Mosaic 34 by Mosaic Literary Magazine

WENDY S. WALTERS

EDUCATOR LESSON PLANS

BRIDGETT M. DAVIS

L I T E R A R Y

Fall Winter 2014

M A G A Z I N E

LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING

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Start A Book Club in Your Community With professional instruction from a teaching-artist the We Are Family Book Club engages in a literary â&#x20AC;&#x153;call and responseâ&#x20AC;? by reading and discussing books that reflect institution-defined communities. We create flexible reading and writing programs that meet the needs of a variety of populations including teenagers, after-school, r-school, out-of-school, out-of-schoo and senior r citizens. WeAreFamilyBookClub.com WeAreFamilyBoo ookClub.com wearefamilybookclu wearefamilybookclub@gmail.com lub@gmail.com 347-454-2161

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content

Interviews Bridgett M. Davis by Kim Coleman Foote.................................................... 8 Wendy S. Walters by Justin Allen ................................................................ 22 Excerpt Into the Go-Slow by Bridgett M. Davis ....................................................... 16 Poems Prologue, 1970s by Wendy S. Walters ........................................................ 25 Driveway by Wendy S. Walters ................................................................... 21 West Indian Woman Speaks From the Dead by Samantha Thornhill ........... 30 Kunta Kinte Speaks to a Killer Whale by Samantha Thornhill ...................... 31 Soul People by Edward Toney .................................................................... 32 Black Paste by Edward Toney ..................................................................... 32 Review Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique ....................................... 28 Around Town by photographer Marcia E. Wilson ............................................. 34 Mosaic Lesson Plans ........................................................................................ 42 Piri Thomas' Down These Mean Streets Lesson plan for high-school educators by Eisa Nefertari Ulen 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.

Cover: Angela Davis Johnson, The Apothecary Dream, Mixed media on panel, 30"x 30" in., 2013

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Editor & Publisher Ron Kavanaugh ron@mosaicmagazine.org Mosaic Literary Magazine (ISSN 1531-0388) is published by the Literary Freedom Project. Content copyright ÂŠ 2014. No portion of this magazine can be reprinted or reproduced in any form without prior permission from the publisher. Retail Distribution Publisherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Distribution Group info@pdgmags.com Subscribe online: MosaicMagazine.org 3 Issues: $16.00 Institution Subscriptions EBSCO 1.205.991.6600 WT Cox 1.800.571.9554 Contact the editor We welcome comments. Send e-mails to info@mosaicmagazine.org Visit MosaicMagazine.org for submission guidelines. Colophon Layout Software: Adobe InDesign CS5 Graphic Software: Paint Shop Pro 12 Mast Typeface: Whomp Editorial Typeface: Zapf Humanist Mosaic is made possible with the support of members and subscribers. POSTMASTER Please send address corrections to: Mosaic 314 W. 231 St #470 Bronx, NY 10463

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contributors

Justin Allen is a writer from Northern Virginia. He earned his BA in Literary Studies from Eugene Lang College, The New School and has written for AFROPUNK, The Studio Museum in Harlem’s Studio Blog, and Saint Heron. Allen is also one third of artist collective BD GRMMR, alongside friends Yulan Grant and Brandon Owens. He lives in Brooklyn. Sidik Fofana has written several publication including the Source, Vibe, and allhiphop.com. His work appears in the recently released The Black Male Handbook: Blueprint for Life edited by Kevin Powell. Kim Coleman Foote is a 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. She was a Fulbright Fellow in Ghana, where she conducted research on the slave trade for a novel. Her fiction, essays, and experimental prose have appeared in Obsidian, The Literary Review, The Places We’ve Been: Field Reports from Travelers Under 35, and elsewhere. She has received writing fellowships from the Hambidge Center, Vermont Studio Center, Illinois Arts Council, and Hedgebrook, amongst others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Chicago State University and currently lives in Brooklyn. For more information, visit www.kimcolemanfoote.com. Samantha Thornhill is a performing poet from Trinidad & Tobago. She has been invited to share her versatile works across the US, as well as Europe & Africa. She earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia, and for the past decade has taught poetry to actors at the Juilliard School. She has published her poems in over 17 literary journals and anthologies, as well as two commercial children's books. She is a founding curator of Poets in Unexpected Places.

Edward Toney is a poet and chemist from Brooklyn N.Y. He is a member of the Hot Poets Collective writers group and a Cave Canem workshop participant. Ed has read at numerous open mic and poetry venues throughout New York City, including McNally Jackson Bookstore, Calypso Muse, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Bowery Poetry Club, Dwyer Cultural Center, Soulsweet Sanctuary, and The Glitter Pomegranate reading series. His work has been published in African Voices, Of fire, of Iron chapbook, and Young Mens Perspective. He is currently working on his first poetry manuscript entitled, Nicks in the Tongue. 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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Bridgett M. Davis insists she’s “so not a Superwoman” but rather a careful planner. That, she says, is how she has successfully held several demanding careers in three decades. She wrote and directed the award-winning indie film, Naked Acts, worked as a newspaper reporter, and is currently Professor of Journalism at Baruch College, CUNY, in New York City.

by Kim Coleman Foote

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Davis's second novel, released this September by The Feminist Press, is Into the Go-Slow, a saga of two sisters in 1980s Detroit and Nigeria. Bridgett’s first novel, Shifting Through Neutral, was a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist. Time Out has hailed her one of “10 New York Authors to Read Right Now.” While the “so-not-a-Superwoman” assertion can be contested, as you can see, I would hope that Bridgett agrees that she’s been a trailblazer as well as a role model for women who struggle to balance work—especially in the arts—with family (yes, Bridgett is a wife and mother too!). Not to mention that she lives up to being a “good literary citizen,” in that she’s helped organize ringShout, a group that promotes black literature, amongst other pursuits. I first met Bridgett this spring at the PEN World Voices Festival, where she discussed Into the Go-Slow during the panel, Bad Women: When Women Break the Rules. I was intrigued by more than just the panel’s premise. Bridgett explained that the novel follows two complex black female characters: sisters from Detroit. There is Ella, who overcomes drug addiction and dives into journalism with a feminist angle in Nigeria, only to meet a tragic ending. There is her younger sister Angie, who follows in Ella’s footsteps, trying to recapture Ella’s life while pushing through her grief. Because I write fiction and memoir about historical and contemporary Africa and love reading books set in Africa, I eagerly awaited the novel’s publication. I’ve been overjoyed by the recent explosion of publications in the U.S. by African fiction writers, especially since the de-

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mise of the Heinemann African Writers Series, but I’ve yearned for more stories about how those of us in the Diaspora experience Africa. As in my case, Bridgett’s fiction was informed by her personal experiences there in her early 20s. She explored women-centered journalism there on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which funds a year of travel abroad. I was fortunate to catch Bridgett just before the start of her very busy book tour, to ask about her beginnings as a writer, her many creative ventures, the new novel, and why Nigeria—which she hasn’t returned to since the 80s—has captured her thoughts for so long. Kim Coleman Foote: When did you start writing fiction? Bridgett M. Davis: I’ve been writing stories since I was a child. I can remember creating little plays and having my friends act them out. The first real short story I wrote was in 7th or 8th grade. The first line was, “The scent of cherry blossoms permeated the air as Lucretia Jackson strolled along the wide streets of Washington, DC.” I still remember so vividly the excitement of crafting a world from a mashup of real-life and make-believe. Later, I wrote a short story in college that received an award, and that small validation cemented my desire to write fiction. I didn’t commit to creative writing, however, until I quit my job as a newspaper reporter in Philly, packed up a UHaul, and moved to New York. That’s when I made the choice to freelance so that I could carve out time to write a novel. People thought I’d had a nervous breakdown— [that was] the only way folks could explain why I’d left a

good job at a major daily to become unemployed! KCF: And look at everything that’s resulted! Do you have any literary heroes (writers as well as characters)? BMD: My number one literary hero is Louise Meriwether. My sister put her coming-of-age novel, Daddy Was a Number Runner, into my hands when I was 10 or 11, and nothing was ever the same for me. Suddenly I understood that little black girls like me could exist in fiction, that little girls like me were worthy of stories that placed them at the center, that little black girls like me could narrate their own stories. I’m sure on some visceral level I decided to become a writer once I read that book. The protagonist in Number Runner is an 11-year-old girl named Francie Coffin, growing up in 1930s Harlem, and she was definitely my first character hero. She was tough and smart and vulnerable and funny. I just loved her. There have been more literary heroes along the way. Not surprisingly, Toni Morrison is one. Sula is still an alltime favorite character for me. Her independence and sense of self as a black female were astonishing to find between the pages of a book. Gabriel Marquez, Louise Erdrich, Marilynne Robinson, Kathryn Harrison, and Arundhati Roy are all writers of whom I am in awe—each for different reasons. I read the novels of each when I was at a particular point in my own journey as a writer, and so each gave me a certain gift of craft, but really more so of possibility.

