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AUDRE LORDE: A LESSON PLAN

HERE COMES THE SUN

MATTHEW SHENODA

BALDWIN & LORDE

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Nicole DennisBenn MosaicMagazine.org

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Horace Mungin Books www.horacemunginbooks.com (843)437-7567

“The poem ‘My Thing’ by Horace Mungin deals with a major theme of the black revolution that is frequently expressed in cries for ‘liberation,’ for self-determination and for a positive identity. It is in this way characteristic of much of the poetry written today by young black Americans, a part of a renaissance of arts, letters, music and drama.” The New York Times, 1976 Also by the author:

Horace Mungin writes in the lyrical voice of the oppressed; but liberation is his patois, freedom is his goal, universality is his dialect and the reader can no longer feign ignorance.

Order at: 2

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www.horacemunginbooks.com

content Interviews Matthew Shenoda by Negesti Kaudo .............................................................. 6 Nicole Dennis-Benn by Danielle Jackson ........................................................ 14 Excerpt Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn ................................................... 23 Lesson Plan Audre Lorde by Eisa Nefertari Ulen ................................................................. 32 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.

Conversation Revolutionary Hope: A Conversation Between Audre Lorde & James Baldwin .. 42 The conversation took place at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA and was originally published in ESSENCE in 1984.

Around Town ....................................................................................................... 53 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.

Cover photo credit: Marcia E. Wilson/WideVision Photography Design: Ron Kavanaugh

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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 Š 2016. No portion of this magazine can be reprinted or reproduced in any form without prior permission from the publisher.

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contributors

A Memphis native, Danielle Jackson is a writer currently living in Brooklyn.

Negesti Kaudo is a Midwestern essayist currently residing in Chicago and pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing Nonfiction at Columbia College Chicago. At 22, she was the youngest person to be awarded the Ohioana Library Association’s Walter Rumsey Marvin grant in 2015. Her work has been published in Nailed Magazine, NewCity Lit, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Ready Publication, among others. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Negesti received Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and Psychology from Elon University.

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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photo credit: Joe Mazza

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Matthew Shenoda A Space for Creatives in 21st Century Activism

by Negesti Kaudo

What is the role of art, literature, and creative writing in today’s society, especially with concerns to activism, politics and social justice? The intersection of art and activism within the literary and creative writing communities is on the rise with contemporary literature, music, comics and art providing social commentary, but how can writers and artists insert themselves into this conversation and create art that adds to this new platform and mode?

Matthew Shenoda is an Egyptian poet whose works tend to explore his identity and cultural roots in looking at Egyptian and African diasporas and also Arab-African identity. In the past, Shenoda has said what drew him to literature was an “intellectual curiosity to explore history, culture, and diasporic roots.” He is the author of three acclaimed poetry collections: Somewhere Else (Coffee House Press), winner of a 2006 American Book Award; Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone (BOA Editions Ltd.), and Tahrir Suite: Poems (TriQuarterly Books/Northwest-

ern University Press), which won the 2015 Arab American Book Award.

A founding editor of the African Poetry Book Fund, which promotes and advances the development and publication of poetic arts in collaboration with other organizations that share an interest in African poetic arts, Shenoda has edited Duppy Conqueror: New & Selected Poems by Kwame Dawes. This year, TriQuarterly Books/ Northwestern University Press will release Bearden’s Odyssey: An Anthology of Poets Responding to the Art of Romare Bearden, edited by Shenoda and Dawes. Matthew Shenoda currently resides in Illinois and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago.

For a long time, American culture has seen its activism and political statements complemented by art: visual or written, and with today’s explosion of social media and communicative technology, the general public has ac-

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cess to any and all sorts of activist art (also known as “artivism”) allowing them to interact with and critique these artistic modes and platforms calling for change and justice. Matthew Shenoda was able to provide his insight on what direction the creative communities could begin to migrate and claim a space in the conversation.

Negesti Kaudo: You frequently discuss your Egyptian identity and explore the African and Egyptian diasporas in your writing. Do you identify as an American poet/ writer? How has American culture influenced your identity or writing?

Matthew Shenoda: Yes, ultimately I do consider myself an American writer, though maybe it’s not “American” in the way it has been traditionally defined. I am writing almost exclusively in English, in this place called the United States of America, and in the history and trajectory of what has been called American poetry/literature. I think the difference of what I and many other writers do in perhaps challenging this question is to illuminate that there are many Americas, that we are not dealing with a monolith, or adhering to a hegemony, that this place is deeply complex, rich, and contradictory and that the definition of both the place (America) and its writers is not at all singular. In truth the first time a person of color picked up a pen or began to write verse after the nation state of the United States was established was the first moment this idea was challenged. We still have a ways to go, in that America is still defined often as A- the United States and B- as European in origin and influence, but those of us who are thinking more broadly, or frankly are just aware of where we really are, have never and can never accept such a singular view of things. So, yes, I am an American writer, but I am an American writer who is

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influenced by my own origins Egyptian, African, etc. and am influenced by the global traditions that surround me which include European traditions, but are by no means simply defined by European traditions.

NK: How has your own identity influenced your perspective and opinions on the history of race relations in the United States in concern to African-Americans and immigrants?

MS: Well in a way my own identity is the first thing that influences my perspectives, as is the case for all people.

Writers often begin with their own view of the world. It is the start of everything, though it may not be the end.

To paraphrase Lucille Clifton, she once said something like, “what some people call political, I just call me at age 16” or whatever. Which is to say that our lived experiences which are undoubtedly racialized and colored (no pun intended) by the histories and present day realities of racism and xenophobia shape the way we see and experience the world and the way we interpret it and write about it. I think a person of color (African- American or immigrant etc.) has to work very hard to try and not see the world that way. You have to do some serious work to try and pretend (and I do think it would be an act of pretending) that the world around you isn’t deeply steeped in the histories of racism and xenophobia. You would have to really disassociate yourself from reality to not see the way race has permeated every systemic structure in this country, and I for one have no interest in living in such a delusion. So one piece of that is an actual and real recognition not only of the histories of African Americans and immigrants, but of the indigenous people of this country as well, those whose land we presently exist on, those who were among the first subjects of the

development and conceptualization of race in this hemisphere. So for me, this is a reality, not the only reality, for sure, but a reality nonetheless and one that as a writer I cannot avoid. Now, if I were a different person from a different place, would I not see these things as clearly?

Perhaps, but that’s just not who I am.

NK: “Artivism” is explained by M.K Asante as one who “uses artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice and oppression-by any medium necessary.” How do politics/activism and art intersect in culture? Today’s culture? Why is this effective?

MS: Well, I think I can see this from a few perspectives.

In some sense I could certainly argue that all art is a form of activism, even that which seeks not to be. What I mean by that is, all art is in some manner an intervention in a larger conversation about society and humanity and a present moment and so even if it seeks not to deliberately point to a specific topic that is deemed “political” or that is seen as openly unjust, it is still commenting on it, perhaps simply by upholding it or reifying the status quo in some way. But more directly to M.K.’s point and to your question, I think this has always been the case around the globe, that artists have worked in a few different camps, one camp that has often existed has been the camp that upholds the dominant narratives of a given society, and exists as a kind of ornamentation of say, the state or of empire, or to simply anchor a set of dominant narratives and perspectives. Then there has always been another camp of artists who feel an urgent need to trouble those narratives, to show the world in a different light, to ultimately question the world around us in order to gain a more significant understanding of things. There can be no more important thing to do as far as I can see,

unless of course you are incredibly pleased and satisfied with the world around you. I am not. I seek more.

So, ultimately this is nothing new, but in the context of the U.S. in particular we saw a significant and brilliant explosion of this kind of art as a “struggle against injustice and oppression-by any medium necessary” in the 1960’s, that dovetailed with various social and political movements. And it is indeed still going on today. I think it is quite effective, actually, in that social movements take on the specific tasks and duties of a moment to fight for change, but art that is coupled with that does two main things. One, it humanizes those moments, in the context of those moments, and that is deeply necessary.

Fighting against systemic injustice, most often that of a state or government, is difficult and isolating work and artists can play a particular role in helping the people within and outside those movements see those moments in new ways, to be reminded of why the fight, no matter how hard, is so necessary. The other thing art in this vein does, is document those moments for the future. Art is much slower and one hopes more sustained than the political movements of a given moment, so for me art becomes a really important document of what people have done, thought, felt, and grappled with in the past.

So for example, you can look today at the Black Lives Matter Movement and understand what these young people are up to, but if you do that while also studying the Black Arts Movement of the 60’s etc. I think the movement and all involved will become much stronger for it and the artist today will see an example and a lineage to help support them in this present moment.

NK: You wrote a review on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between

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the World and Me and suggested that it be interpreted as a primer in contrast to a guide to American race relations. Using that as an example, how can readers and the general public insert themselves into the conversation created by “artivists”? Why is it important to have these conversations in the art/literary/writing communities at all?

MS: I don’t know that I can fully say how people should interact with various pieces of art, but the idea of a primer is important to me in recognizing that art is at its core aimed at starting a conversation or getting people to see things differently. It is not as concerned (or in some cases even capable) with solving these major societal issues.

Because I see all issues under the umbrellas of “justice” or things deemed “political” as being systemic, the approaches to solve them are all about systemic reform, reinvention, or downright dismantling something followed by building something new. In that vein many factors, groups of people, and areas of expertise are at play. That kind of systemic approach often requires very granular and detailed work as well as major things like rethinking physical spaces, economic issues, social access etc.

