VIDEO: Interview with Nikky Finney > Oxford American

Natalie Elliott

Natalie Elliott is a contributing writer to THE OA.

 

Interview with: Nikky Finney

Interview by: Natalie Elliott

In her latest book of poems, Head Off & Split, Nikky Finney navigates political grievances, family traditions, and memories of romance. Such varied themes are drawn together by her singular, glaringly honest voice and knack for examination—the public is made private, and, where necessary, vice versa. In "Left" she immortalizes the image of an abandoned Katrina victim holding a misspelled sign. "Cattails" is a love poem, except the speaker only recalls the wooer—not herself, the wooed. Poems like the title work wrestle with the human (and especially Southern) paradoxical impulse to both flee from and linger in one's hometown. The OA recently spoke to Finney about her preference for nontraditional mentoring, drawing the line in her activism, and rightfully becoming a long-winded poet. Fresh from a reading tour, she spoke with us from her home in Kentucky.

THE OA: Your latest book is dedicated to Lucille Clifton. Could you describe your relationship with her?

NF: When I was twenty-three years old, I found myself in Strand bookstore in New York City, and I found her amazing collection of poems and photographs. I had loved photography for a long time. I was writing about my family in my first book. I sat down, read her book three times, and it became a moment that I will never forget because it gave me permission to love photography, to talk about the stories of my family, and to also put those into forms of poetry.

We met around 2005. She was in the audience and I relayed that experience to her. As a result, we spoke afterwards. I went to interview her that next year for an anthology called The Ringing Ear.

She's at the center of everything I do. I always think about her. I always bring her name up and her work up. She's spinal to whatever I'm doing going forward in this life. I found great support for all the things I wanted to do with my own work in her work.

THE OA: You got your nickname from Nikki Giovanni and you've had correspondence with her and also with Toni Cade Bambara. Could you speak to how important it is for young writers or poets to seek out mentors?

NF: When I left home, I was in search of writers to align with. Toni Cade Bambara's name was passed onto me by a teacher in college—her name and address was written on a postcard, and I went to find her. She had a writing workshop in Atlanta, which I immediately joined. She was the first person to say to me, "So you can write these pretty poems, so what's the plan? What do you want to do with your life?" And I had to go back and not just sit and submerge myself in beautiful language, but I had to really write down some sort of path where I had to get to the place I wanted to get to.

Nikki Giovanni was the same way, when I was a junior or senior and my English teacher made me give her a folder of poems. Nikki Giovanni and her mother, who was a high-school English teacher in Cincinnati, sat down with those poems and red-marked them and she wrote back, "Now there's a lot of red on these pages, but I want you to know there's something beautiful trying to happen, abundant among all this red." So I have all those really instructional moments that I sort of built upon. Those moments, those relationships were critical then. I've maintained a twenty-five-year relationship with Nikki.

As a result of those relationships in my life, I, too, answer letters, mentor young writers, and feel like I have to pass that behind me.

THE OA: You had some hesitation about the academy system when you were first asked to be a writer-in-residence at Kentucky. Have you since changed your mind? Do you now encourage students to go into graduate workshops?

NF: It depends upon the student. I believe first and foremost that you have to have a good sense of yourself; you have to have a good sense of your work. I find it's really important to encourage young writers to be in the world, to live, to not be afraid of placing a gap between their undergraduate years and their graduate years. I don't really like the model of going right from undergraduate to graduate without some time spent out in the world. I think you have to work some. Figure out that you don't want to go that way—you want to go this other way. So often humans follow where everyone else is going. I think you have to make that decision based upon what you need, what you want, sort of what Toni Cade Bambara was asking me—what's the plan? It has to be your plan.

THE OA: What is the hardest thing about writing poetry?

NF: Compression, because poetry is so much about taking stuff out. It's about looking at what you're including. Personally, I'm a long-winded poet. My poems are, you know, not like Lucille Clifton poems. I think that working on form and working on what to leave out and what must make it to the final version is one of the hardest things.

THE OA: Do you consider yourself an activist poet?

NF: Absolutely, absolutely—but I think that I consider myself an activist, and that makes it into my work. I also consider myself a lover of beautiful things and lyrical languages and empathy, as well. I definitely believe that the word "activism" and the ideals of activism are at the core of what I do.

THE OA: It seems that you broach a lot of subjects in the political sphere that outrage you. I was wondering if you have any approach to achieve that kind of aesthetic distance so it doesn't sound like a rant.

NF: Somebody else talked about rage in this book, and I thought, Rage? I don't really see the rage. I don't see the outrage. I see the passion. I see the really powerful feelings I have about certain subjects. I do feel you can't be up on a soapbox shouting polemical things—this is poetry. Poetry is about communicating. Standing up on a soapbox is not communicating; it's something else. Since I grew up in the '70s, when the black arts movement was at its height, I saw poets speaking very polemically and speaking out of a worthy rage. I remember saying, "I don't really want to speak like that. I don't really want to do that. I want to do something else." So for thirty-five, forty years, I've been listening and paying attention to the world I feel very passionately about, and how it makes its way into an art form. Because art is when you make something and you can't just spew and say you've made something. You have to craft to say you've made something.

THE OA: You do have an absolute control over the message that you're delivering and that's what makes it really powerful.

NF: You have to do that because it might become rage. You have to have perspective in your work. As I tell my students, you fall in love. I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love—you fall out of love. You start your litany of other kinds of language. But it's the middle ground, the perspective you take to talk about those things, where the artful message is born.

