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How to Write about Africa

DISCUSSION (11)

Kwani? and 2010 CDC Caine Prize Workshop Reading

Kwani Trust is pleased to announce a reading in collaboration with The CDC Caine Prize workshop. The event will include an award ceremony for the winner of the recent Kwani? Short Story Competition. The Caine Prize readings will feature Mamle Kabu and Stephen Kenai, both shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2009 and 2008 respectively. Kwani? readings will feature 4 upcoming new titles to be released into bookshops on April 1 2010

Date: Wednesday, March 24th 2010

Venue: #3 Kifaru Gardens, Kanjata Rd.(off James Gichuru Rd.)

Time: 7:30 pm

Entry: Free

How Haiti Saved America

Two centuries ago, a glittering Caribbean Island helped finance the Revolution

By Ted Widmer

March 21, 2010

The United States has been leading the response to the Haitian earthquake for all of the reasons that we would expect: our geographical proximity, our competence at emergency response, and our innate generosity. That fits the narrative most of us hold in our heads, for we typically think of Haiti and America as a basket case and a basket, joined only by their contradictions, and the beneficence of one to the other.

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(David Sutter for The Boston Globe)

On the surface, that is true enough. Haiti was desperately poor well before this latest catastrophe and routinely faces problems that border on the biblical — floods, epidemics, and a deforested landscape that suggests a plague of locusts (sadly, it was just human beings). The United States is the world’s all-time winner, whether defined by Olympic medal count or GDP or any other national sweepstakes.

Yet a closer look at the early history of the United States and Haiti — proudly, the two oldest countries in this hemisphere — suggests that the relationship was once very different. In fact, it was the island’s wealth that turned heads in those days. And the United States was hardly a foregone conclusion. In the darkest days of the American Revolution, when it seemed preposterous to believe that the mighty British empire might allow 13 rogue colonies to come into existence as a new nation, the support that came from a 14th colony — French Saint Domingue, Haiti’s predecessor — made an important difference.

In recent years, the bestseller lists have been dominated by history books arguing that our founding moment is the key to understanding everything that has happened since. That is all well and good — in fact, it’s great news that so many Americans are willing and even eager to read about the 18th century. But to tell the story right, we need to think about all of the people who worked for our independence. In the appeals for aid that have gone out over the last few months, there is one powerful reason for aiding Haiti that has never been articulated. Simply put — the United States might never have come into existence without the help of our island neighbor.

That is a counterintuitive thought, to put it mildly. But to avoid defeat, Americans needed guns and powder and bullets and warm clothing. To buy those necessities, they needed money. And money in those days came from France, eager to twist the tail of the British Lion. France supported America for many reasons, including the ones we learn in school — Benjamin Franklin’s

roguish charm and the appeal of the underdog and England’s comeuppance. But a reason we hear less often is that France had a vested interest in protecting a lucrative overseas possession with a strong connection to the United States, and to New England in particular.

Here in Boston, where the American Revolution is an everyday fact, it helps to pull the camera back, away from this tiny peninsula, and consider the broader hemisphere. In the late 18th century, the situation was very nearly reversed — Haiti’s predecessor, Saint Domingue, was the richest colony in the world. Its capital city, Cap Français (today’s Cap Haïtien) was larger than Boston, and among the most cosmopolitan places in the Americas. Its culture matched anything in New York, Havana, Philadelphia, or the dour Puritan city jutting into Massachusetts Bay.

Early in the century, Benjamin Franklin had learned that modest displays of wit were punishable by jail in Boston — why he soon found it convenient to flee to Philadelphia. In Saint Domingue, by contrast, wit was everything. Comedies were performed at playhouses around the country (the largest theater in Cap Français seated 1,500). Le Cap’s first theater preceded Boston’s by more than 50 years. The historian James E. McClellan III said that Haiti’s scientific clubs “certainly rivaled, if they did not eclipse” those of Philadelphia and Boston. A highly sophisticated urban life sprang into existence — more than 11 towns had more than 1,000 people, and in the capital, all of Cap Français danced to orchestras, laughed at cabarets, played at cards and billiards, and visited wax museums. (In 1789, a waxen George Washington was put on display, in what might have passed for the first state visit by a US president.)

As these accounts would suggest, a great deal of money was made in Saint Domingue. To be “as rich as a Creole” was a familiar boast in Paris, and a substantial portion of the French economy depended on this one distant settlement. This was the jewel of the French empire, furnishing the coffee drunk in Paris, the sugar needed to sweeten it, and the cotton and indigo worn by men and women of fashion. Saint Domingue’s commerce added up to more than a third of France’s foreign trade. One person in eight in France earned a living that stemmed from it. By 1776, this tiny colony produced more income than the entire Spanish empire in the Americas.

But Haiti’s superheated economy required constant, grinding labor in the plantations — and that meant massive importation of human beings from Africa. To a greater degree than in South Carolina or Virginia, the planters of Saint Domingue worked their slaves to death. This was a slave society on a scale beyond anything seen in North America. The profits were bigger, and so were the cruelties, distributed as generously. A small colony of 10,000 square miles — roughly the size of Massachusetts — held a teeming population of Africans, half a million strong, ruled over by a mixture of French families, light-skinned mulattoes, and the profiteering adventurers who always congregate in lively Caribbean cities.

