VIDEO: I Am: When being one’s self is enough – A film by Sonali Gulati > Black Looks

I Am chronicles the journey of an Indian lesbian filmmaker who returns to Delhi, eleven years later, to re-open what was once home, and finally confronts the loss of her mother whom she never came out to. As she meets and speaks to parents of other gay and lesbian Indians, she pieces together the fabric of what family truly means, in a landscape where being gay was until recently a criminal and punishable offense.


I Am:

When being

one’s self is enough

– A film by Sonali Gulati

 

by Sokari on September 15, 2011

 

The journey home is always fraught with contradictions. The longing for the place you left and the realisation that your imagination was far from the reality; the joy of the familiar and remembrance; the realisation that possibly your home is now somewhere else and breaking away is as difficult as coming home. I Am is a journey home but one which is compounded by the loss of a mother and coming out.

Trailer for I AM (documentary film by sonali gulati) from Sonali Gulati on Vimeo.

 

DIRECTOR’S NOTES

I started making I Am in 2005. My personal experience of leading a closeted life and my inability to come out to my mother before she died, serves as not only the motivation, but also the starting point for the film. As I began to come out to some of my friends, I noticed that this was not as muted, or invisible, or shameful a subject as I had perceived it to be. I managed to connect with a community of people who were out to their parents, some of whom were even very accepting and understanding. As a departure from my own story, I Am became a portrait of various Indian families, living in India, dealing with having a gay or lesbian family member.

I knew that I wanted to focus on people living in India, because at the time, lawyers in favor of keeping Section 377 (the law that criminalized homosexuality in India) argued that homosexuality was a western import and that it was not part of Indian culture and history. What was ironic was that they were fighting to keep in place a British law that was exactly that.

I Am is an innovative film that takes more than simply creative risks. The experience of making this film has shown me the power in representing one’s self and one’s community from the inside, striking a balance between the need to inform and the need to maintain privacy.

 

PHOTO ESSAY: Street Photography: Conversation with Street Photographers « African Digital Art

Street Photography:

Conversation with

Street Photographers

 

Taking the lens to the street sometimes comes away with a magical reveal. Great street photography always seems to stir up conversations. There is an intimacy to it and a closer look at life in a city. It reveals conflict and surmounting number of feelings from lighthearted moments to struggle that cities happen to display. This interest within our continent sometimes was taken by photographers visiting from other countries and their views always in an interest different from our own. In getting to know photographers on their own home turf (in Kenya & South Africa) taking to the streets to capture this vitality and happenings, we dig deeper to ask how this tradition of street photography helps the way we see our society today. Our conversation begins with three remarkable photographers : Marius W. Van Graan, Gerhardt Coetzee and Louis Majanja.

Photographer: Marius W. Van Graan Location: Mombasa, Kenya

Ger Duany / Former Child Soldier returning to Sudan for the first time in 18 yrs Photographer: Marius W. Van Graan Location : Sudan

 

What interests you to street photography?

Marius : To me, streets are a means, part of a process for people in their everyday lives, whether it’s getting around or whatever, people are usually in between one point to the next when they are on the street. I like to find those moments of people in their everyday processes whether it’s someone late for work rushing through the streets to get somewhere or people protesting in the streets.

Gerhardt: The raw quality and unpredictable elements of the street excite me. The streets don’t lie. I also enjoy playing around with the impulsive nature of the subject versus strong geometric composition lines, carefully composed.

Louis: I don’t know if there any single event or thing that has driven my interest. I’m still relatively new to this but I have always liked images and writing but I found that i’m not so good at writing, nor do I have the patience to sit down and write a long story, pictures for me are an easier way to tell that story.

Photographer: Gerhardt Coetzee Location: PortElizabeth, South Africa

Photographer: Gerhardt Coetzee Location : PortElizabeth, South Africa

 

What do you strive to capture in the moments and photographs that you take?

Marius : I am not always trying to find something, usually I let the moment dictate the idea, and then I’ll interpret that with an image. All art to me is a way of understanding the human condition, and I guess that’s what I look for.

Gerhardt: I generally work around a theme or an emotion so I go out into the streets with the intention of capturing specific moments. I slow a scene down by isolating a certain figure (or congregation of figures). I rely on the composition to pronounce the subject of the photograph as a focal point.

Louis: I strive to capture people and how they interact with their environment at a particular time. From  the mode of transportation, to the way they dress, how communication is interpreted through fonts, to architecture and what people do for work.

Photographer: Louis Majanja Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Photographer: Louis Majanja Location: Nairobi, Kenya

 

There is a preservation of human interest in street photography. In 5 years from now, what do you hope people will learn from your work?

Marius : I don’t know, to be honest. Media today, whether design, music or photography has become so consumed, it’s shelf life is so short. I guess I hope my work will be timeless enough to last, so that in 5 years people can look at it and still appreciate a fleeting moment that passed in the process of someone else’s life.

Gerhardt: Through my work, I hope it becomes obvious what an important role planning your project makes. Street photography goes beyond just capturing a decisive scene. The technical quality of the photograph should be what distinguishes a certain street scene, making the photograph exceptional.

Louis: I really haven’t thought much about that – but i hope i’m part of the the process of preserving the historical record of the places i live in.and of the people i come from.