Those are the nuts and bolts of a society, the things that need the expertise of economists, healthcare professionals, urban planners, engineers, social scientists etc.…

What art can do is help to not only spark a conversation, but to help frame the thinking and perspectives of these various groups of people so that they can begin addressing these issues in new ways. Art, at its best, pushes us away from a reliance on the status quo. Imagine, if we actually commissioned artists to create works that would shed new light on social issues and then asked the experts in various other areas to engage deeply in that art and rethink the way they develop a city, or structure a

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school, or build a hospital, or negotiate a peace treaty.

NK: There are many poets and essayists who have used their writings as outlets to present a message about the status of people of color (specifically African-Americans) in the United States (such as Patricia Smith, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Natasha Tretheway, James Baldwin), how has this affected the literary community? The creative writing community?

MS: I think this has helped enhance and open up the literary community. Like I said previously, the generation(s) before mine really found a way to use art as a kind of bellwether for parts of society that have often been ignored.

So thinking about the writers you have mentioned here as well as many others in the same vein, these individuals have been crucial in breaking open a significant mythology that has permeated the literary arts, namely the mythology of white liberalism. It has often been believed that the literary and artist communities are far more progressive than the whole of society, but what writers such as these have done is shine a light on the gaping holes that have existed and have in turn filled those holes with immensely beautiful and significant work that challenges the hegemonies and systems that dominate our society and have equally dominated the literary and artistic communities in this society. After all artists are products of the societies they come from, so we too encompass all of the messiness of the larger world.

NK: You’ve discussed the misrepresentation of immigrants and immigration in contemporary literature, how might this parallel or contradict the rhetoric on immigration being used in the current political race?

MS: Well, here we are in this moment where we have

a significant rise in the popularity of Donald Trump. In many ways, I can just say, “look at that! Look at how much support he has! Enough said!” I mean anyone who has heard the vile spewing from his mouth as it relates to immigrants and in turn has seen the immense support he receives can see clearly the hatred and xenophobia that many in our society view immigrants with. Aside from this being a baffling hypocrisy given that all of those people are also descendants of immigrants to this country, and given that many of the so-called immigrants that are being targeted are actually moving across a border that has traditionally been a part of their native lands, this is another wake-up call to the reality that we have not progressed nearly as much as we often tell ourselves we have. These are the same vitriolic debates that have existed from day one in this country. As far as how this relates to contemporary literature, it is both an important moment for writers to address such issues through art (as every moment is) and a moment of vigilance in recognizing and understanding that the world of artists is the same world, so we should never trick ourselves into thinking that literature or art are immune from this same kind of inane thinking.

NK: In the past, you have taught courses on contemporary Arab/Arab-American literature, how might the introduction and increase in post-colonial, middle-eastern, African, Asian, South American literature courses in higher education (or even secondary) affect the literary and creative communities?

MS: Aside from the fact that what you have named here constitutes the global majority and it would seem any semblance of a well-rounded education would encompass the majority of the world as opposed to a very small

I could certainly argue that all art is a form of activism, even that which seeks not to be. What I mean by that is, all art is in some manner an intervention in a larger conversation about society and humanity and a present moment and so even if it seeks not to deliberately point to a specific topic that is deemed “political” or that is seen as openly unjust, it is still commenting on it...

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fraction of it (Europe and Euro-America), I also believe that if many young people see themselves reflected in the literatures they read they will not only develop more fully as creative and critically thinking young adults, etc. but many will be inspired to enter into that lineage and expand the already expansive literary landscape. As a result of such courses we will likely find a set of stronger, better prepared, and more engaged writers who are working out of an established tradition rather than what often happens which is that young writers of color have to scramble to find where their work fits in, ultimately having to sometimes entirely self-educate themselves. Having a collective and contextual space to explore these works in relation to one another and in conversation with many other people of various backgrounds will help to create a far more nuanced understanding of what is happening broadly in contemporary literature. As it stands, we often focus on very small pockets of literature, which show an emerging writer an incredibly limited set of possibilities as they pertain to craft, aesthetics, and subject matter.

Narrowness (at least out of a lack of knowledge) is rarely a positive trait.

NK: Should higher education be modified to include and require courses on perspectives of people from all cultures or general courses on Otherness in contemporary literature and society? What is the ideal result from such modifications?

MS: Well I’ll begin by saying that this has always been a necessity in a pluralistic society like this one, but we have to first recognize that there is a long history in higher education of intentionally locking out certain peoples by race, class, and gender. That has changed some, and became much more positive for a time but seems to be getting worse again.

Specifically, what we are also finding in this moment is that

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because the nation’s demographics are shifting in ways that even those in power can’t control, there is a new set of concerns about this that are really (as cynical as it may sound) driven by economic imperatives. Meaning that many feel the “customer” (a terrible term for students) is changing and so they have to shift the “product” (another terrible term for curriculum). This is of course an entirely problematic and misconstrued approach in my estimation, but it is often the reason that some courses such as the ones you mention are introduced. The reality however is not just simply that “times are changing,” but that we have had an education system in place that has for centuries focused almost exclusively on a tiny minority of the world and in the case of literature it seems preposterous that you would intentionally ignore so many stories. After all, the more a young writer and thinker can know and be exposed to, the wider and sharper their own thinking can become; and this is true for all people, not just people of color. So, ultimately, I think such courses should be a standard and integrated part of anyone’s education both historically and in terms of contemporary works.

I think the ideal result from such an education is more nuanced thinking, more critical and creative approaches to local and global problems, and a fuller sense of humanity from students exposed to such things, meaning that they will not only know “the other” better, but themselves as well, as they often exist in a socially constructed opposition to one another. In short, such an education would mean less ignorance and contrary to what people may have heard, ignorance is not bliss or to quote Bob Marley, “only a foolish dog, barks at a flying bird[1]” and I would prefer a society of flying birds to foolish dogs. ★ [1] “Is only a foolish dog bark at a flying bird” from Jah Live

by Bob Marley & The Wailers (1975)

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Nicole DennisBenn

by Danielle Jackson

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photo credit: Marcia E. Wilson/WideVision Photography

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B

rooklyn-based Nicole Dennis-Benn calls her debut novel Here Comes the Sun a “love letter” to Jamaica. With vivid and intricate prose adorned by sensuous details and melodious dialogue, often in patios, the novel feels like a love letter, beautifully intimate and urgent. I read it twice. The first time, at a feverish pace over two days, I was taken by the story’s unexpected twists and turns.

When I read it again, I took two weeks to fully appreciate the delicately drawn characters who form the core of the novel: four women born and raised on the island whose lives and longings unfold over the course of a rocky year in the 1990s.

Margot is an ambitious 30-year old employee at a popular resort in Montego Bay. Desperate to pay the private school tuition of her younger sister, Thandi, Margot performs sex work for the hotel’s wealthy, largely white male clientele in addition to her official job duties. She also secretly loves Verdene, a woman who has returned to Jamaica after living abroad. Because Margot is not out, and homosexuality is a sin in their community, they carry out their relationship under the cover of night, ever aware that taunts, violence, and murder could be their fate.

Margot’s mother Delores has long been complicit in her oldest daughter’s suffering. But she lives with the scars, shadows, and reverberations of her own pain:

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‘Me was sixteen years old when ah had Margot. I was a young girl who neva know me lef’ foot from me right. Margot father was a man who all di children in di community used to call Uncle. Maybe because me was fat. I was big for a young girl an’ him did like that. When me got pregnant, my mother ask me is who’fa pickney. I tell her dat di pickney belongs to Uncle. She get so mad dat she beat me terrible.

Everyt’ing after dat hurt.’

Thandi is an excellent student at an elite high school and the substance of the family’s dreams. She too has secrets and pain that confine her.

What’s rare about Here Comes the Sun is that it centers black women. The secrets we keep. Those we bury. The stories we tell ourselves; the bonds and pacts and compromises we make and break so that the secrets do not kill us. Dennis-Benn has given voice to these secrets and stories in a way that engages the reader and exorcises the shame. She shines a bright, blinding light on intergenerational trauma wrought of the colonial wound and the cycles of lovelessness, sexual exploitation, maternal hunger, and self-hatred that it has inflicted—from the perspective of the marginalized.

Jamaica, which is Dennis-Benn's birthplace, is also a compelling character --a grounding force portrayed with an even hand. There are vivid details about its beaches and fertile countryside alongside an insider’s look at the raw darkness that lives at its edges, complicating and humanizing stilted, hollowed-out images of beauty and paradise.

I spoke with Dennis-Benn, a graduate of Cornell University and Sarah Lawrence College’s MFA program, whose work has appeared in ELLE, Electric Literature, Lenny Letter, and Kweli, about influences, her process in writing Here Comes the Sun, and what comes next.

Danielle Jackson: What was writing Here Comes the Sun like? How long did it take?

Nicole Dennis Benn: I found it liberating. It took five years. I never workshopped the story in my MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College. I started the book in 2010, after a visit back home to Jamaica. Being there had opened up some raw emotions. I felt it necessary to write them down. I journaled my thoughts and feelings; and before I knew it, I had an outline for Here Comes the Sun. DJ: One of my favorite things about the book is that Margot, Delores, and Thandi are so deliciously vivid on the page. Even minor characters like Jullette and Charles are complex and carefully drawn. Alice Walker has talked about her characters coming to her over time, inhabiting her mind almost like a series of visitations. How did your characters initially come to you?

NDB: The characters came to me fully formed. Thandi came to me first, followed by Margot, Delores, and Verdene. Thandi came to me as an embodiment of things that I’ve went through as that working-class, dark-skinned girl growing up in Jamaica. Margot came to me a couple years later when I became privy to the lives of disenfranchised women who exchanged sex for money in tourist areas for survival. But more than that

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Margot is my heroine, who defied all odds by any means necessary. Delores’s story resulted from interacting with and listening to the vendors at the craft-markets. We see them, but rarely do we know their daily struggle.

