Mosaic 38 by Mosaic Literary Magazine

AMINA GAUTIER

JAMES BALDWIN; A LESSON PLAN

THE FISHERMAN

JOHN KEENE

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Far more common threads bind us than differences that divide.

“This is my own personal bias and stubbornness, but since I live in America, I'm usually disinterested in reading about what I already know about the people and the culture. Emancipation and the current racial climate in the country may have brought me back to my roots. The language is sometimes gritty, old school hip and at other times poetic. The author Michael R. Lane shows that he really has observed people and has the capability to dive deep into the human soul. I really enjoyed this book and strongly recommend it.” – Sincerae, Goodreads

“From start to finish this was a great collection of well-written short stories all connected together, depicting the life-story of a Vietnam Vet who struggles with PTSD. The first chapter really breaks your heart and compels you to read on. With only 160 pages, you'll finish this book in a day. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to reading more from this author!” – Wanda, Goodreads Emancipation opens with the story of a tragic event. The author cleverly draws the dark thread of this tragedy through the lives of all characters in the story collection. All the stories are beautifully written and the characters keenly observed. I thoroughly enjoyed Emancipation and recommend it. – Mary, Goodreads

Available in print and EBook online. To order your copy go to www.michaelrlane.com.

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content Interviews John Keene: Conjuration and Casting Spells by D. Scot Miller ............................ 8 The Subtle Art of Amina Gautier by Julia Brown ................................................ 22 Poetry Shucking Corn by Charleen McClure ............................................................... 16 Crown & Glory by Charleen McClure .............................................................. 17 Reviews ................................................................................................................ 18 The Sellout by Paul Beatty The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma Short Fiction What Matters Most by Amina Gautier .............................................................. 33 Lesson Plan James Baldwin by Eisa Nefertari Ulen .............................................................. 46 Mosaic's lesson plans, developed for secondary school educators, demonstrate how our content can serve as a connective tool to empower educators to use books, writing, and reading to engage students. Excerpt James Baldwin Tells Us All How to Cool It This Summer .................................... 58 In Esquire's July 1968 issue, published just after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., the magazine talked to James Baldwin about the state of race relations in the country. Some of the prevalent issues of 1968 still exisit in 2016.

Cover photo credit: Mark B. Anstendig

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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 2016. 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 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

The Literary Freedom Project is a Bronx-based tax-exempt nonprofit arts organization that seeks to restore the importance of reading books. Towards this goal, LFP publishes Mosaic Literary Magazine; develops literature-based lesson plans; and hosts the Bronx Book Fair and Mosaic Literary Conference. 4

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From the writer whose debut novel Upstate was celebrated as “wild and beautiful” (Sapphire), “heartbreaking and true” (Dorothy Allison), and “a poetry uniquely its own” (Elle), and awarded by Terry McMillan as “capturing real emotion,” comes a powerful new story of unseen black youth: Solemn Redvine, a girl whose life winds in unexpected directions as she lives with simple people but complicated circumstances in a Mississippi mobile home community. on sale now in hardcover and e-book

“Kalisha Buckhanon is a writer of great imagination and boundless empathy. The writing style is poetic and the use of Mississippi dialogue, both black and white, is masterful. Solemn is a haunting story that keeps pages turning until the end.”- Jonathan Odell, author of The Healing & Miss Hazel and The Rosa Parks League "Buckhanon crafts a hypnotic tale…cast against the hardships of everyday life in Singer’s Trailer Park, a young girl’s troubled thoughts make for a heartbreaking story of broken promises." -Kirkus Reviews

www.Kalisha.com www.Negression.com @KalishaOnline

“The story’s compassionate tone and rich characters will recommend it to fans of family fiction and Buckhanon’s earlier work.” –Booklist “Solemn is beautifully written in lyrically beautiful, poetic language…the story starts off with a traumatic event that successfully weaves its tendrils throughout the rest of the book.” –RT Reviews “This work earns a place alongside James Hannaham’s Delicious Foods as top-notch literary fiction sending a message about African American struggles in the 21st century.” –Library Journal MosaicMagazine.org

contributors

Julia Brown is a writer in Houston, Texas Sidik Fofana has written several publication including the Source, Vibe, and allhiphop.com. His work appears in The Black Male Handbook: Blueprint for Life edited by Kevin Powell. Charleen McClure is a Fulbright scholar who has received fellowships from VONA, Cave Canem, and US Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. A Pushcart nominated poet, her work has been published or is forthcoming in Muzzle, FreezeRay, Kinfolks Quarterly, and African Voices. D. Scot Miller is a Bay Area writer, visual artist, teacher, and curator. A regular contributor to Gawker Review Of Books, Sensitive Skin, City Lights, and Mosaic. He is the author of The AfroSurreal Manifesto and sits on the Board of Advisors to giovanni singleton’s Nocturnes Literary (Re) view.

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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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John Keene Conjuration and Casting Spells

by D. Scot Miller 8

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Photo credit: Nina Subin

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John R. Keene was born in St. Louis in 1965. He graduated from the St. Louis Priory School, Harvard College, and New York University, where he was a New York Times Fellow. A longtime member of the Dark Room Writers Collective of Cambridge and Boston, and a Graduate Fellow of Cave Canem, he has taught at Brown University; Northwestern University, where he served as Director of the undergraduate Creative Writing Program and Acting Co-director of the MA/MFA in Creative Writing Program; and other institutions. He serves as a fiction and hybrid writing editor at the literary journal Obsidian and teaches at Rutgers University-Newark. His first novel, Annotations, was published by New Directions in 1995. A collection of poems entitled Seismosis, in conversation with artwork by Christopher Stackhouse, was published by 1913 Press in 2006. In May 2015, New Directions published Counternarratives (now in paperback), his collection of short fiction and novellas. In my review of this amazing book for Ishmael Reed's Konch Magazine, I say, "Throughout this collection of novellas and short stories, Keene understands the power of names to the brutalized and enslaved people of color who have been stripped of name as extinguished indigenous victims of early colonialism to Africans across the Middle Passage. To the characters in the book, names are more than bonds. Names are codes. Nick-names are resistance. And naming, unnaming and re-naming yourself is a fugitive act. Fugitive tales are told from the thickets. And Counternarratives is a fugitive book full of fugitive tales." Keene's most recent book, GRIND, is an art-text collabo-

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ration with photographer Nicholas Muellner, published in February 2016 by ITI Press D. Scot Miller: As one of the first poets we published in giovanni singleton's journal Nocturnes (Re)view Of The Literary Arts, I first became familiar with you as a poet. I must confess, that I only recently became aware of your marvelous prose. Could you talk a bit about your next project, Grind, and how your poetry and prose relate, if at all? John Keene: I've written both poetry and fiction at the same time. My second book, Seismosis, was a collaborative project with Christopher Stackhouse. This book is a return to that kind of collaborative project and it comes directly out of my experience this summer at Image Text Ithaca. This new book is more of an art book than full poetry book. One of the projects I worked on was collaboration with the photographer Nicholas Muellner, Image Text Ithaca now has a press, ITI Press, and this is the third book they've done. It speaks to today because it's based on the dating and relationship apps and websites out there, whereas Counternarratives is taking a look at the distant past and making a loop into the present. It very much speaks to the present, covering many of the same concerns but in a very different kind of way. DSM: I've always noticed your keen (pun intended) eye for composition and form, and I'm curious to see what you'll do with "found materials," or unscripted content from these sites. I'm a major fan of the Burroughs/Gysin "cut-up" method, and I tend to use it especially with found material. What kind of content did you choose to use, and how did you compose it into working poems? JK: They are direct quotes in certain cases, and I slightly

modified them so the poems are two concurrent lines that can be read either up and down or left to right. Even if the poem itself is a static entity there's a way it opens up to multiple ways of reading. In a sense, it's trying to capture some of the movement on those sites. Nicholas also kept this in mind in his composition and I'm excited to see this project come to fruition. DSM: On February 19, New Directions published your syllabus, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Temples for the Future: 20th and 21st Century Black Literary Avant-Grades." It's a very impressive and thorough survey with a reading list that includes Amiri Baraka and Bob Kaufman, to Renee Gladman and Nalo Hopkinson. How did this syllabus come to be? JK: That was one of the courses I was teaching when I was at Northwestern University. One of my responsibilities was teaching Contemporary African-American Literature, not just Creative Writing, and I always had a lot of leeway. I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to introduce some of this material to my students and also bone up myself on it. That's where that syllabus comes from. And of course, a lot of it informs my practice, so this was a genealogical tracing for me to think about where this work I do comes from. Some are works I was introduced to in college, and from my time with The Darkroom Collective and, later, Cave Canem. People like Baraka and Gwendolyn Brooks go back to childhood. It was a question of how can I share this knowledge with my students, to "plant those seeds for

the future," like Hughes said. DSM: I like how you said, "genealogical tracing." When I'm going through my notes in preparation for a project or lecture, I experience the same vague feeling of "reaching for roots," and every time I do, I feel that I've learned something about myself or my practice. I'm wondering if there was anything you learned about yourself or these works that you did not know, or realize, before you taught them? JK: I realized that I read more critically than I give myself credit for. And I also realized that, regarding my practice, the strands of the larger weave of African-American and African-Diasporic literary and cultural practice are all there. So, ultimately when I'm writing I'm aware of certain things in the back of my mind. But when I was teaching I found that all of these layers were becoming visible. I'm talking about one thing, and all of these others flash up in front of me. And that happens when I'm writing. It was great to approach this from a pedagogical standpoint. Because anyone can pick up Funnyhouse of the Negro or Ohio State Murders by Adrienne Kennedy and get a great deal out of it, but there may be some things that you do not get. Walking through them with the students was a great way for me to start to think about, "What drew me to these works?" and "What are the multiple things they're saying?" I think about them, in part, in relation to my work. DSM: What do you feel is the difference between the

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Black Avant Garde and the Avant Garde? JK: The aims of Black Avant-Garde are different. One of the first articles that I had the students read was the famous one of the history of the French Avant-Garde by Linda Nochlin, which was talking about how the Avant Garde in French literary and visual culture deeply political and they had certain kinds of political aims that went against the academy. It was not just an aesthetic movement, but a political one. When you think about the Black Avant-Garde, you think of Alain Locke's The New Negro and the various manifestos that have come out of the Black Arts Movement, and Trey Ellis' "New Black Aesthetic," or the landmark Black feminist and Black queer text, there's something deeply political. Black Avant Garde, both inside the US and abroad - and I'm thinking of this as a continuum. Not an "either/or" but a "both/ and" - there is this profoundly political component that is linked to Black liberation. When we talk about Black Avant Garde, these are not solely aesthetic movements. In almost every case, when you look at the works these various writers, artists, and filmmakers, are doing in the world, they are deeply tied to a larger project for Black liberty and Black equality. DSM: One of my favorite characters from Counternarratives is Zion from An Outtake from the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. I didn't want to give away too much in my review, but it's clear that Zion is a witness to his own hanging. It takes a close reading to realize this. He's an archetypical trickster in that he's tricking his persecutors, just as the story has tricked us. Zion and the story itself are unreliable narrators. Could you talk a bit about how you constructed this and made it work so effortlessly?