 
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INTERVIEW: Ralph Richard Banks author "Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone"

Marriage elusive for

educated black women


image
Wedding preparations, Bonnie Mitchell and her sister Ida Mae Mitchell circa 1957. (Photo: Flickr user Cea)

 

Stanford professor says African-American women should give more weight to class and less weight to race when it comes considering marriage partners.


Listen NowListen Now

Story from The Takeaway. Listen to audio above for full report.

 

Throughout the course of American history, a lot has been said about marriage in the African-American community. From scientific racism to the Moynihan Report to Tyler Perry, the way we discuss marriage in black America can be difficult and often controversial. The marriage rate has declined for all Americans over the past forty years, but it’s declined much faster in the black community. Why is this?

Ralph Richard Banks, a professor at Stanford Law School, thinks he has the answer. His new book is called "Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone."

For the book, Banks studied marriage in the black middle class, which he says has never really been explored. One of Banks' discoveries was that "nearly twice as many black women graduate college as black men."

This disparity in education levels leads to three big trends for African-American marriages, according to Banks: First, many educated black women remain unmarried due to a shortage of partners. Second, women who marry men less educated than they are end up being the main breadwinner in households, which leads to marital tensions. And third, college-educated men, because they are scarce and can have relationships on their terms, are less likely to settle down.

"If more black women open themselves to men other races, man women in fact would find better relationships with non-black men than they do with black men," says Banks. Moreover, he says, black women should give more weight to class and less weight to race when it comes considering marriage partners.

In the book, Banks also writes about current depictions of middle class African-Americans in pop culture -- like those found in a number of Tyler Perry films -- which he says can be disastrous for women.

"These pop culture representations that make black women seem responsible for their own plight and make black women seem like they're asking for too much -- those are misguided and have led to disastrous consequences," Banks explains.

Ultimately, marriage is good for African-Americans, Banks asserts, because "70% of black children are born to unmarried parents, and that's not a development that we should feel positive about."

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"The Takeaway" is a national morning news program, delivering the news and analysis you need to catch up, start your day, and prepare for what's ahead. The show is a co-production of WNYC and PRI, in editorial collaboration with the BBC, The New York Times Radio, and WGBH.

via pri.org
__________________________

For Discussion:

As African American Marriage

Declines The Media Asks…

"Is Marriage For White People?"

By 

Even with an African American couple in the White House, the fate of the black family in America has never been so precarious. That’s the message behind Is Marriage for White People?, a new book by Stanford Law professor Ralph Richard Banks.

Researched and written over the past 10 years, Banks’ book explores the unpleasant — and often unspoken — contributors to and consequences of declining marriage rates among African Americans. With 70% of all black children now born to unwed mothers, the consequences have never been clearer. As for the solutions, Banks provocatively suggests that black women begin looking beyond their own race for marriage material and potential fathers of their children.

Is Marriage for White People?, which comes out on Sept. 1, examines the little-explored intersections of race, gender and class among African Americans, but the same issues — regarding marriage, inter-marriage, children — exist among most groups in the U.S. TIME.com spoke with Banks about “marrying down” and why filmmaker Tyler Perry has it all wrong.

 

TIME.com: Your book focuses specifically on marriage patterns within the black “middle class” of educated professionals. Why focus your research so narrowly?
Banks: Because this is a demographic that has traditionally been overlooked by demographers. When scholars study marriage, they usually focus on white people, yet when they focus on African Americans, they usually study the lower classes. There is very little serious data on other segments. Plus, the black middle-class is the community I am a part of — and I’ve personally witnessed the decline of marriage among African Americans.

 

So what did you find out? How is marriage faring among the black middle class?
Not well — particularly for black women. Typically, the more educated the woman, the more likely she is to marry. But a college-educated black woman is no more likely to have a husband than a poor Caucasian woman with barely a high school diploma. When it comes to forming a family, black women are not reaping the benefits of advanced education — nor are they passing those benefits onto the next generation.

 

There are plenty of black men out there, so what’s keeping these women single?
Part of the answer lies in the gender imbalance within the black community — where two African American women graduate from college for every one African American male. Despite this imbalance, there is still enormous social pressure on black women to only marry black men — to “sustain” the race and build strong black families. And this means marrying black men even if they are less educated or earn less money. In short, no matter the personal cost, black woman are encourage to marry “down” before they marry “out.”

 

“Down before out” — ouch! That sounds like a pretty harsh indictment.
Well, this has become almost a consensus view (within the black community). Authors like Steve Harvey and Hill Harper and particularly filmmaker Tyler Perry promote this notion that black women who lack good relationships are victims of their own elitism and snobbery. That they should open their eyes to the virtues of working-class black men and focus on their long-term potential. These kinds of messages tell a black female lawyer, for instance, that she should be enthusiastic about dating a carpenter or a plumber — and if she’s not, then she is the one with the problem. It pressures black women to give up certain kinds of life experiences (for the sake of a man) when white women are taught to cultivate them. This is simply bad advice that can lead these women into disastrous relationships.

 

Photo Credit: Natalie Glatzel

So what are you suggesting, that black women start marrying white guys?
I’m not advocating for black women to marry white men, I’m simply saying it’s time for black women to stop “taking one” for the group. I’m encouraging black women to open themselves up to the possibilities of relationships with men who are not African American — to give less importance to race and more importance to class. This would be good for them, for their children and even benefit other black couples by helping to level the playing field.

 

With everyone from Psychology Today to on-line dating sites suggesting that non-black men are typically uninterested in black women, is this realistic? Will black women actually find a willing cohort of non-black men to marry?