To a surprising degree, Boston was economically linked with a city that was in many ways its polar opposite. New England merchants had been getting rich in Hispaniola since at least 1684, when a young adventurer, William Phips, found a Spanish treasure that made his fortune there. Foodstuffs like dried fish were sold by enterprising Yankees to the rich French island, and the trade in molasses (a run-off of the sugar refining process) became a New England specialty, part of the so-called Triangle Trade. The difficulty of regulating this trade led to the strictures by which England tried and generally failed to bring New England to heel, enraging Americans in the process.

So, well before the first shots were fired at Lexington Green, New Englanders had a mutually beneficial relationship with Saint Domingue that was irritating to England. And France was highly protective of Saint Domingue, which the English had tried on several occasions to seize. All of this provided essential background to the key fact — the French alliance — that allowed the United States to lurch into existence.

Why did the French pour money into our cause? A large portion of the answer lies in Haiti, unremembered by Americans. France did not want to lose its jewel, and so it sprang into action when the American colonists began to agitate for their freedom. The king’s advisers worried that the British would use the conflict to shore up their Caribbean possessions, and seize Saint Domingue once and for all. To support the Americans would not only weaken the British and help avert that disaster, it would support a people with a known interest in trading with the French colonists. The loans were small and secretive at first, often funneled through clandestine agents. But eventually, French support grew open and robust. As recounted by Stacy Schiff in “A Great Improvisation,” France ultimately provided 1.3 billion livres, or the equivalent of $9 billion today.

Without this help, the Revolution probably would have fizzled. Certainly it would not have lasted as long. When the Declaration of Independence announced the United States, the Americans had only about 30,000 fighting men and very little money. Benjamin Franklin wrote, “the world wondered that we so seldom fired a cannon. We could not afford it.” France’s aid made all the difference. The battle that ended the war — Yorktown — was essentially a French production.

But not entirely French. To do their part, the people of Saint Domingue responded enthusiastically to the call to defend the infant United States. Haitians of all complexions fought alongside the continentals at the Battle of Savannah in 1779 (one of them was a 12-year-old drummer named Henri Christophe, who went on to pronounce himself king of Haiti in the 19th century, after getting a taste of independence in America).

Just as importantly, Saint Domingue served as a vital point of transfer for the men, arms, and gunpowder flowing from France to the patriot cause. As those essential donations poured in to the United States, they came through what is now Haiti. Americans were buying powder there as early as 1775. The powder that won the battle of Saratoga came from there. The military engineers who designed the plans for victory at Yorktown and the cannons needed to win it and the French fleet who made sure it happened all came to us via our island neighbor. Yorktown essentially won it all for us.

Perhaps the most important gift of all from Haiti to the United States came in a form that remains difficult to quantify, but was essential all the same. The money that kept the United States afloat during the long war for independence came from those enormous loans, negotiated by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams during their long stay in Paris. Does it not seem plausible that France had money to lend to one part of America because of the huge profits that another part of America — Saint Domingue — made possible? It is hard enough today to know how money goes from one pot into a government expenditure; the difficulty increases exponentially when looking at the distant finances of a country that no longer exists. But the vast sums pouring into France from Saint Domingue at exactly the same time made foreign aid to the New World a distinctly more attractive option than it would have been otherwise. The 1770s and 1780s were the richest decades Saint Domingue had ever seen. It goes without saying that the entire enterprise rested on the backs of the men and women whose labor powered it.

We are naturally drawn to the most elevated part of the story of our national birth, and there is plenty of inspiration in the orations of Sam Adams, the immortal words of the Declaration, and the valor of American soldiers at Lexington and Bunker Hill and Valley Forge. But we do a disservice to the people of Haiti, and ultimately to ourselves, if we do not remember that a large contribution toward American freedom was made by the hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans who, in their way, toiled and died for the cause.

Ultimately, America’s cause merged into Haiti’s own, for the huge loans given to America weakened the French economy sufficiently that another revolution broke out in Paris and the world turned upside down all over again. Out of that chaos emerged a third revolution, and a new Haitian nation, which declared independence in 1804, the second American country to do so. Its path since then has been rockier than our own, to put it mildly, but it overcame more difficult challenges than we did, including the opposition of nearly every nation on earth, the United States among them.

There were voices, then as now, that saw some justice in bringing the two independent nations into closer orbit. Timothy Pickering of Salem, secretary of state from 1795 to 1800, considered the revolution’s leader, Toussaint Louverture, “a prudent and judicious man possessing the general confidence of the people of all colors.” Under John Adams, there was a flourishing trade, and even some US naval support for Toussaint’s maneuvers. In return, Toussaint’s supporters began to call Americans “the good whites.”

On rare occasions, Americans even saw some similarity between the revolutions that each country experienced. In 1791, as the Haitian Revolution was just getting underway, a young Pennsylvania politician rose to defend the slaves fighting for their freedom, arguing, “if the insurrection of the Negroes were treated as a rebellion what name could be given to that of the Americans which won their independence?” In 1804, a Boston newspaper, the Columbian Centinel, wrote, “their case is not dissimilar to that of the people of the United States in 1778-1800.” But in 1806, the Jefferson administration succeeded in a ban on all trade with the newly independent nation of Haiti, extinguishing its hopes for prosperity, at the beginning of its new history.

It is easy to see why we have generally passed over this history. It is obscure, buried in old newspapers and articles, many written in French. It describes a lost colony that seems to have slid off the face of the earth. But Haiti survived Saint Domingue, and now it has survived what may be the greatest crisis in its history.

