SAFIA ELHILLO
KALIEF BROWDER: A LESSON PLAN
MARCIA DOUGLAS
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Spring 2017 $6.00
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JAVA K A STEP TOE
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Literary Freedom Project programs are made possible with donations as well as grants from the Bronx Council on the Arts through the New York State Council on the Arts, Humanities New York, and Citizens Committee for New York City. Additional funds were provided by Partnerships for Parks Capacity Fund Grant, presented by TD Bank, made possible by the City Parks Foundation and the Parks Equity Initiative of the New York City Council under the leadership of Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. Brooklyn Book Festival 2015 Bookend event at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Photo credit: Lauren M. Click
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content Interview Safia Elhillo by Gaamangwe Mogami ............................................................. 8 Marcia Douglas by Opal Palmer Adisa ........................................................... 22 Javaka Steptoe by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie .................................................. 38 Poems by Safia Elhillo Still Life With A Murmur ................................................................................ 12 On Eid We Slaughter Lambs & I Know Intimately the Color ........................... 15 susie knuckles in love .................................................................................... 17 the lovers ...................................................................................................... 20 Excerpt “Rastaman on the Run� The Marvellous Equations of the Dread: a Novel in Bass Riddim by Marcia Douglas ........................................................................................ 32 Review The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead ......................................... 36 Lesson Plan Kalief Browder by Eisa Nefertari Ulen ............................................................ 44 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. Around Town Photographic highlights from New York literary event by Marcia Wilson ......... 53
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Cover credit: Hidden Chapel Studios
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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 © 2017. No portion of this magazine can be reprinted or reproduced in any form without prior permission from the publisher. Retail Distribution Publisher’s Distribution Group info@pdgmags.com Subscribe online: MosaicMagazine.org 3 Issues: $16.00 Institution Subscriptions EBSCO 1.205.991.6600 Contact the editor We welcome comments. Send e-mails to info@mosaicmagazine.org Visit MosaicMagazine.org for submission guidelines. Colophon Layout Software: Adobe InDesign CS5 Graphic Software: Paint Shop Pro 12 Mast Typeface: Whomp Editorial Typeface: Zapf Humanist POSTMASTER Please send address corrections to: Mosaic 314 W. 231 St #470 Bronx, NY 10463
Programs of the Literary Freedom Project are funded primarily by donations and Mosaic subscribers. Additional funds have been provided in part by the Bronx Council on the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Poets & Writers, Inc. through public funds from the New York State Department of Cultural Affairs; Humanities New York; Partnership for Parks; New York City Council’s Parks Equity Initiative, Council Member Fernando Cabrera; and Citizens Committee of New York. In-kind support is provided by The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Andrew Freedman Home, Casita Maria Center for Art & Education, Google, and the New York Public Library. 4
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C K A TO S B ! X CH N O
Join Lilliam Rivera ONE BOOK ONE BRONX as we welcome Lilliam Rivera author of “The Education of Margot Sanchez” back to the Bronx! Free copies of her book, backpacks, and more will be given to the first 100 kids -must be accompanied by a guardian. For details OneBookOneBronx.com
Saturday, September 16, 2017 3:00 to 5:00pm St. James Recreation Center 2550 Jerome Ave. Bronx, NY
OOK FUN ! BA C LB K OO
O O K B E O N N O EB ! R N
FREE!
OL SCHO BOOK F TO U
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This project is funded by the New York City Council’s Parks Equity Initiative, Council Member Fernando Cabrera.
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contributors Sidik Fofana has written several publication including the Source, Vibe, and allhiphop.com. His work appears in The Black Male Handbook: Blueprint for Life edited by Kevin Powell. Gaamangwe Mogami is a poet, filmmaker and founder of Africa in Dialogue, www.africaindialogue.com Opal Palmer Adisa is a writer of both poetry and prose, photographer, curator, professor, educator and cultural activist. Adisa has lectured and read her work throughout the United States, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Germany, England and Prague, and has performed in Italy and Bosnia. An award-winning poet and prose writer Adisa has fourteen titles to her credit, including the novel, It Begins With Tears (1997), which Rick Ayers proclaimed as one of the most motivational works for young adults. Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie is the author of Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation (Grand Concourse Press) which Split This Rock named a Spectacular Book of 2015 and Karma’s Footsteps (Flipped Eye Publishing). She is the Poetry Editor of African Voices magazine. Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies including North American Review, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Black Renaissance Noire, Crab Orchard Review, BOMB, Paris/Atlantic, Mom Egg, The Golden Shovel (The University of Arkansas Press), The BreakBeat Poets (Haymarket Books), and Listen Up! (One World Ballantine). 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. MosaicMagazine.org
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by Gaamangwe Mogami
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Photo credit: Jackson Hall
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afia Elhillo is Sudanese by way of Washington, DC. She received a BA from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and an MFA in poetry at the New School. Safia is a Pushcart Prize nominee, co-winner of the 2015 Brunel University African Poetry Prize, and winner of the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Conversation, Crescendo Literary, and The Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Incubator. In addition to appearing in several journals and anthologies including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, her work has been translated into Arabic and Greek. Her manuscript Asmarani has been selected for the 2016 New Generation African Poets chapbook box set. With Fatimah Asghar, she is co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me. Safia has performed at venues such as TEDxNewYork, the South African State Theatre, the New Amsterdam Theater on Broadway, and TV1’s Verses & Flow. She was a founding member of Slam NYU, the 2012 and 2013 national collegiate championship team, and was a threetime member and former coach of the DC Youth Slam Poetry team. She is currently a teaching artist with Split This Rock. Safia’s first full-length collection, The January Children, is forthcoming from University of Nebraska Press in 2017.
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This conversation happened between the sunny city of Gaborone, Botswana and ecclectic city of Washington, DC by Skype. Gaamangwe Mogami: Safia, you said “I believe that naming is a claiming act – that in giving something a name, or choosing the word(s) through which we will continue to identify this thing, it becomes ours in this way”. And you proceeded to talk about how poetry has been a way for naming and renaming things that you have lost, which I think is powerful and quite revolutionary. The idea that we can use poetry as alchemy; a way for us to bring back the people and the lives and the stories we have been and lived to the present. I want us to start here, on the importance of poetry and its role in the naming and ownership of our stories, losses, traumas, and our healing. Safia Elhillo: I think the process of turning experiences into stories is a very powerful act of agency, because it switches around the power—especially if we are thinking about trauma. Instead of it being “something that happened to me,” it then turns into an experience that belongs to me, that I get to talk about in whatever way that I see fit. So I think that—that process of reclamation—is really important for our own personal narratives and a part of how we envision ourselves. If we consistently think of ourselves as people that things happen to then I think the sense of agency that we have as we move through the world starts to diminish over time. But if we are to think of everything that happens to us as an experience that belongs to us then that process of recla-
mation can give us more agency and active power over our own lives. Gaamangwe: That’s powerful. As a poet and an individual, what are the things that are important for you to name? Safia: It’s very important for me to name my people. That could be my family, my countrymen, and really of anyone who has had sort of a third-culture upbringing. I think that’s important because I didn’t come across a lot of that when I was a young reader, and it almost convinced me that I didn’t exist. If no one in literature was having the sort of experiences that I was having in my life, then it was hard to figure out if the experiences I was having in my life were real or valid or deserving of poetry or literature. So now, as a writer, I think it’s very important for me to specify; yes Sudan, yes hyphenated identity, yes immigration. I spent so much of my younger life convinced that I was not real. So now I am trying to do the best that I can to sort of mark my place. I am sort of still in the process of convincing myself that I do exist and that I did happen. Gaamangwe: I resonate a lot with that because I also didn’t think that people like me exist. There was always only one narrative about Africans that I read and I often felt that, that’s part of the reality I have seen and experiences but not entirely the reality that I am in. But work like yours are doing great in shifting a lot of us. Still on naming things, you said; “I believe that a poem is an extended naming, a reversed
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Still Life With A Murmur
in cairo dark girl at the british school my hair oiled & brushed thin to kill the curl still in my uniform at samira's house watching the heart on the table wrapped in butcher paper small & muscled & dark the way i still imagine my own heart to look & that afternoon we ate it fried in dazzling oil with onions i think i am trying to say something about a curse i think i am saying i did it to myself
- Safia Elhillo
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synthesis that takes all of these pieces that have, for eternity, been lashed together and deemed “love” or “sadness” or “trauma” and spills out everything that has been locked behind their one-word name. A one-word name is a means of codification; a multi-word name is a poem.
Gaamangwe: Wow, that’s powerful. I agree, I think at some level that is what we are all trying to do. Safia: Although maybe I don’t actually think we want to get to that Ultimate Poem because once we write it then there is probably nothing left to write after that.
It got me thinking that often these lose identities of “black”, “woman”, “Arabaphone” can be thought of one-word name. And the entirety of Safia Elhillo, a poem. So if we were to think of you as a poem, looking at all these identities that you are, what kind of a poem will you be? Safia: It’s very hard for me to answer this without projecting what I like in a poem. But in a perfect world, if I could be a poem that I like, then that poem would be short, it would be a maybe more experimental poem, it would be in more than one language using more than one alphabet, and probably a lot of people would think it didn’t make sense. I don’t know, actually, if I am describing the poem I want to be or the poem I am trying to write.