While there may be an entire set of cultural currents and messages that support these beliefs, this theory is fraught with misconception. Part of this has to do with black women themselves, who may assume non-black men are not interested in them, or only desire them for some perverse or "exotic" reason. Life experience may support these beliefs, but along the way black women miss out on the non-black men who are interested in them. I say that the cost of excluding non-black men can be quite substantial for these women.

 

At a time when marriage is becoming less popular among all ethnicities, why such a strong focus on wedded bliss?

 I'm not necessarily speaking of a physical marriage license, but rather the importance of a stable committed relationship — and there is a serious decline of committed stable relationships in black America today. This has many undesirable outcomes not just for adults, but also for children who are the most vulnerable parties here. Seventy percent of black children today are born to non-married partners; most of these relationships do not last, which means most of these kids grow up with just one parent and this is not an optimal situation for child-rearing.

 

 

So where does this leave black men? Seems to me they’re getting all of the blame here.
This book isn’t about demonizing black men, but looking at the consequences of their failures. We are not necessarily exploring the reasons for these failures, but how they affect black families and black relationships. I certainly may not have given enough weight in the book to issues of racism and the criminal justice system or educational policies or employer discrimination, but these topics are for my next book.

 

Speaking about racism, there is a lot of talk in this book about race, but almost nothing about racism. Why the omission?

I consciously chose to sidestep issues of racism because they tend to be conversation-stoppers. Particularly when it comes to why — or why not — black women don't date other races, people like to blame racism, identify the "racists," and this is not helpful. My goal was to consider why people make the decisions they do. This is a deeply detailed and nuanced conversation, which is difficult to conduct when you center on the idea of racism.

 

Your book almost exclusively focuses on the experiences of African Americans. Why should white people read it?

Sure, the book is rooted in the black community, but the themes — marriage, children, inter-marriage — resonate across group lines. Plus, there are many white people who have black friends or co-workers who see that their lives are different from their own, but aren't sure how to talk about those differences. They see unmarried black women around them and wonder why they are single. These are topics that black women regularly speak of amongst themselves, but would never discuss in front white people.

 

With so much talk of unmarried women, fatherless children, economic insecurity, your book feels kind of grim. Where is the hope here for the women you claim to care about?
The hope here is that black women will be able to shape their own lives and not be victims of circumstance. That these women won’t be sidetracked by the lack of black men on one hand and white racism on the other. That they will open their eyes to possibilities they might not have previously considered — and this transcends to women of all races. This is a hopeful book, but not a relentlessly upbeat book because that would have not been true to reality.

 

What about the Obamas? We have an intact African American family in the White House. Are they a realistic model for the rest of the community?
Interestingly, Michelle Obama’s experience is emblematic of a lot of black women. When they married, she was already a lawyer while Barack was still a student. People speak of Michelle “taking a chance” on Barack and that their story is an example of what awaits when black women shed their elitism and marry a man not — or not yet — on their level. Of course, this is simply not true, particularly considering Barack Obama’s background and life history. The issue here isn’t Michelle, but Barack — he was the “wild card” in this marriage.

REVIEW ESSAY: Coming of Age in Child Soldier Literature > The Brooklyn Rail

Coming of Age

in Child Soldier Literature


 

Chris Abani
Song for Night (Akashic Books, 2007)

Ishmael Beah
A Long Way Gone (FSG, 2007)

Emmanuel Dongala
Johnny Mad Dog (Picador, 2006)

Uzodinma Iweala
Beasts of No Nation (HarperCollins, 2005)

Emmanuel Jal
War Child (St. Martin’s, 2009)

Ahmadou Kourouma
Allah Is Not Obliged (Anchor Books, 2007)

Ken Saro-Wiwa
Sozaboy (Longman, 1995)

 

 

In the brief preface to A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (FSG, 2007), author Ishmael Beah relays the queries of his American high school friends as they try to solicit information about his past:

 

“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”
“Because there is a war.”
“Did you witness some of the fighting?”
“Everyone in the country did.”
“You mean you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?”
“Yes, all the time.”
Cool.”

 

In the end, Beah’s teenage inquisitors don’t simply betray a gruesome fascination with violence attributed to too much time spent watching slasher films or playing gory video games. They also express, albeit crudely, a sense of appreciation for someone who has encountered the extremities of human experience and whose character has been subjected to extraordinary trials.

Accordingly, to read works of child soldier literature is, for someone uninitiated first-hand in atrocity, to be humbled. For such a reader (one like me) inexorably endows moral authority to those authors prematurely enlisted to fight in hostilities, or who dared broach a fictional representation of the same.

While endowing these works with moral authority isn’t unwarranted, such a reaction can coincide with a passive engagement that is problematic. A sense of detached sentimentality could enable readers to merely wipe away sliding tears or close agape mouths and then use one of several stock adjectives (harrowing, haunting, heartbreaking, heart-rending, horrific, raw, stark, tragic, visceral) to describe the work before moving on to something else.

If the point of literature is to transform and not simply to sadden or shock, then the small body of child soldier literature asks more of its readers. What does child soldier literature ask?

“What you hear is not my voice,” is the first line of Chris Abani’s Song for Night (Akashic Books, 2006), a lyrical novella written from the point of view of My Luck, a 15-year-old soldier in an unspecified African country. There’s a literal explanation for My Luck’s voicelessness—the commander of his platoon had severed his and his young cohorts’ vocal chords so they “wouldn’t scare each other with [their] death screams.” However, the metaphorical resonance of My Luck’s lack of voice is the author’s acknowledgement of being incapable of speaking for him.

