro-Surrealist seeks definition in the absurdity of a “post-racial” world.

9. In fashion (John Galliano; Yohji Yamamoto) and the theater (Suzan Lori-Parks), Afro-Surreal excavates the

Advertise Feature your ad in the next print edition. Email info@ mosaicmagazine.org to reserve your placement.

Click here for details. remnants of this post-apocalypse with dandified flair, a smooth tongue and a heartless heart.

10. Afro-Surrealists create sensuous gods to hunt down beautiful collapsed icons.

AFRO-SURREALISM IN ACTION San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of the African Diaspora present the works of Mutu, William Pope L., Trenton Doyle Hancock, Glenn Ligon, Wiley, Shonibare, and Walker en masse, with Lam’s Jungle as a center piece. Lorraine Hansbury Theater stages Genet’s The Blacks and Baraka’s The Dutchman, while San Francisco Opera adapts Aimé Césaire’s Caliban and the Fillmore has an Afro-punk retrospective. Afro-Surreal adaptations of Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972), Hurston’s Tell My Horse (1937), and Marvel’s Black Panther will grace the silver-screen.

These are the first steps in an illustrious and fantastic journey. When we finally reach those unknown shores, we will say, with blood beneath our nails and mud on our boots: This is Afro-Surreal! 

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Freelance photographer Marcia E. Wilson gallivants around NYC looking for literary events to spotlight on the "Around Town" page. She may be at a reading near you.

For more visit MosaicMagazine.org.

Friday, November 8, 2013 – Much love and joy filled the room for Kamilah Aisha Moon’s first book of poetry She Has A Name. The party was hosted at Dumbo Sky in Brooklyn and much of BK/NYC arts royalty was in attendance –Nina Angela Mercer, Tracey Smith, Tina Chang, Ed Toney, Jacqueline Jones Lamon, Toi Derrocotte, Cornelius Eady, Tyhembas Jess, Patrick Rosal, Paul Lisicky, Joan Larkin, Ross Gay, Aracelis Girmay, Rachel Eliza Griffith, Samantha Thornhill, Jacqueline Johnson, A. Naomi Jackson, Nicole Sealey, Lola Flash, Mendi Obadike, Juliet Howard, Ellen Hagen, and others. Kamilah’s poetry first appeared in Mosaic in 2007.

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more that June. I stayed at Procter & Gamble until January 1985, when my manumission came in the form on the NEA fellowship and I made literary history. Brown University accepted me that spring. I was a semi-skilled laborer in all of my factory years.

I think it gave me a link between the world of my family, my father, who was a blues kind of man. And, it helped me forge my own sense of what I should write about.

It wasn’t easy. I can’t sit here and pretend it was always easy because I was in the factory, writing and publishing. I would look around some days in the warehouse at those conveyor belts and forklifts and so on and I would think this is nothing to write about. But, I remember talking to a friend of mine Rodger Kamenet, and I said Roger, you know, I’m struggling with being in this place and he said, “Well that’s your poetry.” So that’s my first book, Water Song, which is out of print. That book is basically the book that came out of me getting closer to that subject matter. But it was not interiority.

When I was in the factory, I would look out on the literary landscape. I used to read Black World Magazine, which started out being Negro Digest. That magazine was very, very important to me. But when I looked out also at the people I admired, I read them, I said you know, I want to write about black folks’ interior lives. I saw that early on as my work. You had black interiority from a working class perspective, but it hasn’t been easy.

Because I had a neo-Marxist line when I was young that lyric poetry was bourgeois indulgence.

RH: If you don‘t mind I would like for you to comment on the state of African American poetry from your point of entry until now, and the significance of Cave Canem in the 21st Century. How has the landscape changed since you have been writing?

AW: Folks now have a lot more access. There is still that thing of us and them. There’s still a paternalism and so on. But having said that, Lucille Clifton and Michael Harper, they had less than I had in terms of mentoring

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and so on. They came along and had to be guarded, even against young black poets. So there wasn’t a feeling of wanting to pull us in. It was a feeling of having something they worked very hard for and they wanted to protect it. I understand that now, I didn’t understand it at times when I was younger.

In the 70s I was writing and the Black Arts people were being, little by little, co-opted. Haki Madhubuti’s Black Books Bulletin at Third World was a really important presence in my life. I just loved that magazine and I told him so in a note.