Gaamangwe: Perhaps maybe our life’s work is basically the Ultimate Poem. So when it ends that’s when our lives ends. What are the elements of this Ultimate Poem that you find yourself gravitating towards? Safia: Some of the elements that I have identified so far are bilingualism—or, actually, multilingualism because I think they are many Englishes and many Arabics that I speak in and exist in and write in. I think strangeness, like, weird syntax, is sort of what I feel most married to in my work. A lot of the syntax that I gravitate towards in my writing is sort of directly taken from the syntax I hear when people who do not think in English speak in English. So a lot of the sentences are maybe not in what would traditionally be considered the “correct” syntax, and I love that. I think it sounds prettier that way, and I try to write that way. To sort of do justice to the way that I heard English spoken when I was growing up. But other than that, I am still trying to figure out the other parts. I know there is an element of obsession but I think there’s still a question of what the obsession is with.
Gaamangwe: I often think that we are the stories that we write or there is a lot of ourselves in the stories or the poetry that we write. Maybe we are purging the humans inside us in all the works that we are writing. Safia: I think so. I was talking to someone the other day about writing and how I think I have been trying to write just this one same poem my whole life, and every new poem is one draft closer to this sort of Ultimate Poem that lives in my brain that I am trying to do justice on paper. Every new poem is one step closer to what this Ultimate Poem is but I still haven’t managed to fully extract it.
Gaamangwe: Have you figured what the obsession is? Safia: No—I am obsessed with a lot of things. I am just trying to find the through-line between them because then I think it will help me figure out what my one big obsession is. Gaamangwe: This question came to me because a friend
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of mine recently asked “what are you trying to do with your poetry?” And I said other than the purging of the Gaamangwes, the humans in me, I think I am obsessed with the idea of truths and mistruths. I am always trying to navigate that world. I am obsessed with asking, what if your truth is actually a mistruth? And your mistruth is a truth? So this is what I am always trying to do and no matter how I try to run away from this obsession, even if I seat down to write a poem with the intention of running away from this truth, but really often most of the time its about truths and mistruths. Safia: I don’t know if my obsession is specific like that but I do love that though, truth and mistruths. I am still figuring out specifically what my obsession is but I do know that in terms of language, diction and syntax, my project is to make English sound as less-English and maybe more-Arabic as possible. Or, I don’t know if I am necessarily trying to make it sound Arabic, really—but I am trying to make it sound less like the English I was taught in school. Gaamangwe: That’s powerful. I am now reminded of Taiye Selasi’s Ted Talk titled “Don’t ask where I am from, ask where I’m a local?” and basically she says that we belong to physical spaces as long as we can navigate them as a local, it doesn’t have to be fully but as long as one can navigate that space then they belong to these two or three or four spaces in that way. Safia: I love that. That relates to a lot of my thoughts floating around since the shitshow of the election we just had here in the US. And I think to use the language of the question you just asked, I am sort of re-examining what it means to be a local of a country and what a country even means as a construct, because ultimately,
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even if we are just thinking about Africa, all our countries were made because some white guy got a pen and drew some lines on a map. So, before colonialism those borders were not necessarily the ways that we naturally would have identified ourselves, and would have naturally identified what we claimed as home and where we felt local to. And I’m thinking about that now where many of my questions of my crises around identity are so wrapped up in this idea of a country, when ultimately a country is not a real thing—it’s a thing that some guy made up and I am basing so much of my identity around it. Now I am thinking about what it would like to be a local of a space that I make or space that is made by my community, by my loved ones, by my family. So—what if we were local to only, like, our communities? What if I am only a local of my group of friends? What if I am only a local of my family? Instead of basing that sense of home and nationality and belonging on a country, because country are fallible as hell. Oftentimes, no government actually has the best interest of its people at heart. So if a government is not interested in me, then why am still interested in a government as a way of naming myself and claiming my space? Gaamangwe: That is interesting, you wrote a poem called "Allegiance," and it’s somewhere around the lines of what you are saying right now. I thought the poem was profound especially with everything that is happening in America. What is actually happening there? Safia: Politically, not much has started to happen because technically he is not a president yet until January, but he has made a lot of terrifying appointments of the people that he is going to hire to surround him and advise him during his presidency. What has been hap-
On Eid We Slaughter Lambs & I Know Intimately the Color
i ride an uber spilling the last of the day’s ginger light driver handsome enough to pull listening sounds as he chats our talk is casual at its centre but at the edges i taste an old brittleness memory of something burnt he circles his mouth to an electronic cigarette & its vapor braids into the earth & vinegar smell of sweat you are muslim he tells me not a question & i nod smile at his smoke-dark eyes in the mirror i count the prayer beads strung in a necklace from his rearview ninety-nine & perfect glossy & unworn mine are sandalwood & leave their perfume when cabling through my fingers drink? smoke? he demands an inventory of my wickedness in the way men of my faith think me immediately theirs daughter & sister & wife & never asking my name
always a test
in the rippling mirror my head uncovered extra button undone from my shirt i know this exchange & its right answers a blink & head shaken no he squints his endless eyes at a red light he turns counts what he sees in my face & the light drips in to share our ride new vermillion along our bodies i blink again & measure his disbelief i am tired in the new dark & ready to confirm whatever he decides i am for a moment of quiet moment to rest my loosened hair smells of coal floats over the backseat like smoke
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- Safia Elhillo
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pening on a micro level, what I was afraid will begin to happen, there just been a surge of hate crimes, and there is really this sinister sort of joy behind it. I think, like, white supremacists, white nationalists, are really excited about this moment in history—they don’t see it as the end of the world or the end of a country. And I think the election results just gave a lot of scary people permission to act on their ugliest, scariest impulses, which, before had been sort of set back by the court of public opinion; and now we’ve found out, because a lot of people voted for this guy, I think it revealed that public opinion was always more on their side than we all thought to be.
getting a lot of media coverage because generally that is the deal with Sudan. I think it’s very easy for me to romanticize Sudan as an idea, and as sort of this mythical homeland, but the sort of concrete 2016 reality of Sudan is that it also is a very troubled country and I think that Sudan is going through enough without me sort of assigning it my existential shit. So, basically both of the countries I belong to are sort of a mess, which is why I don’t believe in countries anymore.
Gaamangwe: I can imagine, it sounds absolutely scary, but I am here so I really am aware of how far my imagination can take me. I wonder what it’s like for you especially if we speak of Sudan and your relationship with Sudan, which is where your parents are from originally, right? Actually, did you live in Sudan? Safia; No, I have never lived in Sudan. I have visited roughly once a year since I was born but I have never been enrolled in school in Sudan. I have never actually even been there for more than three months at a time, so I can’t say I’ve lived there. And that was something that I started to think about, because that’s another layer to what makes it hurt so much about the state of this country here, that this is the country where so many people came to be safe—and obviously it had its issues before, but there is something extra blatant and glaring about it this time around. Where, I think for the first time for some of us, the question has become, would we have been better off back home? And I let that thought cross my mind but also Sudan is no walk in the park right now either and there’s a lot of stuff going on that has not been
Gaamangwe: I am a contrast of you. I am from Botswana, and have lived my whole life in Botswana, and as far as we are talking about peace and war, we are up there as one of the most peaceful countries in Africa and the world. So really nothing much happens here so I wonder what it’s like to belong and also not belong to a country that has a long history of war and everything that is painful and unbearable and horrible? And now being in America and having that sense of “do I really belong here or did I ever belong here?” Safia: I think also with both these countries—I’ve thought about this more in terms of Sudan, but I think the same statement can be made with the US—because there is so much trauma wrapped up in the history of these countries, there are a lot of moments of rupture, where something really awful happened and a new version of the country emerged from that. Sort like Russian nesting dolls. But one of the results is that across generations, none of us have the same version of, let’s say Sudan in mind, when we talk about Sudan. So when my grandparents talk about Sudan it’s one thing, when my mother
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Gaamangwe: Wow, that’s really overwhelming. Safia: It’s a weird time.
susie knuckles in love
i think i met all the wrong men before you and i think they ruined me but i think you’re really handsome the way a map is handsome, with skin wide open soaked in the whole world’s ink. i think i’m done pulling paint off the walls i think i want to read you the names of every city that ever burned down, i think we’d like it there.