Verdene Moore, like myself, is someone returning to her homeland, claiming a country that doesn’t claim her back, because of her sexuality.

DJ: So would it be accurate to describe your characters as extensions, or parts, of you?

NDB: All the characters are parts of me. I also take bits and pieces from people I've interacted with or whom I've known. Nora Ephron once said that writers are like pariahs, we take what we can use from our interactions with people. I will add that as a fiction writer, I leave most of it to my imagination.

DJ: Thandi’s struggle to accept herself in an environment that refuses, or even hates who she is, is timely and resonant. How can black women and girls learn to love themselves?

NDB: We’re so fragile as children, so it’s important that the messages of self-love start early. The real challenge is maintaining that self-love in a world that is quick to snatch it. In Here Comes the Sun, Thandi’s mother Delores never uttered those affirmations at home. Instead, she focused on practical things like making money, feeling there is no need to delude her daughters into thinking the world will accept them for who they are as black women. It’s hard to judge Delores for this given that it’s easier to relax our fists, put down our swords, and hunch our backs hoping it would at least be good as stools. But not many of us are ready to give up. We may not be able to completely obliterate the negative messages about our

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beauty, body-image, and self-worth that we get from the media and society as black women, but we can lessen their impact with positive affirmations—something as simple as buying our young girls books with black girls on the cover, or buying them dolls with their complexion and hair texture to play with. Or making sure to use words like “beautiful” and “attractive” when describing other dark-skinned black girls and women. Growing up, the word “pretty” was reserved for women and girls of a certain hue and with a certain hair length and hair texture. For example, in Jamaica, our Miss Jamaica Universe and Miss Jamaica World winners all had that hue. We can reverse that mindset by using those affirming adjectives to describe everyone, especially in the presence of our younger girls who are watching and listening to us.

In Thandi’s case, not even her older sister Margot, who would give her soul for Thandi, could protect Thandi from the insecurities she struggled with as the only darkskinned working class girl in her school. However, I believe that communicating with our young girls constantly about those warped messages of beauty and self-worth that the media and society give them, is essential.

DJ: I get the sense that there is an insistence in your novel, and in recent essays you’ve written and published, on placing black women and our stories at the center.

I love and appreciate that. In Here Comes the Sun you excavate a lot of our pain, a lot of the darkness of our lives. Are you intentional about creating art that may be difficult, but that can also be a balm or a healing?

NDB: Yes, it’s intentional. I’ll refer to James Baldwin who says the role of an artist is to illuminate the darkness—as difficult as it may be—in order to create a better world.

The healing comes with the dialogue the work incites—

the changed attitudes toward a certain group when they are humanized on the page; the efforts to do something about certain issues. That’s the power in writing about the difficult things. Our silences won’t protect us, nor will it change the world.

DJ: Were there challenges in mining this kind of deep, dark territory for you? Perhaps in your own self-care as you are creating this work?

NDB: Writing it was liberating enough.

DJ: I also loved the dialogue. The Jamaican Patois is never italicized or footnoted in the text. (There is a line when Jullette says to Thandi, “Yuh can’t even talk patwa no more” that was funny and also a little heartbreaking.)

Was this a deliberate choice?

NDB: Yes, it was. My characters are working class Jamaicans. Therefore, I wanted to stay true to them. That is how we speak to each other. Patois is our first language; English is our second language. We are discouraged from speaking patois in schools, because it is deemed as uncultured. As a result, many Jamaicans grow weary of the very language our ancestors spoke, becoming ashamed of it, self-conscious when we break into it. Language is an essential part of identity; so to tell a group of people not to speak their language is the first step in annihilating our voice. We are socialized to loathe our language as much as we are socialized to loathe our African features and dark skin and hair. Such are the indelible scars of colonialism. I depicted this struggle in Thandi’s character. photo credit: Marcia E. Wilson/WideVision Photography

I never saw a need to write patois in italics or add footnotes. The dialogue challenges readers to slow down and pay close attention to the phonetics and context.

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Whenever I’m reading works by authors such as Junot Diaz, who does the same thing by inserting Spanish in dialogue, I walk away from their works with so much more when I read that way. Dialect immerses the reader further into the world of the characters on the page.

...many Jamaicans grow weary of the very language our ancestors spoke, becoming ashamed of it, selfconscious when we break into it. Language is an essential part of identity; so to tell a group of people not to speak their language is the first step in annihilating our voice.

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DJ: A lot of critics writing about Here Comes the Sun in large, mainstream media like The New York Times and NPR, focus so much on Jamaica, and how you upend the notion of it as a tourist utopia. Meanwhile, I noticed black audiences having visceral responses to seeing their humanity depicted compassionately in your pages.

There is a tension there, for me, that made me want to understand more about who you are writing for. Do you want to educate elite and white audiences? Hold a mirror up to black or working class folks to show us our beauty? Is it all of the above?

NDB: It is all the above. My book was written as a love letter to Jamaica; but my intent was for every reader— regardless of their background, race, class, sexuality, ethnicity—to take something from my book. Black women are connecting to it, because most of us know that pain intimately—the internalized hatred that becomes selfloathing; we still wear those scars. I wanted them to see themselves on the page, particularly the younger generation of black girls. But others will connect to my book, because of the human experience depicted in one’s quest for belonging, identity, love, sexual and financial freedom; and survival under the looming shadow of displacement—not only in Jamaica, but anywhere else in the world—be it Bedstuy, Southern California, or Bali.

DJ: I enjoyed the conversation you had with Marlon James in OUT Magazine about being gay Jamaican writ-

ers. I am reminded of other Jamaican writers and thinkers who have helped me to see another dimension of blackness and therefore myself. How would you describe Jamaica’s literary tradition? Who else should we be reading?

NDB: To be honest I was not exposed to Jamaican literature until late in life. I loved Louise Bennett, aka Miss Lou, while growing up, but that was the only Jamaican storyteller I knew of back then. In high school I was assigned books by British and American authors. If there were prominent writers on the island, I imagined them as elusive figures that lived in the hills or mountains, white; their foreign accents or studied patois a testament to extended vacations turned anthropological research. For I never saw myself and my people in the literature. I discovered Waiting in Vain by Colin Channer in my sophomore year of college. In a similar manner, I stumbled upon Marlon James’ Book of Night Women, Lorna Goodison’s and Olive Senior’s works in graduate school. I enjoyed them, because they were far removed from what I describe as the colonizer’s gaze—stories that seem to scrutinize black Jamaican characters, particularly the working class, rendering them as caricatures. I must admit that I recently discovered Michelle Cliff from her obituary in The New York Times three weeks before my book launch and began reading her. I was angry when I looked up from the pages and realized that it was too late—that as my book enters the world, she left it. But what she left with me was even greater than the conversations I wish we had. She left her legacy. No longer can I be angry that her books weren’t required reading in schools back home, or that I knew more about her partner, Adrienne Rich, than I knew about her—my fellow country-woman who also happened to be lesbian.

It’s surely not too late to read; and definitely not too late to change the system in our schools to ensure that we give Jamaican children books to read by us. To establish a solid literary tradition in Jamaica, we must start with our youths.

DJ: Were books and storytelling an important part of your childhood? If so, what did you love to read? When did you decide that you are a writer?

NDB: Books were an important part of my childhood.

I read them to escape. My mother fueled my desire for reading by carrying books home for me to read—from Nancy Drew to Sweet Valley Twins—I was always engaged in a story. As I got older I began to write my own stories, mostly with characters similar to those in the books I read. My protagonists lived in places that had snow, though at the time I’d never experienced snow— certainly not in Kingston, Jamaica where I grew up! What was missing in the books I devoured was me and my culture. I had no reference for that. I never knew how to turn the pen inward until I began to crave reading books with characters like myself. Not that I didn’t connect to the human experience of friendship, love, identity, sexuality, loss, betrayal, etc., written about by the authors I read—I just wanted to see a reflection of me on those crisp white pages and identify with the nuisances of being a working class Jamaican girl in Kingston. The seed to write my own stories was planted then. But it remained dormant for many years. I thought the only way to please my family and achieve success was by becoming a doctor. It’s really a struggle with many young immigrants and first-generation college students. There is tremendous pressure to fulfill our parents’ vision of the “American Dream”. So I focused on that, shuffling my feet while

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balancing the weight of text books and expectations on my shoulders. Fortunately, I finally found the courage to pursue writing as a career.

DJ: What are you reading now?

NDB: I’m a book polygamist—I tend to read multiple books at once. Currently I’m reading Chigozie Obioma’s stunning debut novel, The Fisherman, Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven, and James Baldwin’s, Go Tell It on the Mountain.

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photo credit: Marcia E. Wilson/WideVision Photography

DJ: What’s next?

NDB: I’m working on my second novel. This story is set in both New York City and Jamaica. ★

excerpt

T

he long hours Margot works at the hotel are never documented. Her real work is not in answering the telephones that ring off the hook, or writing up delinquent housekeepers for sleeping on the beds and watching TV when they’re supposed to be cleaning. Her real work is after hours when everyone has bid their goodbyes and piled up in the white Corollas—robot taxis—at the massive gate of the resort, which will take them home to their shabby neighborhoods, away from the fantasy they help create about a country where they are as important as washed-up seaweed.

Margot has been employee of the month for several months in a row, because she was the first to arrive and the last to leave. And for good reason. Requests are called in, not in conversational tones but in code that only Margot knows in case anyone is listening on the line. “Ackee” means he wants to taste her down there.