THE OA: Not that Katrina commands your latest book by any means, but how did you decide to approach it in a way that wasn't necessarily double-backing on what others had done?

NF: As a person who creates, I don't know if I want to worry about double-backing on what anybody has done. I saw a woman on a rooftop holding a sign P-L-E-A-S and I thought, This is very powerful, what can I do with this? How can I bring her into the future? Americans have such short memories about hard things and so I wanted to bring her forward. So she was the symbol for me. I wrote to her. I wrote around her. I wrote for her. Whenever I'm talking about that poem, "Left," I say, "Do you remember the woman standing with the homemade sign?" So many people remember her and haven't thought of her for a long time and then I read the poem and they are taken back in their memory to how much empathy they had at that moment.

The great Czech poet, Czeslaw Milosz, says that what he's trying to do is save something. What he talks about is trying to save his fifth-grade teacher's beehive hairdo—and I love that, because I'm trying to save something, too. Poets save things and pass them forward to the next generation, to the next person to know and understand that they can save something as well.


THE OA: In this collection you mention Rosa Parks, the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, and Bull Connor. How did tragedies of the Civil Rights era come into these poems?

NF: I was a child of Civil Rights workers in the South. My dad was a Civil Rights attorney who was going to the jail to get marchers out. My mom and dad worked in their own way, in the small towns, for what black people were fighting for all over the South. So as a child, I was trying to figure out how I could help. There were so many times when it was too dangerous for me to do what I wanted to do. But they would go forward and we would wait behind and we would make the placards or the signs. I've never been far away from the human-rights struggle black people have been involved with in the South. That has been one of the backdrops of my entire life.

When I was writing about Rosa Parks [in the poem "Red Velvet"], I'd just read this new book that came out a few months ago, it's called At the Dark End of the Street. It talks about Rosa Parks being an operative, not this quiet woman who sat on a bus and didn't move, she was actually a reporter for the NAACP who was sent into the South to interview women who had been violated or raped at the hands of different people. She would do these interviews and then she would call the NAACP back and say, "Yes this woman would be a great person to testify against so-and-so," or "No, this person wouldn't be." You think, I don't know this side of Rosa Parks. There's this world about this amazing woman who was this seamstress, who was this NAACP operative who put her life on the line, but we don't know that story.

THE OA: So a lot of research goes into your poems?

NF: Research is such a huge part of what I do as a poet. I don't just want to bring the information through my feelings. I want to go out and see the autobiography. That's what I did with Condoleezza Rice. I wanted to know something about her. Okay, she's a great skater. She's a classical pianist. She grew up in Birmingham/Bombingham. One of her best friends was one of the little girls who was killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. How does all this shape someone who goes on to become Secretary of State—one of the most important people in the country and in the world? These poems started coming as concertos or musical moments in my ear, who she was, who her family shaped her to be. I personally find it incredibly important to go into the public figures, the characters themselves, and try to find more about them to bring forward.

THE OA: Is the poem "Dancing with Strom" autobiographical?

NF: We finally got my youngest brother married. We were all very happy. I drove home from Kentucky to Edgefield, South Carolina, where we had the ceremony. We go to the reception and I'm on this balcony and I look down and, lo and behold! Strom Thurmond has arrived and he's dancing with my mother. I was like, This is surreal. I grew up with such viscidity about him being a South Carolinian and all the things that happened. This was just a few years before he died and there he was. Also, I had just read an article by this brilliant scholar, John Michael Vlach. Vlach was talking of the influence African-American people had on the architecture of the South and how the porch was such an important part of Southern architecture because you could see people coming toward your home, whether they were friend or foe. It was such an important symbolic place. I was reading this essay just before the wedding and then there I was up on a landing and those two things came together: the landing, the notion of the landing, and also the fact that Strom Thurmond was down below dancing with my mother.

THE OA: How did your father, with a Civil Rights activist background, permit something like that to happen?

NF: It's very simple to say my father should have been mad and thrown him out or something like that. But I was speaking almost from a point of privilege; I got to leave. I left the South when I was seventeen, eighteen years old. People who had to stay in the South, in places where there were people like Strom Thurmond, had to figure out how to live with them. I even say it in the poem—I find that black people are the most forgiving people in the world. Knowing what I know about black history, we forgive, we move on. We have to give our children things to hold on to that don't fill them with anger. So this was one of those moments. My father was kind of looking up at me in the poem, going, "I know you don't like this. I know you're angry, but this is a very joyous celebration we're having for your brother." It's complicated. Race in the South is a very complicated situation.

If we would talk about it, and if we would bring up subjects, I think we could get close to a better a way to live together, a more realistic way to live together, and not just sort of shutting down on things that have brought us forward to this moment. That poem is a photograph of a very difficult situation where people who had lived in the South and had grown up with Strom Thurmond had to decide whether to invite him into our grand celebration or turn their backs to him. And what I know of black people and what I know of my community is that we've always been bigger than hate. Hate is a thing that will eat you up and kill you. And in this moment, a body of very loving people decided they were going to move beyond that and were going to celebrate this union, which is the note the poem ends on.

THE OA: You still stood up on the balcony though.

NF: [Laughs.] Yeah, I didn't come down.

THE OA: So have you always been very autobiographical in your poetry?

NF: I think I've always been. I remember going to the Carnegie Library when I was very small and asking my mom, "Where are the books on black people who I know?" You know, the brilliant people in my community. "Where are the books that would mirror their lives?" She would say, in her way of trying not to be too harsh, "Well, sweetheart, I guess you're going to have to write those books. You're going to have to tell those stories and bring those faces to light in your own work." That again was one of those moments of permission for me and I was like, "Oh yeah, that will be my responsibility."