- Safia Elhillo
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talks of the Sudan of her youth it’s another thing, and it sounds absolutely beautiful, but all I have of the Sudan that I have seen and experienced is the Sudan of today, which is not in such a great shape. And I do understand that it is sort of easy to fall into nostalgia and romanticize the past version of a country, especially a version we didn’t experience firsthand, but hearing about the sorts of freedoms that where afforded my mother’s generation as young people in Sudan, and the exchanges of ideas, art music, culture, that they were able to experience as young people there—that is a beautiful version of Sudan that I can only imagine, But part of what brings up this existential crisis for me is that, that is the Sudan that I long for, but it is one that I have actually never experienced, so I feel this patriotism for a place that no longer exists and hasn’t existed in my lifetime. I think we all have our versions of nostalgia, we all have versions of the past that we think are better than the moment we live in today and it just so happens that my version of the past is wrapped into a sense of national identity. Gaamangwe: I don’t think I have ever been nostalgic about my country. But perhaps if I was to be nostalgic, I will be nostalgic of my Botswana before HIV/AIDS, because that has been our war. That Botswana sounds lighter to me. Now let’s shift to Asmarani, what were you naming here? Safia: So when I talk about obsession, that is a project that was entirely born of obsession and I sort of pieces together the intellectual aspects afterwards. Asmarani happened because one day I woke up and I texted my friend Aziza saying “I think I want to write a book about Abdelhalim Hafez.” I don’t know when all these things
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about blackness, brownness and Arabness came through but they sort of came later on while in the process of writing the book. And so those first few months after making the decision that I wanted to write this book about this person, it was just a lot of research—more research than I have ever done for a project—where I figured that I had to learn as much as I could about Abdelhalim Hafez to figure out what my entry point was. And I found it in this word that ended up becoming the title. Asmarani is a term of endearment in Arabic for a brown-skinned or dark-skinned person. In his love songs, Abdelhalim Hafez would sing almost exclusively to this asmarani, and it opened up a lot of questions for me about my place in the Arab world, which has always been a big question mark, where I don’t know how Arab I ever felt. We speak Arabic in my family, in the part of Sudan where my family is from, but I don’t know how much I ever thought of myself as an Arab. I had a lot of experiences in the Arab world where it was clear that a lot of Arabs were not reading me as Arab either—a lot of microaggressions where someone would say something like “I didn’t know you spoke Arabic in Sudan”, or “You speak Arabic so well, where did you learn that?” And I lived in Egypt when I was younger and I think that’s where, a lot of those microaggressions happened, that I internalized but never really examined because I was young and didn’t think too much about them. And so, in starting this project, exploring my Arabophone, Blackness or Arabized Africanness—I used to say my Black Arabness, but I don’t know if that term feels right anymore—it made me think a lot about how radical it is for this widely adored pop singer heartthrob famous person to specify the darker girl every time he sings a love song. So that was my entry point: as the darker girl in this Ara-
bic speaking world, what do I have to say? And that sort of started the project. But there is also a lot of family stuff, a lot of things about my parents, my childhood, because on the more sentimental and less political side, I just listened to a lot of Arabic music growing up, so a lot of those songs trigger a lot of memories for me, being a little kid and hearing my grandmother singing in the kitchen, so that’s another central element. Gaamangwe: That’s amazing. A lot of your work is very personal and vulnerable and intentional, which is really refreshing. It’s interesting the way you share and bring yourself to the world as a writer. To say I am going to write about Abdelhalim Hafez, and have that be an intentional thing and actually create a chapbook is powerful. This is the book that won you the Sillerman Poetry Award, right? Safia: That’s where the confusion happens: Asmarani was a chapbook, and at the time of submitting to the Sillerman Prize it was the title I gave my full-length manuscript—which contains the chapbook, but which is also almost double the length of that. So we’ve changed that title of that book to The January Children, to sort of avoid confusion, where people look for the chapbook and they get the full length, and vice versa. Gaamangwe: So Asmarani is completely different from The January Children? Safia: Yes, Asmarani is the chapbook and it’s already out, and The January Children comes out March next year. All of the Abdelhalim Hafez poems are contained in The January Children, but I think the frame is different. While I think Asmarani was much like a zoomed-in project that was, for the most part, only concerned with
the parts of my life that applied to that Abdelhalim Hafez obsession. And The January Children zooms out a little bit more, and it’s a little bit more Sudanese, I would say. “The January Children,” first of all is what they called my grandfather’s generation who were born under colonial rule, so what they would do so that they could assign them official birth certificates is that they would go to each village and they would line the children up by height and would assign them a birth year based on height—so the taller you were, the older they would assume you would be, and then they gave everyone the birth date of January 1st. With my grandfather we were able to calculate his real birthday because he knew his birthday on the Islamic calendar, but for a lot of people of that generation, the only birthday they had was January 1st, and it may be real or not real, so they call that whole generation the January Children. And this book is more of exploration of my family, more of Sudan then verses the Sudan now. There is a series in there called “talking with an accent about home,” which is a series of erasures whose source text is interviews that I conducted with Sudanese people and members of the Sudanese diaspora, that opened with the two questions “where are you from?” and “where do you consider home?” And the conversation that sort of came out of that was from the differences between those two answers. So there is a lot more of this mystical, mythical Sudan in that book, and a lot more of exploration of my Sudaneseness in that book, and—sort of scratching the surface where I wanted to get more into this but it was towards the end of writing the book—but a lot of exploration about Nubian identity and Nubianness, where even the Arabness of my Sudanese is sort of not entirely indigenous to my people. So there are a lot of thoughts on Africanness and
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Arabness and Blackness and my family. Gaamangwe: I read the poem about the January children to my sister and she was like even as Africans sometimes we also have misconceptions about other African countries especially if you have never been there, and also because the narrative that we get about ourselves are really half of the truths. But we often have similar histories because the concept of the January children also applies to my grandmother’s generation. So thank you for naming things because this is how we are also learning of ourselves and quite possibly reclaiming ourselves.
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Photo Credit: Caits Meissner for Jellyfish Treasury
So how do you envision the exploration and naming of the multi-poem that is Safia Elhillo? Safia; I am honestly making that up as I go along, I have never been much good at planning things in advance, so everything in my life has been in the moment, making each decision as it comes, and that how I’ve gotten to the next moment. So far the only plan I have towards the future is to keep writing and keep reading, because I do love books and there are so many in the world that I have read and I am trying to get to them all, and to keep taking care of my plants, and to maybe start taking vitamins. ★
the lovers
khartoum in the eighties, my mother with ribbons in her hair dress fanning about her nutmeg calves my father (who i hear was so lively and handsome that only bad magic could have emptied that and filled him with smoke) the borrowed record player the generation that would leave to make nostalgia of these very nights to hyphenate their children and grow gnarled by diaspora’s every winter but tonight, motown crackling into the hot twilight, mosquitoes swaying in the velvet dusk, my parents dance without ever touching.
- Safia Elhillo
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The Power To Multiply: An Interview with
Marcia Douglas By Opal Palmer Adisa
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Marcia Douglas is one of the most innovative writers in the Caribbean. Her work is a tapestry of past, present, history and myth and folklore and spirituality –a humane message for the future. This is very evident in her latest work, The Marvellous Equation of the Dread –a novel, which is a love song to Bob Marley, but also a shout out to Marcus Garvey, Haile Selassie, Half-Way-Tree in Kingston, Jamaican and much more. It’s a wise text that has to be savored and taken in small doses to get the full impact. The reader must dive between the layering, follow the many strands and colors of threads, take a leap of faith and love rather than judge the many characters who inhabit this magical novel. A professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder where she teaches creative writing and Caribbean Literature, Douglas is also the author of the novels, Madam Fate and Notes from a Writer’s Book of Cures and Spells as well as a poetry collection, Electricity Comes to Cocoa Bottom. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies internationally, including Edexcel Anthology for English Language, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse, The Forward Book of Poetry, Kingston Noir, Jubilation! 50 Years of Jamaican Poetry, Mojo: Conjure Stories, Whispers from Under the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction, Caribbean Erotic: Poetry, Prose, Essays, and The Art of Friction: Where (Non) Fictions Come Together. Douglas is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. After reading Marcia Douglas’ novel, I set up this interview for Mosaic. Opal Palmer Adisa: Marcia, congrats on this new novel,
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which reaffirms my love for your writing. It is brilliant. But even after reading it,the title is a mystery, or rather seems so algebraic for a book with so much love and reasoning. When and how did you decide on this cover and the title? Marcia Douglas: Thanks, Opal. “Equations” in the context of this novel means deep, rootical knowledge, or to use Rasta language, “overstanding”; it is infused with a power which comes from connecting to spirit. This “Jahrithmetic,” as one my characters calls it, is full of the mystical, and inspired action. In conversation with that, there is a fascination with multiples which pervades this novel. The narrative is concerned, in part, with the way in which words, sounds, voices, stories, and wisdom have the power to multiply and resound, igniting action and deep understanding. In this context, a young boy memorizing his seven times table comes to realize that it is an embodiment his own greatness—a personal power which multiplies and has no end. Or, a young slave girl’s voice, “Mama!” defies law and resounds all the way into the present moment, connecting generations. The narrative is imbedded with many multiples and (re)soundings of this sort. And too, the title, The Marvellous Equations of the Dread, with its sub-title, a novel in bass riddim, announces its link to reggae music, including, dub music, with its focus on echo and reverb and a bass which, in the world of this novel, sounds into infinity, capable of awakening both the living and the dead. OPA: Do you remember the first time you heard a Marley song? And did you ever meet him or see him perform live. MD: Actually no, I don’t remember the first time I heard