Foreign men love that. “Banana” means he wants her to suck him off. “Sun– dae” means he intends to be kinky— anything goes. Of course they know she’s in business, because she makes sure to slip them a wink on the first day of their arrival. Flattered, they initiate conversation.

Margot flirts, reading their stray glances, which almost always land and linger between her exposed cleavage.

That is Margot’s cue for a forward invitation. She goes to the employee restroom to freshen up, spray perfume

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between her breasts, and powder her face before sauntering to the client’s room. She undresses for the client, whose main goal is usually to satisfy a deep curiosity that he never had the balls to satiate with the women in his own country. Like a black woman’s breasts, for instance.

Many of these men want to know the shape of them; the nipples, whether or not they are the same color as tar pressed on the heels of their leather shoes from the paved roads in Europe or America; or if black nipples have in them the richness of topsoil after a thorough rain shower. They want to touch. And she lets them. Their eyes widen like children ogling baby frogs for the first time, careful to hold them so they don’t spring from their grasp. She doesn’t see it as demeaning. She sees it as merely satisfying the curiosity of foreigners; foreigners who pay her good money to be their personal tour guide on the island of her body. Margot stashes the money in her purse when she’s done and hurries home. By then the robot taxis are scarce, so she walks into town and waves for one there. She has long ago rid herself of any feelings of disgust. She used to stay back and shower in the clients’ rooms, scrubbing every part of her until her skin was raw. These days she goes straight home and falls asleep with the smell of semen sunken in her pores.

Replacing the disgust is a liquid hope that settles inside her chest and fills her with purpose. She rolls over in the bed she shares with her sister knowing that one day she won’t have to do this. That one day Thandi will make everything better.

But until then, she must work.

On this night she looks both ways to see if the coast is clear. The hotel maids have all left, and so have manage-

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ment and most hotel staff. The concierge, Paul, is the only one working. Since it’s almost midnight, the night front desk clerks, Abby and Joseph, take turns resting on the sofa in the office. Margot doesn’t pass their desk when she exits the hotel. She exits from the side by the pool, surprised to see Paul outside smoking a cigarette.

“Good night, Margot,” Paul says with a slight bow. He’s always polite, so polite that Margot wonders what he knows. She wonders if he hides his contempt behind that poise. Does he whisper to the other concierges that he sees her leave the hotel late at night? Does he tell them that he has caught her on more than one occasion adjusting her blouse and skirt after coming out of a guest’s room? Such occurrences would have helped the man to put two and two together, but then again, he’s not so bright. And for this, Margot is grateful.

Outside, the night is cool. The stars are sprinkled across the sky like grains of salt. The chirps of crickets in the bougainvillea bushes follow behind her like gossip, their hissing sounds deafening. She walks to the street, thankful for the anonymity the darkness provides. In town, the regular taxi drivers are there: Maxi, Dexter, Potty, Alistair.

Maxi jingles his keys first. It’s a sign to the other drivers that he’ll be the one to take her. “Whappen, sweetness?”

Margot blows him a kiss. They grew up together and attended the same basic school, primary school, and secondary school. Maxi dropped out of secondary school, embraced Rastafarianism, and started referring to himself as “I an’ I.” He smokes ganja all day and by night he’s a taxi driver and a dealer to the tourists who are adventurous enough to go looking for ganja in the town.

“Wha g’wan, Maxi?” She settles in the front seat of the

taxi. The smell of peeled oranges and smoke greets her.

She begins to wonder if the scent will stick. But then again, she has her own scent.

“Me deh yah.” Maxi starts the ignition. His dreadlocks are a thick, matted pile on his head. He tells her about his two children, whom she always inquires about for the sake of conversation that doesn’t involve flirtation. One of them just started primary school and the other one is just starting basic school. They’re from two dif- ferent mothers, women Margot also grew up with. Women she no longer associates with because of their small minds and quickness to judge. “So she t’ink she is big shot now, eh, working in di hotel. Look pon har, nuh. Thirty years old an’ no man, no children. Har pumpum mussi dry up.

Can’t even come down from har trone fi fuck right. She t’ink she too nice.”

“When yuh g’wan get yuh own car, Margot?” Maxi asks.

“Ah hear seh di hotel pay good, good money.”

siasm, but are practiced all the same to maintain eye contact with guests. “It’s a wonderful day at Palm Star Resort, how may I help you?” “Good morning, sir.” “Yes, ma’am, let me get that for you.” “No, sir, we don’t offer a direct shuttle to Kingston, but there’s one to Ocho Rios.”

“May I help you with anything else, ma’am?” “Your shuttle is outside waiting on you, sir.” “You have a good day, now. I’m here if you need anything. No problem.”

“We jus’ haffi stop meeting like this. Dat’s all,” Maxi says.

Margot returns her attention outside. “As soon as Thandi gets through school. Yuh know how dat goes.”

Maxi chuckles softly. When she looks at him, she sees the flash of his teeth, which seem luminous in the dark. “Yuh know how dat goes.” He mimics her.

“What?”

“Nottin’.”

Margot leans back on the leather seat and breathes in the pungent smells. “Soon.” She looks out the window.

Although it’s pitch-black, she can tell she’s passing by the sea. For a moment she wants to give her thoughts freedom to roam in this dark, in this uncertainty.

“How soon?” Maxi asks.

“What? Yuh dat desperate to go out of business?” She smiles at him—it’s a slow, easy smile; her first real one all day. Her job entails a conscious movement of the jaw, a curve of the mouth to reveal teeth, all teeth—a distraction from the eyes, which never hold the same enthu-

“What’s di mattah with you, Maxi?”

He uses one hand to smooth the mustache over his wide mouth. In school all her friends had crushes on him. They thought he looked like Bob Marley, with the naps in his head that grew lon- ger and longer, his peanut-brown skin, and his rebel ways. Once he told a teacher that she was ignorant for believing Christopher Columbus discovered Jamaica. “Wha’ ’bout di indigenous people who were here first?” He was always book-smart, using words no one had ever heard used in everyday conversations: indigenous, inequal– ity, uprising, revolution, mental

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slavery. He skipped classes to read books about Marcus Garvey, telling anyone who would listen that real history was in those books. The principal, Mr. Rhone, a high yellow man from St. Elizabeth, grew concerned about Maxi’s rebel- liousness, fearing it might influence other students, and expelled him. Maxi hadn’t been back to school since. Had he not filled his head with rubbish about freedom and Africa, he would’ve been a doctor, a lawyer, a politician, or some other big shot by now, since he had certainly been the smartest boy in school. Margot doesn’t want the same thing to happen to her sister. Like Maxi, Thandi is book-smart. She has the potential to be somebody. Margot has to make sure that Thandi doesn’t ruin it for herself.

over

“Yuh put too much pressure pon di poor chile. Why yuh don’t focus on your own dreams?”

They fall into the hum of the silence. Maxi begins to whistle as he concentrates on the dark road ahead of them. Only the white lines are visible, and Margot tries to count them to calm herself. Of course she has dreams.

She has always had dreams. Her dream is to get away as far as possible from here. Maybe America, England, or someplace where she can reinvent herself. Become someone new and uninhibited; a place where she can indulge the desires she has resisted for so long. The hotel actually doesn’t pay much, but this Margot cannot say to anyone. She dresses nicely to go to work, her dove-gray uniform carefully pressed, each pleat carefully aligned; her hair straightened and combed into a neat bun, not a strand out of place except for the baby hairs slicked down with gel around the edges to give the impression of good hair; and her makeup meticulously perfect, enough powder to make her seem lighter than she is; a glorified servant. Maybe that’s how Alphonso—her white Jamaican boss—sees her. A glorified servant. As

“My dream is for my sister to be successful.”

“And what’s her dream?” “Same.”

“Yuh eva ask har?”

“Maxi, what’s with all dis talk?”

“Jus’ saying if yuh eva ask yuh sista what is her dreams.

Yuh so set on pushing her. One day di bottom aggo drop out.”

“Max, stop wid dis foolishness. Unlike certain people I know, Thandi ’ave ambition.”

“Certain people.” Maxi grimaces. Again he runs his hand

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his faint mustache. “I an’ I did know weh me want long ago. An’ it didn’t have nothing to do wid weh dem teach inna school. Dem creating robots outta our children, Margot. Is di white man’s phi- losophy dem learning.

What about our heritage and culture?” He kisses his teeth. “Ah Babylon business dem ah fill up di children’s minds wid. Yuh sista, Thandi, is a sweet girl. She know har book. But as ah say, when pot boil too long di wata dry out an’ di bottom aggo drop out.”

Margot holds a hand to his face like a stop sign. “Ah t’ink we done wid dis convahsation.”

heir to his father’s Wellington empire—which includes coffee farms, rum estates, and properties all over the island, from Portland to Westmore- land, including Palm Star Resort—he was nice enough to keep her aboard after firing everyone else that his father, the late Reginald Wellington Senior, had hired. At first she despised herself for letting him touch her. But then she despised herself for the pride that made her believe she had a choice.

What she got from it (and continues to get from it) was better than scrubbing floors. She didn’t want to lose this opportunity. All she wanted in the beginning was to be exposed to other worlds, anything that could take her out of this squalor and give her a chance to get away from Delores and the memory of what her mother had done to her.

Maxi nudges Margot on the elbow. “How yuh push up yuh mouth suh? Relax, man.” He smirks and she looks away, trying to resist.

“Yuh so dedicated to yuh duties as big sistah,” Maxi says.

“Ah find it very honorable. Jah know.” He reaches over and touches her knee with his hand. He leaves it there.