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JK: I love your reading of this story. At the end of the story, as several critics have pointed out, Zion gets away before, Zion -somehow or another- gets away again, but he is to give this account before he is to be hanged to this Anglican minister who has just forgotten it, so there's a record, you get an account of the hanging that is a neutral language, so the stories are open and constantly being broken up. There is a difference between the neutral, beauracratic language, the historical discourse, almost a bureaucratic discourse and something much closer to violence itself. Who witnesses this? In a sense it's Zion and us, the ones who come after. We've been conjured up. I think this trickster figure has been so important, and there have been so many. One my teachers- Ishmael Reed - has played with this concept of "conjuration” through language in many of his works. What does it mean to draw upon, and draw this past into the present, and draw upon these other spiritual knowledge systems into our present moment? When you think about "casting spells," language is a way that people cast spells, and that is a current that runs through the entire book. Language as a means of not just power and knowledge, but of other ways of seeing and being. I think that definitely comes through in that story. DSM: The other thing I loved about the book is that you re-inject queerness into the historical narrative, as opposed to high-lighting it as an anomaly, like so many writers have done in the past. In my review I call it “The unknown knowns” found in Langston Hughes’ Blues (“He slept like a rock/Or a man whose dead.”), the gentle caress between Carmel and Sophie, or Red and Horatio.” And close by saying, “Keene succeeds in “un-queering” history by queering historical text. Not so much re-writ-

ing it, as reclaiming it.â&#x20AC;? As much as it shouldn't be in this day and age, I found the way you configure queerness into your narratives bold and refreshing. Was that intentional or just a natural out-growth of your practice? JK: I believe it was Toni Morrison who said, "You write the kinds of stories that you want to see," or you don't see. When we were in The Darkroom [Collective], we had this idea that "Total life is what we want," and in a sense, with both my first book and this one, in different ways, I tried to imagine a past, but a past that gave a counter-narrative to even the usual counter-narratives of the past. There are counter-narratives within these larger counter-narratives of the master narrative. I just want to think of a richer and do more complex of work that you usually see. I think you see that in the level of content, in the level of form, in the concept, in the multi-layered weave, and queerness is part of that. DSM : As someone who has published successfully for several projects with a major publisher, how does a Black, queer, male writer negotiate #BooksSoWhite, in light of the currently heightened awareness of publishing's desperate need for "diversity"? JK: I think it's very tough. My own personal story has not been an easy one, but I've been very, very fortunate. I was fortunate with my first book. I sent it out blind, and New Directions accepted it. If you talk to any black writer of my or a younger generation, you're going to get a different story, but it's not easy. That's one thing. Another is that publishing industry is constantly changing. When I first started there were a small number of major publishers, a small number of independent publishers, and a few tiny-little publishers. Since then, there's been an explosion of independent and small publishers. You can

Photo credit: Nina Subin

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publish directly to the internet today. There are far more journals out there today than before, so I think there are more opportunities than there were in the past. The publishing industry, as many of the recent articles have pointed out, is like Hollywood: Very white, very straight. But unlike Hollywood, which is predominantly male, the publishing industry is mostly women. But if you are persistent. If you feel it's important, there is a way to get it into print. Maybe it'll be a big publisher, an independent, or you can put it out on your own. There are so many ways to approach publishing that did not exist thirty years ago. My own personal experience hasn't been a walk in the park. DSM: Since this is a conversation for Mosaic: Any advice for young writers of color just starting out? JK: Read, read, read others. When you can, write reviews. Books that you love. Books that inspire you, books that amaze you, books that astonish you, books that drive you up the wall; what do other people know about these books? Especially books from writers of color? And if you're writing, share your writing with others. I think there's a way in which we've moved over the last twenty-five or thirty years into established institutions. I think that's great on certain levels, but you need to think about what connections you have to the communities around you. If you're in formal institution, think about links with writers who are not. Think about creating organizations within the community that are independent so that you can a range of voices that you wouldn't get in an institution. Think about sharing your work across generations. Years ago, I had the opportunity to teach a memoir class at The Queens Library, and many of the students were seniors. I've taught in junior and senior high schools. For young writers just getting started, keeping those connections alive across the age-line is so crucial. I

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think it's really important. You want to be your toughest editor. Don't accept mediocrity and push yourself! Push yourself beyond where you usually go. Those are all important, but the most important thing is reading. Read these authors, study how they do what they do and try to bring some of the best of that to your own work. â&#x2DC;&#x2026;

Start A Book Club in Your Community Book clubs create a fun and suppor•ve reading environment for people who love to read and share books. The Literary Freedom Project can create •exible reading and wri•ng programs that meet the needs of a variety of popula•ons including teenagers, a•er-school, out-of-school, senior ci•zens, and displaced families among others. Our book clubs are led by teaching-ar•st and engage in a literary “call and response” by reading and discussing books that re•ect community-de•ned goals. Book clubs provide a consistent founda•on for CBOs working to strengthen literacy and keep books important in the lives of its cons•tuents. us today for details. Co Contact www.LiteraryFreedom.org booksclubs@literaryfreedom.org

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books H culture H education

Shucking Corn

Kitchen lit by silent fire auntie sits leaned back an old wooden chair scraping razor slicked tears at the table, ripping husks, shucking corn, skinning dinner. She’s told me this story before: how the daddy of her fourth born deemed her undeserving, a bitch to his love; how he didn’t mean to leave it inside her (and now it was brewing, bulging as if to taunt him); how she didn’t deserve it, his love. How he had to remove it’s pulse, cut its little-girl shape out before his love had a way of breathing in this world, a way of looking up at him and winning— how my mother chased down and sliced the bastard air that wouldn’t choke the motherfucker if it let him breathe it damn well’s gonna let him bleed! Her hand wanders the vexed wax shells for one undone, the one to teach me the lesson: that love is never without music that strips the skin but since I was eight I’ve known the steps tugging a man apart, filling his lungs with screams.

-Charleen McClure 16

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Crown & Glory

This crop from a dark seed this hair I collect at the scalp has grown long enough to tether my head to their hands—and this makes me beautiful: A crown urged by the skin. A prophecy of woman that is not unlike the prosperity of forty cotton bales. They flock to touch my gown. They prefer what is most dead about me and this makes me a king. though I’d rather the razor pick the scab, I’d rather pull the hair out my throat, bury it into the wired earth of a magnolia tree—what good is beauty if it gets me killed? Worship, a kind of weapon and here, my only name is sugar on the lips of men, a quantity meant to sweeten the space in the mouth, as manna devoured Amen It is not mine. It is not mine

-Charleen McClure

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The Sellout by Paul Beatty Farrar Straus & Giroux Reviewed by Sidik Fofana “He’s demanding to know how it is that in this day and age a black man can violate the hallowed principles of the Thirteenth Amendment by owning a slave.” So reads the prologue of The Sellout, Paul Beatty’s romp of a third novel: a biting, satirical, sacrilegious tour de force that swipes at the taboo cobwebs of race and class in America. Its made-up world holds a funhouse mirror up to our real world, revealing the inanity of the way things are. The first chapter belongs in the storied halls that boasts the shrines of Eddie Murphy, In Living Color, Dick Gregory, and other sultans of Black comedy that have, over the years, replaced tears of pain with guffaws of pain. At the forefront is an unnamed narrator (he goes by several nicknames including “Bonbon” and his last name “Me”) campaigning to restore his hometown of Dickens, a pastoral hood in California that has inexplicably vanished from all official maps. It’s an area so run down by unemployment, violence, and poverty that even Chernobyl has refused to associate itself with it. Along for the ride is his on again-off again sweetheart Marpessa and the voluntary slave in question, Hominy Jenkins, who claims fame as the lost original cast member of The Little Rascals. Beatty’s narrator is no stranger to the call of heroic duty. His deranged psychologist father belonged to the Dum

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reviews

Dum Intellectuals, an off-the-books cabal of thinkers who discuss local politics at a donut shop. A self-proclaimed “nigger whisperer” with the uncanny ability to talk his fellow brothers and sisters off the ledge, he comically dies at the hands of the LAPD, leaving our protagonist with the herculean task of saving the soul of a zip code already damned. Our lion heart’s first order of business: bringing back reserved seating for Whites on the Dickens city bus. Why? Because discrimination brings oppressed people together he assures. And it mostly works--besides the civil backlash and media outrage of course. “People grouse at first, but the racism takes them back,” one of the city bus passengers concedes. “Makes them realize how far we’ve come and, more important, how far we have to go.” The rationale is profound in its absurdity. In the wrong hands it sounds like the misinformed views of a delusional reactionary, but only Beatty can entertain us with the risible irony of it all. Just as discrimination can have positive side effects in Beatty’s world, so too can the brazen act of owning another human being happen so passively. When it comes to slaveholding, the narrator does not pursue his “property”; he merely relents to it the same way a yuppie indirectly uproots a native resident in the search for a city apartment. Even when he uses the novel to riff on cultural politics, Beatty handles the touchiest subjects with the lightest of strokes. He pokes, tickles, and flapjacks Black myths. He masterfully juggles the proper and the profane, the slang and the Latin, the plot and the punch line.

Sometimes it takes a city like Dickens to understand a city like Ferguson, Missouri. Sometimes we need a fictional Hominy to properly mourn our real life Buckwheat. Sometimes we need to see how owning a slave and keeping a black nanny may not be as far off as we think. The Sellout picks the most hilariously original ways to tell us what we already know: that we are still in conversation with the peculiar institutions of yesteryear. It also trolleys on with subtext that cautions us to beware what one may mistake for progress. It all seems perfectly diagnosable in a place that doesn’t exist. The trick is that in scrutinizing Beatty’s parallel universe we are given permission to scrutinize our own.

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma Little Brown & Company Reviewed by Sidik Fofana It easily enough can be read as a parable. Abulu, a wild homeless man makes a grim forecast of death pitting brother against brother. He could represent the white man in colonial Nigeria. The one who has divided and plundered, who has drawn colonial war lines across African nations. Abulu easily could be the Belgian who split Rwanda into Hutus and Tutsis, the Brit who sliced Sudan into northern and southern provinces. But what if The Fishermen were not a parable? What if it were just a story? Much hullabaloo surrounds Chigozie Obioma’s arrest-

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ing debut novel. This latest contribution to the African lit renaissance became only the second work by an African writer under thirty five years old to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Yet, unlike books like Noviolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Uwem Akpan, Say You're One of Them, The Fishermen doesn’t seem to hold overt political motives. In a market where readers crave fiction that confronts wildly shifting tectonic plates of social unrest, the novel is neither a cautionary tale about totalitarian rule nor a horror about the self-destructive nature of non-western communities. Its message is only faintly allegorical. The Fishermen opens up with the introduction of four brothers: the irrational oldest Ikenna, the confrontational Boja, Obembe the avenger, and nine year old Benjamin who also serves as the novel’s protagonist. They hail from Nsukka the same university town made famous by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. For the most part, they are normal boys who play Mortal Kombat and idolize soccer star J.J. Ukocha, who pledge allegiance to Nigerian presidential candidate MKO Abiola. However, their idyllic existence comes to a crashing halt when the boys venture to a nearby river with idle dreams of being anglers readying themselves for the big catch. It’s here the boys meet Abulu, the village madman whose “pubic region was covered with a dense foliage of hair in the midst of which his veiny penis hung limply like trouser rope”. Abulu prophesies that Ikenna will be killed by one of his brothers. The declaration is cold and

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final, like something spooned out of a witch's cauldron. Whether the boys are driven mad by fate or free will from that point on begs debate, but what is clear is the wild spiral in which the decree has sent their lives. Ikenna becomes consumed by this oracle menace, opting to shut himself off from the world. When he gets aggressive towards Boja, we cringe; the fulfillment of fate seems painfully obvious to everyone but him. The brothers huddle to comfort him, but herein we see the futility of human intervention in preordained matters. The more Ben and his brothers urge Ikenna to make amends with Boja , the more they push him to murder and the more their father’s dreams of his children venturing into the “oceans of this life and becom[ing] successful: doctors, pilots, professors, lawyers” crumble around everyone. It is this susceptibility to hubris and divine will that gives this the story its raison d’etre. Concertedly fabulistic, The Fishermen employs many of the same magical realist tropes--the mythical village, the madman, the proverbial warnings, the dream, the forbidden water--that characterize his famed predecessor, Things Fall Apart. Yet, the novel avoids wagging its finger at any particular political event. The characters are people first. They may ultimately be pawns weighed down by societal gravity, but at best, this is the book’s secondary concern. ★

Subscribe Today Mosaic is a print tri-annual (Spring, Summer, & Fall/Winter) that explores the literary arts by writers of African descent, and features interviews, essays, and book reviews. Three issues: $16 MosaicMagazine.org

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The Subtle Art of Amina Gautier by Julia Brown