This is not to discount Abani’s fluid and poetic rendering of My Luck’s ghost-like wanderings through war-ravaged villages in search of the soldiers from whom he was separated after a landmine blast. Still, from the start, Abani admits to the radical undertaking of channeling the voice of a child, who, particularly in his corner of the world, is seen and not heard—who has become unspeakable.

Song for Night endeavors the impossible, eliciting a keenly perceptive character in My Luck, whose elegiac voice is a tender guide to his grim drifting through battle-scarred territory. “It’s a strange place to be at 15, bereft of hope and very nearly of your humanity…that is where I am nonetheless.” My Luck’s deep resignation permeates the novella. Though bleak, the mindset allows him to meander through his tale without distractive anxiety (i.e., hope) about the future, making the experience of reading Song for Night like looking out at treacherous deep sea waters through a porthole on a submarine.

From such an outlook, informed by the deceptive insulation of a meditative mind, a shark is just as notable for its sleek, angular beauty as it is for its capacity to disembowel. Landmines are “like little jumping jacks.” Lightning is a “sword” that “slices through the plumpness of the hot sky.” The intestines of a boy, who “stagger[s] up and collect[s]” them “in an untidy heap,” are “cradled like a baby in his arms.”

Ahmadou Kourouma takes a more confrontational approach to the matter of voice in Allah Is Not Obliged (Anchor Books, 2007). Kourouma’s child soldier, Birahima, foul-mouthed and unapologetically brash, is a self-proclaimed “Black Nigger African Native”—so self-named for his dual lack of education and command of French, as well as for his penchant for Malinké swear words (fafaro! gnamokodé! wahalé!).

Without the requisite schooling to speak fluently across tongues, Birahima refers to four different dictionaries so that: 1) his story can be read by anyone who can speak French; 2) he can translate French words for “Africans” who don’t understand French; and 3) he can explain “African” and pidgin words to the French “from France.”

The translational is the only courtesy Birahima extends in narrating his transition from a poor street kid in the Ivory Coast to a child soldier inducted to fight in Liberian and Sierra Leonean civil wars. He often ends segments of his story abruptly (“I’m fed up with talking, so I’m going to stop”) and with yet more obscenities (“You can all fuck off!”).

At the outset, Birahima warns readers, “Don’t go thinking that I’m some cute kid, ‘cos I’m not.” And, so, Kourouma very quickly, and repeatedly, disabuses the reader of any sentimental notions when it comes to his protagonist, whose story is not only personal but also political.

Due to Birahima’s taunting defensiveness, we aren’t made privy to his psychological interior. We are, however, within the novel’s short span, given a sweeping lesson in the postcolonial political history of Liberia and Sierra Leone, where “big important warlords have…divided up all the money, all the land, all the people…and the whole world lets them…kill innocent men and women and children.”

With its deadpan take on the trickle-down effect of power- and money-lust, Allah Is Not Obliged features the most politically conscious protagonist of the literature surveyed. Meanwhile, Mad Dog of the eponymous novel evinces not consciousness, but political indoctrination. The 16-year-old militia fighter is one of two main characters in Emmanuel Dongala’s Johnny Mad Dog (Picador, 2006), which narrates events of a fictional civil war in the Congo from the perspectives of both civilian—Laokolé, a teenage girl in perpetual flight from armed forces in various states of disorganization—and soldier, or, more precisely, bloodthirsty armed looter.

Mad Dog’s account of the war he’s waging is overtly unreliable, as depicted in a brutal rape scene in which he interprets as intense pleasure the blank expression of his victim, who, “as cold as a fish,” was looking at him “without emotion, eyes wide as if she were in another world.”

Like Birahima, Mad Dog is not some cute kid; unlike Birahima, he is not at all cynical about the war in which he’s engulfed. Mad Dog pledges unselfconscious allegiance to the ultimate political leader of his rag tag militia, a man who he understands to be heading the Movement for the Democratic Liberation of the People, and who, per recent election results, should have rightfully assumed control of the government instead of the other guy, who led the Movement for the Total Liberation of the People. And, of course, as a member of the Dogo-Mayi tribe, Mad Dog must avenge the usurpation of power by the MFTLP, whose ranks are overrepresented by the Dogo-Mayi people.

War, though, is not just a matter of principle, it also has its perks—allowing Mad Dog to line his pockets, become an adult and “have all the women” he wants along the way. So, though Mad Dog seems to know why he’s fighting, Dongala’s editorial intrusions under cover of his voice betray his greed and the absurdity of his motives.

Agu of Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation (HarperCollins, 2005) is more preoccupied with his bodily, rather than sociopolitical, welfare. As for Agu’s voice, he speaks in English loosely based on pidgin—the grammatically incorrect present tense (“So I am joining. Just like that. I am soldier.”). Agu is also the most childlike of the fictional child soldiers, which suggests that Iweala took very seriously the presumed limitations of the perspective he was exploring.

Immediate and unadulterated, Agu’s voice conveys a preoccupation with survival:

 

I am feeling hungry and I am not feeling hungry. I am wanting to vomit and I am not wanting to vomit, but I am thinking, let me not be vomiting because I am not even eating very much food so if I am vomiting there is nothing staying inside my stomach to be giving me energy.