But the story does not end there. In fact, it doesn’t end anywhere, because Haitians and Americans will always bump into each other in the small hemispheric space that we occupy together. Many more arguments could be cited to convey how entangled are the roots of our liberty trees. How many Americans live in the great heartland that stretches from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains? They owe a debt not only to Thomas Jefferson, Louisiana’s purchaser, but to Toussaint Louverture and the Haitians who fought so tenaciously for their freedom that Napoleon was forced to cash out of America. (He exclaimed, on hearing of the death of his best general, “damn sugar, damn coffee, damn colonies!”) How many Americans have been moved by the prints of John James Audubon, or the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, or the many other descendants of Haitian families, white and black, who came here in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution? How many of us have admired the iron balustrades of New Orleans and Charleston, wondering where the artisans came from who designed them?

Thousands of Americans have rushed to Haiti’s hospitals and shelters and with their expertise and aid. We have given deeply — $700 million and counting. But as the spring rains come, perhaps we can pause to consider this shared history, and do more by a sister republic that has dogged our steps and weighed on our consciences since the dawn of the American experiment. It has often been said that freedom is not free. Should we not show how highly we value it, by repaying a small fragment of the debt we owe to the descendants of a people whose blood, sweat, and tears helped us to become the United States of America?

Ted Widmer directs the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. He is a senior research fellow with the New America Foundation. The library has formed a fund, ”Saving Haiti’s Libraries,” to protect the endangered cultural treasures of Haiti. See jcbl.org for details.

© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.

Celebrate World Water Day: Watch “The Story of Bottled Water”

 

Annie Leonard, creator of the hit internet film “The Story of Stuff” has done it again — she’s put together another great film about the “Story of Bottled Water,” which couldn’t be more useful right now. Today is World Water Day — time to stop and think about the billions without safe drinking water and adequate sanitation — and the hypocrisy of rich nations’ addiction to bottled water, when we have clean water for virtually nothing.

Instead of putting our money in the pockets to multinational water bottlers, let’s put our resources toward helping to provide the infrastructure and funding necessary to provide clean, affordable water for everyone.

Watch Leonard’s video and you can see why this is a necessity now:

 

Tara Lohan is a senior editor at AlterNet and heads up the Environment, Food and Water coverage. She is the editor of Water Consciousness: How We All Have to Change to Protect Our Most Critical Resource from AlterNet Books.

 

Book Review: We Will Return in the Whirlwind

Book Review: We Will Return

In the Whirlwind

Black Radical Organizations 1960 – 1975
By Muhammad Ahmad (Maxwell Stanford Jr.).
(Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 2007. Pp.378, Notes, Appendix, $18.00)

This book is a participant – observer investigation into four of the main radical black organizations in America between 1960 – 1975: the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW); exploring their strengths, weaknesses and contradictions. Here is a close to complete analysis of the African American contribution to world revolution through the study of the aforementioned organizations, complete with discussion of their necessary predecessors and conclusions. Considering the time line of 1960 to 1975, this book presents the history of the African-American radical tradition in terms of the overlapping and interrelatedness of the said organizations with raising the consciousness of African Americans as well as all of humanity.

This book is a must read for those members of my age group (the hip hop generation) and below who would otherwise not have a chance to receive this wisdom at the feet of our elders who participate(d) and engage(d) in revolutionary struggle.

Particularly powerful is the qualitative method of inquiry, the blending of the dialectical material analysis with personal reflection, since Ahmed was a participant and not just a mere observer. This is the first time I have read an African theoretician apply dialectical method to African reality in such a clear manner. Of course the few limitations occur only because Ahmed's competency is limited to his experience; his attempt to write a historiography of the Black Panthers is problematic however, especially out here in Oakland.

There is a lack of continuity from RAM to BPP to the contemporary contribution to revolutionary consciousness. I say this because of the claim that Kwame Ture made on the origins of the BPP; both he and Ahmed tie them to Lowndes County but in different ways; also because Ahmed could have done more research and documentation on local origins of the BPP and thus reached clearer conclusions.

When looking at Ahmed's ideological foundations, mentors to his personal development, I can be thankful that he wrote this book and honored Mr. Boggs' requirement of informing the future to talk about generations of the revolutionary and radical tradition that they are part of and must advance from. Reading this book, I can see why many of my comrades do the work that they do, I can also see the impact RAM had on national efforts toward liberation.

Crucial is the manner in which Africans apply dialectical thinking to daily life. I maintain that dialectical historical materialism is older than Marx or Hegel. It is nothing more than a modern way to talk about Maat, the foundation of African thought. As we recall, dialectics is the art of argumentation, one of the seven liberal arts of the traditional mystery system that G. M. James talks about in Stolen Legacy. Sometimes the term logic is used interchangeably with and substituted for dialectics. Logic is nothing more than the rules of thinking, the ability to rationalize, to speak. The materialist aspect was a European contribution to this law of opposites in order to control and manipulate nature.

A couple of concerns I have with the book include the question of the invisibility of the NOI in his analysis. There is no doubt the heavy influence the NOI had organizationally on the black liberation movement. Also there was a lack of West coast primary sources, some of the narrative concerning California in particular, I thought was at best incomplete. The West coast was presented as lacking strong ideology and organizational skills, except when somehow tied to the national concerted effort which Ahmed admits was a constant problem due to serious reactionary forces, internal and external.