THE OA: But in addition to being a recorder of history, you also write these really personal, tender love poems.

NF: Yes! I have to be willing. I think part of my responsibility is that I look out and see what I see in the world—this Strom Thurmond, Rosa Parks—but my responsibility is also not to leave myself out. I feel I'm responsible for the looking in on myself as well as the looking out into the world. I find balance as an artist in that way. I often find students who are very resistant to that and I'm like, "Who are you, how did you get here? I want to know the blood and bones of you." They're resistant because someone has told them that looking inward doesn't make for good poetry. I don't think that's true. I think that it has to be handled in a certain way. You have to be willing to say this poem is not working, even if it is about you. I think that my putting myself in to my poetry is me saying to my readers and listeners, "I'm willing to stand here and be as vulnerable as perhaps I am making others and situations vulnerable in my work." I have to be willing to do that.

THE OA: Do you ever feel yourself called to discuss your sexuality in your work?

NF: I don't feel like an activist about something so personal. What I am revealing, what I'm sharing with the world is some kind of activism, but I don't feel like I have to do it in a way that supports or aligns with anybody else—I feel responsible to myself first. I have to be willing and ready to say the things that I'm willing and ready to say in that moment of the book, and that's the progression of the individual artist in bloom. I encourage my students to do the same thing. For me, it didn't happen ten years ago or fifteen years ago, it's happening now, and I'm very comfortable with that.

The same could be said about how I deal with certain subjects. If you look at my first book, my poems are very short, my poems are still exploring some of those tough subjects, but not in the intimate way I am now. As I recently told an audience in New York, when you turn fifty, you get permission to say a lot of things different from when you turn forty or thirty—that's very true. I honor that as a human being because I love the progression that I've been on as an artist, and not being a ballet dancer—as a ballet dancer your ankles and knees give out when you're twenty and when you're a writer your ankles and knees get stronger, metaphorically speaking. As a writer, you're capable of holding more and saying more with precision than when you just start out. Your knees are still trying to find their height when you're a poet or writer at twenty-five. At fifty, there are great fabulous stunning leaps you can make if you've done your work—if you've done your work. So that's some of what I'm trying, I think, now.

THE OA: When did you notice the fish theme?

NF: I went home to South Carolina, and my mom took me to the fishmonger. And he said to me what he'd said to me a hundred times but, because I was in a work mode, his question—"Head off and split?"—hit me in a different way than it would have normally hit me. I started to think about what we cut away, what we don't know about certain subjects, what we forget about certain headlines, news stories. So all those things started talking to me in a thematic way.

I started thinking about what I was writing and it occurred to me that I was thinking about the things that we don't want to see. The things that we hope will go away. I thought, Wow that's exactly what he's saying to me. He's saying, "You've chosen the fish, now let me, for a couple of dollars more, cut away the staring eyes, take the scales off, and kind of do your dirty work for you." And I thought, No, at this age, I want to do this myself. I want to know what the fish looks like whole because I think that there is more to the story when you do that, when someone doesn't give you the succulent fish all neat and ready to go.

 

 THE OA: The last poem in Head Off & Split seems to have a commanding finality to it. This isn't your last book, is it?

NF: Oh, I hope not—my grandmother is so much the reason that I'm a poet. She was a farming woman and she was very honest and I've never met a woman who could surmise situations just by walking into a room and looking around. This was a brilliant self-taught, aware-of-the-world kind of woman. After Rice, my second book, she came to me and said, "That's it. No more books, promise me." We were very close. I had to understand it wasn't personal. She was afraid for me. She thought after Rice I was getting too close to saying things in a way that might put myself and my life in danger. She was afraid for me, and she knew she was getting older. She knew she couldn't protect me from what would come, and she wasn't sure what would come, and she saw my writing as getting older, longer, less fearful, and if you look at the book, she's right, there's more on the table. I couldn't promise her. It was the first time she asked me to promise her something that I couldn't promise. This book represents that fear that she had and I hope, hope, hope that this is not my last book. It doesn't feel like my last book. It feels like I'm just at the precipice of a world of more books and more poetry and all kinds of things I've got on the table.

THE OA: Your grandmother still seems like a woman of wisdom and pluck. Do you think, even though she asked you to stop writing, she would have enjoyed this latest book?

NF: My grandmother was intensely private. I think it was because she grew up on the land. She was a rural woman. I can never remember her telling me that she loved me. She never used that kind of frilly language, but she showed me she loved me in a million different ways. I think that she got tired of me talking so much. I don't know how she would feel about my poems. My poems have gotten even longer. They've gotten more revelatory of things of the heart, things of the spirit, things of the soul. And because she was not like that, she'd probably throw something at me—soft—but I think she would be proud. I think she would be glad to know that even though I could not have promised her what she asked me to, I have gone on to have a great respect for the things she taught me, and great respect for other people, even when I disagree with them. I think those are the things she would smile about, but all this talking—she wouldn't really be into that at all. All this book stuff, book learning—go grow a garden, make something, put a tree in the ground. I think in the long run, yes. I think she would.