The one book I reread every few years is Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Everything about that book is a tour-deforce—the changing POVs, the structure, the pacing, the way characters speak, the deep sense of place. KCF: How did you decide on Africa and particularly Nigeria, for your Watson Fellowship? BMD: Africa felt like the most logical and natural choice. I’d been reading novels by African writers ever since taking a college course in contemporary West African lit, and so the continent already loomed large in my imagination. I wanted to see African life as I’d read about it in the work of Achebe and Emecheta and Aidoo. And while I had no interest per se in discovering my own roots, I loved the idea of visiting the continent where my ancestors originated. Given the chance to visit anywhere in the world, I chose Africa—no second choice. Plus I was already committed to journalism as a career and decided I’d study African media women. I learned that the countries with the most active organizations for women in media were Kenya and Nigeria, so I went to both. I also spent time in London and Paris, doing research at the University of London’s SOAS and UNESCO. KCF: Why do you think Nigeria has had such an influence on you for so long? BMD: Lagos is such an unforgettable place, first of all. It’s boisterous and flashy and messy and willful and complicated and just endlessly fascinating. Also, the impact it had on me was a confluence of my own impression-

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able age and the place itself at that moment in time. We were both young—Nigeria was barely 25 years away from independence—and both still filled with possibility and potential. The way I felt about my own life gelled with the way Nigerians felt about their country; I felt a common sense of hope and anxiousness, and it endeared me to the place and to the people I met there. Also, exposure to a different culture—to a different type of black culture—was so eye-opening to me as someone who’d grown up black in America. Being there helped me foment a sense of my own global identity outside of the US definition (I was more than a black American) even as it helped me understand my American-ness. I felt a kind of dissonance, but a happy one. KCF: In Into the Go-Slow, Angie and Ella more or less blended in physically on the continent (I was jealous!!). I could imagine that you yourself were mistaken for Fulani in Nigeria. Can you talk about how this contributed to your personal experience, if at all? BMD: Yes, people would often tell me I looked Fulani, that I was Fulani. I must say that I was surprised at how good that felt! Even though I had no conscious need to know my “roots,” I loved hearing that I looked as though I belonged to a certain tribe. Thinking about it later, I realized the depth of our need to belong, and the traumatic, collective loss for black Americans robbed of knowing from whence we came. That’s why these days, ancestry sites and DNA testing

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are so popular. It’s a fundamental, innate desire to want to know your origins. KCF: Knowing more about your motivations for going to Africa is really insightful, because Into the Go-Slow isn’t the “quest for roots” story readers might expect. Angie is on a heritage quest of sorts as she tries to recreate Ella’s life in Nigeria, but neither she nor Ella seemed to yearn for an ancestral connection. Was this a conscious choice? BMD: It was both a conscious and unconscious choice. I never felt compelled to tell the “finding your roots” story because I wanted to create African-American characters who experienced Africa the way I had—as a contemporary place with a complex, fascinating cultural history. A place that existed on its own terms, not as a backdrop for my characters’ personal identity crisis. The young women in my novel do not go to Africa to find themselves; they go there in order to be more themselves. Of course, Angie and Ella do each connect to their African heritage in an organic way, as a kind of byproduct of simply being there and engaging the culture. KCF: A few times in the novel, Angie questions what it means to “be black in the world.” Yet, it seemed to me that her ultimate challenge was to discover what it means to be Angie, since she virtually lived four years of her life through Ella. Can you talk more about Angie’s conception of “blackness” and why it mattered so much to her in 1980s Detroit? BMD: I believe that for all African-Americans, the ques-

tion of how to be black in the world is intertwined with self-identity because it’s about how you move through the world, and the choices you make. It’s about the lens through which you see yourself. You’re a human being with an internal life, and you’re also part of a continuum of blackness in this country. How will you self-identify? Are you part of the tribe, or are you a unique individual? Ideally, we could be both, but it’s tricky because we live in such a race-conscious society. Our blackness is always apparent, and as such, assumptions are always made about us. Most of us find ourselves with a foot in each world, living a double consciousness as Du Bois spoke of, code-switching when necessary. That’s a complex way of being that can take years to comfortably inhabit. Angie is just coming to understand that complexity. She comes of age on the heels of the Black Power, Civil Rights, Black Arts, and Pan-African movements that gave many blacks a way to self-identify. She has no such easily identifiable movement to join. What she sees are aging activists and Buppies. So who is she? Because she hasn’t quite figured that out, she clings to a nostalgia for those earlier movement days. You can understand why; it seems so much easier! And so, Angie has to figure out how to be black in the world—separate and apart from how her sister chose to be—in order to figure out how to be herself. Like writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has said, “I had to be a nationalist before I could be a humanist.” KCF: The novel portrays the complexities and contradictions of Nigerian society: wealth and technology rub shoulders with poverty and poorly planned infrastruc-

This novel was, in its way, more autobiographical than my first novel, Shifting Through Neutral. I actually used excerpts from my journals to help me recall experiences in Nigeria and to create characters and scenes. And yet, the plot is fiction. MosaicMagazine.org

ture, and corruption, bribery, and American influences (MJ!) abound. Angie also looks to 1970s Nigeria with nostalgia, though those who lived through it busted that bubble. In a way, Detroit is Lagos’s counterpart: a once thriving black metropolis on the decline. I thought this was a fitting comparison. BMD: I always saw Detroit and Lagos as mirror images of one another. I often would tell people that to understand Detroit, you should think of it as a small African country abandoned by its colonizers, imploding from poor self-rule, and then ostracized and blamed by the rest of the world for not thriving. It’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,” American-style. KCF: Wow! BMD: That said, there are many differences between the two places, of course. I haven’t been to Lagos in two decades, but I can tell you this about Detroit: It’s going into bankruptcy, yes, but it’s still a major city of nearly 700,000 residents. You cannot generalize about that many people, no matter how many times the media focuses on images of ruin porn. The city was neglected by our government on every level, so yes it has [a large percentage of] poor residents with few options, [but] it also has activists, public servants, hipster arrivals, teachers, artists, homesteaders, and longtime residents who refuse to give up. The city is transforming and becoming that new kind of American city—smaller, gentrified, and what the sociologist Thomas Segrue calls a victim of “trickle down urbanism.” Working-class folks are not benefiting from the “revital-

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ization.” And Detroit is just the canary in the coal mine. People need to understand that their own cities are next. KCF: There are many similarities between Angie, Ella, and you. You grew up in Detroit and pursued womenfocused journalism in Nigeria in the 80s. Your uncle trained horses too, and you experienced the loss of your sister, to whom you dedicated the novel. Did writing the novel help you gain insights about yourself or your own experience in Nigeria? BMD: This novel was, in its way, more autobiographical than my first novel, Shifting Through Neutral. I actually used excerpts from my journals to help me recall experiences in Nigeria and to create characters and scenes. And yet, the plot is fiction. For instance, my sister died from an embolism, not from a car accident. She never traveled to Nigeria. But her death certainly still haunts me, and writing this book gave me a way to explore my own grief and explore who I was in the aftermath of her death. My central question was: Who are you when the person you’ve defined yourself against is gone? And yes, I got to figure out what my experiences in Nigeria actually meant, lo these many years later. With context and hindsight and Google, I got a chance to deepen my understanding of what was happening to that young, naïve woman back then. That was a thrilling process. KCF: Okay, so I’m excited to know: did you ever see the legendary Fela perform, like your characters did? BMD: I never met Fela [personally], but I did spend time in his club, the legendary Africa Shrine. I can recall being

so near the stage that I could see the muscles tense in his neck as he blew his horn. He was so mesmerizing! I also saw him perform on the University of Lagos campus, amidst a throng of enthralled college students. What was so astonishing to me, even then, was the love and respect young Nigerians had for him. He really was Africa’s rock star, and ironically, for many years Americans didn’t even know who he was. KCF: Well, now in New York, at least, Fela seems like a household name since the musical and now the new documentary on his life. And Afrobeat-themed parties are on the rise! Do you have any plans to go back to Nigeria in the near future? BMD: Now that the book is done, I’d love to return to Nigeria. I specifically chose not to while I was working on the novel because I wanted to retain my memories of 1980s Nigeria. That was important to me. KCF: Your film, Naked Acts, and Into the Go-Slow both deal with characters’ weight struggles. All three of your creative works deal with tensions between a mother and daughter and between sisters. Why do you think you’re drawn to these themes? BMD: Family tensions fascinate me, in part, because I grew up in such a loving household. I’m sure we were as dysfunctional as any American family, but with a tremendous overlay of expressed love. I do not agree with Tolstoy, that every happy family is happy in the same way. And so, I’m endlessly fascinated by imperfect households where family members love and disappoint one

another in equal measure. I have little interest in stories about black life that place pathology and meanness at their center. Not my experience, and not my thing. The interest in women with weight issues comes from my own family. My sisters and my mother were all overweight. From some luck-of-the-metabolism-draw, I didn’t struggle with weight. I feel as though that has given me a unique perspective and sensitivity to how stereotyped and misrepresented large black women can be in the culture. So I guess you could say I’m taking aim at that. KCF: How has your background in journalism and film influenced your fiction? BMD: I’m so grateful for my journalism and film background. Film writing forces you to respect structure and paradigms, even as it emphasizes visual storytelling. And journalism makes you unafraid of rewriting, research, and editorial critique. All of that combined has been vital to my evolution as a novelist. KF: So…you’re a fiction writer, journalist, wife, mother, filmmaker, professor, and…?? Sounds like the quintessential “Superwoman” life. How do you prioritize, and what’s your secret to making time for writing? BMD: I’m so not a Superwoman! The things I’ve done sound impressive when you list them, but the truth is I’ve done these things across three decades. I do subscribe to that philosophy that you can do it all, just not all at the continued on page 36

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excerpt

ANGIE’S EARLIEST MEMORY: SHE IS AT THE TRACK WITH her father and Ella. She is three, sitting atop a milk crate, wrapped in a warm blanket, the smell of coffee and manure and hay under her nose. She sits stock-still and watches as Ella rides a horse, Butterscotch, around the empty track, their father walking beside her, rubbing the chestnut gelding’s rump. She wants to be on a horse too, and she calls out to them, “I wanna ride! I wanna ride!” but her tiny voice gets lost in the treeless wind. Either that, or they ignore her.