 

Agu’s speech is directly reminiscent of Mene’s in Sozaboy (Longman, 1995)—Ken Saro-Wiwa’s “novel in rotten English.” Mene’s first line portends: “Although, everybody in Dukana was happy at first.” Hardly a child, though described as a “young boy,” Mene is distracted in happy times with learning to drive a lorry and finding a wife. But, “after some time, everything begin to spoil small by small and they were saying that trouble have started.” Trouble is shorthand for war. And they is shorthand for a cacophony of authoritative voices that Mene hears mostly from the radio, which, as trouble intensifies, “begin dey hala … [b]ig big grammar” and “[l]ong long words.”

Mene’s own voice, though lacking the diction that he (at first) finds so impressive (“Fine fine English. Big big words. Grammar.”), possesses a core honesty that unmasks the duplicity of local authorities and military forces he comes to serve. His simple speech is particularly adept at stripping from powers-that-be the dignity that is supposed to accessorize their status. The chief of Dukana, for one, goes about “smiling that idiot foolish smile which he will be smiling whenever he sees soza or police or power.” And the formidable major at a boot camp where Mene is hazed “no be important again” when the Chief Commander General—“a very tough man” who “was shouting plenty”—comes onto the scene and starts ordering everyone around. “Power pass power,” as Mene puts it.

Mene—or Sozaboy, as he is later branded—is often “very confuse,” not only by big grammar but, principally, about why he’s fighting. There is a lot of talk about “the enemy,” who, in Saro-Wiwa’s brilliant critique, is an abstraction—faceless, nameless, yet everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Even the war is portrayed through Sozaboy’s eyes as a natural disaster into which humans are swept, as if it were a tornado that had touched down and ravaged everything in its haphazard path.

While Agu’s voice, unlike Mene’s, isn’t employed to satirical effect, it readily communicates his disorientation, as memories of more peaceful times pervade his precarious present. For Agu, everything “is inside out like my shirt I’m wearing.” He goes on: “[s]ometimes I am seeing thing in front of me when we are walking or drilling or killing, and sometimes I am seeing thing that I am knowing is coming from before the war, but I am seeing it like they are coming right now.”

A running theme in child soldier literature is the battle between linear and perceived time, the latter of which is subject to considerable distortion by incessant thoughts, memories and dreams. The relativity of time is apparent in Beah’s A Long Way Gone, an autobiographical account whose reception has come to prioritize questions of veracity over voice. Controversy was sparked when The Australian ran a series of articles disputing Beah’s timeline of events. Among other things, the reporters alleged that the span of time between Beah’s initial flight from rebel forces and ultimate extrication from the government’s army must have been about one year, not upwards of three as Beah depicted.

Ensuing reportage on these claims have questioned the author’s avowed photographic memory, which Beah attributes to a special medicine prepared by his grandfather, who “wrote an Arabic prayer on a slate and washed the writing and the water into a bottle that [Beah] drank when studying for exams.” But a superior knack for recall doesn’t necessarily bring about a precise tally of time; memory and time-keeping can be incompatible faculties.

There is, of course, the impracticality of recording the passage of time in the midst of war, as Beah admits in A Long Way Gone: “I knew that day and night came and went because of the presence of the moon and the sun, but I had no idea whether it was a Sunday or a Friday.” Even after his rescue and rehabilitation, he remarks of his metaphysical struggle with “real” time, which is indifferent to the availability of a calendar. “These days I live in three worlds,” he says, “my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past.”

In any event, the crucial question that arises from this controversy is, given the worldwide focus Beah has brought to the dire situation of child soldiers, whether any of these charges matter at all. As a representative of UNICEF responded when approached by The Australian, “even one day as a child soldier is one day too many.”

This is not to say that moral authority shields child soldier literature from critical examination. But, given the ultimate purpose of these works—to arouse empathy with a segment of the world’s population in urgent need of intervention and compassion—the invaluable content of child soldier literature often trumps the dictates of its form.

So War Child (St. Martin’s, 2009), if the least “literary” of the works reviewed, is still an engaging autobiographical document of how Sudanese hip hop artist Emmanuel Jal, like Beah, transmuted his turbulent past into a mission to help prevent other children from marching in his wake. Jal was conscripted into the Sudan People’s Liberation Army when he was nine years old. Having fled his village in the face of attacks by jallabas—what he calls Arab soldiers fighting for Sudan’s government—Jal was lured into service while stranded at a refugee camp at the border of Ethiopia.

The word “lure” is appropriate because the trappings of child soldierhood can be enticing. Jal describes how, at a meeting held by the SPLA, he and his young friend couldn’t stop staring at the “small soldiers.” They were in awe at how they “were so clean with smart boots,” how they “stared fiercely ahead as they stood with their guns.”

Kourouma’s Birahima and Dongala’s Mad Dog are similarly impressed. Unlike counterparts in other works, who are naturally conflicted about their conscription, Birahima, for one, enthusiastically offers himself up for the opportunity when ambushed by a cordon. He does so because they have “every-fucking-thing”—AK-47s and American dollars and “shoes and stripes and radios and helmets and even cars that they call four-by-fours.”

And Mad Dog manages to elicit some sympathy when he reveals his primary reason for joining the militia—to align himself with the intelligentsia. Among the officials who visit then-Johnny’s district looking for young men to take up the MFDLP cause is a university professor. The would-be solider’s ears are “pricked” at this information. A teenage boy with the equivalent of a fourth grade education, he doesn’t “hesitate to put [his] faith in the intellectual,” as, with “so much knowledge in their heads, people like that couldn’t possibly lie.” In due course, Mad Dog’s fetish for intellectuals manifests in a fetish for books, which he loots and hoards along with all the other swag.