I find that my closeness to South Carolina and to my family never goes away. Even as I get older and even as I have my own home four hundred miles away, there's something about family and home that is my own evisceration. That's what these poems are about—emotional evisceration, and historical evisceration like what we cut away in order to have the sound bites. This last poem is very personal about my putting myself spiritually and physically on the line every time I leave because my family is always saying, "When are you coming back?" There's that moment when my momma's in the yard, and we're packed and they're in their pajamas, and my father and mother are getting older and I'm getting older and this picture doesn't get any easier any time I do it.

 

FASHION + VIDEO: Alek Wek

“How I Made It”

Season 2: Episode 1

– Alek Wek

By lizburr February 8, 2012

In her memoir, ”Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel,”  Alek recounts her journey from a young naive girl discovered on the streets of London to her rise as an internationally adored supermodel. Known for her striking beauty, bold look and unwavering confidence, Alek has graced the covers and pages of the most noted fashion magazines, walked dozens of top runways, and modeled for the most celebrated designers.  Yet she remains thankful for all the experiences she has been blessed with.

In her journey, Alek Wek has redefined the definition of beauty and encourages women from  across the globe to follow their own destiny. “You can’t really accomodate everybody, but you can love what you do,” she explains.  And though already an accomplished model, she is also a visual artist and budding entrepreneur with her own handbag line, Wek 1933, proving that you can have both brains and beauty. Follow Alek Wek on Twitter @TheRealAlekWek

In this episode, supermodel Alek Wek candidly tells us how she made it.

 Episode Credits

  • Original music by Kenneth Whalum III
  • Director: Jon Goff
  • Executive Producer: Liz Burr
  • Producer: Raven Carter
  • Associate Producer: Metanoya Z. Webb
  • Camera Operator: Leighton Pope
  • Makeup: Mia Booker
>via: http://styleblazer.com/31362/himi-episode-2-1-alek-wek/#gk7Jkj7LzdQyZ0Vp.99 

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CUBA + VIDEO: Cuban Women Filmmakers US Showcase & a Conversation with Gloria Rolando > Black Film Center/Archive

Gloria Rolando, 4-6-2010

 

Co-sponsored by the Institute for the Study of the Americas

Afro-Cuban filmmaker Gloria Rolando brought her acclaimed documentary and feature work to UNC Chapel Hill as artist-in-residence from April 1-7. During her stay, she screened and spoke to an audience about her most recent films, Roots of My Heart and 1912: Breaking the Silence.

Rolando is best known for films such as Oggun: An Eternal Presence, which explores how the Orisha Oggun, the god of war and peace, metals, and civilization, was experienced in the life of Cuban Yoruba singer Lazaro Ros; My Footsteps in Baragua, a recounting of the history of a West Indian community in Cuba; and Eyes of the Rainbow, a documentary on Assata Shakur, the Black Panther and Black Liberation Army leader who took refuge in Cuba after years of struggles in the United States.

She is also a founding member of Images of the Caribbean, a film collective dedicated to developing projects that focus on Afro-descendant communities in Cuba.

Rolando’s current project is a three-part documentary focusing on the 1912 massacre of the Party of the Independents of Color, a long neglected topic in accounts of Cuban history. She has been working to recover the history of this era through interviews with historians and communities throughout the country.

This documentary project follows her feature film Roots of My Heart, which chronicles a young Afro-Cuban woman’s discovery of her ancestors’ participation in the events of 1912, including the death of her grandfather.

>via: https://vimeo.com/10783138

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Cuban Women Filmmakers

US Showcase &

a Conversation with

Gloria Rolando

A significant showcase of Cuban women filmmakers began a tour of the United States on March 6th, 2013, in Los Angeles. The Cuban Women Filmmakers US Showcase, brought about by the Women in Film International Committee, Cuban Women Filmmakers Mediatheque, the Cuban Institute of Art and Cinematography (ICAIC), brings acclaimed directors Gloria Rolando, Marina Ochoa, Milena Almira, and actress Claudia Rojas.

BANNER

The showcase features film screenings, panel discussions, and events to promote cultural exchange in Los Angeles, Miami, and New York.  A full schedule is available here, while here is a list of all of the films – mostly shorts by a long list of Cuban women – including Blanco Es Mi Pelo, Negro Mi Piel (White Is My Hair, Black My Skin) by Marina Ocho (1997), De Cierta Manera (One Way or Another) by Sara Gomez (1975), and Derecho de Ser (Right to Be) by Claudia Rojas (2013).

Derecho de Ser

Derecho de Ser

One of the directors who will participate in the showcase, Gloria Rolando, is famous for her documentaries on Afro-Cuban topics. Rolando studied Art History in Cuba, and through this line of inquiry, came to work with many famous filmmakers – documentarians in particular – from Cuba, including Santiago Alvarez and Rogelio Paris.  She is also quite active in the group Imagenes del Caribe (Caribbean Images)

Rolando visited Indiana University in 2010, when she sat down with BFC/A director Michael Martin to discuss her influences, the state of Cuban filmmaking, and what the future holds.  In anticipation of the Cuban Women Filmmakers US Showcase, and to elucidate some of the themes that Gloria Rolando deals with, we’re releasing here some interesting selections from Martin’s unpublished interview with Rolando.

*         *         *         *

BLACK FILM CENTER/ARCHIVE: That distinctiveness concerns your sustained interrogation and recovery of the black experience largely in Cuba.  My question to you is why have you chosen to devote your life’s work to the study of the African diaspora?

GLORIA ROLANDO: I grew up in a very, very humble black family.  My father was a shoemaker, my mother made clothes, and my grandmother, whose hands I never will forget, used to work as a domestic in the houses of other people.  She was a character; she’d never talk about age, she’d talk about life.  She told me how in Santa Clara in the 30s and 40s black people would walk around the park while white people would walk inside the park; it was the custom of that time.