Into the G0-Slow by Bridgett M. Davis The Feminist Press at CUNY

She tried hiding, crawling under the bleachers, determined to make them think she’d gone missing. But they didn’t come looking for her and finally she left her hiding place, returned to her spot on the bleachers, and watched her big sister and daddy circle the track again and again, still hoping for a turn. “You gotta squeeze tight,” their father said to Ella. “Until you feel her heartbeat in your own legs.” Another day. More riding lessons. The giant saucer of a track stretched out in revolutions, kicked-up dust hazy in the early morning light. Butterscotch stood erect beside their father as he held the reins. The night before, the entire family had watched this horse race with elegant speed, lithe rider crouched above in a perfect arc, Butterscotch’s slim ankles a blur of motion. She came in third. “You cannot show hesitation,” said their father. “You gotta show her that you trust her above all else. You trust her with your life. She’s trusting you with hers.”

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Angie was in nursery school, too young to ride the horses. But she wanted to know that feeling her father described. Of pure trust. She watched in awe as he climbed onto the penny-colored horse and galloped off. He was the size of a jockey himself with his small frame, short stature. Angie wondered had he ever done that, raced horses rather than train them.

Their father shook his head as she made her way around the first bend. “She has no patience,” he said. “She wants everything right away.” And when Ella rode back up, he put his hand out for her to climb down, and said, “Don’t try to tell her what to do. Guide her, but don’t try to control her.” He laughed. “You may be smart, girl, but you can’t outsmart a horse.”

Just Angie, Ella and Daddy, together. Denise hated nearly everything about the racetrack. She hated the ever-shitting horses and their startling neighs, the harsh-looking grooms and exercise boys with their dirty dungarees and stinky stall smell. Their mother loved the races themselves, but beyond that didn’t need to see more, not at this point thank you.

FOR AS LONG as she could remember, Angie spent her weekend days at the raceway alongside her father and Ella. Adele, the secretary in the front office, the exercise boys, the stable-hands, the jocks, the hangers-on, everyone knew her father, each greeting him brightly as they passed by, “Hey, Mr. Mackenzie!” Angie could get whatever she wanted from the concession stand—hot chocolate and pizza and popcorn—and just say, “I’m Samson Mackenzie’s daughter,” and she paid for nothing. After he’d done his work, her father would walk them along the shed row, pointing out each horse’s potential and peculiarities. “This one here, Whisper, she’s a sweetheart.” He stroked her nose. “But she needs a sugar cube every time to motivate her.” And at the next stall, “Now Shadowboxer, he’s a good one. Will do whatever you ask of him. Whatever.” He moved on to yet another stall. “And Double or Nothing, she got the right name ‘cause she been all nothing. I’m waiting on the double.”

When their father returned from his lap around the track, he climbed off Butterscotch and Ella climbed on. He studied her closely as she rode around. Angie envied her sister as she watched her lean in low, chest rubbing against the horse’s back. Ella hadn’t discovered the diet pills yet, and her wide, strong thighs spread across the sweat-stained saddle. “You look good up there,” their father told Ella. “You look a little heavy on her, though. Gotta get some of that weight off.” His words hanging there, Ella kicked the horse’s haunches and took off, bouncing up and down clumsily as Butterscotch ran around the inside track. Angie winced when Ella slapped harder at the horse’s rump.

Angie held her father’s rough hand, and as he rubbed the horses behind their ears and patted them between the eyes, she felt his bliss. These were as much his children as she and Ella and Denise were. Swishing tails and soft snorts punctuated the quiet, and the sweet smell from straw beds and oats engulfed her. Behind every stall’s

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door was an enchanted little world for horse lovers. She wished her father the horseman was inside a children’s book, so she could share him with her friends. But he needed a winner. He hadn’t had a horse pay a big purse since Thumbsucker. That horse was a mythical figure to Angie. He’d won the state’s version of the Kentucky Derby, the Michigan Mile, years before she was born. “A horse trainer is only as good as his winners,” Samson would say to Nanette, worry in his voice. “You’re one of a handful of Negro trainers in the country,” Nanette would tell him. “That means something, Samson.” He’d told the girls his story: Been in the horse life since he was in short pants. Skipped school to hang around horses at the state fairgrounds. Ran away from home at thirteen to be part of that life. Took off with a horseman who gave him his first job, cleaning horseshoes, shoveling shit. He spent many a year working as an exerciser, taking the horses out on the track, let¬ting them stretch out. He was a man of thirty and still the men he worked for called him “boy.” “That there Niggra over there, now he’s my exercise boy. Hard worker.” Times when, running horses on southern tracks, places with no motels for coloreds, he slept in barns at night, bunching together the hay into straw pallets. Moved his family north, worked long hours at Hazel Park Raceway, got noticed for his intuition. Convinced a cou¬ple owners to trust him, got them decent wins, and finally hung out his shingle, “Samson Mackenzie Stables.” It was a hard life. Staying up nights worrying about a sick

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horse, ever fearful of one dropping dead, tough conversations with irate owners. And a life on the road, one that Angie came to believe cost him, the way it kept him from his wife and girls. Six months at the track in Florida every year, then six months at Detroit’s track, with short stints to other tracks across the country. Keeping tabs, scouting, ever searching for the perfect Thoroughbred for his picky owners. “You can do something else for a while,” their mother said. “Like what? Set up in some factory, putting left doors on Mustangs or Cadillacs?” said Samson. “I’d rather die first.” It was a hard life, and he would never give it up. He loved it. Saturday morning, a sunny day not long after they’d pumped Ella’s stomach. She’s atop Nightshade, a dark brown horse with sandy-colored circles just above her haunches and white socks on her legs. They’re done for the day and Nightshade trots slowly off the track, Angie and their father walking beside her. A man stalks toward them, obviously an owner—tall, mid¬dle-aged, white, wearing his air of privilege and presumption like a tight vest. “Samson, you and me need to talk.” “How you doing, Mr. Jamison?” Samson asks, taking in the man’s body language. “Nightshade here is looking good,” he says, rubbing her nose.

“Not to me she ain’t, goddamnit.” He nods toward the horse. “I wanna know what’s up with the bitch? Coming in fourth in that last race, now what is that about? Might as well got claimed. I paid for a Thoroughbred, and you told me that’s what I got. You didn’t lie to me now, did you?” “Ain’t nothing to lie about,” says Samson. “Only problem you got with her is you running her too much.” “Hell, what I’m gon’ wait for, huh? I want my money’s worth. I bought her to run her.” Their father nods. “She will do right by you if you let her rest up a bit. She don’t have the same stamina as these younger ones. She’s a good horse, ain’t peaked yet or nothing. She needs time to recover between races is all.” “I don’t know, Samson. I trusted you, didn’t I? Friends say, ‘What you doing with a colored as your trainer?’ But I said, ‘Nah, this here is 1970; I believe he can handle it.’ Now I’m wondering.” He pauses. “You not one of them lying niggas, are you?” At the sound of that word, Ella abruptly turns Nightshade back toward the track and takes off, startling Mr. Jamison. “What the—” Nightshade and Ella glide around the half-mile track with precision, the horse’s graceful legs angled like a dancer’s. Their father’s look of worry shifts to elation. He whistles. “I will be damned!”

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Ella takes the track with a confidence she’d never shown before. She grips the reins just so, leans in on the corners and rises up from the saddle at the stretch. Angie cheers her on in her head, Go, Go! One lap. Please do it right. Two laps. Don’t mess up! Third lap and Ella returns, hair blown back. Nightshade gallops up to them, stops at attention, proud. Yay!

“I feel like I’m gonna—”

“Mr. Jamison,” says Ella, out of breath. “You got an amaz¬ing racehorse here, and if you don’t want her anymore, let me know. I can think of a few people who’d be happy to take her off your hands.”

No one would know for years, but Ella had fasted for three days, living on water and a daily carrot she shared every morn¬ing with Nightshade. She was determined to keep the figure her father had praised her for.