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My first memory of Amina Gautier involves seeing her across a cafeteria lunch table in Taos, New Mexico. It was 2013, in the inaugural summer of the Kimbilio workshop for African-American writers. At lunch that day, I listened as Gautier theorized aloud about the fundamental differences between native New Yorkers and city transplants. I qualified as the latter. A New York City resident for over two decades before moving to Houston for grad school, I listened in, feeling a little implicated, a little guilty even, as I was swayed by her confidence: native New Yorkers have something in their bones the transplants don’t, she said. This was my first encounter with the observational acuity and keen attention to setting that I would later recognize in the stories populating her award-winning collections. At-Risk (2011), winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, centers on the lives of black Brooklyn adolescents navigating their desires while growing up in worlds fraught with pitfalls, both internal and external. The characters in Prairie Schooner Book Prize winning Now We Will Be Happy (2014) explore the boundaries of Afro-Puerto Rican identity. Beneath Gautier’s sensitive authorial lens, ordinary lives are shown in their full measure—courageous. Flawed. Utterly human. Gautier’s extensive publication history includes such journals as Prairie Schooner, Kenyon Review, Agni, Crazyhorse, Iowa Review, Glimmer Train, Callaloo, and Antioch Review, among many others. Her book reviews, nonfiction, critical writing, and essays have appeared in The Rumpus, African American Review, Daedalus, and

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Belles Lettres—she’s been awarded multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and residencies/fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Currently, Gautier is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Miami, and her third short story collection, The Loss of All Lost Things (2016) won the Elixir Press Award. I asked her about her latest publication, her love of and commitment to the short story, and the work that inspires her. Julia Brown: The worlds of the protagonists of The Loss of All Lost Things are, as the title suggests, upended by loss. This book stakes out different territory from the previous collections even in its first sentences (a story called “Lost and Found”): Falling into step with the boy, Thisman draws close and whispers in a voice only for him. Says, “I wish I had a little boy just like you. I wish you were my own,” and the boy believes it, every single word. This almost fairy tale-like bit of dialogue gently guides the reader into a horrific situation—the protagonist is a young boy abducted by a stranger, someone identified only as Thisman. This story fearlessly mines tense, frightening moments, and, to my view, colors the reading of the rest of the collection: a reader learns very quickly to not expect simple redemption tales, or ambiguity-free happy endings. Amina Gautier: I’ve had some eighty-five stories pub-

lished, but only three of them have had happy endings. Two of those stories are in this new collection, so you can see that my definition of happy ending is not all that happy—no ambiguity-free happy endings here. The concept of happiness is too complex and complicated to be ambiguity-free and as a fiction writer I have a responsibility to depict that complexity along with any other emotional complexities my characters may feel—that is if I want them to be represent flesh and blood human beings. Life isn’t easy, so why should stories be easy? JB: The title of the collection—The Loss of All Lost Things—and general tone of the stories made me think of the most affecting lines of a poem by Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art:” Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. The characters in The Loss have lost or are losing every manner of thing: spouses, lovers, children. What’s most important to them. Their lives, their senses of self. Loss becomes a kind of vortex that the reader watches the characters bear. The attempts to deny or stave off loss of course make things worse—many of these characters seem caught in a suspended state, unable to come

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to terms with their losses. What spurred your thinking about loss as you were writing this collection? AG: Thank you. It’s nice to have one’s work compared to such a poet’s. I did not intentionally set out to write about loss, but I believe it’s a topic that emerged naturally once I wrote more stories from an adult perspective. The stories in the first collection At-Risk are all from the point of view of children and adolescents, thus the relationships and interactions between youths and adults are viewed through the lens of the younger narrators. Because of this the stories are more about wanting, having, taking, and procuring. Although children, or the idea of children, are prominently featured in the new collection, the majority of the stories in The Loss of All Lost Things are rendered from the perspective of the adult narrators, which places a different sort of narrative pressure on the stories. For although the adult narrators may very well believe that they are actively acquiring and accumulating, once you have a list of things that you own, claim, or have received—no matter how many more items you are attempting to add to your list— you are also actively involved in attempting to preserve and maintain that which you have already acquired. Meaning, you are engaged in the act of trying not to lose anything, and things are slipping away from you faster than you can catch them. It didn’t seem possible to write about adult relationships and interactions without addressing loss. This seemed to me to be a very adult plight—that of trying not to lose any of your hard-earned gains. It seems to me that we live a life of tallying—counting what we have on one hand and what we need/want on the other hand, without considering that we need both of those hands to hold on to what

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we cherish. JB: The alchemy in some of these stories is subtle. I’m thinking about one of my favorites in the collection, “What Matters Most.” Viv, under a number of stresses— a daughter whom she loves and is frustrated by, an exhusband who won’t quite go away—empowers herself with an affair with a much younger dance instructor. There’s a moment when Viv hears her daughter out on her apartment balcony with the dance instructor. She’s forced, for a moment, to stand back and observe them, as if she were behind glass. To my reading, Viv finds a resolution in what she sees. That moment feels like an irrefutable answer to a question Viv couldn’t even get close to articulating. There’s also new widow Judy, the protagonist of “As I Wander,” who goes into a kind of emotional freefall after her husband’s funeral. I was really drawn in by her attraction to the lover (and possibly the rent boy) of her next-door neighbor. Judy’s desperate need for intimacy in that moment is palpable; she tenderly observes the boy in such a way that throws a sharp light on her loneliness and the unacknowledged gulf left by her husband’s death, something she’s barely begun to admit to herself. As a reader, it’s fascinating to notice what is explicitly stated in the stories, and what goes without saying, and to reflect on why the author made those choices. AG: If I love my characters, I have to imbue them with honest reactions i.e. reactions that are honest to them. I have to let them show me what they will do once I set them in motion. In “As I Wander,” Judy could have easily had the affair with her neighbor Hank instead—he was a

far more obvious choice. Then I would have had a nice, neat, perfectly wrapped story with a bow on top. But once I put Gene’s filthy fleece on her and sent her to that park, I knew she wouldn’t come back as someone who would choose Hank. If I trust my readers, I shouldn’t have to say “Judy was sad. Judy was lonely. She missed her husband.” Hopefully, every sentence in the story will say that without ever making it explicit. I believe that subtlety in fiction is based upon a kind of triangle of trust between writer, character, and reader. The writer has to trust the characters to reveal their emotional underpinnings; the writer has to trust the reader to be an active and engaged participant rather than a passive vessel simply waiting to be spoon-fed information; the reader has to trust the writer to mean more than he or she says and to use language deliberately to make meaning. JB: “Disturbance” is a big departure from your usual strict realism. Although this story is essentially about the efforts to save a schoolteacher in the midst of a breakdown from being fired, the setting is speculative, some distant future-past in a society of separatists consumed by a manic Puritanism. Where did this story come from? Can we expect to see more speculative fiction from you in the future? AG: The nucleus for “Disturbance” was born in 2002 or 2003 at the Callaloo summer writer’s workshop at Texas A&M University. Percival Everett was the workshop leader. He didn’t give us a prompt; he simply told us “Start writing.” Once we started, he dimmed the lights

(the lights were controlled by a slider switch) and forbade us to stop writing. Soon we were all writing in the dark and he let us go on like that for a few more minutes before he stopped us. His point was to prove to us that there was no such thing as writer’s block, to show us that we could write even in the dark. The scene in “Disturbance,” where the teacher (appropriately named Mr. Everett) turns out the lights on his students is what I wrote that day. That’s where the story started, back when it was originally titled “Togetherness.” The story went through numerous drafts over the years and I finally finished it after Trayvon Martin was killed. I felt that I had to finish it then. At that point, I didn’t think the world could get any crazier. Generally speaking, however, as a writer who is African American, Latina, and a woman, I prefer the form of realism because I believe that concerns of race, class, and sex are frequently erased, forgotten and ignored. Privileged people are blind to their privilege; they are often oblivious to the ways in which their family wealth or their race or their sex positions them for success. The genre of realism is an excellent forum for me to reveal these underpinnings. I love sci-fi, fantasy, comics and superhero narratives, but I love them because they allow me to escape. Sometimes that’s what I need to do to recharge my batteries. Escaping is great for a time being, but it doesn’t work for me when it makes me feel like I am running, erasing or denying. I don’t always want to displace my world or my

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culture’s problems onto an alternate universe or in an alternate reality where money, race, or sex is nonexistent. At the end of the day that’s not the reality in which I live. Everyone can’t use the force, or take a serum, read minds, transmogrify or just hop into the Starship Enterprise. Yeah it sucks to be a mutant, but it sucks a little less when you have a mansion and a jet at your disposal. It’s super awful to be an orphaned boy wizard; it’s way less awful to be an orphaned boy wizard with a wealth of guardians, a vault full of gold, and a cloak of invisibility to help you find your way. It really bites when your aunt and uncle get disintegrated by Stormtroopers and there are no more blue milkshakes for breakfast, but it bites a lot less when you can just leave the planet where all of the bad stuff happened behind, climb in a Millennium Falcon and hop on over to another planetary system where you can learn to lift spaceships with just your mind so that you become so powerful you can make sure no one ever takes your blue milkshakes away again. Realism allows me to explore what happens when characters’ own internal conflicts are impacted by external factors such as homophobia, poverty, racism, sexism, or xenophobia; it unpacks for the reader just how few choices such a character might have when so impacted and why an action that, on the surface, seems contrary to a character’s goals or desires may ultimately reveal itself to be the only moment of agency such a character can grasp. JB: Let’s talk writers you love. AG: Love love love Stuart Dybek. Aside from him, I generally love specific short stories or works rather than writers. In no particular order, I love “The Weight

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of the World” by Yelizaveta Renfro, Montana,1948 by Larry Watson, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, Drown by Juno Diaz, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, O Pioneers! by Willa Cather, The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, “Sewanee Summer” by Jaquira Diaz, “The Baby” by Donald Barthelme, “White Angel” by Michael Cunningham, A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines, Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Known World by Edward P Jones, Middle Passage by Charles Johnson, “Quiet, Please” and “Baskets” by Aimee Bender, Caucasia by Danzy Senna, Self-Help by Lorrie Moore, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” by Amy Hempel, Quicksand and Passing by Nella Larsen, Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes, “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, The House Behind the Cedars by Charles Chesnutt, “A Poetics for Bullies” by Stanley Elkin, Erasure by Percival Everett, “Girl” and Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid, “Bliss” by Katherine Mansfield, Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson, “Isn’t it Right?” by Melissa Sipin-Gabon, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, “The Used-Boy Raisers” and “Goodbye and Good Luck” by Grace Paley, and M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A by Van Jordan. As you can see, I am very free with my love. JB: Tell me about your process, specifically as regards theme. All three of your collections seem so tightly constructed thematically. How soon does theme emerge in the gathering of the stories? Do potential themes influence the writing of the stories? At what point does theme become apparent? Whereas the characters in your first two collections are unified by culture, ethnicity, and locale, the characters in