She takes his hand and moves it. Fifteen years ago, when she briefly dated him in high school, this would’ve sent waves throughout her anatomy. Now it doesn’t feel the same. No other touch feels the same.

When Maxi approaches the foot of the hill, Margot tells him to stop the car. “Ah can walk from here,” she says.

Maxi squints through the dark as though trying to see what’s out there. “Yuh sure? Why yuh always mek me stop here? Me know weh yuh live. Why not just mek me drop yuh there?”

“Maxi, I’ll be fine from here.” She takes out the money and gives it to him. He reluctantly takes it from her, glancing once more at the pitch-black in front of them.

Margot waits until his car drives off and his headlights disappear. The darkness claims her, encircles her with black walls that eventually open up into a path for her to walk through. She takes a few steps, aware of one foot in front of the other; of the strangeness creeping up her spine, wrapping itself around her belly, shooting up into her chest. The scent of the bougainvilleas that line the fence is like a sweet embrace. The darkness becomes a friendly accomplice. Yet, the familiar apprehension ambushes her: Can she be seen? She looks over her shoulder and contemplates the distance it would take for her to walk to her house from here. A good mile. She stands in front of the bright pink house that emerges from the shadows. It seems to glow in the dark. As though on cue, a woman appears on the veranda, wearing a white nightgown. The nightgown blows gently in the light breeze that rustles the leaves of the plants and trees in the yard, and carries a faint scent of patchouli toward Margot.

From where she stands, the woman appears to be sailing toward her like an angel, the nightgown hugging her womanly curves. And Margot sails toward her, no longer cognizant of the steps taken over the cobblestone path or the fears hammering inside her chest. When she arrives at the foot of the steps, she looks up into the face of the woman; into those eyes that hold her gaze steady.

She can never get them out of her mind, for they’re the only ones that see her. Really see her—not her figure or the nakedness she so willingly offers to strangers, but something else—something fragile, raw, defenseless. The kind of bareness that makes her shiver under the woman’s observation. Margot swallows the urge to tell her

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this. But not here. Not now. No words are exchanged between them. No words are needed. Verdene Moore lets her inside. * At Old Fort Craft Park, Delores links arms with the flushfaced men in floral shirts who are too polite to decline and the women in broad straw hats whose thin lips freeze in frightened smiles. Before the tourists pass Delores’s stall, she listens to the prices the other hagglers quote them—prices that make the tourists politely decline and walk away. So by the time they get to Delores—the last stall in the market—she’s ready to pounce, just like she does at Falmouth Market on Tuesdays as soon as the ship docks. The tourists hesitate, as they always do, probably startled by the big black woman with bulging eyes and flared nos- trils. Her current victims are a middle-age couple.

“Me have nuff nuff nice t’ings fah you an’ yuh husband.

Come dis way, sweetie pie.”

Delores pulls the woman’s hand gently. The man follows behind his wife, both hands clutching the big camera around his neck as if he’s afraid someone will snatch it.

To set them at ease, Delores confides in them: “Oh, lawd ah mercy,” she says, fanning herself with an old Jamaica Observer. “Dis rhaatid heat is no joke. Yuh know I been standin’ in it all day? Bwoy, t’ings haa’d.”

She wipes the sweat that pours down her face, one eye on them. It’s more nervousness than the heat, because

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things are slow and Delores needs the money. She observes the woman scrutinizing the jewelry—the drop earrings made of wood, the beaded necklaces, anklets, and bracelets—the only things in the stall that Delores makes. “Dat one would be nice wid yuh dress,” Delores says when the woman picks up a necklace. But the woman only responds with a grimace, gently putting down the item, then moving on to the next. Delores continues to fan. Normally the Americans are chatty, gullible. Delores never usually has to work so hard with them, for their politeness makes them benevolent, apologetic to a fault. But this couple must be a different breed. Maybe Delores is wrong, maybe they’re from somewhere else.

But only the American tour- ists dress like they’re going on a safari, especially the men, with their clogs, khaki apparel, and binocular-looking cameras.

“Hot flash and dis ungodly heat nuh ’gree a’tall,” Delores says when the woman moves to the woven baskets. At this the woman smiles—a genuine smile that indicates her understanding—the recognition of a universal feminine condition. Only then does she finger her foreign bills as though unwilling to part with them. “How much are the necklaces?” she asks Delores in an American accent. She’s pointing at one of the red, green, and yellow pendants made from glass beads. Delores had taken her time to string them.

“Twenty-five,” Delores says.

“Sorry, that’s too much,” the woman says. She glances at her hus- band. “Isn’t twenty-five a bit much for this, Harry?” She holds up the necklace like it’s a piece of string and dangles it in front of her husband. The man touches

the necklace like he’s some kind of expert. “We’re not paying more than five for this,” he says in a voice of authority that reminds Delores of Reverend Cleve Grant, whose booming voice can be heard every noon offering a prayer for the nation on Radio Jamaica. “It tek time fi mek, sah,” Delores says. “Ah can guh down to twenty.”

“Fifteen.”

“All right, mi will geet to yuh for fifteen!” Delores says, suppress- ing her disappointment. As she counts the change to give back to the woman, she catches her eyeing the miniature Jamaican dolls. Delores imagines that those dolls, however exaggerated, might be the only images the woman sees of Jamaican people on a short one-day cruise stop. Her husband, who snaps pictures nonstop, surveys the table of the Rastas with their long, oversized penises, the smiling women with tar-black faces and basket of fruits on their heads, the grinning farmer carrying green bananas in his hands, the T-shirts with weed plants and a smoking Bob Marley with IRIE written in bold letters, the rag dolls wearing festival dresses that look like picnic tablecloths. “If yuh buy three items yuh get a discounted price, all these t’ings are quality,” Delores says, seizing the opportunity. “Yuh wouldn’t get dem anyweh else but right yah so.”

The man takes out his wallet and Delores’s heart leaps in her throat. “Give me two of those in a large, the tank in a small.” He points at the T-shirts. Once he makes his purchase, his wife, as though given permission to grab as many local souvenirs as possi- ble, purchases a woven basket—“For your mom”—more bracelets with Rasta colors—“For Alan and Miranda”—and a couple of the

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rag dolls decked in festival dresses—“For the girls.”

By the time they’re done, they have bought half of what Delores had. Only Delores can sell this many souvenirs in a day, because, unlike the other hagglers, she knows she has a gold mine at home—a daughter she has to support—one who is going to be a doctor. She does it for Thandi. As she stuffs the foreign dollars, which will be saved inside the old mattress on the bed that she shares with her mother, inside her brassiere, Delores is convinced that someday all her sacrifices will be paid back. Tenfold. ★

Excerpted from Here Comes the Sun: A Novel by Nicole Dennis-Benn. Copyright © 2016 by Nicole Dennis-Benn.

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a lesson plan

Audre Lorde

by Eisa Nefertari Ulen Audre Lorde (1934 – 1992) described herself as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” A champion for the liberation of all dispossessed people, Lorde concentrated her activism in the struggle for freedom for Black lesbians. Her poetry has impacted the lives of countless diverse people around the world, enabling active readers of her work to move closer to their own personal freedom.

Lorde’s work is important because it is art; it is also important because it is activism. This dual power is consistent with the work of Black women writers globally. Literary fiction and poetry generated by Black women contributes great beauty to the canon, while simultaneously developing Black feminist theory. These lesson plans aim to introduce young minds to this power – the power of Lorde’s work because it is elegant and beautiful, and the power of Lorde’s work because it is a substantive contribution to the way we think about Black womanhood.

To accomplish this learning, these lesson plans utilize selected essays from Lorde’s 1984 collection, Sister Outsider, and aim to support a deeper understanding of Lorde’s prose. Within

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each lesson, there are opportunities to read and analyze selected poems by Lorde. Teachers are encouraged to read Lorde’s The Black Unicorn, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, and The Cancer Journals to better appreciate Lorde’s great ability to write both poetry and prose.

Lorde worked as a freedom writer to dismantle homophobia, racism, classism, and sexism. She also famously said, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” The hope is these lesson plans will help give a new generation of learners the experience, information, and inspired vision to build their own houses.

I. Foreword to Sister Outsider A. Topics for Discussion 1. Define the word paradox. Let’s go around the room and see if we can use the word in a sentence that also uses the word homophobia, lesbian, Black, or the term LGBTQ. For example, “She worked hard in the cause for Black freedom, but she felt marginalized when she told members of the group that she was a lesbian; and, in a similar paradox, when she worked hard in the cause for LGBTQ freedom, she felt marginalized because she wasn’t white.

2. Define the word sister. Now, define the same word using different spellings, like sistah, sistuh, and sista. What do the different spellings of sister mean to you? What are the feelings or connotations associated with the different spellings of sister?

3. Define the word outsider. What does it feel like to be

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outside? Now, think about different uses of the term out, like out in terms of sexual orientation, out of doors, out of the norm, or out of control. Think also about different used of side, like sidelines, sideswiped, and taking sides. What does each word in the compound word outside mean? What does the compound word mean when those two smaller words are joined together? What are the connotations associated with being an outsider?

B. Short Writing Idea What are your expectations for this book after reading Audre Lorde’s foreward? Are you feeling confused or clear about what to expect from this collection of essays? Are you feeling eager or reluctant to read the essays in this collection? Write a writing journal entry that explains how the foreward to Sister Outsider makes you feel about the book. As you write, you may also want to think about the title of the book.

II. “Notes from a Trip to Russia” A. Topics for Discussion 1. What is socialism?

2. What is communism?

3. What is capitalism?

4. What was the Cold War? 5. What was the Red Scare?

6. What was McCarthyism?

B. Essay Idea Note the way Lorde helps the reader see, smell, experience Russia. Write an essay describing your community.