a Marley song, but I did grow up with his voice all around me. Bob’s presence was everywhere, though I took it for granted at the time. In a way, he and other reggae artists of that time, were the sound track of my youth—that along with the speaking in tongues, and brimstone and fire, redemption choruses of church. These two worked together in interesting ways, both born out of longing and sufferation, and reaching for something more. I never met Bob Marley or saw him perform—wish I did. OPA: The novel feels very much like a love letter to Bob Marley –the private, deeply mystical Marley. When did you decide to embark on such a project? And do talk about the process of writing this work. MD: As a teenager, I remember riding the bus and passing Bob’s house at 56 Hope Road, and wondering about the goings on in the yard. I already had a writerly imagination, so maybe there is a way in which I unwittingly began writing the book back then. All of my novels hinge on a long-memory encounter that sort. I also went to school in Half Way Tree where most of the book is set. I passed the clock tower everyday—the place where it is said an old cotton tree once stood and where, in the world of the novel, a slave boy is hanged—and always, it seemed, the clock said the wrong time. Maybe it was waiting for someone to tell a story explaining why. The actual process of writing the book was long. I started it in 2005 as soon as Notes From a Writer’s Book of Cures and Spells was published. Most of it was written late at night, as I navigated parenting and teaching. Then came the process of finding a home for it. OPA: It is evident to anyone who knows any of Bob Marley's biography that you did your research, and choose
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to focus on his days in England before he became the superstar that he became. The various chapters have track numbers and various other symbology of his music. How much research did you do, and does it matter if readers are not so familiar with Marley's music, and certain details of his life? MD: In addition to more traditional forms of research, in writing this book, I listened to a lot of reggae! That was part of the research—feeling the music. The novel is written out of a reggae aesthetic. I have used concepts such as “version,” “re-mix” and “dub-side” as structural devices. The “dub-side” of the novel, for example, is the spirit side—where the dead meet and converse. This makes sense to me because dub music is deeply bass line and trance inducing; its echo and reverb also infuses it with the feel of a spiritscape. And too, there are a number of stories within the story, which are told or retold as “versions” or “re-mixes.” The prose too, is always aware of the poetry of the bass line. One question the novel plays with is: What if there is a bass line so strong that it has the power to wake up the dead? In writing this book, I tried to do what writers such as Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison do with the jazz or the blues. Readers who are familiar with reggae will have a heightened appreciation for some of the ambitions of this novel, but I don’t think it is entirely necessary for understanding the book as a whole. Also, this book includes Bob as a character, but it is ultimately about more than Bob. Marcus Garvey and Maroon Nanny are in it too, as well as lesser known historical figures. It’s a book about a people, a nation, and nations, and our power to heal. OPA: The novel features many "odd" people, Fall-down
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the Half-Way Tree madman, at least that is how he is seen, Leenah who is deaf, the boy and his tragic domestic scene, people who perceive themselves in much grander terms and who are in regular communication with duppies, ghosts; they inhabit alternate reality, but also, well certainly for someone like me, make a good deal of sense. Speak to me about your belief in multiple worlds and realities. How do you want readers to see and understand Fall-down? MD: Each reader will necessarily connect with the material in different ways depending on their background and on their own experiences. I am comfortable with the concept of alternate realities and ancestor spirits. I grew up with stories of the spirit world and so on. Other readers will simply see these aspects of the book as fantastical or even metaphorical. I’m okay with each reader making sense of the story on his or her own terms; the narrative works on multiple levels. OPA: The tone and rhythm of your work seem to be informed by the Rastafarian culture. Are you a Rastafarian? What influences have this sect, and this movement had on your development as a woman and as a writer? MD: I do not identify myself as Rastafarian though I draw a lot of sustenance and wisdom from Rastafari. To which I would add, I arguably draw a certain sustenance from Buddhism and Christianity as well, without necessarily identifying myself by those paths. So, in that light, true— a part of me is fundamentally Rasta. One takes the wisdom that works for one’s journey and leaves the rest. Rastafari is characterized by free thinkers and is dynamic in many ways. In its broadest sense, the wisdom of Rastafari teaches us to honor our origins; remember mother
Africa; love and care for our body and the planet, and seek positivity and justice. These are the principals I am attracted to in Rastafari, and which I find useful. OPA: As I was reading, I wanted to see inside your head --like really how do you come up with these ideas, where do they come from, Leenah, Fall-down, the boy. MD: That’s a good question. Sometimes characters begin with a memory I have carried; others begin with a voice I know or have created. In general, characters are part memory, part imagination. The character Fall-down, for instance, is a blend of all the homeless “madmen” I’ve encountered on the streets of Kingston, coupled with Biblical stories of fallen angels. In those Bible stories, fallen angels are simply evil and outcast, and I wondered, what if their transgressions were, to an extent, explicable or just more emotionally complex? And too, if we can “entertain angels unawares,” might we not also brush shoulders with fallen ones as well? Add to this several doses of imagination, a bit of humor, and whole lot of experimentation, and the character Fall-down, is born. OPA: There are various visual markings in the texts that I suspect might be your own etchings/illustrations. I remember in your previous novel, Notes from a Writer's Books of Cures and Spells, that you introduced images of dolls that you made during the writing of that novel. Are these etching yours and what was the process of their birth? And secondly, what is the relationship between the images and the words? MD: Yes, I did the drawings myself. Given that I included not only dolls but also sketches in Notes From a Writer’s
Book of Cures and Spells, my editor at Peepal Tree and I agreed that that would make sense. This is a novel with many moving parts, and the recurring images function to help orient the reader through the text. Beyond that though, I am interested in the creation of hybrid fictions—that is, works, which engage multiple creative forms. I always say that a narrative can be as much for the eye as it is for the ear. One of the central characters in the book, Leenah, is a deaf Rastawoman, and I’d like to think that she would agree with this statement too. OPA: Who do you see as your audience? MD: I hope that this novel engages as wide an audience as possible. Having said that, I do see readers from the African diaspora as primary. A Jamaican reader will appreciate certain cultural references, for instance, as no one else can. These readers are my first tribe. When I write, this is the sort of reader/listener I imagine; I don’t need to explain certain details of speech or culture for this reader. But too, I am aware that there are other audiences as well; some readers will be drawn to the work because of an interest in hybrid or “experimental” fiction or, because of an interest in the novel’s engagement with the world of spirit and so on. OPA: Most Caribbean novelist are just novelist -- they are not doing anything new with the form, although they might tell a good story. I read you and am reminded of the Nigerian novelist, Amos Tutulo, whose work I deeply admire. I think of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I think of Gayle Jones, and other African Diaspora/Latin American/ Caribbean writers who have not just accepted the novel form handed to us, but who are wrestling with it in and
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through their work. Certainly Kamau Brathwaite comes to mind as a poet from the region who is doing this. But all your works, push and tear apart and collage the novel form, creating something new and exciting. Talk about the form and how that comes to you? MD: Each of my books has experimented with form in a different way. For Madam Fate, for instance, I took the Jamaican notion of “turnin yu hand,” that is, making something beautiful out of bits of this and that, and applied it to the written word. Written out of this sensibility, this multivoiced narrative comes to be interwoven with scraps of poetry, recipes, proverbs, crochet stitches and so on. Each book has engaged hybrid form in a different way. We’ve already mentioned the art dolls which accompany the text of Notes From a Writer’s Book of Cures and Spells, a novel which engages visual art; and most recently, with the Marvellous Equations of the Dread: a Novel in Bass Riddim, I’ve layered in music as well. I find this play with form exciting. For me, this is where much of the satisfaction of creating resides. It’s also a way for me to bring some of my diverse interests together, observing what sparks. Creativity is play really, and play is necessary for survival of the artist spirit. OPA: Much of the second half of this text takes place at Half-Way Tree in the clock tower or its surrounding area. And most Jamaicans probably do not know or even remember that where it sits was the site of a great cotton tree, I suspect many Jamaicans will still say a cotton tree is home to duppies, spirits. What memories are you stirring up by placing the action at the Half-Way Tree clock? MD: Since I attended high school in Half Way Tree, setting the book there came easily for that reason too, and
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grew out of my own connection to that area. In a way, I came of age in the shadow of the Half Way Tree clock. In my small world, Half Way Tree was a place where things unfolded— news and trouble and teenage-girl worries; but for centuries as well, HWT has always been a place where history and all sorts of drama collide. Flash back to the old silk cotton tree and its reputation as a dwelling place of spirits, and a resting place for market women; then flash forward to Half Way Tree today as a place of commerce; the place where Jamaica watches Usain Bolt win on big screen, or where politicians address the nation. If the ancestors could return, as this novel imagines, seems as though they would congregate there for sure. OPA: The premise of the novel hinges on the belief is duppies or reincarnation or when people die they can or do come back, even if not as themselves. Bob Marley returns, not as himself, but as the madman and remains unrecognizable, even by Rita until he finds his name and is re-united with the most high in Ethiopia. Do you believe that people like Marley and Garvey and Selassie, and the everyday person does return in another form and perform some final act of attrition or redemption? MD: I believe “return” can take various forms. I also believe there is such a thing as ancestral memory, a consciousness we can plug into. Perhaps too, our ancestors can return in the art we imagine—in our songs, in our stories, in our poems. Perhaps, if we invite then, they’ll speak through us. OPA: You cover a lot of ground in this novel -- the life of Bob Marley and his relationship to His Imperial Majesty,
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Selassie, the impact of his music, the afterlife and ancestry, ecology in terms of the Doctor bird and the Swallowtail butterfly and other references. It's like a pepper-pot --a lot of different ingredients thrown together and repurposed into something mouth-watering and delicious. How long did it take you to write this novel? MD: Yes, it does cover a lot of ground—all sorts of factual and imaginary details of time and place. In writing this book, I was reminded that I am interested in so many disciplines, not just writing and language, and that my work as a writer intersects many other fields of interest. I find myself curious about so many things, from butterflies to clocks and time to fallen angels. In the world of this book, all of this curiosity comes into play as the narrative unfolds. You also ask what I learned about Jamaican society. And to this I would say that ultimately, I was reminded that though complex and wounded, Jamaican society is also a rich space, and one full of resilience, and that it has a capacity for the sort of healing which comes from the creativity and innovation of its people. This is something I come to underscore in the novel. OPA: There is the story of Bob Marley, Haile Selassie, Marcus Garvey, a new approach and way of thinking, the healing of the children, Bob Marley finding his name, his relationship with and to his father, Leenah and her story and Hector... There are so many precious but odd characters that make up this landscape, people who would not be considered "normal," would be considered a little bit "touched," but in this novel they are the heroes and heroines. Speak briefly about character development as a novelist. How do you go about developing your characters and how do you come to know them and have them speak their truth regardless of how they