The Loss of All Lost Things are all over the map in terms of background and setting and circumstance; the situations are so varied I’m wondering if the process of writing this book different for you than the previous two. AG: I write in a very open-ended manner. I don’t impose a lot of restrictions upon myself in regards to writing a certain number of days per week, or getting up at the same time every day etc. (unless I’m at a writer’s residency, which is a whole different ball of yarn). In general, I don’t need such restrictions. I already want to write all of the time, so I don’t need to find ways to trick myself into doing my favorite thing. Usually, I need to find time, not motivation. For individual stories, I often start by writing longhand and later transcribe what I’ve written onto a word document. And I’ll keep adding to it here and there over the course of a few months or years until the word count hovers near 3,000 words. Then it’s like “Lo and behold! There’s a story here, just waiting for me to write it!” That way I’m never staring at a blank page. When I write that way, I feel like a sculptor who is chiseling away to release or reveal a figure hidden within the clay. When I approach a document upon which I have already laid words, I feel like I am there not so much to create a story, but to discover the story in the words I already have. As far as writing short story collections go, I don’t really write towards theme. I write about whatever I am feeling or whatever interests me on a particular day and later on I take a step back to assess and put it all together. Before my first book At-Risk was published in 2011, I had been

writing and publishing short stories for over a decade. I started writing seriously in 1999 and I spent all of the time between then and the first book trying to write as many different stories as I could in terms of style, content, form, rhythm, length, language and point of view. After publishing my fiftieth story some years back, I took a step back and looked at all of my stories. In doing so, it became clear that they fell into six disparate categories or six different thematically coherent group formations. I didn’t set out to do that. I never wrote an outline or made a chart that said “Now you need stories about marginalized black kids in Brooklyn” or “Now you need another story about middle-class adults suffering loss” or “Time for another story about Puerto Ricans.” I could never write that way. After I write about a subject, topic, or issue, I usually believe that I am done with it, until I discover that I’m not. A few stories later, my brain pulls me back and I find that I want to look at the same subject from a different angle or perspective. “What Matters Most” appears in the third collection, but it was completed in 2002, long before I ever wrote the first draft of “Push,” which appears in the first collection. “A Cup of My Time” and “Push” were actually both completed some six years ago, within months of each other, even though they ended up in two different collections. I wrote much of the material that ended up in my three collections At-Risk, Now We Will Be Happy, and The Loss of All Lost Things at the same time. When I write I like to work on multiple pieces at the same time in order to prevent boredom or compla-

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cency. I write the stories first; I build the collections later. That way nothing feels forced. JB: I want to reach back into your previous collections for a second and talk about two short stories that I found astonishing. “Push” (from At-Risk) made me think instantly of Stanley Elkins’s “A Poetics for Bullies,” a story about a bully called, incidentally, Push. “The Luckiest Man in the World” is a very different story from “Push,” but the young male protagonist floats in a similar state, engaged in illicit play with a female cousin. “Lost and Found” from the new collection has a similar flavor. The reader gets immersed so deeply in the experience that the reader feel like she’s fumbling, elegantly, irresistibly, toward some horrible conclusion. Tell me about those particular stories. AG: Astonishment is a great compliment. Thank you. My story “Push,” was written in homage to the Elkin story. “A Poetics for Bullies” is one of my favorite stories. I first read it in eighth grade. Christine Schutt, who is a pretty snazzy writer in her own right, was my eighth grade English teacher and she assigned it in our class. I loved it right from the beginning, from the moment Push begins his litany of what he hates and then says “I love nobody loved.” Damn that’s good! Serious lyricism in that story. You read that story out loud and it makes your lips vibrate and your mouth hum. Aside from the amazing language and rhythm of that story, what I loved was Push’s emptiness, the way he bullied from hunger, from a need to fill himself up on the weaknesses of others, to covet things like their limps and lisps etc. I wanted to explore how gender would change the nature of the bullying. What might make one girl bully the other? What would she covet and what would the bullying accomplish for

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the two girls? I wanted “The Luckiest Man in the World” to sound like music; I wanted the fumbling of the bodies to mimic the music and the language to sound like a song since they are at a house party and there is music playing in the background. “Lost and Found” was deliberately kept that short because I wanted it to have the repetitive sound of a child’s first primer, which I think a reader can only take so much of. Just enough should make the story haunting once the reader realizes the repetition signals just how often the boy has heard these sentences and how often he’s repeated them in his head. It becomes a haunting litany. I also omitted the kidnapper’s name, instead eliding “this man” into Thisman, which is the name the boy comes to know him by, a stranger’s address made familiar. JB: Your stories often end on what writer and teacher Kevin McIlvoy would call an about-to-be moment, a moment of imminence. So many of the stories’ apparent conflicts don’t seem fully resolved; some are only just brought to their climax before the story ends. I’m thinking particularly about “A Cup of My Time,” about a woman in the uncomfortable last stage of pregnancy with twins, in full knowledge that one likely won’t survive. The story leaves the reader at a cliff drop of a kind of Sophie’s Choice. I’m curious to hear what’s behind this approach. AG: I’m not sure if I see it that way, but that may depend on what the reader defines as the central conflict. In “A Cup of My Time,” the husband Cary tells his wife that she should be the one to choose between the twin fetuses. Despite representing himself as supportive or

magnanimous, she reads his act as abdication, as deliberately evasive. The reader doesn’t need to hear his answer since it doesn’t matter what choice he makes so much as it matters that she has asked him to choose. He asks her if there’s anything he can do for her and she responds by asking him to do the one thing he’s unwilling to do. The central conflict isn’t what’s going to happen to the twins. That conflict was occurring before the moment in which the story began; I would say the twin conflict is more inciting incident or backstory, but that the immediate conflict for the characters is the husband’s evasiveness, which the reader sees in the way he hides from their neighbor landlord and then sees again in the way he evades helping his wife make a decision. I’m not a big fan of cliffhangers, unless I’m watching reruns of Batman, so whether by word or gesture, I like to bring all of my stories to a definitive close. That might come from growing up watching figure-skating. I like my stories to stick their landings and fling their arms out in an Olympics-worthy flourish. JB: To what degree do you consider your readers/audience when you write? AG: Like Tony Stark in Iron Man 2, you can always count on me to pleasure myself first. JB: I was surprised to once hear a professor, a very successful short story writer, talk disparagingly about short story collections—mostly about how poorly they sell, how little cultural capital they have. In the careers of some authors, short story collections can feel like waystations between novels. You’d think in the age of the successful careers of writers like George Saunders and Alice Munro who choose to traffic exclusively in the short sto-

ry, people might be content to let short story writers live. I adore short stories and appreciate your commitment to the form. Tell me what hopes you have for the short story in particular. What does this form do for you? Where and how did you learn to love it? AG: I find it befuddling that some would disparage the short story collection or form; that sounds like a personal problem. Short stories are difficult to write. Perhaps it’s sour grapes. For those who can’t see the value inherent in the short story form, I suggest going old school on them and quoting Run-DMC: “You’re blind. You can’t see. You need to wear some glasses like DMC.” In all seriousness, I’ve never paid much attention to the disparagers. Long before George Saunders and Alice Munro, there was Carver, Chekhov, O’Connor, and Paley—all purveyors of the short story. Even when some of them wrote longer works of fiction, they were still thought of as short story writers. Here’s what I do know. I know that fiction is the tool I use to make sense of the world. Some people cannot understand their world unless they paint or draw it, sing it, chart or graph it, build it, take it apart, grow and farm it in the soil, quantify or calculate it—in order for me to understand the world, I need to be able to tell stories about it. Fiction is my form and the short story is my partner in this love affair. I love short stories. I delight in them. I adore them. I live them. I love the shape and size and form of short stories. I love their boundaries and the way they call upon me to push against those limits. I love their edges—frayed, worn, neat, tapered, or tucked. I love the way they speak in whisper, murmur, and growl. They never lull and they’re never coy. They demand.

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Short stories grab my chin and make me look. I read them the way a toddler watches its first commercial on TV—paralyzed, transfixed, arrested, captivated and unable to look away or so much as blink. Short stories shiver down my spine. Why would any writer who feels or experiences this not wish to replicate it? JB: Whose short stories are you reading lately? As an assistant professor of English at the University of Miami, do you prioritize short stories in your syllabus, and which short stories are you teaching these days? AG: I assign various forms of short fiction in my undergrad syllabi—short shorts, short stories, and novellas. In my graduate workshops, we read and workshop novels, stories and everything in between. I tend to assign short stories based on the specific craft lecture or assignment. For stories within stories I like Peter Rock’s “Blooms.” For setting I like William Henry Lewis’s “Shades” or Maura Stanton’s “The Sea Fairies.” For writing about humor I like Blanche McCrary Boyd’s “The Black Hand Girl,” Alice Munro’s “Royal Beatings” or anything by Grace Paley. I like Stuart Dybek’s “Pet Milk,” Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl” or Katherine Mansfield’s “Bliss” for imagery, Jhumpa Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter” for plot, characterization and point of view. For self-effacing narrators, I like James Alan McPherson’s “Why I Like Country Music.” For speculative fiction, I like Robert Olen Butler’s “Jealous Husband Returns in the Form of a Parrot,” Percival Everett’s “The Fix,” Katie Chase’s “Man and Wife.” For voice, I like Toni Cade Bambara’s “Gorilla, My Love” or “Raymond’s Run,” James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” and Michael Cunningham’s “White Angel.” For POV, I like Alice Adams “Complicities” or Richard Yates “The

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Best of Everything.” For plot, I like Eileen Pollack’s “The Bris” and Philip Roth’s “The Conversion of the Jews.” I could go on and on. ★

short fiction

What Matters Most by Amina Gautier You are on the way to your tango lesson with Tavares, the new young Puerto Rican teacher the center has hired to teach half of the Latin dance classes while Esmerelda takes a leave to have her baby. You are in the bathroom squinting under the bright lights, trying to see if the antiaging anti-wrinkle serum you applied is working any miracles for you. It is not. Fine lines feather the frail brown skin near the sides of your eyes when you squint before you realize that squinting defeats the purpose of buying age-resistant makeup. You are applying lipstick when the phone rings. It's your ex-husband. He doesn't even say hello when you pick up. "I would like to be there. It's only fair since you had her all Thanksgiving," he says.

Walk to the cross. At that moment in Argentine Tango between the fifth and sixth step, with all your weight balanced on your left foot, lean in closer and forget about all of the things that really matter. Forget to worry about Brooke coming home for mid-winter recess, forget that Tavares is your teacher and not your lover, forget that you are in your forties and he is not. Tavares frowns at your sloppy dancing and tightens his hold on your arm, "Wiggle arms! Be firm! Brace your arm against mine. This is not salsa!"

"I can't help it." Whine as he pulls you from the cross into forward ochos. Love the ochos, feel the turns, the back and forth. You know the two of you look fantastic on the dance floor. "You're never going to learn. You never pay attention."

Remind him that not only did he have her for Labor Day and Columbus Day, but that the two of you are splitting your daughter for the Christmas holidays. Warn him not to get greedy. "You can't block me out, Viv. I'm still a part of your life, you know. As long as we have Brooke, I always will be. Like it or not," he says. "Not," you say and hang up before he can get bring up his favorite topic and start asking for reconciliation. Remind yourself that getting rid of your husband was a good thing. Blot your lipstick and head out the door to go to your tango lesson.

"But I am!" Snap out of your reverie in time to see him shake his head at you in that annoying way of his. Old woman, you know he is thinking. "You would still be better off taking the group class. That way you could switch partners with each song andâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;" Cut him off. Lower your voice until you are purring. Tell him you can only learn with him. "Lead me into the forward ochos again and I'll show you." Touch his arm lightly. One. Two. Three. Four. "Don't just dance like wood!" He half drags you once again to the cross.

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"Don't yell!" "Don't pout," he says as he pulls you into forward ochos. Close your eyes when you feel him signal a gancho; try not to take that extra half step like you always do. Come chest to chest with Tavares again before he can lead the tango close. Stand on your tiptoes and press into him before you open your eyes. "See?"

"Pay attention!" he says, as you step back on the wrong foot. Suppress the urge to tell him that you love him and that at night sometimes you can't sleep because there is this thing inside you that you can't explain. A feeling like heaviness, like a lot of weight slowly crushing you. When you feel like this all of the words go out of your head and you feel like you are suffocating.

"Vivian."

"Get your head out of the clouds. Your time is up."

"Okay, okay. Once more?"

"Oh. Right."

Tavares releases you and looks at his watch. Take a look too, trying not to stare at the way the thick dark hairs on his arm almost curl over the watch face. You know that there are moments between the two of you when he doesn't see your checkbook or your age. Like when he walks you to the cross and spins you out into ochos and lets his hand press against your back with more firmness than is necessary. There have been more moments like that than you can count. But you want to tell Brooke about him first, before you let this thing become. Wonder how Brooke would feel about Tavares being young and Puerto Rican. You raised your daughter with an open mind, tried to instill values in her that sank deeper and wider than mere culture, but Brooke has turned out to be an insufferable snob despite your efforts. And you're not just saying that because you're her mother. Brooke's last three crushes have all been on boys from Third World countries. Their suffering is what attracts her. Doubt that Brooke would think Tavares has suffered enough.