Pay special attention to human interaction, as did Lorde.

Do people smile, embrace, scowl or shun one another where you live? Describe main thoroughfares and areas where people come together in your community. What do those areas sound like? What kinds of conversations do people have in those areas?

C. Additional Activities 1. Look at a political map of the earth and name all the socialist countries, all the communist countries, and all the capitalist countries. Next to each country, list the quality of life value assigned to that nation by a reliable source like The Economist, US News and World Report, or the OECD. Create a chart that lists the countries and their rankings (and any inconsistencies you find in the rankings) to hang in your classroom.

2. Read “East Berlin” by Lorde. Think about the descriptions of life, especially for Black people in East Berlin.

Next, research Germany and the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall was a symbol of the Cold War. In what ways might the history of that city influence the speaker of this poem? Paste a copy of “East Berlin” in the center of a large piece of paper. Around the poem, draw or paste images from magazines that illustrate the tension of that time period. http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/3525 3. Research the names of prominent African Americans who were members of the Communist Party USA. How dedicated were each of the people listed to Civil Rights and the movement for African American freedom? Post that list in your classroom, too.

4. In 1932, a group of prominent Black artists including Langston Hughes travelled to Russia to make a film about black life in the United States. Research that visit and write a report detailing what happened.

5. In 2000, a Cuban boy named Elian Gonzalez became the center of an international custody battle when his mother drowned on a refugee boat heading for Miami.

Research the experience Elian Gonzalez had and write a timeline of major events in the case. Make sure your timeline documents the lingering tension between Cuba and the United States as a result of the Cold War. On your timeline, include any powerful photographs you discover.

6. Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent and social democrat, ran a competitive campaign to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. What is a social democrat? What aspects of his campaign platform seem most reflective of that definition? On paper suitable for display in the classroom, define social democrat and list the issues important to his campaign that are consistent with this definition.

7. Patrice Lumumba was the first democratically elected prime minister of the Congo. He was an activist who called for African unity. Create a timeline of the life of Patrice Lumumba to hang in the classroom. Make sure your timeline includes information about the Cold War and its impact on African countries like the Congo.

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III. “Poetry is not a Luxury”

or the ability to think?

A. Topics for Discussion 1. Define manifesto, allegory, and treatise.

2. Read Plato's “Allegory of the Cave.” What does light symbolize in this story? What does the light provide the character that escapes the chains that kept him bound to the wall of the cave? http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html

9. What do you think requires more courage, to think deeply or to feel deeply?

3. What does this quote by Descartes mean?: "I think, therefore I am." What is the relationship between conscious thought and our humanity?

4. What are dreams? Are dreams thoughts we have while we sleep? Are they messages given to us by our ancestors? Are dreams messages from some Divine Source?

What or who might this Divine Source be?

5. Are women or men more likely to be called emotional? Are women or men more likely to be called thinkers?

6. When people are called emotional, is that considered a compliment or is that often considered a put-down?

When people are called thinkers, is that considered a compliment or a put-down?

7. What does society value more, the ability to think or the ability to feel? Do you agree with Lorde that "feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men"?

8. What do you think is more powerful, the ability to feel

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10. Do you think it is important for society to equally value both thinking and feeling? Why? 11. Think about a #BlackLivesMatter event that you either participated in or saw on TV. Go online to see video and photographs of demonstrators in Ferguson, or Baltimore, or the area where you live. What ideas or thoughts would you guess were driving the people to demonstrate? What feelings or emotions do you think compelled them to demonstrate?

A. Essay Idea Write a poem inspired by the freedom and intense regard for dreams Lorde celebrates in "Poetry is not a Luxury."

B. Additional Activities 1. Read “A Woman Speaks” by Lorde. In a small group, go through each line of the poem. How does each line make you feel? What does each line make you think?

On a piece of paper, write the words that your group members come up with. When you have finished that, analyze the poem by thinking about your own responses to each line. What is the speaker of this poem saying?

What is this poem about? Finally, as a group, decide why this poem is essential for living. Why is “A Woman Speaks” not a luxury? http://www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/audre_ lorde_2012_3.pdf

2. Read the 8th paragraph of “Poetry is not a Luxury” out loud. What does it mean? Freewrite your responses in a reading response journal.

3. What do poems provide? What do poems give the person reading the poem? List the reasons why poetry is not a luxury.

4. Make a poster that uses words or images or a combination of both to show why poetry is not a luxury. Make a poster that shows why poetry is essential, why poetry is a requirement for living.

5. In her last paragraph of this essay, Lorde says that "there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt." Break off into small groups and discuss this assertion. How might new feelings help people experience "new possibilities and strengths"? How might feelings help people experience the strength to be free?

As a group, write a list of feelings. Next to each feeling, draw an arrow. At the end of each arrow, write or paste an image that shows a new way of being free.

6. Go to the Poetry Foundation webpage and read Lorde’s poem “Coal.” Open your reader response journal and answer these questions: How does this poem make you feel? What does Lorde celebrate in this poem?

What does the speaker of the poem suggest about people of African descent? What does coal provide? What do the heat and light that come from coal give to humanity? Remember Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” What does light symbolize? Why do you think the source of coal, “the earth’s inside,” is significant? What does the use of the words “diamond” and “jewel” do in this poem?

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http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/42577

IV. “Scratching the Surface” A. Topics for Discussion 1. Have you ever seen two women fighting over a man on a reality TV show? How did these women look to you? Use one word to describe them as they fought.

2. Have you ever seen two men fighting over a woman on TV? Use one word to describe them.

3. Have you ever seen two women fighting over another woman or two men fighting over another man on TV? 4. Which conflict would seem more normal or commonplace to you? Which conflict would seem most unusual?

Why do you think this is?

5. Think about the June 2016 mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. What do you think caused the gunman to kill 50 people in the LGBTQ community in one night? Do you think the fact that it was Latino Night at this club is at all significant?

6. Have you ever heard people quarrel or argue about who has it harder, Black men or Black women? When it comes to straight people who are African American, do you think it makes sense to quarrel over who has an easier time in society? Why or why not?

7. Look up the word intersectionality. Write a definition

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using your own words to describe intersectionality.

B. Essay Idea Research the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting that took place on June 12, 2016. Some news reports identified the mass murder of mostly Black and Latino members of the LGBTQ community as a terror attack. Based on your research, is this tragedy a terror attack or a hate crime?

Write a persuasive essay that answers this question.

C. Additional Activities 1. Read “Love Poem” by Audre Lorde. Does it matter whether the speaker of the poem is a man or a woman?

Is the love diminished if the speaker of the poem is a man? Is the love intensified if the speaker of the poem is a woman? Write your own love poem – to yourself. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/love-poem-8/ 2. Break into small groups and talk about the divisions Lorde examines in this essay. What force do you think divides white women from Black women and Black straight men from Black lesbian women? Do you think these divisions exist in your community? Are there other divisions that keep people from interacting in healthy ways in your community? What might you do to help bridge the spaces between different groups of people?

How can ordinary people begin to unify diverse communities? Write an action plan.

3. Re-read the first paragraph of the last section of this essay. It begins, “This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples.” Do you think that oppressed people, like women and men of color, white women and Black women, and even diverse groups of

Black women have too often acted as if “there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us�? Close your eyes and imagine freedom as boundless, unlimited, and free for all people, everywhere in the world. What would your community look like with that kind of freedom? Draw, paint, sketch, or use magazines to create a collage of images that reimagine your particular community with this boundless freedom in place.

and http://bilerico.lgbtqnation.com/2011/04/46_years_ago_ today_1st_lesbian_gay_protest_at_the.php 2. Now, look at this image of young New Yorkers at the Stonewall Inn in 1969. These pictures were taken just 4 years after the White House protest. What is different about the attire, facial expressions, and racial diversity of the protestors? http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/historic-new-york-gaybar-stonewall-inn-gains-landmark-status#slide1

IV. Love is Love A. Topics for Discussion 1. Look at this image of a 1965 Gay Rights demonstration, the first in the country. What do you see? What are the demonstrators wearing? What expression(s) do you see on their faces? Does this group appear diverse?

Could someone looking at this image come away thinking "only white people are gay"? What do you think the demonstrators are trying to tell straight people with their attire, demeanor, and the racial make-up of the group?

Are the picket signs written for other members of the LGBTQ community or do they seem to be directed at straight, mainstream Americans? Do you think the location of the demonstration is significant? Does looking acceptable help a marginalized group be acceptable to the mainstream? http://thestarryeye.typepad.com/gay/2012/04/demonstration-for-gay-rights-held-in-front-of-white-house-forfirst-time-april-17-1965-.html and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LGBT_actions_ in_the_United_States_prior_to_the_Stonewall_riots

3. Look at this placard from a 2008 protest in support of gay marriage. What do these checked boxes suggest?

What kind of community does this sign seem to want to form? What history of protest does this placard reference? http://www.masslive.com/localbuzz/index.ssf/2008/11/ northampton_protests_californi.html 4. Watch this video to see and learn just a little about the victims of the 2016 shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Who do these victims look like? Could they be neighbors, friends, or family members? Who are they racially, ethnically, and in terms of national origin?

Who are they as people? Are their lives, interests, and occupations very different from or mostly the same as other young adults you know?

5. Think about the struggle from Abolition to Civil Rights, Black Power, and now #BlackLivesMatter. When members of the #BlackLivesMatter movement protest, what are they fighting for? Are the #BlackLivesMatter activists seeking the same kind of freedom Abolitionists, Civil

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Rights workers, and Black Power activists wanted? Now think about the struggle from Stonewall to AIDS awareness and activism, gay marriage, and now vigils for the victims at Pulse. When members of the LGBTQ community protest, what are they fighting for? What does the need for this ongoing direct action say about our country?