When I went to Brown in 1985 and I look back now, Cornelius Eady and I are at a color cusp point. And I’m a couple years older than Cornelius, but we’re in that generational shift when the Black Arts Movement took people like yourself and Honoree and Terrance. But Cornelius and I were in that space, generationally. When I came to Brown, I walked in with an NEA fellowship in one hand and a book in the other. Except for the M.F.A. I had the same credentials as C.D. Wright, who was teaching at Brown. There I was at Brown and I was the most accomplished poet in the workshop, but when they ranked the poets at the end of that first semester, and Michael Harper told me this, they ranked me in the middle of a bunch of mostly fresh undergrads with B.A. degrees who were writing about things that were very ethereal and philosophical. Harper was more grounded in a work-a-day world, and CD Wright as well. But Keith Waldrop, and Keith was good in his own way, was heavily engaged with French theory.

So there I was. The only thing that separated me from CD was she had an MFA. She had been teaching for two years when I got there. So I was and I wasn’t. As Houston Baker said to me one time, “Michael, Rita Dove has a foundation. You have a ‘groundation.’ “ That was Houston’s way of talking about my feet being that far down in the thing we call culture. I also had to make that struggle between working class and academia, and I wrestled with whether or not to talk openly about being

a factory worker.

So you have this big black man who is a factory worker and they’re like he can’t possibly have a refined sensibility. That kind of person does not have a refined mind.

It just doesn’t happen. And some black folks say that as well. I’m not going to put it all on white folks. Because I’ve had to deal with black folk, too. And it’s hurtful when it comes from your own people. [Vincent Woodard] put it most succinctly to me one day. Vincent, God bless him, said, Afaa, you have what we call in Vodou bull energy. If you see a bull, you’re not going to mess with it, but it doesn’t look exceptionally intelligent. It’s so composed and so still. And he said: “Afaa, people are constantly misreading and underestimating you.” It’s just my path in life.

So I had that. But that’s why I went to Brown. I had a sense that I needed something, I needed a counterweight. Brown put it on me, and it was tough, but it was tough not for the work itself. It was for the adjustment, not actually knowing enough about class to negotiate certain places, and also not having enough confidence to push back against people who wanted to project onto me. So I had a really hard time, but I got through. It was a psyche game.

I got out of there and I was adjuncting. I adjuncted here in New York for two years. NYU. I taught the first graduate course in black poetry ever taught at NYU. I developed it. The very first. Black poetry had never been taught at NYU at the graduate level. I have my syllabi in my storage locker in the archives. David Mills, now a Cave Canem poet, was one of my students.

I taught African American drama at NYU, then composition at Brooklyn College, and I had jobs everywhere.

Then the thing came up at Rutgers. A lot of that was because the EEOC office, Economic Equal Opportunity, was constantly hounding the English department. But they took me and there I was in a tenure track position but still, nowhere along there did I have what you

guys have at Cave Canem. Nowhere along there was there a Darkroom collective. I was an object of study for the Darkroom Collective. I remember hearing Sharan Strange took my book, My Father’s Geography, and told somebody “You need to read this.”

But I didn’t have any of that. Cornelius didn’t have much of that either. Mary Oliver is a good friend of his, but Cornelius came through in ways similar to my own. Except he didn’t work in the factory. So I look at things now.

I saw Terrance Hayes in New York. We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge together. I said, “Terrance, how are you doing” and he was telling me and I was like “It’ll be okay, it’ll be back to normal by next spring.” His success story and Honoree Jeffers’ and Major Jackson’s and Natasha Trethewey’s and Camille Dungy’s is built upon having access. I mean, you have talent, but you poets now have a forum. An institution. And I didn’t have that.

The Black Arts Movement had their fellowship, but for me, I was estranged from the literary world in a way like Wallace Stevens. He makes me so angry, but some of the anxiety I have around him is knowing that we both had that exilic development. I always promised myself I wouldn’t be like him and I wouldn’t be like Richard Wright who came to really dislike black people, I think. I said I’m not going to let that happen to me. So having a forum and having an institution is about having a social process.

RH: I want to talk a minute about some of your early influences in terms of who you were reading and felt drawn to in terms of aesthetic choices when you began to take poetry seriously?

AW: I had two anthologies. I had The Poetry of the Negro by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps and I had The Library of American Poetry by Conrad Aiken—with no black folk in that anthology. And I had How Does a Poem Mean. Lucille Clifton told me to get that book. And I had XJ Kennedy’s An Introduction to Poetry. But I read poems that spoke to me, and Langston Hughes spoke to

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me, of course, but so did Ezra Pound and TS Elliot. And TS Elliot’s eloquence has stayed with me for a long time.

I notice in looking back at my work, there’s a kind of rhythmic thing I do that goes back to my very first book, that poem, “Water Song.” It’s a rhythmic pattern inside the lines just as much having gone to a Baptist Church, as it is anything. The idea of this sense of incantation. But, I would say the very first poets were Langston Hughes, Ezra Pound, and TS Elliot.