He smiles at you. "You have remembered that the session ends next week, right?"

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Actually, you forgot. "Next week? Already?" Tavares fills up your Thursday evenings from 6:30 to 7:50. Realize that you have no idea what to do with a free Thursday. He walks to the far end of the studio to turn the music off and locks the cabinet that holds the stereo. "Then it picks up the week after, right?" "No. We have a month off for Intercession." "Then you teach again?" "I don't do session two. Esme does. She had a girl. She'll be back in time to take over again." Esmerelda has legs no middle-aged woman should have. They put Tina Turner's to shame. Only her face shows her real age. The sun took its toll on her. Deep lines of

age wrinkle her upper lip and crow's feet pull at the sides of her weathered brown face, making it look as if someone were standing behind her and gripping her hair hard from the back. It's a face you don't like to look at. You are glad she is on leave. She is having her baby at forty-six. You would never have a baby that late in life. Remind Tavares that your daughter will be home next Friday. Ask if he's still having dinner with the two of you when she gets in. Tavares looks up from changing his shoes. "How could I forget about the wonderful Brooke? She's all you talk about, all you think about." Say, "That's not true." Use your most coquettish voice. Let it imply that you think of other things, such as him. Tavares looks up at you. His eyes linger longer than necessary. This is one of those moments.

Sometimes having coffee with a good friend is the best thing you can do and all you can hope for. Especially after five new messages from your ex-husband with suggestions about the ways you, he and Brooke could enjoy her mid-winter recess as a family. You are sitting on a stool at the island in the middle of your kitchen the next morning, surrounded by hardwood floors that gleam from a fresh waxing, twirling around in circles on the stool as if you are a teenager from the fifties hanging out at the local diner. No matter that your coffee stands cold

and untouched on the counter or that the good friend you are imagining is none other than your housekeeper, Abby. Abby is in the kitchen pulling lettuce apart for a salad and you have not even offered her any coffee. Abby is in her mid-to-late forties, just slightly older than you, but Abby seems much older. Watch Abby and understand that although you are both black and near in age that the similarities end there. Tick off a list of points in your mind to remind you of just how dissimilar the two of you are: 1. Abby acts old, walking around in senior citizen clothing fresh from a rack at K-Mart, while you make sure to feel and look and act young. You watch your weight. You keep abreast of all the latest trends. You have a personal trainer. You still wear your blue jeans tight. 2. Abby is a widow and not a divorcee like yourself. Therefore, Abby is prone to lapse into long droning family stories about her dead Nelson and her children. Abby whips out photos of grand babies at the drop of a hat. You, being divorced, are close-mouthed on the subject of your ex-husband. He is the last thing you want to talk about. 3. Abby has only finished high school. She's never gone to college unlike you who have both your undergraduate and graduate degrees from prestigious institutions. 4. Abby is forgetful when it comes to her children. She has so many of themâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;three boys and two girlsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that she can afford to mix up their birthdays and call one by the other's name. You have the one daughter, Brooke, so

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you have to be very very careful of her.

"That's not why I'm taking it!" you blurt before you can stop yourself.

Rise and begin to dance the eight basic steps of tango to imaginary music, making sure to extend your legs back far with each step. Pluck a daisy from the vase at the center of the kitchen’s island and hold the stem between your teeth. Close your eyes and pretend that your left arm is around Tavares' neck.

"Of course not," Abby says. "I wasn't even thinking that."

"That's what you do every week in that class, Miss Vivian? Isn't that the kind with all the fancy stuff, where they drag you all over floor?" Abby asks. Tell her, "No one drags me. We haven't gotten up to arrastres yet." The look on Abby's face is discomforting. She seems to be watching you in a way that says she is trying hard to no avail to imagine someone your age dancing like that. Feel Abby's gaze linger at the pinch of skin under your neck. Tilt your head down. Thwart her gaze. Feel Abby looking around your mouth for lines. Relax the muscles around your mouth accordingly and clench your jaw to tighten the skin under it. Remind yourself that you are not old. Remind yourself that Abby is a hag. And where does she get off pointing fingers anyway? Abby was old when you first hired her and she is even older now. "You keep flowers in your mouth in class?" she asks. "No. We don't have to. Tavares doesn't make us." Abby's eyes light up with knowing and she puts the lettuce down. "Oh. He's teaching it?"

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"Tango is demure. It's got sophistication and class. It's all about grace and elegance. It's intricate, not like that salsa stuff Esme teaches which is just a bunch of wiggling." Abby nods and changes the subject. "I have to get used to cooking for more than one person with Miss Brooke coming for vacation. You eat like a bird so it's not hard to get things ready for you—" "Brooke definitely has an appetite," you cut in, happier to be talking about something else. "Sure does. Last time she was here she ate like it was the Last Supper!" "She's a starving student. You know what they say about cafeteria food." You smile with thoughts of your own boarding school days. You reach out and lay your hand on Abby's, momentarily forgetting about your differences. ¬Abby flinches and stares at your fingers draped lightly over her own. Look at your fingers. See them not as though they are the fingers you have lived with all your life, but as if they do not belong to you. See them as Abby might see them. Long brown fingers still smelling of scented lotion with weekly manicured nails shaped in tapering ovals. Fingers that have never had to become wrinkled while wringing a mop in its bucket. Or remain

in a sink full of grimy dishwater. Or curl around the handle of an iron. Or tuck in the elastic of a fitted sheet. Lazy fingers. Idle and rich. You've never seen them this way before. Wiggle them to shake off the shame. Remind yourself that Abby could have had the same things you had if she'd wanted. No one ever handed you anything on a silver platter. "That's right," Abby says as if there's been no break in the conversation, "And Miss Brooke sure has a lot of favorite foods. Guess I better go to the market and pick up some things so I can start getting them ready for her." She delicately pulls her hand out from under yours and heads for the door, leaving you with the distinct feeling of being dismissed.

Once Abby leaves, you run a bath and soak in it. Allow your mind to wander, even though it always comes back to Brooke. Wonder if Brooke will ever forgive you for sending her away and if you can ever know if Brooke has forgiven you. Realize that you don't know your daughter anymore. Sixteen years old and already Brooke is a stranger to you. She had come back after the first trimester of boarding school a changed woman. You had not recognized her. She'd cut off her shoulder length hair—the hair that you had diligently oiled and braided and brushed and helped her grow and take care of for years— to get rid of the perm. She'd worn short baby dread locks that reminded you of a pickaninny's pigtails you'd seen on Civil War memorabilia in the museums. The next vacation had brought even more changes. After last year's mid-winter break, Brooke decided to become a vegetarian and join an animal rights group. She came

home in the dead of a snowy New York winter wearing canvas sneakers and a cotton jacket because she decided that since she no longer ate animals she shouldn't wear them either. You put up with these changes because it is the only way to keep her and because you sense that these rebellions are directed at yourself. You accept the blame because you and your ex-husband agreed that it wouldn't be fair for only one of you to keep Brooke while you hammered out the terms of your divorce and the custody terms and that it would prevent one parent from unfairly hogging her if you sent her to Lyman-Sankey, a boarding school in western Massachusetts, and split the costs. So you bought your daughter herbal shampoos and conditioners with jojoba to encourage hair growth and you had Abby stock up on soy milk, soybean butter, tofu, tempeh and textured vegetable protein.

Next week, you are fifteen minutes late for your last session with Tavares. He lights into you about being late and irresponsible and wasting his time and your money and not bothering to call or reschedule —right in front of Esmerelda who is there showing off her baby to a couple practicing a milonga basic in front of the mirrored wall. The couple discreetly leaves the practice room, but Esme takes her time and throws a look at you that is vengeful and satisfied. In the middle of Tavares' tirade, you take comfort in the fact that Esme's legs are getting older and it will take her more than a few weeks to work off the fat she gained from her baby. Tell Tavares that you are not a child and that he can't yell at you that way. Slowly remove your jacket, fold it and lay it on the window ledge. Change into the dance shoes

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that make you two inches taller and put your street shoes in a corner by the radiator. "Well, you act like one," Tavares says as he walks away from you and opens the cabinet that contains the stereo. "Go to hell, Tavares. Where do you get off yelling at me like that in front of everybody?" He turns the volume up high and the music takes over the room, filling it so that it feels like the orchestra is right there in the room with you. "Tango position!" he commands as he jerks your right hand into position and braces his forearm against yours. "In front of everybody?" Tavares mocks you, his voice a strained falsetto in imitation of you. "You see?" he says, roughly pulling you to him. "It's so damn important to you to look good in front of everybody." "That's not true!" "It is. You're just a big baby." His fingers dig into your back. "You're hurting me!" "So set on having everything your way!" â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fuck you!" "You you you. The world does not revolve around you, Vivian! You think you're the only one that matters, the only one that's important, right?" The look on his face

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is terrible. His voice drops to a whisper. "And it's more important for you to show Esme up than for you to have the common courtesy to tell me you're sorry for standing me up and being late." "And what the hell are you? Bitching and moaning like some prima donna! I was just a little late. I couldn't help it. Brooke is coming and everything has to be perfect! I have to get everything right. You just don't understand." You don't mean to cry, but you can't seem to help it, what with the music so loud in your ears that you can hardly think and Tavares so mad at you and dancing you so fast you can barely keep up without tripping and holding you so close and rough that you almost can't breathe and your daughter coming and you being scared everything will go wrong. You cry right there in the middle of the scuffed floor with the radiator behind you and the mirrored wall before you and Tavares and the music and Brooke and all the things that matter caving in on you all at once. "I'm sorry!" you scream and pull out of his grasp. Then Tavares' hands are wiping your tears and you think he is apologizing because he'd forgotten about Brooke, but the condoleons and violins and all the other string instruments whose names you have never learned are so loud that you can't hear well enough to be sure since he is whispering again. Then he is kissing you, kissing you and walking you to the cabinet and lifting you on top of it, fumbling with the latch on his belt, running his hands up your legs, pushing roughly at the hem of your skirtâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; you feel the softness of his hands, hands without calluses, and know without a doubt that Brooke would not think he has suffered enough.

Pull into the parking lot at Lincoln Center the next day. For some reason, the administrators at your daughterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s school have chosen Lincoln Center as the drop-off place for the kids taking the chartered bus into New York. Kids Brooke's age mill about the three large buses, saying their good-byes and waiting for their rides to come get them. They all have a look about them that you can't place. If you did not know they came off the bus together, you would still know that they were a group. They slouch and tilt and lean forward when they talk to one another, standing like they are too cool to stand straight. You can't tell the boys from the girls. They are all dressed in baggy jeans, ski caps and big bulky down coats. Except for Brooke, who you can pick out right away. She is the only one not dressed for the weather. A thin denim jacket covers her bony shoulders and arms and you don't have to guess that she didn't bother to wear her thermals like you reminded her to. The navy blue paisley swirls of her bandanna cover her growing dreadlocks; the bottom half of her cherubic brown face is hidden by the upturned collar of her denim jacket. You can't see her nose, but you know that it is running. You grab the raincoat you keep in the backseat and get out of the car, eager to cover up your poor freezing daughter. An Asian girl with a waif thin body and bright orange hair passes her a cigarette, but when she sees you, she refuses the smoke. "Hey Mom," Brooke says as you hand her a tissue and motion for her to blow her nose. She allows you to hug her for the briefest of seconds. You feel her thin fingers push at the tops of your arms when you have hugged long enough. "You must be freezing to death out here with nothing

on!" "No, it's cool," she says. "This is Ji-In Kim." "Hello Ji-In. Here Brooke, this will keep you warmer. Put this on." You try to help her into the raincoat, but she backs away and looks at you as if you are asking her to eat arsenic. "What's that made out of?" "It's perfectly safe. Plastic. Vinyl. No animals." She takes the raincoat from you and eyes it warily. After Ji-In puts out her cigarette, she eyes it, too. Brooke turns it inside out and thumps the lining. "What about this?" "It's padded." "With what? Down? Feathers?" She's got you there. "I don't know," you say. "I'm not putting that on. No way." Ji-In nods and agrees with Brooke, even though she is wearing a pair of calf-high leather boots. "Okay fine, Brooke. Then let's just get you in the car. Where's your stuff?" "Dad's getting it." "What?" Breathe slowly. Maybe you have misheard.