Mr. Jamison shields his eyes from the sun as he looks up at her. “I’ll keep that in mind, young gal.” He turns to their father. “Let’s see how things go, Samson. I’m a set tight for a spell.” He nods his head toward Ella. “Look like you got you a jockey in the family.”

“Wait ‘til you see her!” Samson told his wife later, bedroom door flung open for all to hear. “She’s got it. She’s got that thing that a jockey’s gotta have. I’m telling you, she can do this. Long as she don’t get much taller, and she stays the same size, she can do this.”

Mr. Jamison turns, walks off, his dress shoes crunching the gravel. Ella climbs off Nightshade and their father takes her into his arms, lifts her off her feet as he swings her around. He can’t stop grinning. “Unbelievable!” he gushes. He whistles again.

“I want her to do something respectable with her life,” said Nanette. “Something clean and upstanding. I don’t want her to spend her days at one dirty racetrack after another, all kinds of men lurking about. And I certainly don’t want her getting run over by a horse, lose her life in some freak accident.”

Marveling at her father’s joy, Angie is suddenly furious. Why wasn’t he hugging her, swinging her around? “You look damn good out there, girl!” He shakes his head, still grinning. “Looking like a jockey if I ever seen one!” They lead Nightshade back to her stall, reward her with water, extra oats. But suddenly Ella grabs on to her father.

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She faints, tumbling onto the hay. Their father runs to the first aid kit he keeps in his cluttered cubbyhole office and grabs smelling salts, puts it under her nose. As she watches Ella regain consciousness, four-year-old Angie feels a fresh pang of guilt over her jealousy.

“Do you hear what I’m saying?” Samson was exasperated. “The girl has a gift! She could be the first colored female jockey! That’s as respectable as they come.” “She’s got a brilliant mind,” said Nanette. “I want her to use it.” “You don’t think it takes brilliance to ride a horse to vic-

tory? You don’t think that requires a high level of intelligence?” “You know what I mean, Samson. Don’t try to mix up my words.” “Imagine it! She’ll be in Ebony, a whole spread, her posing on top of a fine-looking horse, trophy in hand. Can’t you see that?” He paused, looking at the imaginary magazine feature. “I see it clear as day.” “I’m just worried about you pushing her into it,” said Nanette. “That’s because you haven’t seen her ride! Going at it like she got a hunger she can’t satisfy. And I know all about that, how you get them horses up inside you and you just can’t stay away. She loves it, Nan. She downright loves it.” “What she loves is pleasing you,” said their mother. “And I’m here to tell you Samson, that’s not the same thing.” ANGIE AND DENISE grew up hearing family lore about Ella: how she walked at eight months, talked in full sentences by her first birthday, and could read a book by age three. Those facts made Angie feel that whatever she did, she couldn’t compete, could never catch up, had already blown it before she was out of toddlerhood. When Nanette took Ella to be tested, the psychologist said she had the highest IQ he’d ever seen in a Negro girl. Each time she told the story years later, burnishing it over time, their mother shook her head, as if marveling anew at the mind of her oldest daughter. But any-

one who listened knew she was really bragging. She was proud of Ella, certain she’d be a first. She’d be the first one in the family to go to college, the first to have a professional career. Maybe the first Afro-American female in Michigan to become a psychiatrist, a judge, or a US congress¬woman, like Shirley Chisholm. Who could say? She’d be living proof that migrating north had been worth it, that given the opportunity, a child of two southern blacks with slight edu¬cation could achieve greatness. She’d make every indignity her mother and father faced at the hands of a hostile white world worth it. And then there were the tales of Ella’s bottomless hunger, her insatiable appetite for something once she fixated on it. How she ate oatmeal every day for one year, refusing to eat any¬thing else. How she discovered Nancy Drew mysteries in third grade, and devoured them so steadily, reading them through the night, that her mother had to talk to the librarian at the local branch, ask her not to loan any more of the series to Ella, who’d developed dark circles under her eyes. How she became obsessed with her first two-wheeler, had to ride it to school daily, threw a tantrum when their mother wouldn’t let her ride it in four-feet-high snow. The aunties, her father’s sisters, had some of the best family tales about Ella. The aunties had taken care of their brother’s child from the time she was five until she was seven. They called her Daughter. They’d ply her with a heaping of butter beans or fried chicken or smothered cabbage and watch her eat. Every time they dumped more food on her plate, she ate it all. “Had enough?” they’d ask, in unison. “Had enough?” And on continued on page 39

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WENDY S. WALTERS TROY, MICHIGAN by JUSTIN ALLEN

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How might sonnets about a suburb’s past incite conversations on racism? While poetry may seem inadequate to many at achieving this feat, Wendy S. Walters’s Troy, Michigan takes significant strides toward undoing this perception. Even the most mundane of rationale falls into question: “Back then a fear of strangers did not feel / small-minded. Too many outsiders lived / in neighborhoods. Why not predict trouble / from mixing?” Walters’s preceding volume, Longer I Wait, More You Love Me (2009), found the writer engaged with the long poem and experimental narrative structure. In Troy, her use of the prose sonnet to grapple with history, psychology, and autobiography further exhibits her ambition and dexterity. Ten-syllable lines set pace as each poem streams by cinematically, excited by action but contained within its perimeters. Walters places characters into landscapes and, with the characters, the landscapes move: Leaves on tall boughs make the sound of applause in the distance. When rain bends trees, here comes longing. A girl studies the plot of these woods for proof of her feelings--a tangled, shadowy boscage, the creekbed’s stalled mud. Each section acts similarly to the sonnet’s constraints, providing order to the steep project of considering a history of one of De-

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troit’s suburbs. Themes include mythology--a reference to Troy’s Greco-Roman name--the town’s founding, city planning, geography, and the biographical.

was actually named after Troy, New York--not the Greek city, but the town in upstate New York, a very small, sturdy industrial town.

As discussions on racism in the United States prove imperative--and their absence, dangerous--the scope of the work is only fitting. In engaging the history of her hometown, Walters grapples with a piece of American history, and the history that informs the complexities of our present. All of us, indeed, have stories to tell, and Troy, Michigan shows us that to document means to take action.

There was nothing that auspicious about Troy when I lived there. It was becoming itself. A lot of the major roads that are there now were dirt roads. Now they’re multi-lane.

Justin Allen: You grew up in Troy, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. What’s the city’s relationship to its suburbs? Wendy S. Walters: The suburbs of Detroit tended to be more affluent than Detroit proper, at least during the time I write about in the 1970s and 80s. Detroit had an African American mayor, Coleman Young, and it was coming out of the haze from 1967 Detroit riot, which meant there was a movement of white people out of the city and into the suburbs. Troy was one suburb about 15 to 20 minutes away from the city. It was rapidly building up. A lot of people lived there who worked in the auto industry. JA: In the book, you engage Troy’s history as well as reference its Greco-Roman name. Though a small place, its history and even its name outsize its contemporary profile. WSW: In my research I found out that Troy, Michigan

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JA: You also write about the woods. Were the woods being knocked down as well? WSW: Yes. There were woods behind our house and clusters of trees all over the town. Kids would wander from their houses, build forts out of fallen trees and things we found at construction sites. This changed after the murders happened. JA: You write about these murders and the crisis caused by who is known as the Oakland County Child Killer. You also touch on how these murders contributed to racial tension in the area. WSW: There were other abductions of younger women in towns around us, which were attributed to anonymous Black men. Increasing unemployment in the area gave way to a fear of violence bubbling over from the city. At the same time, a lot of Black people associated with the automobile industry were moving into the suburbs. These were college-educated people who wanted their kids to be in excellent public school systems. This cre-

ated another level of anxiety. Sometimes these people were more affluent than the neighbors they were moving in with, which didn’t make sense to those with more provincial ideas about race and class. Fear Look at them looking like they don’t know how they look. Why don’t they just stay where they stay? Or drag sideways across our fields, come at us zigzag over the rows we cut. We made a place they know they should not stay for a reason. They were nothing back when we started from nothing, or we could not have worked so hard to be right. They never do what they need to do to be right. Who knows? Someone might kill one. We tell them this if they don’t run. Come on, try us, we say. A city grows over the rows we cut. Then they come at us. We stay for reasons. They don’t understand right the way we do. JA: In the persona poem “Fear” you speak in the voice of one of these more provincial-minded neighbors. What inspired this gesture? WSW: It’s difficult for me to understand how people cannot see me as a person. I was trying to inhabit this space, to think about what it feels like to live in a community insulated from broader conversations about foreigners or strangers, and then to suddenly have to deal with it. There’s a certain level where I try to understand that anxiety, and there’s a also place I can’t get to.