James Boggs was able to see a change in the American interpretation of Marxism (another contribution of African philosophy), advancing C.L.R. James analysis which led to their ideological split. Concerning the Boggs/ James connection, Ahmad refers to the Boggs' as mentors to RAM. In discussing the Boggs', Ahmed mentions how they split from James over ideology, specifically over the need to for American socialist theory to take into account the phenomena of cybernation in American factories at the time. For the Boggs' the need to develop theory from the practice of Detroit labor was imperative while according to Ahmed, C.L.R. James seems to gloss over this point in his analysis. I didn't want to say too much specifically about the organizations due to the way Ahmed weaves his story together, showing the contradictions he saw in each organization and how they're overall efforts contributed to the national cause of black liberation.

I wasn't clear on Dr. Muhammad's secondary discussion of the establishment of Black studies in national colleges and universities. As an alumni of the Pan Afrikan Student's Union, the ideological descendant of the original Black Student Union at the San Francisco State University, I was extremely critical on what Ahmed had to say on these matters, to cross reference it with my own experiences. Perhaps I was expecting too much from him. Perhaps, indeed, We Will Return in the Whirlwind is a brief introduction into a world of unrecorded and undocumented revolutionary ideas and actions.

In conclusion this is a must read for student organizations and grassroots community organizers. All too often we reinvent the wheel. This book is invaluable in terms of visualizing, conceiving and emulating an African standard.

He seemed to do a thorough job with SNCC and Ram. My critique mainly stems from the lack of discussion of the NOI in this time span; how he spoke about Malcolm X without mentioning the ideological development he acquired from his activity in the NOI; and with the organization of the BPP. Admittedly, I don't see the connection between DRUM and the BPP (unless Ahmed himself is the link via RAM).

Concerning the whole question of Marxism and Africa, at Mamadou Lumumba's (Ken Freeman) memorial Baba Lumumba (Ken's brother) mentioned how his brother struggled to reconcile Marxist Leninist thinking with African culture. I see this same tendency in Ahmed's writing. For me, dialectical historical materialism equates with Maat. Therefore, many of our black Marxists overemphasize Hegelian thinking in our struggle for total liberation. I think that understanding is a direct result of how the Hegelian paradigm in many ways perverted our movement; because the white academics make it look so advanced-- at least it did to Negroes in the early 20th century. Garvey was the main one to warn about getting too close to the Communists, that we should return to our African philosophy.

Consequently, this is where the question of the 'West coast contribution' enters the story . Yes, San Francisco 1968 was the epicenter of black studies, but what did it produce? For one thing it produced a new school of thought beyond the Marxist-Leninist paradigm. Even Nkrumah refined those ideas for the Afrikan situation. I'm merely pointing out that when an Afrikan refines European ideas (which came from self anyway), that Afrikan is making a contribution to Afrikan philosophy. Then the question becomes , who were some one of the first Afrikans to popularize and refine Marxist – Leninism for Afrikans? You gotta mention C.L.R. James down to Huey Newton.

--Ramal Lamar

Ramal Lamar is a graduate student in Logic and an associate of the Plato Negro Academy of Da Corner. He teachers Math at Berkeley Continuation High School.
http://www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com/

Ai (1947 - 2010)

BIOGRAPHY

Ai is a poet noted for her uncompromising poetic vision and bleak dramatic monologues which give voice to marginalized, often poor and abused speakers. Though born Florence Anthony, she legally changed her name to Ai which means “love” in Japanese. She has said that her given name reflects a “scandalous affair my mother had with a Japanese man she met at a streetcar stop” and has no wish to be identified “for all eternity” with a man she never knew. Ai’s awareness of her own mixed race heritage—she self-identifies as Japanese, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Black, Irish, Southern Cheyenne, and Comanche—as well as her strong feminist bent shape her poetry, which is often brutal and direct in its subject matter. In the volumes of verse she published since her first collection, Cruelty (1973), Ai provoked both controversy and praise for her stark monologues and gruesome first-person accounts of non-normative behavior. Dubbed “All woman—all human” by confessional poet Anne Sexton, Ai has also been praised by the Times Literary Supplement for capturing “the cruelty of intimate relationships and the delights of perverse spontaneity—e.g. the joy a mother gets from beating her child.” Alicia Ostriker countered Sexton’s summation of Ai, writing: “‘All woman—all human’; she is hardly that. She is more like a bad dream of Woody Allen’s, or the inside story of some Swinburnean Dolorosa, or the vagina-dentata itself starting to talk. Woman, in Ai’s embodiment, wants sex. She knows about death and can kill animals and people. She is hard as dirt. Her realities—very small ones—are so intolerable that we fashion female myths to express our fear of her. She, however, lives the hard life below our myths.”

Ai explained her use of the dramatic monologue as an early realization that “first person voice was always the stronger voice to use when writing.” Her poems depict individuals that Duane Ackerson characterized in Contemporary Women Poets as “people seeking transformation, a rough sort of salvation, through violent acts.” The speakers in her poems are struggling individuals—usually women, but occasionally men—isolated by poverty, by small-town life, or life on a remote farm. Killing Floor (1978), the volume that followed Cruelty, includes a poem called “The Kid” which is spoken in the voice of a boy who has just murdered his family. Sin (1986) contains more complex dramatic monologues as Ai assumes actual personae, from Joe McCarthy to the Kennedy brothers. Ai’s characters tend to speak in a flat demotic, stripped of nuance or emotion. Poet and critic Rachael Hadas has noted that “although virtually all the poems present themselves as spoken by a particular character, Ai makes little attempt to capture individual styles of diction [or] personal vocabularies.” For Hadas, however, this makes the poems all the more striking, as her “stripped-down diction conveys an underlying, almost biblical indignation—not, at times, without compassion—at human misuses of power and the corrupting energies of various human appetites.”