RH: What people don’t realize is that you are an accomplished playwright, I am thinking about the play recently published in Tidal Basin Review that I had the privilege to read. The work seems to draw on the vernacular tradition through the sermon (show excerpt). It is a play in one scene titled Sermon in the New Land. There is not only great satire, but also there is great attention to detail with regards to the African American church and its histories. Were you influenced any by James Weldon Johnson? What drew you to this project?

AW: Actually, it was Reverend Tabrum from my church.

He also worked at Bethlehem Steel Mill like some people did, preaching and working in those days. He was a very tall man and he’d give a sermon and say something funny and be the only person laughing. He had a huge white handkerchief, and he’d make himself laugh and wipe his face. But it was him and Reverend George Watley over in Newark. Those two ministers framed that performance piece I did.

But I do have to say about my time in theatre. I spent a lot more time than I actually talk about in interviews.

When the second play “Elvira and the Lost Prince” was done in Chicago in 1993 at ETA and I won that playwright’s award, the PDI award. After that, I became part of a think-tank that we have on black theatre. So I got to work with Woody King and Eleanor Traylor and Rob Penny. I got to have social time with folks in the Black Arts Movement and the theatre and that went on for several years. I’m still friends with people out there on the

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Southside. Abena Joan Brown has been one of the most important mother figures in my life. So yeah, I spend a lot of time in theatre but don’t talk about that a whole lot.

RH: To quote from your Beijing address: The Plum Flower Dance is the first in a trilogy of books to deal with trauma. The second book of the trilogy is The Government of Nature, a completed but unpublished manuscript that deals specifically with my abusive childhood and which is arranged according to Daoist and Buddhist principles and sayings. The third book is City of Eternal Spring, a manuscript in progress concerning my experiences in Chinese culture in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong since first going to Taiwan in 2002 as a Fulbright scholar. I was wondering could you expand on this for the purpose if this interview.

AW: The only other time I’ve seen a sequence was when I was going from Water Song to My Father’s Geography to Timber and Prayer. But this time I see it more clearly, because with The Plum Flower Dance, it’s me looking back mostly. There are some new poems in that book; about 30% of that book is new poems. The second book, The Government of Nature goes to the trauma itself. It’s more obviously concerned with trauma and my Chinese spirituality. It’s trauma specific. The third one is turning out to be something where I’m dealing on different platforms, including my recognition of my working class experience being visible over there in the lives of people that I know, poets, who worked in the factory the same time I did. The manuscript is in progress, and I don’t like to talk too much about something that is not complete.

I will say just a few things, but all of this is in the flux of the creative process.

When I left the University of Maryland in 1970, a lot of us in those days had our little red book. We had no idea what was going on in China. We didn’t know. But we had that little red book. And I read that quote from Mao Tse Tung about how the artist should be grounded in the common folk and, of course, I was the common folk.

This third part of the trilogy—some of those poems are coming out in the Writer’s Chronicle along with an interview at some point. But they’re also going to be in Asian American Literary Review with an extensive interview about my Chinese connection. We’re talking about different things in that interview. {Gerald Maw} interviewed me in Los Angeles.

But I’m realizing that this third one is more in-the-moment, as in present-oriented and not looking back and trying to understand the trauma from a chronological look backward. And it’s a lot about me seeing myself, or having my own experience affirmed, in a way, in the lives of people there. So I’m working on that and toying around with the issue of having a few poems in a sequence where you have a black character like Booman goes to Beijing. At the same time this stuff is happening, the black vernacular is presenting itself in whole new ways. Like that chanting poem. I call it “Back Spin of Hope.” I’m getting a whole new take on black vernacular. I’m going to find a way to put it in there. So it’s another kind of wholeness in that third book. That’s what it’s looking like right now. 

Fall 2013 Non-Fiction #1. The Butler: A Witness to History

by Wil Haygood #2. Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove by Ahmir Thompson #3. High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

by Carl Hart #4. The Rejected Stone by Al Sharpton with Nick Chiles #5. Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward #6. Mom & Me and Mom by Maya Angelou #7. It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership by Colin Powell #8. Manology: Secrets of Your Man’s Mind Revealed by Tyrese Gibson, Rev Run #9. Shred: The Revolutionary Diet: 6 Weeks 4 Inches 2 Sizes by Ian K. Smith #10. The Wealth Choice: Success Secrets MosaicMagazine.org 57 of Black Millionaires by Dennis Kimbro

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God’s Graffiti: Inspiring Stories for Teens

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