JA: In the poem “Founding” you traverse over a hundred years, from the town’s 19th century beginnings to the 20th century emergence of suburbs. You do so with a crown of sonnets: seven sonnets, the last line of each the first of the following; the first line of the first sonnet the last line of the last sonnet. WSW: One poet that does sonnet crowns really well is Patricia Smith. I admire her ambition with them because, though lines repeat, they feel surprising when heard in a different context. For me, trying to tell the history of personalities in a small town was a challenge--how do you make it compelling to someone who’s not from there? I hoped the unity and momentum created by the sonnet crown would raise that local history to a slightly mythic level even though, in plain fact, the details don’t seem remarkable. JA: A lot of the poems in the book feel mystical despite engaging factual histories. Is this intentional? WSW: Sonnets are magical in that the information you put into them at the beginning can be as rational as you want, but something happens in the volta that switches the poem into a more mystical place, no matter how grounded you were when you started it. Sonnets are almost like little pieces of technology. JA: Reading, I found parallels between a sonnet’s formal limitations and a suburb’s geographical and social limitations. WSW: I thought a lot about the movement that happens

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"As a writer I speak, so there’s more risk involved in the portrait of the “I.” The “writer,” in third person, is the one who manipulates the story and determines what parts are told. I could have written solely from memory, but I didn’t feel that introduced opportunities to discuss the subject matter, so I fragmented the acting agent into three different parts."

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Prologue, 1970s Imagine you love sky enough to embrace snow in right neighborhoods outside one gray city. The tension between here and there sets your expectation of distance. This suburb wrangles a type. Maybe you know them. Maybe you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care who you tell. That is the hope and question. To start, take a shortcut through the woods. Feel the desire for safety as you unfold the map. You are almost home but not allowed to care where it is. Try to find the clearing. Houses along turning roads, each a false fortress, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fit together. Disquiet serves as the provocation, the lesson.

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within the grid of a suburban map. But also, the movement in someone’s subdivision, or yard, or house. The house may look like all the others on the block, but it has its own narrative and story within it. I thought about the way a sonnet appears: there’s much more happening in them than one would assume by simply glancing.

speak. As a writer I speak, so there’s more risk involved in the portrait of the “I.” The “writer,” in third person, is the one who manipulates the story and determines what parts are told. I could have written solely from memory, but I didn’t feel that introduced enough opportunities to discuss the subject matter, so I fragmented the acting agent into three different parts.

Character Because I was wrong to bring up the past, the writer has drawn a version of me that insists on being subject rather than implement. Please think of her face instead of your own if you want to empathize with my error. Maybe you see her drift through the atmosphere, trying to arrest our pursuit of insight. She will not harm your memories if you let the writer mock your need to express awkward feelings. The writer illustrates our girl’s worries as a wall of windows. Look out. See how she waves as she walks up the road? She wants you to join her, but you can’t catch up. JA: You also explore limitations of writing about the self. The work engages the lyrical “I” as well as the characters of the “writer” and “our girl,” both in third person singular. Reading, it’s clear to me that, though three characters, they all signify one individual. WSW: I think about this history in different ways. I think of myself as a character moving through school and through a neighborhood as a six-year-old girl. There’s an innocence to this character because she doesn’t really

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What was important for me was to not talk about racism only, but to talk about racism as a function of xenophobia and a function of design--to think about opportunities we have to diminish that disconnection people feel through design by rethinking the way houses are lined up, rethinking the way space is carved out in an open landscape. JA: In writing about design and geography, how do you produce affect from the inanimate? WSW: Blueprints leave evidence of what we thought was important at the time they were created. Places shape us, but most of the time they do so in such a gentle way, we don’t realize we’re made from them. ★

Driveway The approach to the house imitates one flat piece of rock. But you own this road. It dead-ends at a yard as if stopping by reflex answers the same intention as building home. Fabrication invites , trespass while neighbors admire your lot from over there. Enough distance allows romances with other peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trouble. Arguments fly from their houses. A string tightens then breaks, one more lost kite. To stand on this slab of slag and fly ash means you have no perspective. The world might be what you expected, benign as providence. Wait here. Everything is coming to you.

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review

Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique Riverhead Books Reviewed by Sidik Fofana Sometimes when a young writer of color is compared to Zora Neale Hurston, it has little bearing on the writer's actual style. Ethnic fiction is so diminished when placed next to its hegemonic counterpart that its palette seems limited. How can one accurately describe a new writer's style when the list of references does not stretch much further than Morrison, Wright, Ellison, Baldwin, and Hurston? The only solace is with these comparisons—like Tiphanie Yanique to Zora Neale Hurston—the critics have their hearts in the right place. If not entirely accurate, they speak at the basest level to the resonance of the work. In Land of Love and Drowning, two sisters from a wellbred clan, are forced to bear the tragic death of their father, sea captain, Owen Arthur Bradshaw and the dramatic class demotion that accompanies it. They unceremoniously go from pampered to paupered, a transition much like their native Virgin Islands' which swordlessly transfers from Dutch to American rule in 1917. The novel chronicles the stately Eeona and much younger and fiery Annette as they navigate the fits and starts of independent life without status. Their bottled existences become subject to the whims of the men around them. The women's magnetism becomes their only gateway to emancipation. As Eeona puts, "Beauty is a parlour trick."

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It is a mythical Virgin Islands that Yanique has chosen to portray, by magical realist feint along the way. Sea people and apparitions inhabit Anegada, the island's northernmost tip. Incest and divine beauty pervade. The territory invokes justice in its own waters, unravels secrets at its own pace with invisible wisdom. Women are imbued with their own supernature in the form of silver pubic hair and clubbed feet. We see why many writers rely on these fantastical leanings. Yanique has created a parablesque world ruled by morals and metaphor. If the Zora Neale Hurston comparisons are warranted, they would apply to Annette's chapter. As the younger sister, she is born post-fortune into the working class Caribbean stratus that endows her pidgin. Her speech is sprinkled with "ains" and "sameselfs" that give the novel an audio authenticity. The novel features four different perspectives: an omnipresent roving eye, buttressed by firsthand chapters from each sister and the occasional interjection by their half-brother Jacob. Yanique prefers to languish in the quiet moments. She is not so much concerned with blockbuster plot points, graphic deaths, or pornographically delineated sex scenes. She is more interested with the moments leading up to or arising shortly after. This predilection slightly bogs down the novel's pacing, but also allows Yanique to showcase her poetic sensibilities. Lyrical and sprawling, Land of Love and Drowning elegantly balances fact and legend. It is the sepia-tone story of love and justice that firmly roots Yanique as a voice to be reckoned with—one that transcends the island her birth. ★

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West Indian Woman Speaks From the Dead

Is five years now I dead and my husband does still go to the old years fete with them good looks that beat all cockfight. Surrounded by his old time partners— stink mouth men full of old talk— he sip his ponchacreme as they talk talk talk like they eat parrot bottom! Smelling of sweet soap and bay rum, vein full of barbadine and beat pan, my husband so short, you could drink soup on he head! And he could win any limbo contest in Port of Spain with a back straight as bamboo shoot! Ay! Ay! I see Mags Carmichael in the corner over so giving he plenty sweet eye, still thinking he go want she with that breath like stinking toe! And the rest of the widows circling he like the blades of a windmill, wagging they bamsees like force ripe schoolgirls as he shuffle he foot to old time Calypso, sway he hips to Parang and close he eye to all my favorite tunes. But watch he, nuh. He must still love me too bad.

Everybody think he forget me because he never visit my grave but does come to every lime, hair slick back like a Dougla and shoes well shine. Let the cock bottom widows think he does come to watch them wine they waists and dance like oil in a hot pan. Cause my husband damn well know I eh never miss a good fete a day in my life, and something as stupid as death will not change that! Just a few ticks till the New Year, and I know he waiting for me to come and dance with he like in the earlies—on like boil corn. I see he standing up so in the middle of the fete with he eyes closed, crooning down the place in his whiny-whiny falsetto. I drift over so, stand up tall-tall in front of he, a cobweb broom. He open he eye, look through me oxygen breasts and hydrogen hips. He hold he wedding hand up in the sky, and I take it as he drape he other arm across this dreaming continent, my back, where it should be, and we dance just so into another new year.

Samantha Thornhill

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Kunta Kinte Speaks to a Killer Whale

Tilikum, black boy, with a name and a plight like that—just as well claim African. No matter your mama squeezed you into the dim waters of Iceland where you learned to hunt from top rung spanning a cool hundred miles on a day’s breath with NUFF time to frolic in the sun light shining down on the deep sea diver’s sole delight— some white boys locker. Brother, had I known they were coming for you next I would have sent congo cries straight to your orca heart— up jump the boogie, before lasso logic and nigger nets. Alas, the same passage done borned we to this troubled mass; and the same pink dolphin captivated us both into ticking time bombs swimming circles inside their squares.