Fate (1991) and Greed (1993), like Sin before them, contain monologues that dramatize public figures. Readers confront the inner worlds of former F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover, missing-and-presumed-dead Union leader Jimmy Hoffa, musician Elvis Presley, and actor James Dean as voices from beyond-the-grave who yet remain out of sync with social or ethical “norms.” Noting that Ai “reinvents” each of her subjects within her verse, Ackerson added that, through each monologue, what these individuals say, “returning after death, expresses more about the American psyche than about the real figures.” Vice: New and Selected Poems (1999) contained work from Ai’s previous five books as well as 18 new poems. It was awarded the National Book Award for Poetry. Ai’s next book, Dread (2003), was likewise praised for its searing and honest treatment of, according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “violent or baroquely sexual life stories.” In the New York Times Book Review, Viijay Seshadri wrote that “Dread has the characteristic moral strength that makes Ai a necessary poet.” Aiming her poetic barbs directly at prejudices and societal ills of all types, Ai has been outspoken on the subject of race, saying “People whose concept of themselves is largely dependent on their racial identity and superiority feel threatened by a multiracial person. The insistence that one must align oneself with this or that race is basically racist. And the notion that without a racial identity a person can’t have any identity perpetuates racism…I wish I could say that race isn’t important. But it is. More than ever, it is a medium of exchange, the coin of the realm with which one buys one’s share of jobs and social position. This is a fact which I have faced and must ultimately transcend. If this transcendence were less complex, less individual, it would lose its holiness.”

In addition to the National Book Award, Ai’s work was awarded an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, for Sin, and the Lamont Poetry Award of the Academy of American Poets, for Killing Floor. She received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Bunting Fellowship Program at Radcliffe College and the National Endowment for the Arts. She taught at Oklahoma State University. She died in 2010.

 

[Updated 2010]

CAREER

Poet. Visiting poet at Wayne State University, 1977- 78, and George Mason University, 1986-87; writer-in-residence, Arizona State University, 1988-89; visiting associate professor, University of Colorado at Boulder, 1996-97. Has also worked as an antiques dealer in New York City and elsewhere, and as a jewelry designer.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

POETRY

• Cruelty, Houghton (Boston), 1973.
• Killing Floor (Lamont poetry selection), Houghton, 1979.
• Sin, Houghton, 1986.
• Fate, Houghton, 1991. 
• Greed, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 1993.
• Vice: New and Selected Poems, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 1999.
• Dread, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2003.

OTHER

• Black Blood (novel), W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 1997.

Contributor of articles and poems to magazines, including American Poetry Review, Antaeus, Caprice, Paris Review, Poetry, Ms., and Zone. A collection of Ai's manuscripts is housed at the New York Public Library.

FURTHER READINGS

BOOKS

• Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit), Volume 4, 1975.
• Contemporary Women Poets, St. James Press (Detroit), 1997.

PERIODICALS

• American Poetry Review, November, 1994, p. 23.
• Kenyon Review, winter, 1995, p. 150.
• Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 1973.
• New York Times Book Review, February 17, 1974.
• Publishers Weekly, September 27, 1993, p. 46.
• Times Literary Supplement, March 29, 1974.
• Ms., June, 1974; June, 1978.

POEMS

Conversation

Cuba, 1962

Disregard

Killing Floor

Nothing But Color

Passing Through

Salomé

The Kid

Twenty-year Marriage

Woman to Man

 

Conversation

BY AI

for Robert Lowell

We smile at each other

and I lean back against the wicker couch.   

How does it feel to be dead? I say.

You touch my knees with your blue fingers.   

And when you open your mouth,

a ball of yellow light falls to the floor   

and burns a hole through it.

Don’t tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.   

Did you ever, you start,

wear a certain kind of silk dress

and just by accident,

so inconsequential you barely notice it,   

your fingers graze that dress

and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,   

you see it too

and you realize how that image

is simply the extension of another image,   

that your own life

is a chain of words

that one day will snap.

Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,   

and beginning to rise heavenward

in their confirmation dresses,

like white helium balloons,

the wreaths of flowers on their heads spinning,

and above all that,

that’s where I’m floating,   

and that’s what it’s like

only ten times clearer,

ten times more horrible.   

Could anyone alive survive it?

 

By okeowo on writing

This is a trailer discussion (more to come)in English (French subtitles) on French Hip hop and African immigration issues (similarities, differences, issues) with participants Karima Zerrou from Tala Entertainment Services and Academia Dr. Maboula Soumahoro, (Columbia) former African French residents leaving in the Bronx for more than 10 years. Discussion led By Dr. Naison from the The Bronx African American History Project.