She told me about the Union Fraternal, the society for black people in Havana, and another black society for those who were doctors or lawyers or teachers.  I remember that she used to say, “Maybe you will attend Club Athena because you have your title, you graduated, you are a professional.”   In school, though, I never heard about this kind of history.  After some time, I held on to all this information, and when I started to make films I wanted to see these kind of very humble people, but very proud and with a lot of dignity.

Filmmaker Gloria Rolando

Filmmaker Gloria Rolando

BFC/A: In your work, you’ve largely made documentaries.  Why this genre and form of storytelling?  Why documentary?

GR: Well, I was a part of the documentary school mostly because of who I worked with at the ICAIC.  The first project that I worked on in the ICAIC was with Santiago Villafuerte. It was a story about the migration of people from Haiti after the Haitian revolution.  It’s the documentary that is called Tumba Francesa.  So I did all the research and it was my first work and also my first script, Tumba Francesa with Santiago Villafuerte. I discovered that through hours of historical research for the documentary that I got in touch with the main characters of the story.  I discovered something that would help me to discover Cuban culture to know more about my country.  So I said, “Ah! The cinema will help me.  And a documentary about war will help me to know more about Cuban culture,” because I had never learned about Tumba Francesa and all these black people that are going to white clubs and speaking another language.

BFC/A: Gloria, let’s talk a little bit about Images of the Caribbean.  What is Images of the Caribbean?

GR: It’s a family relationship, friends—it’s not a company.  People think that it’s a company.  No!  First, it’s not possible to do this in Cuba (laughs). No, we’re separate from a company.

People ask me how it is possible to have so many projects going at once.  Well, it’s because I am a member of the National Video Movement and each project has a different story.  My Footsteps in Baraguá was the first one that I loved so much; it was with the help of so many people.

In a general sense, though, we would like to be part or to re-create or to catch the images of the people who don’t have voices for themselves.  They are part of the history, they made the history, and they appear as general topics in books. In Spanish we have a phrase about la historia de la gente sin historia –and we want to give voices to these people.  You know, of course they made the history, of course they are part of the history, but they don’t have their own voice.

BFC/A: Let’s talk about your work-in-progress.  What can you tell me about 1912: Breaking the Silence and its three part structure?

GR: Well, the first chapter is like an introduction.  So I talk a little bit at the beginning and try to create some kind of expectation by talking about the injustice.  We jump right in in the credits – with a young lad named Josenia.  As a student in her psychology classes, students of all races would ask: “What did black people contribute to Cuban history?”

I didn’t include her answer in the film. Her answer is the documentary. She said, “I didn’t know either; I was worried because I didn’t have too much information, only about the Independent Party of Color.”  She wasn’t clear about the rest of the Cuban history before the Independent Party of Color.

For this project, I listened to the voices of the young people.  It’s the voice of the young generation in Cuba, and I am very concerned about how they teach the Cuban history.  Of course it’s not only for young people; it’s for many other people that never take care of the Cuban history in this way.  So for that reason I said, “Okay, I cannot get in touch directly to the Independent Party of Color.  I need to do more.”

So I dedicated this first chapter to get in touch with different circles of different members of Cuban history, and now I have finished with the foundation of the party.

 

CULTURE + VIDEO: Defining Afro-Latin@ - afrolatin@ forum

 

Excerpts from the Afro-Latin@s Now! Conference

 

What Does it Mean to be Afro-Latino?

Michael Lopez, Charles Reynoso and Guesnerth Josue Perea, members of the afrolatin@ forum, speak about being a Black Latin@ in America.

Defining "Afro-Latin@" 
[excerpt from Introduction, The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, Duke University Press, 2010]


Afro-Latin@? What's an Afro-Latin@? Who is an Afro-Latin@? The term be­fuddles us because we are accustomed to thinking of "Afro" and "Latin@" as distinct from each other and mutually exclusive: one is either Black or Latin@.

The short answer is that Afro-Latin@s belong to both groups. They are people of African descent in Mexico, Central and South America, and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, and by extension those of African descent in the United States whose origins are in Latin America and the Caribbean.

As straightforward as this definition would seem, the reality is that the term is not universally accepted and there is no consensus about what it means. The difficulties surrounding what we call ourselves reflect the complex histories of Africans and their descendants in the Americas.

And this brings us to the long answer. Broadly speaking, the word "Afro-Latin@" can be viewed as an expression of long-term transnational relations and of the world events that generated and were in turn affected by particular global social movements. Going back to the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, Pan-Africanism signaled for the first time an explicit, organized identification with Africa and African descendants and more expansively of non-White peoples at a global level. Attendant to this process, concepts of Negritude and cultural movements like the Harlem Renaissance and Afrocubanismo gained increasing ground during the 1920’s and 1930’s.

The period from around mid-century and through the 1980’s saw the growth of African liberation movements as part of a global decolonization process, as well as the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in the United States. In Latin America the beginnings of antiracist organiza­tions and the Congreso of the late 1970* introduced the first continental context for an assertive self-identification by people of African descent and a clearly articulated condemnation of anti-Black racism. Similar de­velopments were occurring in the United States during those years, with increasing talk of "people of color" and the move from the terms "Negro" and "Colored" to Black to Afro-American or African American. With the explosive demographic increase of immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, the notion of a Hispanic or Latin@ pan-ethnic identity was also gaining a foothold in the same period.