Oh how they love you to their greatest capacity— which is to say, shutting you up in a bathtub, training your charm into dollars you make rain for them, as they flip you over to milk your sperm from the cash cow you is, quelling all rebellion with rubs and rewards. Only for your seeds to grow apart from you. Alas they captured you but are yet contain the joy of your rage. Alas, you signify half the name they gave you killer—cause bruh you ain’t no whale. Shamu, Rambo, Sambo of sea: I mean to say, and Nat means to say (we spoke the other day) and sister Harriet too—boy you got some dead folk praying for you! Done seduced your captors with your kind nets. May you do all we tried in our ways to do, which is to say. Like a bullet burning with the president’s name boy, save your masterpiece for the stage. I mean to say: killer

whale, killer whale—grip this ship by its sail and drag the whole thing down, down, down, down, down. MosaicMagazine.org

Samantha Thornhill

Soul People Brothers and sisters of the southern sun of the old and new moons this side, that side of the equator blackness of the shadows Mother Nature can’t cast… cause their mystery buries way too deep Hurricanes and storms that won’t dare bare our names cause there will be nothing left standing after we strut, swag, switch and tip on through Why, we be the reason, Prince begs in the high pitch squeals, wear heels and does the split why Aretha sang Natural woman in the first place why Nina Simone haunts the heart and why sometimes our tears taste like molasses It’s exactly why James Brown sang it’s a man’s world but my brothers we wouldn’t be a damn thang without a ….woman or a girl! We got those bend and don’t break, back bones 7 layers of a tough impenetrable skin and the eighth layer (they don’t have) is the one don’t keloid the layer the whip couldn’t get through God Dipped our molds in a variety of shades and the last one one came from our mama’s breast milk tongues be leather on one side, silk on the other with an over-proof saliva they won’t dare ever bottle immortal essence of Egyptian Kings and Queens incorporeal spirits that define our royalty and our songs and words rise from our ancestral spiritual depths ordained in the Blessings of our every waking breath conjured from the realms of our very soul we be a Soul People!!!

Edward Toney

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Black Paste Death’s fragrance can be the stench of life’s bowels It can reside on your lungs like a wet cement seal the cerebellum in a slab of marble onyx like the floor in a funeral home your limbs lose their posture freedom now a crumbling headstone with no epitaph this is the tether that holds dark to midnight sticky substance that blinds the open nicks in the tongue gnarls my fingers like dead rose-bud vines locks the jaws, ravages a smile turns teeth a dark steel a jail cell that pre-empts the screams Hate, this dark liquid glues the throat turns veins blue-black this un-clean river slides like a sewer sludge lungs are tar-feathered and you breathe like a sea gull that can’t flap in an oil spill Hearts pump a ruddy Alabama mud whatever was alive in the stomach chokes, the flutter stops, the intestines writhe like a Black mambo snake when anger can’t escape blood becomes a Black paste a strong backbone molds to the fragile spine spit becomes a rancid bile and it taste, tastes just like Injustice. And now I am stuck we are stuck, we must pull free We must pull each other free!

Edward Toney

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around town 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.

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September 20, 2014 - It was another great day at the Brooklyn Book Festival. The annual events features numerous readings, panels, and signings throughout the day and preceding week. Festival particpants included Christopher Myers (top right), Misty Copeland (top right), Jess Row, Jonathan Lethem, Mike Dawson, Naomi Klein, Daniel Campo, Mervyn Taylor (right), Rita Dove (below), Nadeem Aslam, Sandeep Jauhar, Alice Marwick, James McBride & son (above), Boris Fishman, Rashidah Ismaili, Sam Roberts, Zadie Smith (left), Raj Karamchedu, Morowa YejidĂŠ, Nuruddin Farah, Rebecca Frankel, Chip Kidd, Leonard Lopate, Tina Chang, Eric Schlosser, Herb Boyd (top far left), r. erica doyle (top left), Lynn Nottage, and Joyce Carol Oates among many others.

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same time. So that’s how I prioritized my life choices: I left daily journalism to teach so I could have more time to write. I made a film before I married and had children because I needed the film to be my only priority. And I was over 40 when I published my first novel—by the time my son was entering kindergarten—because teaching full-time with a young child meant I had a small window of time for writing. My secret to carving out time to write isn’t a secret at all; I rise early and I write while the house is quiet, before my kids and husband wake up. And I try very hard to not judge myself for how long the process takes. I wrote my first novel across seven years; Into the Go-Slow took nine years to write, because sometimes all I could grab was a half-hour in the morning. And because I rewrote the book three times. KCF: I can certainly relate to spending years on a novel! Did you face any other challenges, though? BMD: My biggest challenge came from the fact that the story is based on my own experience. For so long, I kept trying to tell these disparate stories—a young woman’s loss of her beloved big sister, and a young woman’s experiences traveling to a foreign place—but I couldn’t figure out how to braid them together. I was stubborn, though, and refused to pick one storyline, as I was advised to do. But because I was holding on to the facts of my own sister’s life and death, it took me forever to realize what the story needed: Ella goes to Nigeria, dies there, and Angie follows in her footsteps to discover what really happened to her. Bingo! That’s when the story took off, and I re-

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wrote the novel in five months. KCF: Small independent presses have been getting increasing attention for their ability to champion less mainstream writing and work intimately with their authors. Yet, they don’t necessarily have the clout or budget of larger publishers. What was it like to go with The Feminist Press after having had your first novel published by HarperCollins? BMD: First of all, the 10-year gap between publications is what makes my experience so vastly different this time. The industry has changed, and I’ve changed. Publishing with HarperCollins, and working with the wonderful editor Dawn Davis was a first-time novelist’s dream, because it felt so validating. This time around, I feel more confident about my selfworth as a writer, and what matters to me most is yes, working with an editor who gets what I’m doing, but also having a press behind me that takes a long view. The Feminist Press is committed to my novel long past the opening week, and even the first three months. FP is a mission-based nonprofit press; while it’s certainly important to sell as many books as possible, it’s equally important to further the cause of providing a platform for feminist work. Plus, given how small its staff is, I’m awed by their dedication and their effusive support of me, and the loving care given to every detail of the novel. I’m not just published by FP; I’m a member of FP’s community of writers, and that is a great feeling. KCF: What changes have you seen in the way books are

being published and promoted nowadays? BMD: It’s a different world from when I published my first novel ten years ago. Back then, I created a little film for the book—we didn’t call them book trailers yet—and the publicist didn’t quite know how to share it. There was no YouTube! It almost feels quaint now, the naïve hope that if I went to a few cities on a book tour and got some press, that that would somehow be enough. Boy oh boy, has social media changed that notion! Everyone now talks about your online presence and your social media strategy and the need to get certain press so you can amplify public awareness. All that is true. But I’m amazed at the pressure put on writers themselves to generate that awareness. It seems so frenzied, and I can’t help but think it lets publishers off the hook a bit. Yes, I know all about Amazon’s strong-arm tactics and the rise of e-books and the shrinking of major publishers’ staffs, etc., etc., etc., but those elements are out of a writer’s control, so I do not take any of that on as my burden. Let me add: I also do NOT subscribe to the notion that it’s my friends and their friends’ job to help me get on the NY Times bestseller list. I find that an unfortunate measure of success. I did not write my book to get on a particular list. I wrote it so people would read it, and so I could engage with readers about the ideas my book tackles. Those readers come from all kinds of surprising places. And so, I’m most proud of the fact that during those ten years between books, I spent time becoming a good lit-

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erary citizen. I bought other writers’ books and spread the word about authors that I felt deserved attention. I helped found ringShout, a group devoted to just that very thing. We launched an annual event that’s in its 5th year as part of the Brooklyn Book Festival. I mentored junior faculty who’re creative writers at my university. I joined writing groups. As Books Editor for Bold As Love Magazine, I wrote about authors doing great work. I started and became the curator for a monthly reading series to showcase writers of color. Being a good literary citizen is paying off for me now that my own book is out in the world. THAT to me is what’s most empowering and rewarding about promoting my book—the opportunity to add my own work to a larger conversation that I’ve already been part of. KCF: That’s such an admirable way of approaching it. Can you share some details about what you’re currently working on? BMD: I’m writing a memoir about my mother. She was a number-runner (a bookie for an underground lottery business) who raised five children, gave us a middle-class life, and became a philanthropist and mentor to young women as well. I want the world to know more about this incredible African-American woman who made such a difference to so many people’s lives. It’s a challenging project, but I’m excited about it too. KCF: I’m hooked already! And I can imagine why Daddy Was a Number Runner had such an impact on you when