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She shrugs and gives you her don't weird out on me look. "Dad showed up a little bit before you. I thought you guys had worked something out or something. You're not going to do anything are you?" "Like what, Brooke? What would I do?" "I don't know, Mom. Just please, okay? Just be cool." Tell her that you're the coolest and watch her roll her eyes again. You are losing points quickly. As if he knows he is being talked about, your ex-husband comes up to you. He is carrying one of Brooke's duffel bags in each hand as if they are lightweight. They are not. You've seen her pack before. Your ex-husband has grown a paunch. He doesn't look so hot since your divorce, but you know you have never looked better. Feel a slight twinge of satisfaction when you notice that he knows this too. "What are you doing here?" "You were late." "Five minutes! Give me a break. Besides, it takes you more than five minutes to get here. So what were you doing? Spying on me?" From the corner of your eye, you see Brooke frown and whisper with Ji-In. You hear her say, "My parents are like so immature." "No, Viv, I was not spying on you." Then he smiles and looks at you like you are crazy. "Don't be so dramatic."

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"Dramatic?" you shriek as Brooke tries to blend in with the background behind you, too ashamed to acknowledge her relationship to you. "You have a lot of nerve. I don't know how you can dare to show up here. This is a violation of the court agreement," you say, wishing you had your can of pepper spray with you. You snatch Brooke by the arm roughly and pull her over to you as if there is a white line etched in the ground between you and your ex-husband. If you gave her the chance to choose sides, you might lose. But for now â&#x20AC;&#x201D; for this weekend at leastâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; you can choose for her. "I have Brooke for the recess. You don't." He shrugs boyishly. "Well, I told you I wanted to see her. And I didn't have any other plans for the weekend. And I figured if you could see that I was serious about spending time with the two of you, then maybe you would come around. Come on, Viv." You are so angry that you can't speak for a good minute. You can't believe him and his nerve and you don't appreciate the way he is acting all innocent and making you look like the bad guy who won't play fair. Maybe you'd come around. You remember that shrug and that phrase from countless times in your marriage when he coerced you into doing something you had already said you didn't want to do. Like when he took the job in New York without telling you until it was a done deal, even though you said you didn't want to leave Philadelphia. He took it and hoped

that maybe you'd come around to the idea of living in the Big Apple. Like the nights when you wanted to be left alone and he put his hand on your thigh or breast and continued, because he wanted you and was hoping that maybe you'd come around. And when you told him to stop, he kept on going, hoping, just hoping that maybe you'd come around. You could kill him right now with your bare hands for his assuming you'd come around.

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Say, "I don't think so," and take the duffel bags away from him, even though they weigh more than you do and your arms feel like they are popping out of their sockets.

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"You don't have to be like this, Viv," he says. "What about dinner at least?"

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"I'm already having someone else over for dinner that I want Brooke to meet," you say. Shoulder the bags and walk away. "So you're the famous Brooke! Or should I say infamous?" Tavares says when you let him in. He kisses your cheek briefly and then engulfs Brooke in a bear hug after giving her a small bouquet he'd picked up for her. The arrangement is cheap—yellow, white, and pink daisies, carnations, and baby's breath—with not a single zinnia or gladiola in sight. You think it's a bit overdone, but Brooke loves it. She blushes under the attention and basks in it. It makes her happy and more at ease and that is all that matters. Tavares and his cheap flowers have made more lee-

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way with your daughter in less than five minutes than you have all afternoon. Your initial greeting had been strained. Brooke rebuffed your attempts to hug and kiss her. She didn't appreciate your efforts to keep her room exactly the way she'd left it the last time. She hugged Abby and thanked her for preparing her favorite pasta dish, a dish Abby could not have made had you not paid for the groceries. You feel like an outsider. Throughout the morning and afternoonâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; with Abby and Brooke watching Oprah and Jennie Jones and Ricki Lake while Abby intermittently cooked and gossiped and now through a dinner peppered with questions directed to Tavares about the living conditions in Puerto Rico and the poverty in parts of the island that didn't attract tourism and the depletion of its natural resources as a result of that tourism and the history of Argentine Tango and Tavares' initial interest in studying it and the two years he spent in Argentina and whether or not tango really had African origins and the differences between Argentine Tango and Ballroom or American Style Tangoâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; you feel as if you are on the outside looking in. And the feeling sickens you. Briefly, over salad and during the beginning of the meal, wonder if that sick feeling in your stomach is pregnancy and for five hysterical moments your mind is filled with anxiety over the possibilities of getting pregnant so soon as a result of last night with Tavares and having a change of life baby at your age like Esmerelda which is too reprehensible to bear. You look across the table at Tavares. He is wearing an olive green shirt with the first two buttons left open so that you can see a vee of golden brown flesh and chest hair. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. Dark curling hairs circle and hide the dusky skin of his forearms. His

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hands, large and brown drum idly on the white linen tablecloth and he leans back in his chair, eyeing you with sureness. Don't let him distract you. Try to forget how handsome he is. That is what got you into trouble in the first place. Run off a list of points on how you feel about the possibility of having his baby: 1. He is too young. Fatherhood would be a joke to him until he matured. 2. He is Puerto Rican. He will teach the baby Spanish and you won't be able to understand your own child. 3. He has no money and will probably fight you for custody. He might even make you pay him child support. 4. Having his baby might cast a shadow on your character and destroy your chances of winning custody of Brooke. The judge might think you easy and desperate, fast and loose, unfit to raise a precocious teenager and set a good example. You come to your senses once the pasta is served, deciding that you are merely nervous and not pregnant. After pasta and dessert, usher the two of them into the den to show off some pictures of your daughter. Tavares comments on an eighth grade photo of Brooke winning a debate, "Early on your daughter was showing the signs of becoming a very beautiful girl." "Thank you," you and Brooke say at the same time.

When you go to the dining room to clear the table, Tavares follows you.

wool, Tavares?' "

"What's wrong?" he asks, kissing your neck. "You look really tired."

"Don't make fun," he says. "It's good to hold a pretty girl's interest and have her look at you like you're ten feet tall. If she were a few years olderâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;"

"She hates me!"

"Then it wouldn't be illegal."

"No. She's a bit high strung like her mother. She's got a lot of pride like her mother. And she thinks that she's got a lot to proveâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;"

"In my country, a girl like her would already be married."

"Like her mother," you and Tavares say at the same time.

"Some things we do different. My mother married when she was fourteen. She had me when she was Brooke's age. In Puerto Rico, your daughter would be a woman."

"You have a knack for that," he teases you. "Do you think she likes me?" "I don't think this is as big of a deal to her as it is to you. I think you should relax and calm down and let whatever happens happens. That's what I do," he says. You can't help wondering if that was how he explained last night to himself. "After all, she's here now. You have the whole weekend to win her over. It doesn't have to be done in one night. She's here. With you. Let that be all that matters for the moment." Tell him he's right. "What about you? Do you like her? Because she sure seems taken with you. 'Tavares, was there ever a time in Puerto Rico when you didn't have hot water to bathe in? Tavares, did you ever have to wear hand-me-downs? Is it very hard to learn the tango, Tavares? How do you feel about factory farming, or wearing

"This is your country."

Say, "That's enough, Tavares. I can bring the rest of these dishes into the kitchen myself." The joking had been funny at first. You don't mind being ribbed a bit, but some jokes can go too far.

Go into the dining room for the last plate. Brooke follows you back into the kitchen. Make a mental note to take her clothes shopping while she's here and insist that she buy some decent clothing. She is wearing a tight orange ballerina top that hints at breasts she'll never have. Her tiny waist is belted tightly; bright blue baggy jeans with a big X on each pocket balloon over her small hips and down her legs and are cuffed over the tops of faded canvas sneakers that have been patched with duct tape. "So, is that your boyfriend or what?" she asks, plucking a

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spinach rotini from the plate in your hand and eating it.

"You sure?"

In shock, you drop the plate you've been carrying to the garbage disposal. It clatters and crashes on your newly waxed floor, spreading tri-colored pasta all over the shine.

"Yes. Sure. Go."

"Sorry Mom. I was just wondering that's all. I mean 'cause he's young and stuff and a lot of people's moms go through stuff like this when they get to be your age, but that's not cool. I mean, really, he's hot and everything, but he's not much older than me, you know?" Lie. Say, "He's just my teacher. That's all." "That's cool, then. It just wouldn't make sense, that's all. Like, it would make more sense if I went out with him. Or somebody that's like my age, you know? Do you want me to help you clean that up? I know Abby won't be back till tomorrow and my work assignment is in the cafeteria, so I do this all the time." "No, that's all right. Why don't you just go back to the den? I'll just be a few minutes cleaning up this mess. Ask Tavares to teach you to tango. Or show him your awards and soccer medals." "Mom, it's no big deal." Refuse her help. Hold onto the counter. "Just go sweetheart. Don't worry about this."

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You don't feel the coldness of the floor as you get down on your hands and knees with a wet paper towel to pick up the jagged edges of plate that lie scattered across the floor. Tell yourself that it's not your fault that your daughter has become such a little bitch. Blame The Lyman-Sankey School, then remember that the decision to send her away was yours. It is your fault that you raised a daughter whom you love with a desperation bordering on insanity but with whom you cannot have a civil conversation. Wonder where Brooke learned to be so tactless and so shrewd. Oh yes, you understood the underlying threat. You heard it loud and clear. Laugh it off as absurd that you should compete with your daughter. You love Tavares, but you would give up a hundred Tavareses to be able to talk to Brooke without feeling sharp, needling pain. Wonder if talking about Tavares could be the door-opener you need to make inroads with your daughter. You could tell Brooke how you feel about all of it. Brooke is a bright girl, a high school sophomore. She will listen and analyze. Then she will decide that you are having a mid-life crisis. You don't want her to think that. Mid-life crisis. For men it's buying a red sports car and chasing eighteen- year- old girls. For you, it's tango lessons and a twenty-something year old Puerto Rican. You don't want Brooke to see it that way. You feel the need to convince her otherwise choking you, overwhelming you. Spring from the floor to go tell your daughter the truth.

The den is empty although the green power light of the stereo is still on. You go to Brooke's room next. Stop in front of her door. You hear something. Push the door open slightly; a shaft of light triangles on your daughter's empty bed. You hear voices, soft and hushed, off the terrace. Follow the muffled voices until you see the silhouettes of their bodies through the balcony curtains. They are leaning over the railing, staring up at the skyline, talking and having fun without you. Brooke leans into Tavares' side and his strong brown fingers twist and stroke her dread locks. Try not to notice how youthful their bodies look together, like two willows bending towards each other. Brooke points up at something you can't see and Tavares laughs deep and long. Brooke joins in and pushes him lightly, just enough to tease. You step closer and strain to hear the joke. It would be good to laugh right now, but whatever they are saying is lost to you. You know it's not the words that matter. Press down on the balls of your feet. Feel your calves flex and tighten. Throw your head back and straighten your posture like Tavares taught you. Then remember that you have already had your last lesson. â&#x2DC;&#x2026;

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by Eisa Nefertari Ulen There are many lenses through which to view literary great James Baldwin. These lesson plans examine Baldwin the author activist and provide a historic context for young people to better understand that #BlackLivesMatter is a fresh iteration of the centuries-long Black freedom struggle. The struggle for Black Liberation has taken many forms. The Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century is rooted in slave ship rebellions and slave uprisings, Abolition, the AntiLynching Campaign led by Ida B Wells-Barnett, the Back to Africa Movement and Garveyism, Uplift, the Colored Women's Club Movement, and the Labor Movement. This list is not exhaustive. Consider pan-Africanism, Negritude, and the New Negro Movement. Civil Rights struggles are as varied and diverse as the beautiful diversity within the Black community. For contemporary youth to begin to know and appreciate the revolutionary aspects of Black life, they must begin to know and appreciate more than what most schools teach. One way to examine the deep engagement of countless African Americans in our own liberation is to study the contributions of one of them.