The allure of becoming a child soldier, however, is not only material; it’s also psychological. Severed from family, community and traditional paths to adulthood, orphaned boys eager to become men are readily seduced by the figure of the “small soldier.” With his military accoutrements and hard demeanor, the child soldier is a stop-gap measure for achieving manhood.

The highlight of the brief time Jal spent in a village he’d fled to is gaar—a ceremony in which knife strokes are cut bone deep into the foreheads of fourteen year old boys. “Gaar meant so many things—you were ready for war, able to tell younger boys like me what to do, and forbidden from going into a kitchen again or crying.” After Jal is conscripted into the SPLA, which banned gaar to prevent any tribal dissention, the mark of his own rite of passage is the day he’s entrusted with an AK-47. In a scene set for a graduation, Jal and his fellow recruits step up one by one to a platform raised atop training grounds, and each retrieve a gun from their commander, who, at the ceremony’s end, tells them: “Always remember: the gun is your mother and father now.”

Guns, as they fill the protective role of dead or missing parents, are endowed with totemic import. Beah recalls the corporal who handed him his very own AK-47 : “When it was my turn, he looked at me intensely, as if he was trying to tell me that he was giving me something worth cherishing.” The corporal advises Beah that the gun is a “source of power” that will protect and provide for him. One of Jal’s commanding troops tells him that his gun and bullets are invaluable: “[i]f you are walking across a desert, throw your food away but keep your gun and bullets. If you are crossing a river, let the water pull you down, but keep your gun and bullets.”

Transference, of course, not only occurs with artillery but also with fellow combatants. Abani’s My Luck, far from relieved to have been separated from his platoon, roams night and day in search of them like a long lost relative. And Beah makes a distant fatherly figure out of one of his commanders, Lieutenant Jabati, a quiet but stern man who he often spies reading Julius Caesar. Beah is furious when the lieutenant dismisses him and some other boys from service and hands them off to a crew of UNICEF workers: “Why had the lieutenant decided to give us up to these civilians? We thought that we were part of the war until the end. The squad had been our family.”

As conscription supplants healthy initiation into adulthood, and family is cobbled together from the transient members and articles of war, young soldiers come to realize that, while they are no longer children, they are certainly not yet men. Iweala’s Agu snaps out of a vivid reverie of an initiation ceremony in his village and takes in his bleak surroundings: “I am opening my eye and seeing that I am still in the war, and I am thinking, if war is not coming, then I would be man by now.” And My Luck gathers: “I have never been a boy…and I will never be a man—not this way. I am some kind of chimera who knows only the dreadful intimacy of killing.”

This liminal existence, being neither child nor adult, complicates the question of accountability. To what extent can child soldiers be held responsible for their actions? The good child, we are told, has been instilled with the ability to follow instructions of elders. So is a child to blame if he is ordered to kill, maim and, as often depicted in Johnny Mad Dog, rape? The default answer to this question is no, as the kind nurse who takes a liking to Beah at a rehabilitation center keeps reassuring him, “none of what happened is your fault.”

Nonetheless, some works of child soldier fiction portray psyches tormented by guilt. If he is among “the great innocents” of war, My Luck wonders, then “who taught [him] to enjoy killing, a singular joy that is perhaps rivaled only by an orgasm?” Agu is indoctrinated into the mysterious pleasure of killing by his commandant who tells him it’s like falling in love (“You cannot be thinking about it. You are just having to do it…”). He fends off the question of his guilt with the mantra, “I am not bad boy.”

Birahima, meanwhile, mockingly shrugs off the issue by referring to himself as a “fearless, blameless kid.” Besides, as the title, Allah Is Not Obliged, suggests, his quandary over accountability is externalized. He looks chiefly to Allah, who, on the one hand is “not obliged to be fair about all the things he does here on earth” and, on the other, “never leaves empty a mouth he has created.” In light of this paradox, Birahima falls back on grigris, which, according to his glossary, are protective amulets made of “paper inscribed with magical incantation kept in a small leather purse.” In the novel, soldiers and “warlords” drape themselves in grigris, which fail only due to the wearer’s personal deficiency.

The nonfiction accounts reveal that killing has a numbing effect, which forestalls questions of culpability. Beah’s fighting was fueled by “brown brown,” a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder he took when he wasn’t at the front lines or watching a war movie. After several doses, “all [he] felt was numbness to everything and so much energy that [he] couldn’t sleep for weeks.” He didn’t have the capacity, during his enlistment, for philosophical introspection: “My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule was to kill or be killed. The extent of my thoughts didn’t go much beyond that.”

Jal’s appetite for battle was fed by hate and revenge. He describes his lack of feeling after he and his cohort killed three jallabas: “No pain, no disappointment, no regret, no guilt. All I know is that I want to kill again and again.” To equip Jal and other young soldiers for battle, the SPLA provoked their hurt and rage at having their families destroyed at the hands of the enemy. The SPLA also forbade their child soldiers from becoming friends, telling them “love, friendship, pity…all these will weaken you in war.”

Beah and Jal, then, relate how war required them to diminish, not examine, much less expand, their humanity; they tell how their states of mind, whether drug-induced or hate-filled, kept them at a cool remove from their actions, like players of a violent video game.