As of the 1980’s, spurred by the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, there has been a growing interest in the realities of racism on a global scale and the centrality of Africa for an understanding of this pressing political phenomenon. The concept of an African Diaspora, while implicit for decades in this long historical trajectory, comes to the fore during these years and serves as the guiding paradigm in our times. Most importantly for our purposes it acknowledges the historical and continuing linkages among the estimated 180 million people of African descent in the Americas. Along with the terms "Negro," "afrodescendiente," and "afrolatino-americano," the name Afro-Latin@ has served to identify the constituency of the many vibrant anti-racist movements and causes that have been gain­ing momentum throughout the hemisphere for over a generation and that attained international currency at the World Conference against Racism: Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, which was convened by UNESCO in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.

The term "Afro-Latin@" thus was born and reared in this transnational crucible of struggle and self-affirmation, and until recent years it has pri­marily been used to refer to people of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean as a whole, even as nation- and region-specific termi­nology continues to hold sway. For example, depending on context a Black woman in Ecuador can identify as afrolatina, afrodescendiente, afroecuatoriana, or choteña. Since the early 1990’s, however, in part as a result of the intellectual cross-fertilization between north and south, the term has gained increasing currency in the United States. Just as in Latin America, where the prefix Afro has been critical in challenging the homogenizing effects of national and regional constructs, so in the United States the term "Afro-Latin@" has surfaced as a way to signal racial, cultural, and socioeconomic contradictions within the overly vague idea of "Latin@." In addition to reinforcing those ever-active transnational ties, the Afro-Latin@ concept calls attention to the anti-Black racism within the Latin@ communities themselves. In the case of more recent immigrants these attitudes are brought over as ideological baggage from the home coun­tries, while for the generations-long citizens of the United States they re­flect the historical location of Blackness at the bottom of the racial hier­archy and the Latin@ propensity to uphold mestizaje (racial and cultural mixture) as an exceptionalist and wishful panacea. It is also a standing challenge to the African American and English-language monopoly over Blackness in the U.S. context, with obvious implications at a hemispheric level. Throughout the hemisphere, "afro" serves to link struggles and de­clare a community of experiences and interests. Most significantly, the prefix establishes the foundational historical and cultural connection to Africa, an affirmation that simultaneously defies the Eurocentric ideolo­gies that have characterized Latin America and the Caribbean.

Thus, while we recognize the primacy and historical priority of the hemispheric usage of the term, in this volume our focus is on the strate­gically important but still largely understudied United States context of Afro-Latin@ experience. What then does Afro-Latin@ mean in that con­text? What are and who are United States Afro-Latinos?

Clearly the reference is to those whose numbers and historical tra­jectory have had the greatest significance in the United States. While recognizing the inextricable connections to the transnational movement or identity field ("ethno-scape") of the same name, there are conditions and meanings that are specific to the national framework of history and society in the United States. In some cases, transnational and domestic experiences may even run askew of each other and show greater discon­tinuity than parallels. Thus, for example, despite the crucial place of Brazil—the country with a Black population second in size only to that of Nigeria—within the Latin American context, the Brazilian presence in the United States has been relatively small and the Afro-Brazilian negligible. Similarly, despite the towering significance of the Haitian Revolution to hemispheric history and the parallels that can be drawn among all immi­grant peoples of African descent, in the context of the United States Hai­tians have consistently been distinguished—and have often distinguished themselves—from Latinos. Unlike the case of Afro-Latin@s, Haitians are generally understood to be unambiguously Black.

 

VIDEO: Unsung—The Whispers > SoulTracks

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THE WHISPERS

 

To the SoulTracks Family.

We are simply THANKFUL for the perfect blend of integrity, critics and friend that flows from the tips of your review pens, telling us not only the things we want to hear but also the things we need to hear... Your sincere truthfulness has helped us to improve our craft over the years.  It's clear to us that SoulTracks, Kingdom Records and each member of our family of fans, are GOD sent blessings that we do not take for granted.  Your are perfect examples as to why we titled our very first inspirational Gospel CD THANKFUL, because that is exactly what we are...so very thankful!!! Happy everyday to all!!!

May GOD always direct yoru steps.

With love

THE WHISPERS

 

 

May GOD always direct yoru steps.

With love

THE WHISPERS

Web Sites: 

Whispers Site
MySpace Page

The Whispers

Biography

Formed in LA in the early 60s, the Whispers have certainly taken a "slow and steady" career course in which they have quietly become one of the most successful modern soul groups.  Consisting of twin brothers Walter and Wallace (Scotty) Scott, Nicholas Caldwell, Marcus Hutson and Leaveil Degree (who replaced departing member Gordy Harmon in 1973), the Whispers first recorded for local LA label Dore Records, hitting the pop and R&B charts with "Seems Like I Gotta Do Wrong" in 1970.  They continued to be a mid level charting act throughout the 70s on the Don Cornelius/Dick Griffey "Soul Train" label (later the popular SOLAR label), but gained momentum toward the end of the decade with tha album Headlights and memorable hits like "Olivia," "All The Way" and a cover of Bread's "Make It With You."

After so many years, the Whispers seemed destined to remain a a middling act that would never achieve real large scale international attention.  Then in 1980, Griffey teamed them with upcoming writer/producer Leon Sylvers, and the result was "And the Beat Goes On," one of the most infectious songs of the disco era and the single that would thrust the Whispers to the top tier of soul artists.  "And the Beat Goes On" was included on the excellent Whispers album along with two other instant classics, the Caldwell-penned ballad "Lady" and "A Song For Donny," a touching tribute to Donny Hathaway sung to the tune of Hathaway's "This Christmas"  (with lyrics by Whispers labelmate Carrie Lucas).