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you were young. Is there anything else you’d like to add? BMD: Just thank you for such great questions, and for this opportunity. ★

excerpt Into the Go-Slow by Bridgett M. Davis cue Ella always said, “Not even!” which just tickled her aunties to death. Aunt Bea loved to tell the story of Ella joining her parents in Detroit. “The day Daughter left for up North, Oh my Lord, that was some sad day. But not for her. No ma’am. She said, ‘Auntie Bea, I got to go, so don’t you cry. Mama and Daddy are waiting for me and I been waiting for them.’ She was not afraid of riding the train alone neither. She was itching to get on it. ‘I’m not gonna shut my eyes the whole ride,’ she said. And you know that girl could do whatever she put her mind to. When that locomotive pulled out of the station, you talking about tears, oh I cried me a little river. But Daughter was dry eyed. I waved goodbye till I couldn’t see her no more, and I thought, She is going far in life. That’s what come to me. I could tell right then and there, she was gonna be something. ‘Cause I’m here to tell you, that child was fearless.” Another apocryphal Ella tale: Samson letting her ride his pony, Bill, around the little inside track, and Ella always want¬ing to go faster, faster, until running beside them, her father couldn’t keep up, let her go, and one day she lost her grip on Bill and fell off, flying before hitting the hard dirt. Ella lay there, in pain; her arm broken. Their mother hadn’t been there, had been at five-yearold Denise’s birthday party, amid the cacophony of celebratory girls, already pregnant with Angie. When they walked into the house, Ella upstaging the party with her bright, white cast, their mother gasped, “What hap-

pened?” As soon as he explained, she lit into her husband right in front of the kindergartners. “How the hell did you let that hap¬pen, Samson?” “She kept saying, ‘Faster, faster!’” he said, in defense. “And I asked her over and over, ‘Had enough?’ And she kept saying, ‘Not even.’ That’s what she said, God do hear me say, she said, ‘Not even!’” “She’s nine!” her mother screamed. “But I wanted to do it,” said Ella. “You broke your arm,” her mother pointed out. “It was worth it.” ANGIE REMEMBERED SO little, really, of her father: His curly yet wild salt-and-pepper hair, those saddle-rough hands, the way he’d give her piggyback rides as he made his rounds at the horses’ stalls. Those practice sessions on the track. His smell was an intoxicating mixture of the outdoors and aftershave. Early mornings in the car, headed to the track, sun just peeling away the darkness, she’d scoot close and inhale him deeply as they sat three abreast in the front seat, cool jazz spill¬ing from the radio. He was on the road so much that his presence was like a holiday. Everything felt special—eating pancakes togeth-

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er in the morning, watching him repair things around the house, greedily eyeing him and their mother as they slipped behind the closing bedroom door. As a family, they’d go to all the races running his horses. Angie loved the crowds, the whoop¬ing yells, the starting bell, the discarded tickets scattered across the ground like oversized confetti. And when one of his horses placed— not first, but often third, sometimes second even—she loved going down to the winner’s circle and standing with her sisters and parents and her father’s horse. She remembered warm summer nights, cicadas singing out, the family posing as the photographer snapped, his giant cone of a flash blinding them briefly. And then her father’s racetrack family would take over, crowding them out. They’d whisk him off for some post-race chatter and another hour would go by. Their mother knew the drill, like the girlfriend of a musician after the gig, so she drove her own car to the track. Angie and Denise rode with her to the Chinese restaurant where they always had dinner after¬ward. But Ella stayed with their father. “You want to hang out with me a bit?” he’d say to her. And she always did, even though she had to be hungry, or tired, or just ready to go. Or maybe not. Her needs or desires could never compete with his need to show her off, his daughter, the soon-to-be jockey. Afterward, they’d all sit at a big round table at China Delight, passing plates of pepper steak and egg foo young and shrimp fried rice. Sometimes, by the time her father and Ella joined them, Angie was already asleep in her mother’s lap. And some¬times Denise would try to gain her father’s attention, telling him about a book report she’d done on racehorses, or a math project that determined the probability of winning. Once, she showed

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him a sketch she’d drawn of a horse, a pen and ink done in her art class. She’d filled it in with watercolor, giving the horse a sandy brown hue. She was clearly talented. “Which horse is that?” asked their father. “It’s just one I made up,” she said. “See, if you’d learn to ride a horse, you’d know what one really looks like,” he said, chuckling. “That there is a nice pic¬ture, but it don’t look like a real horse.” Denise said nothing. Why didn’t you just draw Bill, Daddy’s pony? Angie thought. Silly! Throughout the rest of the meal, Denise poked at her food until the gravy on her egg foo young con¬gealed. Later, Angie found the deft, delicate watercolor tossed in the trash. She felt sorry for Denise, but she left it there. ★

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MosaicMagazine.org L ITERARY

MAGAZINE

Lesson Plan

L ITERARY

MAGAZINE

Fall/Winter 2014 MosaicMagazine.org 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. Designed by Eisa Nefertari Ulen Piri Thomas is widely celebrated as a progenitor of Nuyorican literary culture and a literary godfather to contemporary writers of Latino descent, including awardwinning poet Willie Perdomo and Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz. In his bestselling memoir, Down These Mean Streets, Thomas evokes the isolation and invisibility of mid-20th century Puerto Ricans living in New York’s El Barrio. Down These Mean Streets was published in 1967, two years after the publication of both The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land. Taken together, these three coming-of-age narratives center Black and Brown male life and give voice to the discontent that arose from marginalized communities of color during the Black Power Movement, the Chicano Movement, the American Indian Movement, the Asian American Movement, and, from 1968 to the early 1980s, the expansion of the Young Lords.

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Born in Harlem Hospital in 1928, Thomas would go on to write Seven Long Times; Savior, Savior, Hold My Hand; and Stories From El Barrio. He read his poetry at venues around the country, released two cds of his poetry, and wrote several plays. Thomas passed away in his California home in 2011. The World of Piri Thomas originally aired on National Educational Television (NET), a public television network, in 1968. Directed by Gordon Parks, this hour long production is set in East Harlem, with brief meanderings into Manhattan’s midtown. By maintaining consistency in terms of setting, and venturing outside of El Barrio only to offer a starkly white contrast to the brown hues of East Harlem’s largely Puerto Rican community, The World of Piri Thomas captures much of the discontent of Down These Mean Streets. Like the book, the film does much more than simply express rage. With images and sounds of hope, love, joy, even freedom, The World of Piri Thomas provides a counterbalance to the anger, despair, and sheer exhaustion that it also captures. Young people viewing the film will likely be struck by the clothing, hairstyles, and car models that are so different from today. They will likely also be struck by the similarities between the experiences of the film’s subjects and contemporary American life. After careful viewing of the film, a classic examination of how far society has come and how far society has to go should organically emerge in classroom discourse. Other themes emerge that will help center student responses to The World of Piri Thomas, including invisibility, children’s lives; burdens placed on women; and the emasculation of men, and other special opportunities for focused study.

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East Harlem: Then and Now A. Topics for Discussion 1. What year do you think this film was produced? 2. Can you identify any of the hairstyles, clothing styles, and car types that you see? 3. Define the word montage. a. How does the opening montage make you feel? b. What does the opening montage tell you about the world of Piri Thomas? c. If you had the come up with a title for the montage, what would the title be? d. Does the rest of the film deliver what you expected given the montage of images at the beginning of the film? B. Additional Activities 1. In the opening montage, look closely for these images. Check off each image when you see it. a. Ice man b. Use of fire hydrant c. Cock fight d. Abandoned car that has been stripped e. Boy being spanked f. Older people’s faces g. Dominoes game h. Handcuffs i. Baby kissed by woman j. A wino k. An arm shot with heroin 2. Create a chart. On one side list images from the film that could very easily have been shot today. On the other side, list the images of things that you would be less likely to see in East Harlem today.

3. Write a one page explanation of why you made the choices you made. 4. Look at the Images of America book, Images of East Harlem. Consider the images of East Harlem in the film. Create your own collage of images that evoke the East Harlem community. 5. Look through your own family photo albums. Do you see any old pictures of family and friends that look similar to the pictures in the film? Make your own 1960s collage using copies of the photographs you found in your family album. 6. Take pictures of your school and / or classroom community. What images would you need to capture to make an accurate collage of images that expresses who you and your peers are? What activities, hairstyles, clothing styles, and even methods of transportation (buses, bikes, scooters, subways, cars) would be important to document to show The World of Your School in a way that would really let outsiders see the world you occupy every day? 7. According to a voice-over in the film, at the time The World of Piri Thomas aired there were 900,000 Puerto Ricans in the United States, with more than 600,000 living in New York City. Go to the Pew Research Hispanic Trends Project and research the population figures for Puerto Ricans living in the United States today. (http:// www.pewhispanic.org/2013/06/19/hispanics-of-puertorican-origin-in-the-united-states-2011/)

C. Essay Ideas 1. Using the Pew Hispanic figures as your guide, write a summary of Puerto Rican life in the United States today. In your summary, refer to the information and / or images presented in The World of Piri Thomas. Make sure your summary answers these questions: Is the world of Puerto Ricans today similar to the world of Piri Thomas in the 1960s? How has the world of Puerto Ricans in the United States changed? How has that world stayed the same? 2. Write an essay about the population changes in East Harlem (and Central Harlem) since the 1960s. Make sure your essay defines gentrification and displacement. Examine the effect gentrification and displacement have had on East Harlem residents. As you write, refer to The World of Piri Thomas. To research your essay, use these additional sources: Humanity in Action - http://www.humanityinaction.org/ knowledgebase/79-gentrification-and-displacement-inharlem-how-the-harlem-community-lost-its-voice-enroute-to-progress El Barrio Tours - http://elbarriotours.tumblr.com/ post/75857326173/there-is-no-sweet-spot-for-displacement-a Gentrification and Resistance in New York City - http:// www.nhi.org/online/issues/142/gentrification.html Invisibility