There are, among the works reviewed, glimpses of what true adulthood might seem like. Mad Dog comes across it from time to time in his victims, including a man whose house he storms into and tries to intimidate at gunpoint. The man, in response, merely looks at Mad Dog “without a word,” then returns his gaze “to the thick volume in his hands.” Mad Dog is paralyzed: “I couldn’t see an ounce of fear or a glimmer of panic in the eyes of this man. On the contrary, I saw complete serenity, as if he were living in some other world. It wasn’t normal.”

In Sozaboy, a zen koan is posed by a “thick man” who was always writing or listening to the radio whenever Mene passed by his house, during happy times. At a rare appearance in church, the thick man tells the sitting congregation that they are “the salt in the soup”—as, they all knew, soup wouldn’t be soup without salt in it. Then, he asks, can there be salt with no salt inside it? Or, really, what use is any “man wey be no man”?

The congregation is further challenged: “Why run away if another man, whether he holds gun or not, comes to your house? Why run away? Why smile idiot foolish smile to porson who have come to tief and give you moless? What are you fearing people of Dukana?”

In the end, Sozaboy is a meditation on one incontrovertible characteristic of the ideal adult, which is courage—particularly in the face of a government that wants to “byforce” you. Saro-Wiwa’s own life is a testament to this principle. He was executed in 1995 by the Nigerian government due to his ongoing activism on behalf of the Ogoni people, who were protesting the degradation of their land by oil-extracting companies like Royal Dutch Shell.

It’s tempting to compare fictional to non-fictional accounts to see what the fiction accurately discerns or overlooks. The most striking contrast between the genres is how the autobiographies encompass an awareness of the trans-Atlantic diaspora that is absent from most of the novels.

I say most of the novels because Mad Dog, with his Tupac Shakur t-shirt, shows some awareness that extends beyond the borders of his war-torn country. Among the civilians he is unable to terrorize is a breakdancing guy who “writhed and twisted” with a boombox he refused to fork over. “[H]is head would disappear entirely between his shoulders, then suddenly pop out on a neck longer than a heron’s,” and “the next instant he was lying huddled on the ground; then he would leap up like a jack-in-the-box.”

The international reach of hip hop infuses A Long Way Gone and War Child. In two surreal episodes, Beah’s love of hip hop saves his life. Before being conscripted into the Sierra Leonean government’s army, Beah and five other boys are captured and corralled before a village chief, who plays a Naughty by Nature tape that falls out of Beah’s pocket. To negotiate their release, Beah must mime the lyrics to OPP as he does the running man in the sand.

Music is all around Jal after he’s extracted from the SPLA and relocated with a guardian to Kenya—the “soft lilt of Bob Marley,” the “heavy beats of Tupac and Ice Cube.” But it’s Puff Daddy (now Diddy) who inspires him the most, with a rap song about faith and Jesus that leads Jal to record his own Christian rap music. Jal goes on to perform at the Africa Calling segment of the 2005 Live 8 benefit concerts and has become an internationally known rap artist.

The sense of diaspora, of a connection that transcends national and continental boundaries, is heartening, and, ultimately, the cause for my humility—which is not to say that child soldier literature is asking me to be humble. What I’m being asked, I believe, is to listen­—to listen and hear from each voice a distinct story that will blur the static, oft-reproduced image of a small African boy toting a large gun. Child soldiers are no strangers to any continent (think WWI, WWII, the American Civil War, the Balkans, ad infinitum), and these stories set on the African continent breathe humanity into our global “problem.” They also bring forth, for a reader like me, the always-latent dilemma that was posed by Ken Wiwa, the late Saro-Wiwa’s son: “All of us have a choice, to make our children safe in the world or to make the world safe for our children.”

 

INCARCERATION: Troy Davis: 14 Days in May – The execution of Edward Earl Johnson

Troy Davis: 14 Days in May

– The execution of

Edward Earl Johnson

 

by Sokari on September 16, 2011

in Action Alert,Black America,Human Rights,USA

Edward Earl Johnson / portrait by Claire Phillips

 

This was the third time I watched this documentary on the last 14 days in the life of Edward Earl Johnson who was executed in Mississippi’s gas chamber on May 20, 1987. This is a horrific act of cruel and inhumane punishment that has everything to do with vengeance and little to do with justice. The evidence against Edward Earl Johnson was weak and tenuous and further investigation after his execution revealed it was highly unlikely Earl Johnson was guilty. In less than a week a similar fate awaits Troy Davis. To try to stop his execution please sign the many petitions, write emails whatever you can to stop this from happening OR just write to Troy that you care, that he is loved whatever happens! Let this not be the last five days of Troy Davis’s life.

In this Follow up to 14 days in May – Johnson’s lawyer, Stafford Smith [Reprieve] searches for the truth behind Johnson’s arrest, trial and execution.

Troy Anthony Davis, his family’s website
http://troyanthonydavis.org/
NAACP Too Much Doubt Campaign    http://www.naacp.org/blog/entry/toomuchdoubt-a-campaign-to-save-troy-davis-life
Amnesty International Too Much Doubt Campaign    http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/cases/usa-troy-davis?id=1701026
Educators for Troy `Teach Troy Davis’ Emergency
Curriculum for Educators
http://troydaviseducation.wordpress.com/
Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
http://www.gfadp.org/
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
http://www.ncadp.org/#Troy_Front_Page
Campaign to End the Death Penalty
http://www.nodeathpenalty.org/

Write to Troy: Send our brother Troy some love and light.
Troy Anthony Davis, 41, has been on death row in Georgia for
more than 19 years: Troy A. Davis, 657378, GDCP G-3-79, P.O.
Box 3877, Jackson GA 30233.