Ceci est seulement un extrait d'une discussion sous titrée en françaissur le hip hop français et sur les différences et les similarités entres les USA et la France dans le hip hop et dans les banlieux (ghetto) avec 2 jeunes filles qui ont été très active dans le rap français Karima Zerrou de Tala Entertainment et l'académique Dr. Maboula Soumahoroe qui vivent depuis plus de 10 ans aux USA. La discussion est menée par Dr Maison du projet d'histoire des africains américains du Bronx

2010 SouthWest Writers Writing Contest

2010 Contest Rules

The SouthWest Writers’ 28th Annual Writing Contest encourages and rewards excellence. Cash prizes are awarded to the top three entries in each of 14 categories. In addition, first-place winners in each category compete for the $1,000 Storyteller Award.

The contest is open to all original, unpublished work by English-language writers.

Deadline: Postmarked no later than May 1, 2010
Late entries: Postmarked no later than May 15, 2010 (late fee applies)

Contest Categories & Submission Requirements

1. Mainstream/Literary Novel: The first 20 double-spaced pages of the manuscript plus a single-spaced synopsis, two pages maximum

2. Mystery/Suspense/Thriller/Adventure Novel: The first 20 double-spaced pages of the manuscript plus a single-spaced synopsis, two pages maximum

3. Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Novel: The first 20 double-spaced pages of the manuscript plus a single-spaced synopsis, two pages maximum

4. Historical Novel: The first 20 double-spaced pages of the manuscript plus a single-spaced synopsis, two pages maximum

5. Middle Grade or Young Adult Novel: The first 20 double-spaced pages of the manuscript plus a single-spaced synopsis, two pages maximum.

6. Memoir Book: Submit the first 20 pages. Manuscripts must be double-spaced.

7. Memoir Article: No more than 1,500 words. Manuscripts must be double-spaced.

8. Mainstream/Literary Short Story: No more than 5,000 words. Manuscripts must be double-spaced.

9. Nonfiction/Essay Article: No more than 1,500 words. Manuscripts must be double-spaced.

10. Personal Essay/Column: No more than 750 words. Manuscripts must be double-spaced.

11. Nonfiction Book: Submit the first 10 pages plus a book proposal of no more than 10 double-spaced pages plus a one-page, single-spaced query letter. Follow these category-specific instructions.

12. Children's Fiction or Nonfiction Picture Book: Submit the entire manuscript, maximum 10 pages. Follow these category-specific instructions.

13. Screenplay: Submit the first 20 pages in industry-standard format plus a one-page synopsis. Follow these category-specific instructions.

14. Poetry: Submit one poem per entry of no more than three pages, any format. Follow these category-specific instructions.

Critique Service

You may request a critique by another professional agent or editor (judges critique only first-place winners) by circling the appropriate fee on the Entry Form, submitting three copies of your manuscript instead of two, and enclosing the correct fee with your submission.

Rules/Deadlines/Judging

1. Each entry must be in a separate envelope accompanied by a completed Entry Form and Entry Fee. No certified mail. Enclose a self-addressed, stamped postcard if you want notification of receipt.

2. Write the Category Number you are entering on the outside of the envelope below your return address. Be sure to circle the Category Number on the entry form.

3. Your entry must be original, written in English, and unpublished or un-optioned at time of submittal.

4. If your manuscript previously won 1st prize in a particular category, it is ineligible for that category.

5. Using standard manuscript formatting, your manuscript must be printed on one side of 8-1/2 x 11 or A4 white paper in 12-point Courier or Times New Roman, double-spaced. Synopses and query letters must be single-spaced. Poems have no spacing requirements. Screenplays should follow industry-specific standards.

6. Your name may not appear anywhere on the manuscript, synopsis, book proposal or query.

7. Submit two (2) copies of the manuscript, synopsis, book proposal or query as specified for the category you are entering. Manuscripts will not be returned. Manuscripts will be shredded or otherwise destroyed by October 31, 2010.

If your Entry Fee includes the cost of a Critique: Submit three (3) copies of your manuscript plus a large, self-addressed envelope with enough postage stamps affixed for return mail (i.e. a large SASE). NO METERED POSTAGE. The critiqued manuscript will be returned in your SASE in August, 2010.

8. All First (1st) Place winning manuscripts in each category are sent to the Storyteller judge in consideration for the $1,000 Storyteller Award.

9. Winners in each category will be notified in August, 2010. Prizes are as follows: 1st Place: $150; 2nd Place: $100; 3rd Place: $50.

10. Contest judging takes place in two phases. A qualified panel of writers and editors selects the top 15 entries in each category. Those top 15 entries are then judged by an agent, editor or publisher appropriate to each category. The top three winners in each category receive a critique from the commissioned judge. Contacting any judge during the contest period about an entry is an automatic disqualification.

11. The professional editors, agents and/or publishers commissioned as judges are not employees of SouthWest Writers (SWW) and their opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SouthWest Writers.

12. As part of the annual SWW Novel Conference, a banquet will be held September 10, 2010 to announce and honor the top three (3) winners in each category. Winners will also be posted on the SWW website.

13. SouthWest Writers reserves the right to disqualify any entry if contest rules are not followed, in which case the entry fee will not be refunded. Common mistakes include: (1) Writer’s name is on manuscript. (2) Incorrect fee is enclosed. (3) Incorrect number of manuscript copies is submitted (See Rule 7).

SouthWest Writers Contest 2010 Rules and Entry Form

Click here for a copy of the 2010 Contest Rules and Contest Entry Form in .pdf format

Annual Writing Competition

For 79 years, the Annual Writer’s Digest Competition has rewarded writers just like you for their finest work. We continue the tradition by giving away more than $30,000 in cash and prizes!