The 80s brought a string of monster soul chart success for the Whispers, with additional hits "It's A Love Thing," "Keep On Lovin Me" and "Tonight," though crossover success was more limited.  The group appeared to lose steam in the second half of the decade, but a hot dance tune written by then-unknown Deele member Babyface brought the Whispers back, as the excellent "Rock Steady" shot to the top of Pop, Soul and Dance charts.  The group left Solar for Capitol in 1990 and continued to record soul hits through the mid-90s, garnering success with "Innocent," "My Heart Your Heart" and "Is It Good To You."  

Most recently, the group recorded a solid, but underappreciated 1997 album of Babyface covers, Songbook Vol. 1: The Songs of Babyface, for Interscope Records.  It was nearly a decade before the issuance of their next album, the self-released For Your Ears Only, a surprise hit that topped the CDBaby independent CD charts for several weeks. In 2009, the group began working on its first Gospel album, Thankful, collaborating with Unified Tribe's Magic Mendez as well as Fred Hammond, among others.  The first song, "For Thou Art With Me," hit radio in Summer 2009.

by Chris Rizik

 

PUB: Northern Colorado Writers 2013 Writing Contests

Contest Categories

NOW OPEN: Short Fiction
DEADLINE: March 31, 2013
The short story can be in any genre or style and should have broad apeal. See below for word count and style guidelines. The final judge for this year's short fiction competition is novelist and short story writer Alyson Hagy. Originally from Virginia, Ms. Hagy now lives in Laramie and teaches at the University of Wyoming. 

COMING SOON: Personal Essay/Creative Nonfiction
SUBMISSIONS ACCEPTED: April 1-June 30, 2013
The personal essay can be in any form or style, and should be evocative, thought-provoking, and sincere--and if it's humorous too, even better. See below for word count and style guidelines. Nonfiction writer and novelist David Shields is our prolific final judge in this category.

COMING LATER: Poetry
SUBMISSIONS ACCEPTED: July 1-September 30, 2013
Poems can be in any style, up to 250 lines. Submit up to three poems per entry fee in this category. The final judge for poetry is Colorado Poet Laureate David Mason

 

Submission Guidelines

Open Submissions
You do not need to be a member of NCW or in Colorado to enter the contests.

Prizes
Each category will be awarded the following:  
1st place: $1,000  
2nd place: $250  
3rd place: $100  
Winners, Honorable Mentions, and Editor's Picks will be published in the annual winners' anthology, Pooled Ink: Celebrating the 2013 NCW Contest Winners (due out December 10, 2013) and receive 1 free copy.  The judges' decisions are final.  

Editor's Picks
The editor may pick entries from all three categories that did not place in the top 3 or receive honorable mention according to the final judges for additional inclusion in the 2013 anthology, upon permission of the authors of such entries. Editor's picks will be contacted in October and will also receive a free copy of the anthology.

Notifications
Notification of winners will be via an e-mail to all contestants and this website.

Entry Fees
The entry fee for all contests is $20 per entry. Electronic submissions only. (Note: If you do not have a credit card or prefer to mail in your payment, please send an email to Jennifer Top,  Contest CoordinatorThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .  There is no limit to the number of entries you may submit. You may submit up to 3 poems per entry fee in the Poetry category. 

Copyrights
All submissions must be your own original work. Simultaneous submissions are okay, but please let us know if your submission is accepted elsewhere, as this may affect our ability to publish it should it be selected as a winner. Submissions can be previously published, however, you must own the rights to republish in the event that your submission wins. All winning entries and honorable mentions will be published in the annual anthology.

Format

All entries must be in a 12-point standard serif font (Times New Roman or similar). Short stories and essays should be double spaced with pages numbered; poetry format is open. All entries should be sent in Microsoft Word-compatible format.  Include a cover sheet with your contact information and the title of your piece (ok to include in body of email instead of as a cover sheet). Include only the title on the submission itself, not your name.  

Word Limits
Short stories:  5,000 words
Personal essays:  5,000 words
Poems*:  250 lines each  
*Entrants may submit up to 3 poems per entry fee in that category.

Pooled Ink 
Purchase the previous years' anthologies, Pooled Ink: Celebrating the 2012 NCW Contest Winners and Pooled Ink: Celebrating the 2011 NCW Contest Winners, online at Amazon.com.


Email your entry:
1. Pay online.

Select number of entries
1 entry $20.00 USD 2 entries $40.00 USD 3 entries $60.00 USD

2. Email your entry (attachment) to the Contest Coordinator at jennifer@northerncoloradowriters.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

If the payment button isn't working, please contact the Contest CoordinatorThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

 

 

 

PUB: Call for Papers - Special Issue :: The Arab Studies Journal

Call for Papers - Special Issue

Special Issue of the

Arab Studies Journal on

“Cultures of Resistance:

The Case of Palestine and Beyond.”


[Note: Deadline Extended to 30 April 2013]

Arab Studies Journal invites submissions analyzing contemporary and historical forms of popular cultural resistance on the topic of “Cultures of Resistance: The Case of Palestine and Beyond.” Papers should be between 6,500 and 10,000 words, double-spaced, including endnotes.