6. Watch this video of Audre Lorde following the Stonewall Riots. What do you think Lorde means when she talks about “the creative use of difference”? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYYkNPSWJpk B. Essay Idea Write a poem that celebrates the activism of the LGBTQ community. Under the poem, write an essay that examines the inclusion and/or marginalization of people of color within that movement as you’ve seen it in pictures.

Make sure you quote Audrey Lorde at least two times in your essay.

C. Additional Activities 1. Research the work of The Audre Lorde Project. Why was this organization founded in 1994? What community does ALP serve, and what are the organization's guiding principles? What does the ALP actually do? Is it significant that the organization's home is the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, a church that was known as a "temple of abolition" and whose founding pastor was an abolitionist? Why do you think the organization honors Audre Lorde in its name?

Create a group presentation that answers these questions about The Audre Lorde Project. Present your group presentation to the class.

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http://alp.org 2. Research the Stonewall Inn riots. Start with the laws in New York that prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages to gay men and lesbian women. Reflect on the ways gay men and lesbian women were harassed by police. Think about that experience for, say, a lower-income, undereducated, runaway Black girl. How might her treatment by police differ from that given to an upper-income, highly educated, home-owning white man? Use these articles to help you think about your ideas: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-stonewall-riot http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-monroe/dismembering-stonewall_b_1625272.html http://thegrio.com/2009/06/30/in-the-1960s-new-york/ http://sfonline.barnard.edu/a-new-queer-agenda/reclaiming-our-lineage-organized-queer-gender-nonconforming-and-transgender-resistance-to-police-violence/ 3. Write a letter to Audre Lorde about the Stonewall Riot and her work as an author activist for people of color within the LGBTQ community. In your letter, tell her how her work influenced your thinking about Stonewall as an important moment in recent American history. Put your letter in the center of a large poster board. Around the letter, paste pictures of young people at the Stonewall Inn Riot.

4. Read excerpts from the work of Audre Lorde using the link below. Think about the relationship between voiced expression and activism in each excerpt. What is Lorde saying about the power of resisting silence? Why is voiced expression so necessary for survival? On a poster

board, create a collage of images and words that give voiced expression to people of color within the LGBTQ community. Hang your collage in your school as a way to speak out loud. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lorde/activism.htm ★

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.

Mosaic provides a unique space to preview upcoming releases through book reviews and author interviews. Each issue is supplemented with educator lesson plans based on our mission.

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Revolutionary Hope: A Conversation Between Audre Lorde & James Baldwin The conversation took place at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA and was was originally published in ESSENCE in 1984.

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JB: One of the dangers of being a Black American is being schizophrenic, and I mean ‘schizophrenic’ in the most literal sense. To be a Black American is in some ways to be born with the desire to be white. It’s a part of the price you pay for being born here, and it affects every Black person. We can go back to Vietnam, we can go back to Korea. We can go back for that matter to the First World War. We can go back to W.E.B. Du Bois – an honorable and beautiful man – who campaigned to persuade Black people to fight in the First World War, saying that if we fight in this war to save this country, our right to citizenship can never, never again be questioned – and who can blame him? He really meant it, and if I’d been there at that moment I would have said so too perhaps.

Du Bois believed in the American dream. So did Martin.

So did Malcolm. So do I. So do you. That’s why we’re sitting here.

Audre Lorde: I don’t, honey. I’m sorry, I just can’t let that go past. Deep, deep, deep down I know that dream was never mine. And I wept and I cried and I fought and I stormed, but I just knew it. I was Black. I was female.

And I was out – out – by any construct wherever the power lay. So if I had to claw myself insane, if I lived I was going to have to do it alone. Nobody was dreaming about me. Nobody was even studying me except as something to wipe out.

James Baldwin: You are saying you do not exist in the American dream except as a nightmare.

AL: That’s right. And I knew it every time I opened Jet, too. I knew that every time I opened a Kotex box. I knew

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that every time I went to school. I knew that every time I opened a prayer book. I knew it, I just knew it.

JB: It is difficult to be born in a place where you are despised and also promised that with endeavor – with this, with that, you know – you can accomplish the impossible. You’re trying to deal with the man, the woman, the child – the child of whichever sex – and he or she and your man or your woman has got to deal with the 24-hour-a-day facts of life in this country. We’re not going to fly off someplace else, you know, we’d better get through whatever that day is and still have each other and still raise children – somehow manage all of that.

And this is 24 hours of every day, and you’re surrounded by all of the paraphernalia of safety: If you can strike this bargain here. If you can make sure your armpits are odorless. Curl your hair. Be impeccable. Be all the things that the American public says you should do, right? And you do all those things – and nothing happens really. And what is much worse than that, nothing happens to your child either.

AL: Even worse than the nightmare is the blank. And Black women are the blank. I don’t want to break all this down, then have to stop at the wall of male/female division. When we admit and deal with difference; when we deal with the deep bitterness; when we deal with the horror of even our different nightmares; when we turn them and look at them, it’s like looking at death: hard but possible. If you look at it directly without embracing it, then there is much less that you can ever be made to fear.

JB: I agree.

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AL: Well, in the same way when we look at our differences and not allow ourselves to be divided, when we own them and are not divided by them, that is when we will be able to move on. But we haven’t reached square one yet.

JB: I’m not sure of that. I think the Black sense of male and female is much more sophisticated than the western idea. I think that Black men and women are much less easily thrown by the question of gender or sexual preference – all that jazz. At least that is true of my experience.

AL: Yea, but let’s remove ourselves from merely a reactive position – i.e., Black men and women reacting to what’s out there. While we are reacting to what’s out there, we’re also dealing between ourselves – and between ourselves there are power differences that come down…

JB: Oh, yes…

AL: Truly dealing with how we live, recognizing each other’s differences, is something that hasn’t happened…

JB: Differences and samenesses.

AL: Differences and samenesses. But in a crunch, when all our asses are in the sling, it looks like it is easier to deal with the samenesses. When we deal with sameness only, we develop weapons that we use against each other when the differences become apparent. And we wipe each other out – Black men and women can wipe each other out – far more effectively than outsiders do.

JB: That’s true enough.

AL: And our blood is high, our furies are up. I mean, it’s what Black women do to each other, Black men do to each other, and Black people do to each other. We are in the business of wiping each other out in one way or the other – and essentially doing our enemy’s work.

AL: Mm-hm.

JB: That’s quite true.

AL: Any way around that now?

AL: We need to acknowledge those power differences between us and see where they lead us. An enormous amount of energy is being taken up with either denying the power differences between Black men and women or fighting over power differences between Black men and women or killing each other off behind them. I’m talking about Black women’s blood flowing in the streets – and how do we get a 14-year-old boy to know I am not the legitimate target of his fury? The boot is on both of our necks. Let’s talk about getting it off. My blood will not wash out your horror. That’s what I’m interested in getting across to adolescent Black boys.

JB: I don’t think there’s any way around that fact.

There are little Black girl children having babies. But this is not an immaculate conception, so we’ve got little Black boys who are making babies, too. We have little Black children making little Black children. I want to deal with that so our kids will not have to repeat that waste of themselves.

JB: I hear you – but let me backtrack, for better or worse.

You know, for whatever reason and whether it’s wrong or right, for generations men have come into the world, either instinctively knowing or believing or being taught that since they were men they in one way or another had to be responsible for the women and children, which

means the universe.

JB: I don’t think there’s any way around that.

AL: If we can put people on the moon and we can blow this whole planet up, if we can consider digging 18 inches of radioactive dirt off of the Bikini atolls and somehow finding something to do with it – if we can do that, we as Black cultural workers can somehow begin to turn that stuff around – because there’s nobody anymore buying ‘cave politics’ – ‘Kill the mammoth or else the species is extinct.’ We have moved beyond that. Those little scrubby-ass kids in the sixth grade – I want those Black kids to know that brute force is not a legitimate way of dealing across sex difference. I want to set up some different paradigms.

JB: Yea, but there’s a real difference between the way a man looks at the world…

AL: Yes, yes…

JB: And the way a woman looks at the world. A woman does know much more than a man.

AL: And why? For the same reason Black people know what white people are thinking: because we had to do it for our survival…

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JB: All right, all right…

AL: We’re finished being bridges. Don’t you see? It’s not Black women who are shedding Black men’s blood on the street – yet. We’re not cleaving your head open with axes. We’re not shooting you down. We’re saying, “Listen, what’s going on between us is related to what’s going on between us and other people,” but we have to solve our own shit at the same time as we’re protecting our Black asses, because if we don’t, we are wasting energy that we need for joint survival.

JB: I’m not even disagreeing – but if you put the argument in that way, you see, a man has a certain story to tell, too, just because he is a man…

AL: Yes, yes, and it’s vital that I be alive and able to listen to it.

JB: Yes. Because we are the only hope we have. A family quarrel is one thing; a public quarrel is another. And you and I, you know – in the kitchen, with the kids, with each other or in bed – we have a lot to deal with, with each other, but we’ve got to know what we’re dealing with. And there is no way around it. There is no way around it. I’m a man. I am not a woman.

AL: That’s right, that’s right.

JB: No one will turn me into a woman. You’re a woman and you’re not a man. No one will turn you into a man.

And we are indispensable for each other, and the children depend on us both.

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AL: It’s vital for me to be able to listen to you, to hear what is it that defines you and for you to listen to me, to hear what is it that defines me – because so long as we are operating in that old pattern, it doesn’t serve anybody, and it certainly hasn’t served us.