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might be perceived by others? MD: I have always thought that being a writer has some parallels to being a psychoanalyst or therapist—that is, it requires a close look at the human psyche and the capacity to observe people, wondering what resides at their root, and what makes them tick. It also requires imagining that you are walking in your character’s shoes. Another way of thinking of it, is that you have to become your character to a certain extent. Performers do this on the stage or screen; and writers do it on the page. When I wrote the character, Ida, in Madam Fate—a “madwoman” who hears voices in a calabash, I would sometimes put a calabash to my ear. OPA: What I love the most about the second part is the healing and realization that occurs with the children when they encounter Marley as a duppy madman at the clock, especially the boy who discovered that he was the sum total of seven, and amazed himself, his teacher and others with this eye-opening revelation. I have often felt that the child rearing practices of Jamaica were so outmoded that far too many children fall victim of a one-tier system that does not acknowledge differences. Why do you have Marley as the madman at the clock shining the children's shoes? MD: One of my memories of primary school in Jamaica is of my teacher lashing me with her rubber strap because I did not know seven times seven. I was about eight or nine at the time. I have carried this memory with me all these years, and unexpectedly, it transformed into the little boy you speak of and his realization that he is greater than the times table, and that his greatness is capable of multiplying into infinity just as the numbers do. This was a very healing passage for me; and I hope
it works that way for others too. So we have come full circle to our original exchange about the mathematics of the book, Opal. The scene where the “madman”/Bob shines the children’s shoes is a gesture of love and honor for the youth, encouraging them on their life journeys. Another true meaning of “walk good.” OPA: Your work is innovative, spiritual, deeply connected to Jamaican mysticism. It is gritty and soulful and yet so full of common sense and deep understanding of the human spirit and the diverse people who make up the Jamaican landscape. How much time did you spend in Jamaica during the writing of this book? MD: I try to go home to Jamaica at least once per year. And early in the process of the project, I spent a oneyear sabbatical there. That year was very important to me; it was a time during which the prose took root. Among other things, I spent the year connecting with Rastafari communities; I asked, What does Zion mean to you? The answers were surprisingly varied, but always interesting and full of longing. I knew I wanted to write a book that addressed that yearning. I have dedicated the book, for the healing of the nations. But going back to your question—Jamaica is a place, which is always with me. I may not physically be there, but I carry it with me—in all of its complexity—and I write out of that space of knowing and understanding. OPA: I know you teach creative writing, but do you also teach Caribbean literature, and if so, who are some of the writers you teach? MD: At the University of Colorado, I mostly teach creative writing, but also, Caribbean literature. My syllabus is usually a blend of both established and emerging writ-
ers, so I might include writers such as NourbeSe Philip, Kwame Dawes, Dorothea Smartt, Patrick Chamoiseau and Patricia Powell, but newer or lesser known writers as well. There are many very interesting writers such as Jacqueline Bishop and Alecia Mckenzie who should probably be taught more—the list of such writers is long; suffice to say, Caribbean literature is full of hidden gems. I’ve taught your work as well—you are one of our Jamaican trailblazers. OPA: Influences! Everyone wants to know who and what have influenced writers. I am not asking for your favorite(s) writers, I want to explore what have influenced you to write about the things and people that you do, in the manner that you do? MD: My writing is a product of so many voices and “languages”—my father preaching, my mother praying, the music of my grandmother’s sewing machine, reggae bass, one-drop beat, dogs barking in the night, gun-shot. We were not the sort of family to talk about poetry or books at the dinner table in our home. Rather, we discussed things such as the lizard that appeared in one of our dreams the night before and what that meant; or Jesus feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fish; or the meaning of the black moth on the ceiling above us and its refusal to move. My parents were church-going, working class, and had limited education, but lots of ambition. So I was raised in the sort of Kingston environment that brought all those things into play. Both my parents were also born and raised in remote country areas and there was a part of them, even after living in Kingston, which always remained very much steeped in rural Jamaica. Our household was therefore part country, part town. My first school was Balmagie
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Excerpt “Rastaman on the Run” The Marvellous Equations of the Dread: a Novel in Bass Riddim by Marcia Douglas
Primary in the Waterhouse area of Kingston—a place I experienced as full of hard-life. Later, I went to Holy Childhood. My father was a small farmer in St. Ann, spending a few days in country as well as a few days in town each week. I remember him dropping me off at school in his loud-engine, red-dirt, country truck. He would pull up in the Holy Childhood High parking lot with the back of the truck spilling with his cabbage and lettuce and Irish potato. It created an interesting scene in front of the main office. So, this is an example of how I lived at an intersection of experiences. As a result, I am able to see Jamaica from multiple angles, and all of this has influenced the characters and themes I navigate in my work. Setting The Marvellous Equations of the Dread in Half Way Tree was a natural move for me, in that Half Way Tree is another sort of intersection, marking a point between uptown and downtown, a place where things converge. OPA: Let's say I pour a handful of sand into your palm from Port Royal, and I say begin this story... MD: This palm full of sand contains, bits of coral, shellfish, china plates from sunken ships, and, as Leenah says, the ground hip bones of our ancestors—fierce babymothers who jumped off deck, and “swallowed seawater but stayed strong inside”… ★
The others have been waiting for his arrival in the eye. The bass riddim of the people has called them too. They lean against the zinc fence or sit on their haunches; some of them have bongo drums. There is a congregation of birds in an ackee tree and the smell of corn roasting on hot coals. A red flag blows from a bamboo pole. A woman steps forward. They call me Queen Nanny, she says. Nanny of the Maroons. Is me could catch the white soldiers’ bullets and spit them out. That is what the books say, but I used to do much more. I could grind a soldier’s teeth and use the powder to light a good fire. I could spot one-a-them coming between the trees without turning around. I would feel it— the too-red of their jackets on my bare arm. One of them would piss behind a tree and I would hear it a mile off. If the books really said-all the very ink would stink of blood. Let’s leave it at that. But see me here; the people have called. I have heard their new-time music beating the ground. And the feet of the children, dancing. Their hopefulness mixed with pain. Listen to me, there is an echo which travels along fault lines; it comes from their music. The strange music of the people. Sometimes the earth shudders and our bones move in their graves. How can we not arise? Up, up ye mighty, someone sings. An elder steps forward. His long grey locs touch his knees. He carries a staff carved with a Lion of Judah. My name is Leonard, he says. Leonard Howell. They call me the first Rasta, but that don’t matter now. And they call me a thief, same like they call Garvey. Said I tricked
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the people with false tickets to Ethiopia. Thief or not, I had a vision. History needed me to keep the wheel turning. Yes-I. I come now to organize. To buoy the people up. Up, up! To higher groundation. Praises. Another woman steps forward. Her head is tied with a piece of flour bag. One furious plait twines against her face. Me don’t have no name, she says. Everybody forget it and now not even me can remember it. It happen like that to plenty of we. We sew and plant and cook and sweep and wash and scrub and reap and stir and cry and pray and bend over and scream and brake we back and then hold it straight again to send the children to school with piece of pencil so they can learn to write the book of we story and never forget it. I heard the babies crying from my grave— my grans and my gran’s grans; and how could I not return? Mercy.
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A little girl wipes tears from her eyes. It was election time and gunshot fly into my face, straight up my nose, she says. Me step in front to save my brother. He was only three and Mama said to mine him while she go look one tin a mackerel. Me catch the shot just like Nanny, only it killed me. Me name Hortense, but them call me Tensie. From over this side, I hear my brother, big-man he is now clicking a gun, and the sound of the click make my bones-them tremble. Don’t! Don’t! I call-out, but he can’t hear me. I want to stop him. Help me stop him.
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Stop the violence! The people must stop it! Is long time we a warn them! A man steps forward. It is Garvey. He wears a green velvet vest under a black jacket. He has a hat of plumes. We must hold together now, he says. If the living have no hindsight, then we must be that hindsight. If the living have no foresight, then we must be that foresight. If the living have no wind then we must be that wind. If the living have no fire, then we must be that fire. Up, up. Let us be the terror and the tenderness; the storm and the lullaby. Let us whirl together as one mighty force— Enough of the preaching to rah, a woman calls. She wears short-shorts and long white boots. Is Patsy me name. Even in the grave my feet keep dancehall. Me is a dancehall rebel woman. Is a rebel dance me a dance, for if you look the moves good, you see is Africa them come from, but the people don’t know that. And me neva know it neither. Is Madda Nanny tell me. Is them kinda thing we need to tell the people. We don’t need no more preaching. Back to Africa. The people need Africa. Garvey takes off his hat and holds it against his belly. Sister you are right. This time we will need a ship of a different kind. The people must return to Africa on fleets of the mind. This is where Zion lives. Yes-I. Yes-I. We need a plan, Nanny says. Something great, same as we imagin-we-nation, yet simple as a goat’s milk. That’s how the Maroons defeated the enemy. Who woulda believe that we could defeat the British with a few roots
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and river stones and so-so weeds? A woman dressed in white beats a drum between her knees. Three times three. Tears run down her face; her lips tremble. Three times three. Her hands call sound up/rising and/skin deliv/erance— But how shall we start? The drums stop. The woman falls to the ground, her body shaking. Someone sprinkles her with white rum. She lets out a sigh and everyone is quiet. With the children, Bob says. He steps forward into the circle; still wet from storm. My name is Robert Nesta Marley. I-man used to play music, but before that me was a boy had a pain in me heart. My heart so heavy it beat with a one-drop/ one-drop. Is music and Rastafari save me, but everyone don’t so lucky. The youththem—me hear them bawl at night outside in the road. And when them eye-water dry-up, them beat them one another. Is them we must start with— With one mighty force, calls Garvey. The little youths shall lead us! One by one we must build an army. Selah. Somewhere a lizard begins to sing. The young girl, Hortense, rises up and Bob gives her the drum. Her small hands beat the skin, chanting down Babylon. The spirits sing Nyahbinghi, and Nanny dances in the circle. She grasps the hem of her skirt as her feet inch the ground, working the perimeter. There is a scent of white rum and a swirl of mango leaf and bird feather.