Win a trip to New York City !

GRAND PRIZE: $3,000 cash and a trip to New York City to meet with editors or agents. Writer's Digest will fly you and a guest to The Big Apple, where you'll spend three days and two nights in the publishing capital of the world. While you're there, a Writer's Digest editor will escort you to meet and share your work with four editors or agents!

Entry Deadline:  May 14, 2010.
Add $5 per manuscript or poem to Entry Fee(s) on all entries submitted after May 14.

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Compete and Win in 10 Categories!

 

• Inspirational Writing (Spiritual/Religious)
• Memoirs/Personal Essay
• Magazine Feature Article
• Genre Short Story (Mystery, Romance, etc.)
• Mainstream/Literary Short Story
• Rhyming Poetry
• Non-rhyming Poetry
• Stage Play
• Television/Movie Script
• Children's/Young Adult Fiction

Entry Fee: Poems are $15 for the first entry; $10 for each additional poem submitted in the same online session. All other entries are $20 for the first manuscript; $15 for each additional manuscript submitted in the same online session.

Add $5 per manuscript to all entries submitted after May 14, 2010. Entries submitted after June 01, 2010, will not be accepted.

PRIZES | RULES | JUDGING & NOTIFICATION | QUESTIONS | PRIVACY PROMISE | FAQs | ENTRY FORM

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PRIZES

Grand Prize: $3,000 cash and a trip to New York City to meet with editors and agents.

You'll spend three days and two nights in NYC and a Writer's Digest editor will escort you to meet with four editors or agents of your choice! (Includes airfare within the U.S., meals, transportation and related expenses.)

First Place: The First Place Winner in each category receives $1,000 cash and $100 worth of Writer's Digest Books.

Second Place: The Second Place Winner in each category receives $500 cash, plus $100 worth of Writer's Digest Books.

Third Place: The Third Place Winner in each category receives $250 cash, plus $100 worth of Writer's Digest Books.

Fourth Place: The Fourth Place Winner in each category receives $100 cash.

Fifth Place: The Fifth-Place Winner in each category receives $50 cash.

Sixth through Tenth Place: The Sixth- through Tenth-Place winners in each category receive $25 cash.

First through Tenth Place Winners also receive a copy of the 2011 Writer’s Market Deluxe Edition and a one-year subscription (new or renewal) to Writer’s Digest Magazine.

11th through 100th Place: All other winners receive distinctive certificates honoring their accomplishment.

We will accept all entries submitted online. 

Entry Deadline: May 14, 2010

Late Entry Deadline: June 01, 2010 (Add $5 per manuscript or poem to Entry Fee(s))

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79th Annual Writer's Digest WRITING COMPETITION COLLECTION

The Grand Prize manuscript, the First Place manuscript in each category, and the names of the top 100 winners in each category will be printed in a special competition collection. Purchase a copy online or use the coupon on the printable entry form. (Publication date: November 2010. You are not required to purchase the collection to enter the competition.)

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RULES

The Categories:

You may enter as many manuscripts as you like in each of the following categories:

• Memoirs/Personal Essay, Magazine Feature Article and Children's/Young Adult Fiction: 2,000 words maximum.
• Mainstream/Literary Short Story and Genre Short Story: 4,000 words maximum.
• Inspirational Writing: 2,500 words maximum.
• Rhyming Poem and Non-rhyming Poem: 32 lines maximum.
• Stage Play Script or Television/Movie Script: Send the first 15 pages in standard script format, plus a one-page synopsis. Complete scripts are not eligible. Scripts—original or written for any series in production on or after January 1, 2010—are eligible; adaptations will not be accepted.

Preparing Your Entry:

1. Enter online or you submit your entry via regular mail. Offline entries must be accompanied by an Entry Form, and the required entry fee (credit card information, check or money order made payable to Writer's Digest). If you are entering more than one manuscript, you may mail all entries in the same envelope and write one check for the total entry fee; however, each manuscript must have its category indicated in the upper left-hand corner.  You may enter online even if you are paying with a check.
2. Your entry must be original, in English, unpublished* and unproduced, not accepted by any other publisher or producer at the time of submission.Writer's Digest retains one-time publication rights to the Grand Prize and First Place winning entries in each category to be published in a Writer's Digest publication.

   * Entries in the Magazine Feature Article category may be previously published.

3. If you are submitting your entry via regular mail, the entry must be typed on one side of 8-1/2 x 11 or A4 white paper. Scripts and poems may be either double-or single-spaced; all other manuscripts must be double-spaced. Your name, address, phone number and competition category must appear in the upper left-hand corner of the first page—otherwise your entry is disqualified.
4. BE SURE OF YOUR WORD COUNT! Entries exceeding the word or page limits will be disqualified. Type the exact word count(counting every single word, except the title and contact information) at the top of the manuscript.
5. Mailed entries that are more than one page in length must be stapled.