JB: I know that. What I really think is that neither of us has anything to prove, at least not in the same way, if we weren’t in the North American wilderness. And the inevitable dissension between brother and sister, between man and woman – let’s face it, all those relations which are rooted in love also are involved in this quarrel.

Because our real responsibility is to endlessly redefine each other. I cannot live without you, and you cannot live without me – and the children can’t live without us.

AL: But we have to define ourselves for each other. We have to redefine ourselves for each other because no matter what the underpinnings of the distortion are, the fact remains that we have absorbed it. We have all absorbed this sickness and ideas in the same way we absorbed racism. It’s vital that we deal constantly with racism, and with white racism among Black people – that we recognize this as a legitimate area of inquiry.

We must also examine the ways that we have absorbed sexism and heterosexism. These are the norms in this dragon we have been born into – and we need to examine these distortions with the same kind of openness and dedication that we examine racism…

JB: You use the word ‘racism’…

AL: The hatred of Black, or color…

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JB: - but beneath the word ‘racism’ sleeps the word ‘safety.’ Why is it important to be white or Black?

AL: Why is it important to be a man rather than a woman?

JB: In both cases, it is assumed that it is safer to be white than to be Black. And it’s assumed that it is safer to be a man than to be a woman. These are both masculine assumptions. But those are the assumptions that we’re trying to overcome or to confront…

AL: To confront, yeah. The vulnerability that lies behind those masculine assumptions is different for me and you, and we must begin to look at that…

JB: Yes, yes…

AL: And the fury that is engendered in the denial of that vulnerability – we have to break through it because there are children growing up believe that it is legitimate to shed female blood, right? I have to break through it because those boys really think that the sign of their masculinity is impregnating a sixth grader. I have to break through it because of that little sixth-grade girl who believes that the only thing in life she has is what lies between her legs…

AL: Okay, the cops are killing the men and the men are killing the women. I’m talking about rape. I’m talking about murder.

JB: I’m not disagreeing with you, but I do think you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m not trying to get the Black man off the hook – or Black women, for that matter – but I am talking about the kingdom in which we live.

AL: Yes, I absolutely agree; the kingdom in which these distortions occur has to be changed.

JB: Something happens to the man who beats up a lady. Something happens to the man who beats up his grandmother. Something happens to the junkie. I know that very well. I walked the streets of Harlem; I grew up there, right? Now you know it is not the Black cat’s fault who sees me and tries to mug me. I got to know that. It’s his responsibility but it’s not his fault. That’s a nuance.

UI got to know that it’s not him who is my enemy even when he beats up his grandmother. His grandmother has got to know. I’m trying to say one’s got to see what drove both of us into those streets. We be both from the same track. Do you see what I mean? I’ve come home myself, you know, wanting to beat up anything in sight- but Audre, Audre…

AL: I’m here, I’m here…

JB: Yeah, but we’re not talking now about men and women. We’re talking about a particular society. We’re talking about a particular time and place. You were talking about the shedding of Black blood in the streets, but I don’t understand –

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JB: I agree with you. I see exactly what you mean and it hurts me at least as much as it hurts you. But how to maneuver oneself past this point – how not to lose him or her who may be in what is in effect occupied territory.

That is really what the Black situation is in this coun-

try. For the ghetto, all that is lacking is barbed wire, and when you pen people up like animals, the intention is to debase them and you have debased them.

AL: Jimmy, we don’t have an argument JB: I know we don’t.

AL: But what we do have is a real disagreement about your responsibility not just to me but to my son and to our boys. Your responsibility to him is to get across to him in a way that I never will be able to because he did not come out of my body and has another relationship to me. Your relationship to him as his farther is to tell him I’m not a fit target for his fury.

JB: Okay, okay…

AL: It’s so entrenched in him that it’s part of him as much as his Blackness is.

JB: All right, all right…

AL: I can’t do it. You have to.

JB: All right, I accept – the challenge is there in any case.

It never occurred to me that it would be otherwise.

That’s absolutely true. I simply want to locate where the danger is…

AL: Yeah, we’re at war…

JB: We are behind the gates of a kingdom which is determined to destroy us.

...but let’s remove ourselves from merely a reactive position – i.e., Black men and women reacting to what’s out there. While we are reacting to what’s out there, we’re also dealing between ourselves – and between ourselves there are power di¼erences that come down…

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AL: Yes, exactly so. And I’m interested in seeing that we do not accept terms that will help us destroy each other.

And I think one of the ways in which we destroy each other is by being programmed to knee-jerk on our differences. Knee-jerk on sex. Knee-jerk on sexuality…

AL: I’m not blaming the Black man; I’m saying don’t shed my blood. I’m not blaming the Black man. I’m saying if my blood is being shed, at some point I’m gonna have a legitimate reason to take up a knife and cut your damn head off, and I’m not trying to do it.

JB: I don’t quite know what to do about it, but I agree with you. And I understand exactly what you mean.

You’re quite right. We get confused with genders – you know, what the western notion of woman is, which is not necessarily what a woman is at all. It’s certainly not the African notion of what a woman is. Or even the European notion of what a woman is. And there’s certainly not standard of masculinity in this country which anybody can respect. Part of the horror of being a Black American is being trapped into being an imitation of an imitation.

JB: If you drive a man mad, you’ll turn him into a beast – it has nothing to do with his color.

AL: I can’t tell you what I wished you would be doing. I can’t redefine masculinity. I can’t redefine Black masculinity certainly. I am in the business of redefining Black womanness. You are in the business of redefining Black masculinity. And I’m saying, ‘Hey, please go on doing it,’ because I don’t know how much longer I can hold this fort, and I really feel that Black women are holding it and we’re beginning to hold it in ways that are making this dialogue less possible.

JB: Really? Why do you say that? I don’t feel that at all. It seems to me you’re blaming the Black man for the trap he’s in.

AL: If you drive a woman insane, she will react like a beast too. There is a larger structure, a society with which we are in total and absolute war. We live in the mouth of a dragon, and we must be able to use each other’s forces to fight it together, because we need each other.

I am saying that in our joint battle we have also developed some very real weapons, and when we turn them against each other they are even more bloody, because we know each other in a particular way. When we turn those weapons against each other, the bloodshed is terrible. Even worse, we are doing this in a structure where we are already embattled. I am not denying that. It is a family discussion I’m having now. I’m not laying blame.

I do not blame Black men for what they are. I’m asking them to move beyond. I do not blame Black men; what I’m saying is, we have to take a new look at the ways in which we fight our joint oppression because if we don’t, we’re gonna be blowing each other up. We have to begin to redefine the terms of what woman is, what man is, how we relate to each other.

JB: But that demands redefining the terms of the western world…

AL: And both of us have to do it; both of us have to do it…

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JB: But you don’t realize that in this republic the only real crime is to be a Black man?

AL: No, I don’t realize that. I realize the only crime is to be Black. I realize the only crime is to be Black, and that includes me too.

JB: A Black man has a prick, they hack it off. A Black man is a ****** when he tries to be a model for his children and he tries to protect his women. That is a principal crime in this republic. And every Black man knows it. And every Black woman pays for it. And every Black child. How can you be so sentimental as to blame the Black man for a situation which has nothing to do with him?

AL: You still haven’t come past blame. I’m not interested in blame, I’m interested in changing…

JB: May I tell you something? May I tell you something?

I might be wrong or right.

AL: I don’t know – tell me.

JB: Do you know what happens to a man-?

AL: How can I know what happens to a man?

JB: Do you know what happens to a man when he’s ashamed of himself when he can’t find a job? When his socks stink? When he can’t protect anybody? When he can’t do anything? Do you know what happens to a man when he can’t face his children because he’s ashamed of himself? It’s not like being a woman…

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AL: No, that’s right. Do you know what happens to a woman who gives birth, who puts that child out there and has to go out and hook to feed it? Do you know what happens to a woman who goes crazy and beats her kids across the room because she’s so full of frustration and anger? Do you know what that is? Do you know what happens to a lesbian who sees her woman and her child beaten on the street while six other guys are holding her? Do you know what that feels like?

JB: Mm-hm.

AL: Well then, in the same way you know how a woman feels, I know how a man feels, because it comes down to human beings being frustrated and distorted because we can’t protect the people we love. So now let’s start – JB: All right, okay…

AL: - let’s start with that and deal. ★

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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.

Monday, June 13, 2016 - Yaa Gyasi, author of the critically received debut novel Homegoing, was joined by poet Tracy K. Smith for a conversation about her debut novel. The talk and reading took place at the Brooklyn Public Library.

About Homegoing: From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.

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August 20, 2016, Brooklyn, NY - Presented by the NY Writers Coalition, the 12th Annual Fort Greene Summer Literary Festival was hosted at BRIC Arts Media House and featured young writers (6-18 years old) who participated in its summer writing program reading alongside three highly acclaimed young black women novelists: Nicole Dennis-Benn (middle left), author of Here Comes the Sun, Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman, and Yaa Gyasi (middle right), author of Homegoing. Writer Chris Prioleau (left) MC'd the exciting event that brought generations of writers together to build on the literary traditions of Fort Greene. Mosaic Magazine was a media sponsor. Shout out to NYWC's 54 MosaicMagazine.org executive director Aaron Zimmerman (right) and public programs director Rose Gorman for doing what they do.

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Mosaic Literary Conference

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MosaicMagazine.org

Saturday 11/19/2016

1040 Grand Concourse at 165th St. BX NYC

This event is presented by the Literary Freedom Project, a Bronx-based nonprofit arts organization, and is made possible with donations and public funds from the Bronx Council on the Arts through the New York State Council on the Arts.