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a lesson plan

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James Baldwin was born in 1924 in Harlem and passed on in 1987 in France. In the 63 years of his life, Baldwin authored some of the most important narratives ever produced in this country, including Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, Giovanni's Room, If Beale Street Could Talk, Go Tell it on the Mountain, and Going to Meet the Man. The recipient of prestigious fellowships from the Rosenwald Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, Baldwin also won awards from the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the Eugene F Saxon Memorial Trust, as well as the National Conference of Christians and Jews. Baldwin received an honorary doctorate from Morehouse College and also received France's highest honor, La Legion D'Honneur. These lesson plans do not focus on Baldwin's accolades, however, but on his activism. "Sonny's Blues, "The Outing," "Going to Meet the Man," and "James Baldwin Tells Us all How to Cool it this Summer," as well as a 30 minute “Hollywood Roundtable” following the 1963 March on Washington provide a context for this activism - and for students to deepen their understanding of both the 20th century Civil Rights Movement and the 21st century #BlackLivesMatter Movement.

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I. Going to Meet this Man A. Topics for Discussion 1. Read through this biographical timeline of James Baldwin. What events seem most significant to you? What does this timeline tell you about Baldwin’s life and career? http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/james-baldwin-biographical-timeline/2667/ 2. View this short video, “Who’s the Ni**er?” on YouTube. James Baldwin flips the script on White America and their power over the n-word. Does Baldwin reclaim the power that the n-word would otherwise take from Black people? Is he more powerful than the n-word and the non-Black people who use the term? Why? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0L5fciA6AU 3. Now, watch this video of a much older Baldwin. What do you make of Baldwin’s response to a reporter’s question about being poor, Black, and gay? What obstacles do Black people face in American society? What obstacles do poor people face? What obstacles do members of the LGBTQ community face in this country? What would it be like for someone to have to face all those obstacles? Consider all those obstacles in place to prevent one man from achieving both personal and professional success. Does Baldwin’s insistence that he had to “find a way to use” all the identities that intersected in him make you think he was a strong person? In what ways do you think this writer and activist might have used his identities to overcome all the obstacles in his way? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-rfiG6ubVc

4. On The Dick Cavett Show, which was a popular talk show in the 1960s, Baldwin identifies four institutions in American society and provides evidence of systemic racism. Those institutions are the church, labor unions, real estate, and the education system. Why do you think Baldwin spoke about those four institutions? What roles do faith, work, housing, and learning have in the experiences of every person? How important are faith, work, housing, and learning in supporting a person’s humanity? Freeze frame on Baldwin’s face at the end of the clip, when he is silent and the audience claps. Give one word to describe the look on Baldwin’s face. How do you think Baldwin feels about the conditions of Black people in the 1960s? How do you think Baldwin would feel about the conditions of Black people now, in the 2010s? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6WlM1dca18 5. Now, give one word to describe how these video clips of James Baldwin make you feel. 6. Now that you’ve seen James Baldwin on TV during the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, think about the 2016 performances of Kendrick Lamar at The Grammy Awards, Beyonce at the Superbowl, and Chris Rock at The Academy Awards. Consider the fact that these performances have taken place during the #BlackLivesMatter Movement and the #OscarsSoWhite boycott. Which, if any, of these contemporary artists look like James Baldwin did when you freeze framed on his face and the audience clapped on The Dick Cavett Show? Which, if any, of these performances in 2016 make you feel the way you did when you watched the 1968 appearance of Baldwin on Dick Cavett?

B. Essay Idea Write a review of the pop culture responses to #BlackLivesMatter and #OscarsSoWhite. Review Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar, and Chris Rock. Which, if any, of these three artists created a powerful response to the political movement of your time? Which, if any, of these artists created a weak response to the political movement of your time? Which artists created the strongest message to America in their performances, and which artists created the weakest message to America? As you write, compare these performances to James Baldwin’s appearances on television in the 1960s. Has this generation of artists lived up to the high standards of political engagement established by culture workers like James Baldwin? You might want to think about #BlackGirlMagic and #SayHerName as you write. C. Additional Activities 1. Read this article about Kimberle Crenshaw, the Black feminist scholar who coined the term intersectionality in the 1980s. Write James Baldwin’s name in the middle of a large piece of paper. Around his name, write the many different identities that intersected in him. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/ wp/2015/09/24/why-intersectionality-cant-wait/ 2. Read “Gay Will Never be the New Black” on the GLAAD website. Why do you think Baldwin was such a staunch defender of the rights of African Americans within the LGBTQ community? Why do you think Baldwin so ardently aligned himself with the Civil Rights Movement but made a point of saying “the gay world as such is no more prepared to accept black people than anywhere else in society”? Free-write your ideas. Then,

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create a visual image to express Baldwin’s ideas about Black life within the LGBTQ community. Cut images and words from old magazines to create a collage that expresses Baldwin’s idea about Black exclusion within the LGBTQ community. http://www.glaad.org/blog/gay-will-never-be-new-blackwhat-james-baldwin-taught-me-about-my-white-privilege 3. Read this Daily Kos article, “Oppression and Intersectionality.” Devon DB writes about being Black, male, and gay. Think about the way several different identities intersect in Devon DB’s body. What might be the experiences with oppression that Black gay men experience today? Now, pretend to be James Baldwin. Imagine the ways racism, classism, and homophobia impacted him. Continue to pretend to be Baldwin, and use the first person to write your own blog post about being a gay Black man in the 1960s, before the Gay Pride Movement of the 1970s and the legalization of gay marriage in 2015. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/8/4/1116867/-Oppression-and-Intersectionality

II. The Outing: Silence in Black Gay Manhood A. Topics for Discussion 1. Define the word outing. What is an outing from a child’s point of view? What are the images and feelings associated with a child’s outing? What is an outing from an adult point of view? What does it mean for an adult to be outed? What are the images and feelings associated with an adult’s outing? 2. Think about the times you have travelled with your family to a park, beach, swimming pool, family reunion, amusement park, or other outing. How did you feel? What were your expectations before the outing? How did you feel while you were away from home with your family? How did you feel when you returned home? 3. What is love? Are there limits on love, or is love an emotion that should have no limits? 4. Can writing be a form of activism? Why or why not? 5. Think about what you know about the Black church and the social justice movement of the 1940s - 1960s. Which Civil Rights leaders emerged from the Black church? What role did the Black church play in the Civil Rights Movement? 6. Do you think there were many Christians among the Africans who were brought here as slaves? How do you think slave owners in South America, the Caribbean, and the United States were able to make so many African people Christian? What do you think they told people

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about God? What emotion do you think drove the conversion of so many people?

ted to worship and the limits that were placed on their expression of faith.

7. Consider the fact that many African-American writers interrogate or question organized religion in their writings. Given the history of the Black church as a bastion of social justice activism, why do you think this is the case?

3. Create a chart that defines these terms: Intersectionality, Ally, Gender Neutral, Privilege, Closeted, Out, Marginalized. Use each word in a sentence to describe something important, like a theme, character, setting, or symbol, in “The Outing.”

8. What does the 4th of July holiday celebrate? What, do you think, constitutes authentic freedom? Can people ever be really free if they can’t openly express their love for another person? B. Essay Idea Consider the idea that art can be a form of activism. If Baldwin’s “The Outing” can be read as protest, then what problems in society does Baldwin address in this short story? How effective is this short story in examining homophobia? Think about the fierce love between Johnnie and David. Is the fact that these two boys cannot openly and freely express their love on the 4th of July ironic? Imagine how Gabriel would react if he saw and overheard Johnnie and David express their love. Does the story make you want to be more like Gabriel or less like Gabriel? Does this story make you think differently about the LGBTQ community? Can a story about closeted gay characters help the reader want to be an ally and support gay men who yearn to be out in real life? C. Additional Activities 1. Write a poem, essay, letter, or song about love. 2. Complete a research paper on the history of the Black Church. Write about the many ways slaves were permit-

4. Bring a diverse group of students together and develop a plan to commit to support members of the LGBTQ community who attend your school. You might decide to create an affinity group for LGBTQ students, work to normalize the use of gender neutral pronouns in your classrooms, or advocate for the establishment of gender neutral bathrooms and locker rooms in your school. 5. Read through this list of prominent African Americans who are also members of the LGBTQ community. Make posters that celebrate these Black leaders and hang them around your school. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/08/prominentblack-lgbt-icons_n_4747530.html 6. Make a list of members of the Hip Hop community who have come out as members of the LGBTQ community. The people you list might be MCs, actors, businesspersons, or athletes. Make posters celebrating these Black leaders and hang them around your school. 7. Write a poem, song, short story, letter, or essay that celebrates LGBTQ pride.

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A. Topics for Discussion Before the Reading 1. Watch this PBS video documenting the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Sit in silent reflection for a moment. Now, free-write. Write for 10 full minutes about what comes up for you. What feelings and ideas have come out of your free-write? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohYgjwa71lg

4. What do you think Baldwin means when he says that the person from the white community who can talk to the Black community is, "Anybody, who doesn't think of himself as white"?

2. Look up the definitions of these terms: appropriation, reappropriation, inequity, looter, Sambo, apartheid, imperialism, Race Solidarity. Now that you have a dictionary definition of each, give an example of the way you might use each word in a conversation. What would you be talking about for these terms to come up in a conversation?

5. Does reappropriation change the meaning of the nword? What does it mean for an African American to reappropriate the n-word or a woman to reappropriate the b-word? Does reappropriation change the power of the epithet?

3. Focus on the word looter. What image comes to mind when you hear that word? What would a typical looter look like to you?

6. Look up images of Sambos. What do you think about Baldwin's reappropriation of Sambo toward the end of this interview? Why do you think Baldwin uses such a racially charged term to answer the reporter's question about what white people must answer for?

B. Topics for Discussion After the Reading 1. Now read the Esquire magazine interview, â&#x20AC;&#x153;James Baldwin Tells Us All How to Cool it this Summer.â&#x20AC;? http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/interviews/ a23960/james-baldwin-cool-it/ See page 58 for an excerpt from the Esquire interview. 2. In this interview, Baldwin talks about inequities and says they are not "an Act of God." What do you think he means? 3. Look at Baldwin's response to the question "How

would you define somebody who smashes in the window of a television store and takes what he wants?" Who do you think Baldwin identifies as the real looters? Who would you identify as the real looters?