Mainstream literature on the Arab world has largely focused on formal politics and classic notions of civil society (such as high-level diplomacy, political parties, electoral systems, voting patterns, trade unions, and NGOs.). Scant attention has been devoted to the ways in which cultural production can function as crucial site of political expression, as well as for (re-)thinking identity formations, nationalisms, forms of power, and resistance. The central role that street art, music, forms of dressing and sartorial practices, religious and secular rituals, and popular songs have played in forging new political subjectivities and new political cultures during the recent uprisings in the Middle East indicates the extent to which such research into cultural forms of ‘doing politics’ is timely and needed.

The case of Palestine takes center stage as a paradigm of contemporary forms of settler colonialism, and, historically, as a lively laboratory for different and changing cultures of resistance. Here at stake is the relation between resistance and cultural production in a context of ongoing occupation and simultaneously, of normalization. Resistance, as expressed in cultural production, has historically centered predominantly against Israeli occupation, but more recently it also increasingly targets different internal actors who are seen to be complicit in normalizing the occupation, such as the Palestinian Authority and other political elites. By looking at the “aesthetics” of politics, power and resistance, we would like to investigate whether and how cultural productions can spur the emergence of new political subjects and projects that can function as counter-publics, alternative and/or in opposition to hegemonic discourses, and what kinds of gender and generational shifts are under way in these processes. We also welcome analyses of other contexts within the Middle East and comparative studies elsewhere that are similarly characterized by occupation, conflict, resistance, revolutions, and uprisings.

Particular questions that this special issue will address include:

Are contemporary forms of art, cinema, literature, music, humor, or other forms of cultural production contributing to the emergence of new political projects, subjectivities, and expressions in Palestine and beyond? How do they compare to past forms of cultural resistance? Which lines do they continue, with which do they break? How does the Palestinian case compare to cultures of resistance in other contexts? For example, what new insights can the study of cultural productions provide on the political dynamics of the recent uprisings in the Arab world? How do notions of resistance, dissent, and solidarity circulate locally, regionally, and globally? Who are the agents (artists, producers, audiences, etc.) of cultures of resistance, and within which structures do they operate? More specifically, how, why, and by whom can political messages of dissent and resistance become appropriated, co-opted, and commodified?

Articles should be submitted to editor@arabstudiesjournal.org by 30 April 2013. Please follow the Journal’s submission guidelines. If you would like to discuss your article before submission, please contact the special issue editors, Ruba Salih, ruba.salih@soas.ac.uk and Sophie Richter-Devroe, s.richter-devroe@exeter.ac.uk.

 

PUB: Call for Papers for Caribbean Intransit: Antithesis/Synthesis—Fine Art and Cultural Heritage > Repeating Islands

Call for Papers for Caribbean

Intransit:Antithesis/Synthesis

 —Fine Art and Cultural Heritage

Guest editors James Early, Diana N’Diaye, and Dominique Brebion extend a call for papers for Issue 5 of Caribbean InTransit: Antithesis/Synthesis: Fine Art and Cultural Heritage. The deadline for submissions is April 15, 2013.

Description: Are expressions of “fine art” and “cultural heritage” mutually exclusive, beneficial and/or interchangeable? There are a plethora of terms that seek to distinguish arts connected to “heritage” including such performance based genres as carnival regalia, genre paintings such as those created by Amos Ferguson and utilitarian arts such as basketmaking or fashion, from the arts taught historically in the academy- painting or sculpture.

The K2K alliance in Trinidad and Tobago, which combines carnival costume design with high fashion, and the exhibition of Junkanoo costumes in the Bahamas National Art Gallery space, are recent initiatives that urge further thought on these interactions between the fine art and cultural heritage. K2K and National Art Gallery of the Bahamas demonstrate that through contemporary art practice these categories are being subverted, blended, and may not even be sensibly employed. These concerns are poignant for artists practicing within the Caribbean and in the Diasporas. What does this mean for Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora artists accessing “heritage”? This fifth issue of Caribbean InTransit takes up the intersections between forms of the fine arts, including visual and performing arts, and cultural heritage. [. . .] How do artists and artisans amalgamate the categories of fine arts and cultural heritage and what is gained or lost by so doing? What might these mergers say about global postmodernism, our historical moment in the Caribbean, or a regional Caribbean aesthetics? Such concerns may also raise questions about the ways art is defined, catalogued, presented and practiced in the Caribbean. How does the region mediate Afro, Indo, Euro, Amerindian and other conceptualizations of art? And what is the role that artists, cultural workers, cultural organizations and cultural policy may play in transforming how the arts and culture are considered, characterized and taught in the Caribbean?

For this issue, we seek artistic works, collaborative practice, essays, music, dance and dialogues that address the above mentioned considerations. Work that reconnects shared heritage(s), attempts re-constructive dialogue(s) and probes the invisible and anonymous past(s) of post-colonial realities that determine how we practice art(s) and culture(s) are welcome.

We welcome 4000-5000 word essays, in English, Spanish or French. Artwork, music, dance, poetry, mas or junkanoo designs or any other artistic expression with blurbs in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, dialect or creole are welcome as well as films in any language with subtitles in English. Fiction or non-fiction writings in English or dialects will be accepted. Writings in dialect should be accompanied by a translation of terms. Research papers on visual or vocal modes of expression as well as interviews of contemporary artists in English are also welcome.

Submit your work via the Submissions tab (and see Submissions Guidelines) on the Caribbean InTransit website http://www.caribbeanintransit.com/submissions/submit-work/

Any queries should be emailed to: citsumbmissions@gmail.com and cc to caribintransit@gmail.com