And this is what the drum speaks: Zion train coming/ Zion train coming/ People get ready/ Zion train coming. Zion is a place inside, calls Garvey. And this is what the drum speaks: Set the children free/ Set the children free / Set the children free. Patsy zips up her boots and dances with Nanny in the circle. Who can’t sing, clap; who can’t clap, testify; who can’t testify, dance! she calls. Her knees dip and part; dip and part. A draft travels her spine and rises to her head. It pushes at the space between her scalp and funeral wig. She closes her eyes and whispers, Rah. For this is what the drum speaks: Zion train coming/ Zion train coming/ Children get ready/ Zion train coming. And the woman with the furious plait begins to cry. For she sees her great grans far-far on the other side. They have her Guinea cheekbones, and ashy skin. Zion is/ a place inside! she calls; hoping they will hear. And her bare feet dance the words into the dust of the dirt yard. Zion/ is, Zion is, her heels treading faster. Zion is/ Zion is/ Zion is, go the drums. And spirit feet massage the ground (For this is the real reason there are almost two hundred little earthquakes on the island per year. And this is the real reason you should pay attention when the photo on the living-room wall shifts sideways, your feet unsteady in the hallway. For this is how the long-dead rock our fever babies; or shake the youth from don’t-care.) ★
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Reviews
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead Reviewed by Sidik Fofana The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is caked in jargon. The gist of it is this: a slave is a slave no matter where she is. South Carolina or Massachusetts. If she has run away and is caught, she is to be returned. She is a carefully labeled piece of luggage. As far as narrative implications go, the dynamite crackles: no matter how far any slave escapes, there always looms the threat that she may be recaptured and restored to her original state of bondage. Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad is the next in a line of reimagined antebellum dramas which has recently included films like 12 Years a Slave and Birth of a Nation, novels like James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird, Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings, and Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing; and non-fiction oeuvres like Annette Gordon Reed’s The Hemingses of Monticello and Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning. The difference is Whitehead tends to write secondarily about race. He writes about poker and zombies and disillusioned elevator operators first. But, it seems that even the most eclectic writers of color have obligations. In Underground Railroad, we meet Cora, an outcast slave. She is known to talk to herself and throw fits. All that she owns is a tiny secret garden where she grows her own yams, which of course is ironic as she does not own herself. When her slave owner dies of kidney failure and the plantation is bequeathed to his cruel brother,
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Cora is offered an opportunity to run away with another on-the-margins slave named Caesar. She turns it down at first ( “to escape the boundary of the plantation was to escape the fundamental principles of your existence: impossible” ), but things become unbearable and the two finally set off for the wilderness. After a run in with the “law” results in the death of a bounty man’s son, the two slaves flee to the underground railroad. However, this is not Harriet Tubman’s underground railroad, that historical network of undisclosed houses and pit stops for runaway slaves, but an actual rural subway system replete with freight cars and magical negro conductors and destinations as mythical as the lost city of Atlantis. Cora appears to be another one of the line’s successful commuters, until her stay in South Carolina with an independent community of progressive free souls turns out to be a sick experiment in eugenics. From there, she is cooped up in the attic of an abolitionist. Of this, Whitehead cannot resist indulging in the irony: “On the plantation, she was not free, but moved unrestricted on its acres, tasting the air and tracing the summer...here, she was free of her master but slunk around a warren so tiny she couldn’t stand.” All the while, hot on her heels, is the notorious slave-catching Ridgeway, a man who has never met property he could not return.
antiquated ideology isn’t punctuated either. One slave is casually taught the Declaration of Independence since “a bird can be taught limericks, a slave might be taught to remember as well.” Slave narratives are tough. How can one compete with facts? No matter how wicked the imagination, it is always superseded by the unseemly reality of the truth. Yet at its rawest, The Underground Railroad is the study of a fugitive slave, whom hindsight has proven is on the right side of the law. And so, it is inherently gripping. The wound from slavery’s legacy may never heal properly, but as it scabs, the fiction surrounding it has taken a slight turn for the fabulistic. Cora is in some ways like D’Artagan or Ali Baba, a heroine steeped more in lore than conceived from deep sociological excavation. The Underground Railroad may desire more from its main character at times, but it succeeds at the most visceral level: that of black woman vs. American patriarchy. On that most crucial plain, the novel is fast, tumbling, and very necessary. ★
Whitehead tells the story very deliberately. Acts of violence and cruelty in the novel are mere matters of fact. At one point, Cora, in her hiding, comes across several hanging corpses who are sparsely described as, “trousers black where their bowels emptied when their necks snapped.” She witnesses a live lynching of another girl who is simply “led up the stairs” to her reckoning. The
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JAVA K A STEP TOE by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie
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Photo credit: Hidden Chapel Studios
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Words like courage, resistance, legacy, or mission don’t always come to mind when readers think of children’s books, but since the late 60s, Black children’s book authors and illustrators have been creating work that subtly and boldly inspires readers to reenvision what we think children’s books are and can be. It wasn’t until after I had my first child that I understood just how important children’s books were. Talking bears were great, letters of the alphabet were fine, barnyard animals teaching manners and numbers were sweet, but something was missing. Books were a place we went to get glimpses of the world but what was missing from many of the books I saw was the very child I was reading to. Her communities and her family were often absent from bookstore shelves. Javaka Steptoe was born into a family dedicated to changing that. Both of Steptoe’s parents were artists. His father, the late John Steptoe, was an award-winning illustrator of 16 books,10 of which he wrote. Javaka explains that his parent’s home was their studio, which allowed him to be immersed in art from an early age. Initially unsure about what his life’s work would be, it became obvious when his first book In Daddy’s Arms I am Tall was published in 1997 to much acclaim and won the Coretta Scott King Award. The book prophetically begins with the Ashanti proverb “When you follow in the path of your father, you learn to walk like him.” Since then Steptoe has illustrated nine more books. His latest, Radiant Child:The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, is the second one that he wrote and illustrated. Radiant Child is a tour de force that smashes misconceptions about Jean-Michel Basquiat and exemplifies
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Steptoe’s love of experimenting with materials. In previous works he used coins, paper, buttons, fabric, soil, seashells, and even fish dipped in paint. In Radiant Child he uses wood found in dumpsters and on the streets as well as discarded material from the Brooklyn Museum as canvas. Everything– from the way Javaka Steptoe approaches artmaking, the stories he chooses to tell, and the detailed, loving notes he places in his books– feels like an invitation. Come see yourself and consider new ways to tell your story. His books serve as mirrors and lenses. In Steptoe’s world, we are whole. My conversation with Javaka was a journey into hip-hop, technology, privilege, Basquiat, The Four Agreements, the myth of absent Black fathers, and the stigma of mental illness. Steptoe chooses words as deliberately as he chooses colors and materials for his books. Growing Up with Visual Artist Parents My father’s parents were from Virginia. They were used to a certain way of going about things and so I think, to one extent, they were really proud of my father but to another extent they didn’t get it. Both of my parents, John Steptoe and Stephanie Douglas, would hear things from their parents like how are you going to make money? When are you going to get a real job? My father was hearing this even after being successful with his first book. I’m glad I didn’t have to hear that growing up. At least not from my parents. At friends’ houses their parents would say that to me but it was weird to me. My parents were artists and I was still eating, I still had clothes. Because my parents weren’t independently wealthy it
wasn’t like they had a studio over here and an apartment over there, it was all in one. There can be problematic things with that but I was a consistent witness to their creativity. I was learning from them either in their studio or in the next room. I’d be drawing and if I had any questions I’d ask them how do you do this or that. They’d take a couple of seconds and show me and then I’d keep on doing what it is that I was doing Ancestors Making Room For Us What we have is the opportunity to choose and our ancestors didn’t have that choice. You had very specific ways that you could do things (back then) and then you couldn’t do those things without permission. That’s a really horrible place to be as an individual. Our ancestors’ survival, and not just their survival, whatever resistance came about and allowed things to change to the way they are today– is what allows us to have this opportunity to play, to create, to have this privilege. It is a privilege. Seeing Our (true) Selves in Books My father told me that the reason he created children’s books was that when he was growing up there were no people in books that looked like him, that spoke like him, that were doing the things that he was doing, or were doing the things the people in his community were doing. There was no humanity for Black people in children’s books. It’s important to have those images. In movies, books, on the radio however you’re inputting information. If you’re not seeing yourself in diversity: as a scientist, as a cop, as a nurse, as a florist, as an artist, then that’s not in your spectrum. For most people, if they don’t see it, then it’s
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not possible.
says ‘there is also this in the world if you’re interested.’