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7. Many times whites appropriate the reappropriated nword and claim that they, too, can use the n-word as a term of endearment. Do you think this is OK? Similarly, boys and men sometimes appropriate the reappropriated b-word and claim to use it as a term of endearment. Is it ever OK for men to call women the b-word? Now that you have seen images of Sambo, would it ever be OK for a white person to call you that? What happens to the power of the epithet and the power of the person using the epithet when reappropriated terms are appropriated by those outside the group?

photo credit: Mark B. Anstendig

III. Cool

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C. Essay Idea The reporter asks, "What does the death of Martin Luther King signify?" Reread Baldwin's answer. He says, "If you can shoot Martin, you can shoot all of us." Consider the poignant #BlackLivesMatter mantra, "Stop killing us." Think about your discussion of Race Solidarity. In what ways does the death of one Black person affect all African Americans? Write an essay that examines Race Solidarity as a way of being Black that derives from our shared history of white on Black violence. You may want to consider the mother's testimony in "Sonny's Blues" and her declaration that "you got a brother" as you write. D. Additional Activities 1. The interviewer asks Baldwin several questions related to Black leadership. Who are the most famous African American leaders today? Make a list of 10 well known leaders. Now, think about the 3 women who created the #BlackLivesMatter Movement. Are they important Black leaders? Develop a list of 10 African-American leaders who are not famous. Can you name any community activists who do important work in the area where you live? 2. Research the anti-Apartheid Movement. Look up organizations like TransAfricaForum, gather information about the historic boycotts against companies doing business in South Africa, and research the construction of shantytowns on college campuses around the United States during the height of the anti-Apartheid Movement. Research also organizations like the ANC, gather

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information about the student-led protests in Soweto, and research the Sharpeville Massacre. Create an international timeline that documents the work of Black people in South Africa and in the USA to end Apartheid. 3. Develop your understanding of imperialism. What is Western Imperialism? What countries form the socalled West? Define the term imperial. Use three different sources and write three different definitions of the term Western Imperialism. Now, that you have several definitions, think about Baldwin's assertion that "We understand very much better than you think we do..." Though you may have never heard this term before, do you feel like you always knew what Western Imperialism means? Is Western Imperialism something you always felt or knew but could never label or find the words to describe? Write the term in the center of a large piece of construction paper. Make a collage using images that show what Western Imperialism is and does. Write a paragraph, poem, or definition of Western Imperialism and place that in your collage. 4. Think about the words attitude and condition. What does each word mean? Write your definitions on paper. Now, look up the dictionary definitions of attitude and condition. Write them down, too. What does Baldwin mean when he says white is an attitude, Black is a condition? Write an essay, story, poem, or short play that supports, or refutes, Baldwin's ideas. As you revise, think about your writing as a form of activism.

IV. Celebrities in the Civil Rights Struggle Watch this US Information Service video of a Hollywood Roundtable following the 1963 March on Washington. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u27coFlGXg A. Topics for Discussion 1. What do you think Sidney Poitier means when he says he participates in Civil Rights demonstrations to perpetuate his survival? Why do you think each of the people of African descent echoes that sentiment, by identifying a lifetime or even generations-long commitment to Civil Rights? 2. When Harry Belafonte says that America is at the point of no return with regard to Civil Rights, do you think he was foretelling the ongoing demonstrations, protests, and uprisings to support #BlackLivesMatter? 3. Try to answer Baldwinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s query at the end of the roundtable. Why has America needed to invent the n-word? B. Essay Idea Note how Baldwin was in community with other culture workers as a Civil Rights activist. Why do you think it is important for people to come together, and not be in isolation, as they struggle for human rights? What do you think it might have been like for James Baldwin to know that he had activist peers, in Hollywood and in other communities, who were prominent public figures? In what ways might this community have offered him support as he went about the difficult work of being a writer and activist?

C. Additional Activity Create your own roundtable discussions. Break off into small groups of no more than 7 students. Choose a topic or issue of national concern that is important to you and your peers. You might choose the #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName movements or some other national (or international) movement for social change. Decide who will be moderator and hold a 30 minute roundtable for each group. Videotape your roundtable so, years from now, you can see yourself responding to an important issue of your youth.

IV. Sonnyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Blues A. Topics for Discussion 1. What does the word son mean to you? Think about the importance of a son in families. Think also of the colloquial use of son as a way to address another person. 2. Now think about the homonym of Sonny. What does the word sunny evoke or suggest? 3. Consider the two ways the apostrophe s in the short story title work: to show possession and as a contraction. What does the title suggest if Sonny owns the blues? What does the title suggest if Sonny is the blues? 4. What is blues music? In what ways is blues music connected to Hip Hop, Soul, Funk, R&B, House Music, Spirituals and Gospel, Rock & Roll, Jazz, and the African Drum? Think about Soca and Salsa, Reggae and Bomba. What do all these musical forms have in common? Who do all these musical forms have in common?

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5. Be silent for 3 minutes. List everything you hear in the silent classroom. Has everyone in the classroom heard the same sounds? Has everyone in the classroom heard those sounds the same way? 6. What roll does music play in your life? 7. What roll does music play in the lives, history, and culture of African Americans? 8. What if Black people had been forbidden to create music in this country? What would America sound like? 9. What is a symbol in literature? What is a theme in literature? B. Essay Idea A story within a story often helps the careful reader understand the bigger story. Reread the section of “Sonny’s Blues” when the mother tells her oldest son about the uncle who was killed with a guitar on his back. What themes or symbols in the mother’s personal testimony help the reader understand the short story better? Think about the sound of the guitar being destroyed by the truck of white men and the pulp that is left of Sonny’s uncle because of those same men. How might the guitar sounds be connected to the bloody remains of the uncle’s body? Why do you think the mother tells this story to Sonny’s older brother?

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C. Additional Activities 1. Listen to music by Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, Billie Holiday, Muddy Waters, Son House, and Bessie Smith. Think about the sound created by their voices and their instruments. Think about the lyrics of their songs. Based on these artists, what is Blues Music about? Paint a picture, write a poem, choreograph a dance, or use some other artistic form to express the power of The Blues. 2. Think about the sounds of your friends in the schoolyard, the sounds coming from a car or home, the sounds of your neighborhood street. Write a poem, short story, or essay about the sounds around you. 3. Consider the mother’s testimony about Sonny’s uncle’s death. She tells what happened to her husband’s brother so vividly, even though she wasn’t there to witness his death. Think about something you heard someone in your family tell you but that you didn’t actually see happen. Try to write about that family member’s experience in a way that would allow readers to see it, to bear witness to it, too. 4. James Baldwin writes about the murder of Black people by whites in “Sonny’s Blues.” Think about an issue of importance to you. You might choose the topic your group discussed as a roundtable or some other topic. Write a short story that helps readers see and hear the way this issue affects people.

V. Going to Meet the Man A. Topics for Discussion 1. Look at videos of Black people being killed or injured by police: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpGxagKOkv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKQqgVlk0NQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XFYTtgZAlE. What feelings come up for you as you watch these images? What ideas do you get when you see these videos? 2. What do you know about Rodney King?

2. Create a series of posters that speak out against police brutality. Hang your posters around your school. 3. Think about the ways Baldwin’s short story might have impacted American readers who didn’t understand why the Civil Rights Movement was taking place. How might this story have helped them understand why African Americans wanted to demand their human rights? Write a short story or letter to America to help people in this country better understand the #BlackLivesMatter movement. ★

3. Define the word lynching. What is a lynching and what ways were Black people lynched? 4. What do you know about Emmett Till? 5. What kind of language is appropriate to examine police brutality and lynching in a short story? Should a brutal subject like police brutality or lynching be told with brutal language? B. Essay Idea Think about the interactions Jesse has with Grace, his parents, and with the young Civil Rights worker he has jailed. In what ways do these different interactions (one in his marital bed, one at his first public lynching, and one in a jail cell) all connect? What one thing connects all these different relationships? C. Additional Activities 1. Research Ida B Wells-Barnett and the anti-lynching campaign. Make a poster celebrating her work as a writer activist.

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In Esquire's July 1968 issue, published just after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., the magazine talked to James Baldwin about the state of race relations in the country.

Q. What would you say ought to be done to improve the relationship of the police with the black community? BALDWIN : You would have to educate them. I really have no quarrel particularly with the policemen. I can see the trouble they're in. They're hopelessly ignorant and terribly frightened. They believe everything they see on television, as most people in this country do. They are endlessly respectable, which means to say they are Saturday-night sinners. The country has got the police force it deserves and of course if a policeman sees a black cat in what he considers a strange place he's going to stop him; and you know of course the black cat is going to get angry. And then somebody may die. But it's one of the results of the cultivation in this country of ignorance. Those cats in the Harlem street, those white cops; they are scared to death and they should be scared to death. But that's how black boys die, because the police are scared. And it's not the policemen's fault; it's the country's fault. Q. In the latest civil disorder, there seems to have been a more permissive attitude on the part of the police, much less reliance on firearms to stop looters as compared with

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last summer when there was such an orgy of shooting by the police and the National Guard. BALDWIN: I'm sorry, the story isn't in yet, and furthermore, I don't believe what I read in the newspapers. I object to the term "looters" because I wonder who is looting whom, baby. Q. How would you define somebody who smashes in the window of a television store and takes what he wants? BALDWIN: Before I get to that, how would you define somebody who puts a cat where he is and takes all the money out of the ghetto where he makes it? Who is looting whom? Grabbing off the TV set? He doesn't really want the TV set. He's saying screw you. It's just judgment, by the way, on the value of the TV set. He doesn't want it. He wants to let you know he's there. The question I'm trying to raise is a very serious question. The mass mediatelevision and all the major news agencies-endlessly use that word "looter". On television you always see black hands reaching in, you know. And so the American public concludes that these savages are trying to steal everything from us, And no one has seriously tried to get where the trouble is. After all, you're accusing a captive population who has been robbed of everything of looting. I think it's obscene. Q. Would you make a distinction between snipers, fire bombers and looters? BALDWIN: I've heard a lot of snipers, baby, and then you look at the death toll. Q. Very few white men, granted. But there have been a few.

BALDWIN: I know who dies in the riots. Q. Well, several white people have died. BALDWIN: Several, yeah, baby, but do you know many Negroes have died? Q. Many more. But that's why we're talking about cooling it. BALDWIN: It is not the black people who have to cool it, because they won't. Q. Aren't they the one's getting hurt the most, though? BALDWIN: That would depend on the point of view. You know, I'm not at all sure that we are the ones who are being hurt the most. In fact I'm sure we are not. We are the ones who are dying fastest. Q. The question posed, however, was whether snipers could be classified as true revolutionaries; fire bombers, as those overwhelmed with frustration and seeking to destroy the symbols of their discontent; looters, as victims of the acquisitive itch? BALDWIN: I have to ask you a very impertinent question. How in the world can you possibly begin to categorize the people of a community whom you do not know at all? I disagree with your classifications altogether. Those people are all in the streets for the same reason. Q. Does some of our problem come from our flaunting the so-called good life, with its swimming pols, cars, sub-

urban living and so on, before a people whom society denies these things? BALDWIN: No one has ever considered what happens to a woman or a man who spends his working life downtown and then has to go home uptown. It's too obvious even to go into it. We are a nation within a nation, a captive nation within a nation. Yes, and you do flaunt it. You talk about us as thought we were not there. The real pain, the real danger is that white people have always treated Negroes this way. You've always treated Sambo this way. We always were Sambo for you, you know we had no feelings, we had no ears, no eyes. We've lied to you for more than a hundred years and you don't even know it yet.We've lied to you to survive. And we've begun to despise you. We don't hate you. We've begun to despise you. And it is because we can't afford to care what happens to us, and you don't care what happens to us. You don't even care what happens to your own children. Because we have to deal with your children too. We don't care what happens to you. It's up to you. To live or to die because you make your life that choice all these years. â&#x2DC;&#x2026; Visit: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/interviews/ a23960/james-baldwin-cool-it/ to read the complete interview.

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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.

April 9, 2016, Tyehimba Jess introduced his stunning poetry collection, OLIO, at Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn. Special Guests: Randall Horton, Janice Lowe, and Jessica Lynne Brown "With ambitious manipulations of poetic forms, Tyehimba Jess presents the sweat and story behind Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s blues, worksongs and church hymns. Part fact, part fiction, Jess's much anticipated second book weaves sonnet, song, and narrative to examine the lives of mostly unrecorded African American performers directly before and after the Civil War up to World War I." MosaicMagazine.org 61 -Wave Books

photo credit: Anthony R. Wilson/WideVision Photography

On May 7 & 8, 2016, book lovers, writers, and readers gathered for the Bronx Book Fair at the Bronx Library Center. Now in its fourth year, the book fair invites Bronx and New York-based writers and literary organizations to participate on panels, readings, and workshops. Mosaic is one of the event sponsors.

Bronx Book Fair panel A Conversation: Women, Arts Activism, Creativity and Social Responsibility 62 Moderated MosaicMagazine.org by Lorraine Currelley, right, with panelists Jonterri Gadson, Rebecca Brooks, Mercy Tullis-Bukhari, Alison Roh Park, and Purvi Shah.

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