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A. Topics for Discussion 1. What is visibility? What is invisibility? Can you think of things in your own community that only local residents see on a daily basis? 2. Listen closely to the poem Thomas reads in the beginning of The World of Piri Thomas. a. Think about the lines “You wanna know/how many times/I’ve stood on a rooftop/and yelled out to anybody/’hey, world, here I am’?” Is the speaker of the poem visible or invisible as he stands on the rooftop? Does anyone see him? If so, whom? Is “anybody” out there? b. Can you clearly see Thomas as he reads his poem? In what way(s) does the profile of the poet and the filmmaker’s use of silhouette emphasize the theme of invisibility in the poem? c. When Thomas reads the last line, “I am a human being,” he looks directly at the camera. What is the effect of his gaze? Do you feel like he is looking into more than just the camera? Do you feel like he is looking directly at you? Why is that gesture important? d. Who, exactly, is the speaker of the poem addressing? Who does the “I” speak to? e. The line “I am a human being” is a declaration, a statement, but it might also be asking for something. What might the speaker be asking for with that statement? (Visibility? To be seen?) f. Does the film itself, and the fact that it was played on public television and in your classroom, mean that the speaker of the poem is now visible? Or, are the speaker and real people like him, who have also been ex-cons, ex-gang leaders, ex-drug addicts, still

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invisible? Does mainstream American society really see people like the speaker of the poem? g. The speaker also self-identifies as a poet, painter, and writer. Does art make the speaker of the poem visible? h. The speaker of the poem says, “I am my majesty, Piri Thomas.” Why doesn’t he say he is your majesty? Why my majesty? i. Think about the line “always reachin.” What or whom do you think the speaker of this poem is “always reachin” for? 3. Think about the people featured in this film. Would they be likely to appear in any other movies? By lingering on their faces, does filmmaker Gordon Parks force nonPuerto Ricans to see the people who inhabit Thomas’ world? 4. What things and/or people does this film make visible that make you uncomfortable? Is there anything in this film that you want hidden? Can invisibility be a good thing? If so, under what circumstances? B. Additional Activities 1. Think about the things and/or people that made you uncomfortable in the film. List the things that you would rather keep hidden. Next to each thing you list, write the reason why you want the thing you wrote down to remain invisible. 2. Create a chart with three columns. Make a list of things and/or people in your community that you think are invisible. Next to each item, write down whether or not you would want to make the thing or person visible.

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Next to that, write down the reason why you think the thing or person should or should not be visible. 3. Next, create an action plan. Think of ways to make the invisible visible in your community. What can you do to amplify the voices of your neighbors and present their experiences to the world outside the area where you live? C. Essay Ideas 1. Read this Fusion article about Puerto Ricans in Florida: http://fusion.net/story/6249/how-puerto-rican-migrantscould-swing-the-largest-swing-state/ In what way(s) is voting a form of voiced expression in our participatory democracy? How does the act of voting make the voter visible? Because Florida is such an important state in our country’s national elections, democrats and republicans are actively courting this demographic group. Based on your study of The World of Piri Thomas and your research on Puerto Rican life in East Harlem today as it gentrifies and becomes increasingly populated by non-Puerto Ricans, do you think these politicians really see the Puerto Ricans who are moving to Florida from the island? What if Puerto Ricans did vote as a bloc and made Florida swing one way or another in the next election? Do you think that voting power would make Florida’s Puerto Ricans more visible? As you write, refer to the film and these other articles: NBC Miami - http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/ Puerto-Rican-Population-Plummets-As-Islanders-Moveto-US-Mainland-270798081.html International Business Times - http://www.ibtimes.com/ florida-gop-leader-blames-republican-decline-influx-

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puerto-ricans-1569188 NPR - http://www.npr.org/2013/02/05/171061350/offto-the-mainland-puerto-ricans-leaving-the-island-inrecord-numbers 2. There is great tension and even anger in The World of Piri Thomas, as the subject of the film struggles to be seen and heard. Is this anger justified to you? Write an essay that addresses these questions: If existing, being in the world, means that others can see Thomas, and yet he knows that people from outside El Barrio never really do see the man that he is, doesn’t that mean he is living a kind of contradiction? As you write, remember the many women and men like him who live in El Barrio. Are they also living a kind of contradiction – existing, and so being visible, but feeling ignored and unseen, and so being invisible, too? As you write, you may want to refer to this article on Afro-Surrealism: http://mosaicmagazine.org/ blog/?p=3066#more-3066. Children, Women, and Men A. Topics for Discussion 1. A stunning image of a young bride appears in the film, and then that image is soon followed by a sequence featuring an older mother with many children. Why is this juxtaposition of a young bride and an older mother important? What is the filmmaker saying about the condition of women living in El Barrio? What is the filmmaker saying about women everywhere? 2. Think about the poem Thomas reads that focuses on emasculated men. What and / or whom do you think emasculated the father “who can only bring home mis-

ery”? What causes him to be frustrated by “what he would like to give them” but cannot afford to buy? Who does he want to buy things for? Why is the ability to support their families important in our society?

mural a form of protest? Is it a wall of prayers? Is it something else?

4. In the film, Thomas asks, “How does a 10, 12, 13 year old kid get tired?” and then goes on to answer his own question. Write down his answers and discuss them. Do you agree or disagree with Thomas’ answers?

B. Additional Activities 1. Several children featured in the film say they would rather live in Puerto Rico than in New York City. Form small groups and work together to research the conditions of locals living on the island in the 1960s. Research the education, health care, and political systems on the island. What were these systems like in New York’s East Harlem community? What was the economy like on the island? What was the economy like in New York? Try to find employment figures for Harlem residents in the 1960s. Report the results of your findings to the class. Then think about the children’s interest in Puerto Rico and discuss their interest in escaping New York City as a class.

5. How do you feel when you see a woman crying with her child in the film?

2. Design and create your own mural, either temporary or permanent, for your school or classroom.

6. The boy with glasses reappears in the film with his mother, father, and other siblings. His mother explains why they insist that he study hard, so he can escape El Barrio. How does this scene make you feel? Think about your community. Is it a place you would like to remain in, or is it a place you would one day like to escape? Why?

3. Create a graffiti wall for your school. Think of a theme that would appeal to many people in your school community. Hang paper to cover an entire wall and invite the class or school community to cover it with words and images that express that theme. Use cameras to document the work produced by your peers.

3. Look at the family that gathers around the boy with glasses. Listen as he reads a story about a girl named Sally. Now, look at the images of the Dick and Jane, a popular reader used in the 1960s to teach American schoolchildren how to read. (Search Dick and Jane Basal Reader.) What are the differences between this boy’s family and the Dick and Jane family? What are the similarities?

7. Study the images and words on the PS 117 mural that is featured in The World of Piri Thomas. With words like Love, Peace, God, and Life, what do you think the wall is intended to instill in the minds of schoolchildren? The mural is art, but what else might it be labeled? Is this

C. Essay Ideas 1. Write a personal essay about escape. If you could go anywhere, where would you go? Who or what would you take with you? Who or what would you leave behind?

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2. Write a story about the children featured in the film who want to move to Puerto Rico. Imagine one of them gets to travel back to the island. Write a story about what this fictional child experiences when she or he moves from New York’s East Harlem to the island of Puerto Rico. 3. Write a poem, prose poem, or story inspired by The World of Piri Thomas. Other Important Aspects of the Film A. The Nuyorican Literary Culture 1. In Visible Movement, Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam 2. Nuyorican Poets Café a. http://www.nuyorican.org/ b. Study of contemporary Nuyorican artists c. Study of café founders d. Poetry Slam in class 3. Every Child is Born a Poet - http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/everychildisbornapoet/nuyorican.html B. Exploring the World of Street Lit 1. Iceberg Slim, Pimp 2. Sapphire, Push 3. Percival Everett, Erasure

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C. Author Studies - Children’s Literature with Urban Settings 1. Walter Dean Meyers 2. Rita Williams Garcia D. Young Lords Study E. Gordon Parks Study 1. The Learning Tree 2. Work for Life magazine F. Music in The World of Piri Thomas 1. Music of Puerto Rico, with Sound - http://www.umich. edu/~ac213/student_projects06/dorir/puertorico.html 2. Caribbean Cultural Center - http://cccadi.org/ 3. Brief Summary of the Music of Puerto Rico - http:// www.socsci.uci.edu/~rgarfias/aris/courses/latino/pr1. html G. The Legacy of Piri Thomas 1. El Barrio Remembers Piri - http://vimeo.com/50064934 2. Celebration of Piri Thomas at El Museo Del Barrio -http://mosaicmagazine.org/blog/?p=1209#.VCsKYfldWSo

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Beyond the Supersquare Through January 11, 2015 Beyond the Supersquare explores the indelible influence of Latin American and Caribbean modernist architecture on contemporary art. The exhibition features over 30 artists and more than 60 artworks, including photography, video, sculpture, installation, and drawing, that respond to major Modernist architectural projects constructed in Latin America and the Caribbean from the 1920s through the 1960s. Also on view Here I Am: Photographs by Lisa Leone in print / imprint: works from the permanent collection Rethinking the Garden Casita

1040 Grand Concourse at 165th St Bronx NY 10463 | BronxMuseum.org

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FREE ADMISSION to the Bronx Museum of the Arts is sponsored by Shelley and Donald Rubin