Elitism in Art I find it problematic. Art, with the quotation marks, was a privilege for the rich. I used to be a docent at the American Craft Museum and there was this big thing about what craft is and what art is. Really what it came down to is that craft is (seen as) what poor people do and art is what rich people do. Because craft was a beautiful utilitarian object. You didn’t just have time to make a painting that you couldn’t use.
Advice to Artists Fight for your vision and don’t conform. You can’t excel by conforming. Creating Radiant Child The Four Agreements says to always do the best you can. Everybody was excited about this book and everybody wanted to make this the best book possible. It’s 90% my voice. This was something I wrote too and so because I didn’t just illustrate it had a lot more control over it. As an artist you can’t be afraid to ask for what you want. You have to have a clear vision and believe in your vision.
Resisting Elitism in Art I write the notes in the books because I think it’s helpful. People are curious and they want to know what’s your process. To a certain extent it is to demystify the process. As an artist I’m always looking at how other people are doing things and figuring out how things were done. That’s my curiosity. So when I write these notes I’m speaking to the artists and the people who are curious. I also want to let children know how to do things. I want them to try making art. I want them to participate.
Radiant Child as a Counternarrative You do the research you see everything that comes up. You might have preconceived notions about some things but you never know what’s going to pop up. I tell people you’ve got to find the meat of the story. As things come up that are important to talk about you try to figure out a way to add that in.
Being an Alternative Children are dealing with their lives and whatever they were given. It would be lovely and wonderful if I could show somebody my book and their whole life is changed, and ideas can do that, but you have to deal with the realities of that person’s situation as well. How else is this person not being fed? Who is this person and are the obstacles in their life surmountable? It’s really all about the journey that person is going to take. I just see myself as someone who is going to put out an option. My work
One of the things that happens when you do research on Basquiat is that you have people that say all this weird stuff. Assistants try to take credit for his work. People claim he took advantage of him but they were only around because he was who he was. So who was taking advantage of who? It’s always negative (when they talk about Basquiat) there is no humanity, no one is trying to understand where he is coming from. A lot of people heard about him from Schnabel’s film (Basquiat) which depicts him as wild, and abusive to his girlfriend. His
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girlfriend is depicted as a saint who works to keep drugs on his plate. If you read more than one book (even her book Widow Basquiat) you find out she was doing lots of drugs and partying too. They didn’t have a perfect relationship but there was love there. In her book I found out that he would bring his mother, who was hospitalized for mental illness when Basquiat was young, to the shows. He would ask his girlfriend to sit with his mother so people wouldn’t mess with her and she wouldn’t feel by herself. There’s a lot of tender moments in Basquiat’s life and things that people don’t really want to focus on about Basquiat. I guess they love the idea of the terrible black man.
stigma but especially if you live in a community people care and people understand and people are helpful. Legacy The most important thing to pass down is that you should do what you love. ★
Art as Medicine My first book came out 20 years ago in the exact same month as this one. It also won the Coretta Scott King Award. Creating books for children is therapeutic. It’s an opportunity to go back and really dig around and explore that stuff you need to figure out so that you can go forward. When I worked on In Daddy’s Arms I Am Tall, my father had recently passed away and the book was a way for me to deal with that. With Radiant Child I didn’t have the same experience as Basquiat, my mother didn’t exhibit mental illness when I was a child it happened later on in life, but I had to deal with it. Sometimes that meant I had to be in all these crazy situations. [Long pause] There is a part of me that says I am a children’s book artist, I don’t want anyone to know that this ambulance is coming to my house. I don’t want anyone to know that this woman who is acting up is a part of me. One day it just came to me that they already know and people care. People are concerned. We live with this
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Photo credit: Zach Gross
KALIEF BROWDER: A LESSON PLAN
by Eisa Nefertari Ulen One night, when Kalief Browder was just a 16-year old kid, he walked home from a party in The Bronx, and two policemen arrested him for stealing a backpack. None of the stolen items were ever found on him. He was never found guilty. Indeed, his case never even went to trial. The charges against him were eventually dropped, but all his future prospects, his life’s course – indeed, his life itself - were destroyed that night. Charged with a crime he maintained he did not commit, caught in a criminal justice system that denied him the right to a fair and speedy trial, Kalief spent over 1,000 days on Rikers Island. For about 800 of those days he remained in solitary confinement. While his school friends passed notes in English class, Kalief learned to wash his own clothes with bar soap and a bucket. While his friends giggled about prom, Kalief was beaten by inmates - and officers. While his friends planned parties for graduation day fun, Kalief tore bed sheets to make a noose that would fit around his own neck. Kalief failed to successfully commit suicide during the time of his incarceration. He was 20 years old when he was released, and in all those years, despite court appearances where he was offered his freedom in return
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for a guilty plea, Kalief refused to confess to a crime he did not commit. When his case was finally dismissed, he walked back into the world, took a bus, and rode two subways home. Kalief earned his GED, obtained a job, attended weekly counseling sessions, and enrolled in Bronx Community College, where he earned a 3.6 grade point average. He appeared on The View and met Jay Z. But none of those accomplishments liberated him from the trauma of prison life and the child abuse he experienced while on Rikers. Exoneration, reunion with family, even a lawsuit against the system that caged him couldn’t undo the damage done inside. In an article for the New Yorker, Kalief said, “People tell me because I have this case against the city I’m all right. But I’m not all right. I’m messed up. I know that I might see some money from this case, but that’s not going to help me mentally. I’m mentally scarred right now. That’s how I feel. Because there are certain things that changed about me and they might not go back.” After at least one unsuccessful suicide attempt following his release, Kalief killed himself. His mother found him hanging outside a second floor bedroom of their Bronx home. Kalief’s story added renewed fervor to the Movement for Black Lives. Jay Z produced a six-part documentary series about Kalief that aired on Spike TV. His story became an anthem for prison reform advocates. Two lawsuits remained in place against the city. But none of that eased his family’s pain. Sixteen months after her young-
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est child took his own life, Kalief’s mother Venida also passed away, her own heart broken by the unfair burdens placed on her son. These lesson plans will never make sense of it all, but they can give young learners the tools they need to become more thoughtful and purposeful in their interrogation of the criminal justice system that denied Kalief Browder his human and legal rights.
Getting the Facts Topics for Discussion 1. What are your general opinions about incarcerated persons? 2. What type of person do you think of when you hear someone has spent time in jail? 3. What are your opinions about corrections officers? 4. What type of person do you think of when you hear someone has worked as a corrections officer? 5. What facts, if any, do you know about incarcerated persons? What facts do you know about corrections officers? 6. What do you know about the rates of incarcerated youth in this country? 7. Is it your opinion that 16-year olds be locked away even before they have been convicted of a crime? 8. Is it your opinion that 16-year olds be locked away even after they have been convicted of a crime? 9. What other forms of punishment and monitoring of children awaiting trial might be possible? 10. What other forms of punishment of children found guilty of punishable crimes might be possible? 11. Is something other than punishment possible? Focused Discussion Read this New Yorker magazine article: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/kaliefbrowder-1993-2015 1. A fact is an indisputably true assertion that can be objectively supported. What are the facts regarding the Kalief Browder story as presented in this article? 2. What are some details that confirm to the reader that the journalist is using objective facts to report on the Ka-
lief Browder story? 3. An opinion is a view or judgment about something and can be subjective. What are the opinions in this article? 4. What language does the journalist use to indicate to the reader that she is providing an opinion? 5. Which are stronger in this article, the facts or the opinions? 6. Have any of your opinions about incarcerated persons, corrections officers, and the way youth are treated in the criminal justice system changed now that you’ve learned the facts of the Kalief Browder case? Essay Idea Write your own article about Kalief Browder using facts you research about this tragedy. In your article provide a few opinions on the case, but be sure to use language that lets the reader know you are providing a subjective opinion in those sentences. Remember, your article has to be informational, so be sure to provide more facts than opinions. Additional Activities 1. Kalief Browder was arrested for allegedly stealing a backpack. Use the backpack theme to create a visual expression of your opinion regarding the Kalief Browder story. You might want to think about the emotions this story unpacks for you. You might want to consider the things you wish society could just pack away forever like police profiling, anti-Black racism, and fear. Maybe these social problems, like the problem of incarcerated children, are things you think America needs to unpack and deal with in a meaningful way. Use a backpack drawing, collage, photograph, advertisement, or sketch to express
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the emotional responses and thoughts you have when you consider the Kalief Browder story.
paper. Write for at least 15 minutes, in silence, without stopping.
2. Using the facts of the case, stage a mock trial of the Kalief Browder case. Identify a student to play each part, including the judge, jury, prosecutor, and defense attorney. Someone should also play the police who arrested Kalief, the friend he was walking with that night, the man who said Kalief robbed him, and of course Kalief himself. Give Kalief the trial he never got from the criminal justice system.
Additional Activities 1. DuVernay uses simple but striking visuals to show the increase in incarcerated persons in the United States. Use the numbers she provides to make a graph or a chart that documents the growth of the prison population in this country. 2. Research prison populations around the world. Choose two countries on each continent (and include Australia) and make a graph or a chart that documents the numbers of incarcerated people globally. Be sure to use numbers for the same year for each country you select. Include the same year numbers for the United States on your chart or graph. 3. Rewind the DuVernay documentary to the section on ALEC. Did you know about ALEC before watching this film? Do you think many Americans know about ALEC? Do you think all Americans should know about ALEC? As a class, decide how you feel about this organization and its influence on public policy. Write an open letter addressed to the American people that lists the important facts about ALEC, what it does, and who it influences. You may want to emphasize the Trayvon Martin case, Stand Your Ground, and Wal Mart in this letter. Make sure your open letter sticks to the facts as provided in DeVernay’s film. Post your open letter online. 4. Read the Emancipation Proclamation: http://www.historynet.com/emancipation-proclamation-text. Write your own Emancipation Proclamation for persons who are wrongfully incarcerated. You may wish to write an Emancipation Proclamation or all incarcerated persons under the age of 21.