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JUDGING & NOTIFICATION

1. Every entry will be read by the judges. Judges' decisions are final. Judges reserve the right to re-categorize entries.
2. Entries must be postmarked by June 1, 2010. We cannot return submitted manuscripts so keep a copy for your records. To receive notification of the receipt of your manuscript, send a self-addressed stamped postcard along with your entry. Please note that it may take up to 30 days after the deadline for all entries to be opened and sent to the judges.
3. The Grand Prize Winner and a guest must agree to travel (flying from the same city) during March, April or May 2011. The editors or agents who meet with the Grand Prize Winner are under no obligation to read, buy or represent the Grand Prize Winner's work.
4. The following are not permitted to enter the contest: employees of F+W Media, Inc., and their immediate family members; Writer's Digest contributing editors and correspondents as listed on our masthead; Writer's Online Workshops instructors; and Grand Prize Winners from the previous three years.
5. Top Award Winners will be notified by mail before October 22, 2010. The top 10 winners in each category will be listed in the November/December 2010 issue of Writer's Digest. All 1,001 winners will be listed in the 79th Annual Writer's Digest Competition Collection and at www.writersdigest.com after the December issue is published. Prizes/awards certificates will be mailed by November 15, 2010.

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QUESTIONS?

Please review the competitions FAQs. For additional questions, contact Writer's Digest Competitions at (715) 445-4612 x13430 or email writing-competition@fwpubs.com.

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PRIVACY PROMISE

Occasionally we make portions of our customer list available to other companies so they may contact you about products and services that may be of interest to you. If you prefer we withhold your name, simply send a note with your name, address, and the competition name to: List Manager, F+W Media, Inc., 4700 E. Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, OH 45236.

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FAQs

Q: Is it okay to have illustration pictures on the cover?
A: Please send the text only

Q: If there is a word count, how many words per page am I allowed?
No preference

Q: How large of print is allowed?
No preference

Q: Are pen names allowed?
Pen names are fine. Write your pen name on all forms etc. so there is no mistakes on credits. Please be advised that we only need your real name if you are chosen as a winner (in order to issue prizes).

Q: What if I am not a U.S. resident?
WD writing competitions are open to non-U.S. residents as well. Please refer to the entry form and guidelines. All entry fees are due in U.S. Dollars.

Q: Is there an age limit for entrants?
No

Q: What if I wanted to submit only part of my novel into the competition ( to stay with in the maximum number of words)?
If you submit a portion of a novel please understand that it will be judged as a complete story, not part of another work, so it needs to a complete story in and of itself.

Q: Can the same title be entered in multiple categories of the WD Annual?
Yes, it can

Q: When will winners be notified?
Top Award Winners will be notified by mail before October 22, 2010. The top 10 winners in each category will be listed in the December 2010 issue of Writer's Digest. All 1,001 winners will be listed in the 79th Annual Writer's Digest Competition Collectionand at www.writersdigest.com after the December issue is published. Prizes/awards certificates will be mailed by November 15, 2010.

Q: What are the word count requirements for each category?
Memoirs/Personal Essay, Magazine Feature Article and Children's/Young Adult Fiction: 2,000 words maximum.
Mainstream/Literary Short Story and Genre Short Story: 4,000 words maximum.
Inspirational Writing: 2,500 words maximum.
Rhyming Poem and Non-rhyming Poem: 32 lines maximum.
Stage Play Script or Television/Movie Script: Send the first 15 pages in standard script format, plus a one-page synopsis. Complete scripts are not eligible. Scripts—original or written for any series in production on or after January 1, 2010—are eligible; adaptations will not be accepted.

Q: What are possible category definitions? Genre Fiction: Stories that fit into a specific classification such as mystery, romance, science fiction, horror or fantasy.

Mainstream/Literary Fiction: Serious, non-formulaic fiction that does not fit into a genre.

Personal Essay: This is an article that is distinguished by and draws its power from its personal viewpoint. In such pieces, the author examines an issue, event, experience, place or idea and offers an opinion or some other reaction to it. The goal of an essay may be to explain, justify or persuade. The last is most often the goal of newspaper op-ed essays. Examples of other types of essays may be found in such magazine columns as Redbook's "A Young Mother's Story" or Writer's Digest's "Chronicle".

Feature Article: This is an article that is "reported"—the writer has researched a topic and explains the topic to readers. Often there is a "service" angle—a clear benefit that readers can take away from the article. There are many types of feature articles: how-to articles, personality profiles, Q&A's, informational pieces, travel articles. They may include events drawn from the author's personal experience, but the focus of the article is on providing readers with information. Features make up the bulk of most magazines' editorial offerings.

Inspirational: An article, essay or story with an explicitly religious, spiritual or otherwise inspirational focus. An article that's suitable for Guideposts or St. Anthony Messenger, for example, would be inspirational. An essay on how the power of Christ, (or Buddha, or Allah or Vashti) touched your life would be inspirational. A story about the power of religion, the power of prayer, or the power of the universe would be inspirational.

Rhyming Poetry: When the last word of some or all lines rhyme with each other. Ask yourself: What is the rhyme scheme of my poem? If you don't understand what that question means, your poem is probably non-rhyming. Most formal poetry is considered rhyming poetry (such as sonnets or ballads).

Non-rhyming poetry: When there is no recognizable or purposeful rhyme scheme or structure. Free verse falls under this category.

*Judges reserve the right to re-categorize entries.

Q: How do I order books published by F+W Media?
www.fwbookstore.com/category/writers-digest

Q: How do I subscribe to Writer's Digest?
visit www.writersdigest.com and click on the link

Q: Are there other writing competitions?
Yes! Visit www.writersdigest.com/competitions for other competitions for writers

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ENTRY FORM

To submit your entry online, visit our secure online entry form.

To enter via regular mail, use the printable form, and send it with your manuscript and entry fee to:

79th Annual Writer's Digest Writing Competition
700 E. State Street
Iola, WI 54990