13th Topics for Discussion 1. What do you know about slavery? 2. What is the difference between the term slave and the term enslaved African? Which term emphasizes the humanity of the person in bondage? 3. What is the difference between the term prisoner and the term incarcerated person? 4. Have you ever heard the term prison industrial complex? 5. What was the motive behind slavery? What did slaveowners want to make? 6. What is the motive behind private prisons? What do the people who own prisons want to make? 7. Do you think there is a relationship between the slave system of the past and the prison system of today? Essay Questions Watch the Ava DuVernay film, 13th, on Netflix. Once the film ends, simply pick up your pen and begin writing. Write whatever comes out of you without holding back, or editing, or reconsidering what you put down on
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Restorative Justice Topics for Discussion 1. What does the word restore mean? 2. What is justice? 3. What might the term Restorative Justice mean? 4. What does punitive mean? 5. Pretend you are responsible for managing children who have committed crimes. What kind of space would you want those children to live in after the crimes are committed? Would you place them in a space that looks more like a prison, or would you want them in a place that looks more like a home? Would your intention be to punish them or to rehabilitate them? What might be the best ways to help prevent future crimes from happening? 6. What do you think the school to prison pipeline is?
Photo credit: Zach Gross
Essay Question Read this article about Restorative Justice, or RJ: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34203-restorativejustice-gives-our-children-dignity-in-us-schools Research RJ on this website: http://restorativejustice.org/ Imagine what a system that utilized RJ, instead of punitive discipline, might have done for Kalief Browder during the 1,000 day period of his incarceration. How might the outcome of his experience have been different? How might other incarcerated children and the corrections officers have been different if RJ was the strategy in place on Rikers Island? Given the fact that he went to school, obtained a job, and went to weekly counseling sessions, do you think Kalief might have been able to exit Rikers and continue to live a productive life if he was incarcerated in a facility that sought to restore him rather than punish him? Write an essay that imagines Kalief’s life in
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and out of prison if he had done the same time – but in a different kind of place. Additional Activities 1. Research your own school’s discipline policy and the online policies of other schools around the country. In a small group, talk about the expectations of young people in U.S. schools. 2. Read this Tavis Smiley Report on the school to prison pipeline: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/ education-under-arrest/school-to-prison-pipeline-factsheet/ Make your own fact sheet about this pipeline and post it in your school. 3. View this infographic on the American Civil Liberties Union website: https://www.aclu.org/infographic/ school-prison-pipeline-infographic Read this interview with Fania Davis about RJOY: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/no-word-for-prison-byeisa-nefertari-ulen/ Using facts from the Davis interview, create your own infographic about RJOY. 4. Write a letter to your local Board of Education informing them about the school to prison pipeline and the alternative to punitive discipline in schools that RJOY offers. In your letter, persuade school officials that resources used to bring officers into schools might be better used to bring RJOY programs into schools. Use facts to support your ideas and give your letter validity. Send your letter to your local Board of Education. The Prison of the Mind Suicide prevention requires professional support. Here are some links to resources educators might find helpful: Suicide Prevention Resource Center
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http://www.sprc.org/settings/schools US Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, https://store.samhsa.gov/shin/content/SMA124669/SMA12-4669.pdf American Foundation for Suicide Prevention https://afsp.org/our-work/education/model-school-policy-suicide-prevention/ The New Abolitionists Focused Discussion View this interview with Angela Davis: https://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/6/angela_davis_on_prison_abolition_the 1. What do you think Davis means by decarceration? How is that term different from incarceration? 2. Are you surprised by the number of people Davis says are incarcerated in the prison industrial complex? 3. What do you think of the term prison industrial complex? 4. What is industry? What are the connotations associated with the word industrial? Do those words suggest a place suitable for humans? 5. What is a complex? What does it mean when something is complex? How does this word, both the noun form and the adjective, relate to Kalief’s experience? 6. Think about the word abolition. What other movement for social justice is associated with that term? 7. Do you think a word associated with the emancipation of slaves makes sense when talking about the prison industrial complex? In what way(s) is being enslaved similar to being incarcerated? In what way(s) are those two
experiences different? Essay Question Read through the table of contents in the essay collection Who Do You Serve? Who Do You Protect? (Haymarket Books 2016), and choose one that interests you. After you read the essay you select, list the facts you learned. Next look over the facts you listed. Can they be organized into categories or groups? After you’ve organized your facts, write a magazine article about the topic of your study as it relates to the Kalief Browder story. Make sure your magazine article is informational. It should contain facts that inform the reader.
Photo credit: Zach Gross
Additional Activities 1. When the whole class has finished writing their articles, put them together to make a magazine. What should the title of your magazine be? Work on a powerful cover with bold art to draw attention to your magazine. What kinds of advertisements would be appropriate for your publication? Imagine ads that might run in an informational magazine like yours and include them between each article. 2. Read this essay by Angela Davis: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/davisprison.html It contains many words that may be unfamiliar to you. Develop a reading guide to help younger students read this essay. List vocabulary words and their definitions in your reading guide. In addition, create a fact sheet to help younger readers understand this essay and the social issues it addresses. 3. Research Angela Davis, including her childhood, her education, and her involvement in the Struggle for Black Liberation in the 1960s and 1970s. Focus your
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research on her experience as a political prisoner and her decades-long work on behalf of the incarcerated in America. Create a vivid infographic using pictures and words to help others understand Davis’ commitment to abolition of incarcerated persons. 4. Read the online definitions of the prison industrial complex and abolition on the Critical Resistance website. This is an organization Angela Davis cofounded. Create a sketch, painting, collage, or other artistic rendering to express your feelings about prison abolition and Kalief Browder. Incorporate the Critical Resistance definitions in your work. 5. The Prison Abolition Movement is very similar in name to the Abolitionist Movement to end slavery. Using a large poster board, write Abolitionist Movement on the top of one side of the paper and write Prison Abolition Movement on the top of the other side. Draw a line underneath these terms and list the facts about each movement to make a historical chart. For example, you might write “Movement to free enslaved African people” under Abolitionist Movement and then write “Movement to free incarcerated people” on the other side. Make sure your chart lists facts. 6. Read this Atlantic article about Rikers Island: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/ rikers-island/525858/ Consider what the closure of Rikers would mean to the memory of Kalief Browder. On one side of a piece of paper, write the facts about the possible closure of Rikers. On the other side, write your opinions about what that closure might mean to Kalief’s legacy. 7. Think like a lawyer. Read this definition of child abuse as provided by the federal government: https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/can/defining/fed-
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eral/ View this video of beatings Kalief received while wrongfully incarcerated: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/exclusivevideo-violence-inside-rikers In what ways was his experience child abuse? Should the city of New York and Rikers be held responsible for abusing Kalief while he was forced to live under their supervision? Draft a case to support your opinion using facts about child abuse and Kalief’s experience. 8. Choreograph a dance, write a play, or craft a poem about Kalief Browder. Tell his life, using all the facts you’ve gathered, in a creative way that expresses all of your opinions about his experience on Rikers Island. ★
around town Freelance photographer Marcia E. Wilson gallivants around NYC looking for literary events to spotlight on the Around Town page. She may be at a reading near you. For more visit MosaicMagazine.org.
Thursday, April 27 - Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn hosted a book launch for Liza Jessie Peterson's All Day: A Year of Love and Survival Teaching Incarcerated Kids at Rikers Island. Following her reading Peterson was joined for a lively conversation by Flores Forbes, author of Invisible Man: A Contemporary Slave Narrative in the Era of Mass Incarceration. Liza Jessie Peterson is a Brooklyn-based poet and actress who has appeared on Def Poetry Jam and toured the country with her one-woman show. She has also worked for 18 years with incarcerated youth as a teacher and counselor. Her new book All Day is the story of her first year as a full-time GED teacher for incarcerated boys on Rikers Island. Praised by Russell Simmons and Jamal Joseph, the book is a personal glimpse into the issue of mass incarceration, and an unpredictable, insightful and ultimately hopeful reflection on teaching children and teens. MosaicMagazine.org
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Left: agent Marie Brown and her daughter, Hachette Books publicist Laini Brown.
Highlights from the 2017 Bronx Book Fair, which took place May 6 at the Bronx Library Center. Top left: Michael Alvarez, Bronx Library Center Network Manager of The New York Public Library; top center: the keynote was delivered by Kevin Young, poetry editor for the New Yorker and Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture/NYPL; center right: The Bronx “Book Desert”: Fighting Back through Public Libraries and New Bookstores, moderator: Robert Farrell, panelists Noëlle Santos (Lit Bar), Melissa Coss Aquino (Bronx Community College), Gesille Dixon (Director of Bronx Libraries for the New York Public Library), and Oren Teicher (American Booksellers Association) discussed the lack of bookstores in the Bronx and what the borough is doing about it. Photo credits: Anthony Wilson/WideVision Photography.
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