 

VIDEO: Charles Lloyd & Maria Farantouri; ATHENS CONCERT on Vimeo

Charles Lloyd & Maria Farantouri

ATHENS CONCERT 
Historic concert by Charles Lloyd and Maria Farantouri at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus with Jason Moran, Reuben Rogers, Eric Harland, Socratis Sinopoulos and Takis Farazis performing Lloyd compositions Dreamweaver and Blow Wind, a Byzantine prayer, Kratisi ti zoi by Mikis Theodorakis; and Vlefarou mou.

__________________________

 

Chales Lloyd and Maria Farantourie live in Athens. The recording was released on CD. Fore more information go tohttp://ecmrecords.com/Catalogue/ECM/2200/2205_06.php?cat=&we_start=0or http://www.jazzecho.de/aktuell/artikeldetail/article/195908/traumweber-trifft...

VIDEO: Sona Jobarteh - Female Kora Virtuoso

Sona Jobarteh
 
Sona Jobarteh is the first female kora virtuoso to come from a griot family in West Africa, and she marks the launch of her new album "Fasiya" with this performance at Dingwalls, in London's Camden Town on 16th June 2011, joined by her full band............... 
Visit her website: http://www.sonajobarteh.com for more information.
__________________________

 

 

Sona Jobarteh on

Network Africa

 

Sona Jobarteh

Network Africa video session

 

Play in either Real OR Windows Media players

 

Sona Jobarteh hails from a long West African tradition of Griots and kora players; her grandfather was the master Griot Amadu Bansang Jobarteh.

Creating her own history, she has broken from the male-dominated kora tradition to become the family's first female virtuoso of the instrument.

When she came to Bush House studios, she spoke to BBC's Fred Dove about her family's musical tradition, her love of the kora and the music she is creating.

Listen 

Listen to Sona Jobarteh interview (Duration: 12:38)

With a debut album and a film score already available, Sona is working on tracks for her second album release, Fasiya.

Sona came to Bush House to perform a Network Africa video session with guitarist Femi Temowo and percussionist Robert Fordjour.

They performed 'Jarabi' (top) and 'Saya' (below), both tracks from the forthcoming record.

 

Play in either Real OR Windows Media players

 

>via: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/2011/02/110225_sona_jobarteh_page.shtml

__________________________

Sona with her 4-year-old son

Fasiya

0.2781445167493075

In this A World In London interview special, DJ Ritu chats to Soas graduate, Sona Jobarteh. Outstanding singer, composer, and a true rarity as a female kora player, Sona talks about her Gambian roots, her goals & aspirations, and her beautiful new album, ‘Fasiya’. See her live at the Bloomsbury Theatre on September 12th, as part of this year’s London African Music Festival!

 

SONA JOBARTEH at A WORLD IN LONDON, SEPTEMBER 6th. ONLINE & AT ITUNES.

The 9th London African Music Festival
Friday 9 to Sunday 18 September 2011

More info: http://www.joyfulnoise.co.uk/lamf.html

>via: http://soasradio.org/fasiya

 

PUB: Epiphany Book Kits

Epiphany Editions Chapbook Contest in Poetry, Prose Poetry, and Micro Fiction

JUDGED BY DAVID SHUMATE

SUBMISSIONS DUE 9/30 2011

In the fall of 2011, Epiphany Editions will publish two chapbooks in limited editions of 300 each. The first will be by our contest judge, David Shumate, and the second will be chosen from among our submissions.

As much as we would like to be able to open submissions free of charge, we are a non-profit organization and all proceeds from your submission fee of $12 will go towards the production of the books. For a submission fee of $16, contestants will also receive copies of both chapbooks in the form of Book Kits with instructions for binding. For more information on our revolutionary model for chapbook publishing, click here.

Chapbooks will be letterpressed hand printed covers on quality stock paper professionally designed and distributed. Should they choose to, winners will have the opportunity to be involved in the design of books.

Epiphany Editions is connected to Epiphany, a literary magazine, and we are members of CLMP. We adhere to CLMP standard practices concerning book contests and all submissions will be filed by our intern. No readers will see contestants' names, and any submissions recognized by readers will be passed along to another reader.

Please submit up to three chapbooks (each will require a separate reading fee) with two cover pages. The first should include the cover, title, personal information, and how you learned about the contest. The second should include title only.

We are accepting submissions by mail and online.

To submit online, please make your purchase via Google Checkout below and include your confirmation number in the "notes" of your submission.

To submit by mail please send submissions with check or money order payable to "Epiphany Magazine" to 71 Bedford St, New York, NY 10014.

We look forward to reading your manuscripts! Good luck!

 
$12.00 - Chapbook Submission $18.00 - Chapbook Submission (includes both published chapbooks)

 

 

 

 

PUB: Winning Writers - Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest

Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest

Welcome to the ninth annual Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest sponsored by Tom Howard Books. First prize is $3,000. A total of $5,550 in prizes will be awarded. Submit poems in any style, theme or genre. Click here to read the winning entries from past contests.

Submission Period
Entries accepted December 15, 2010-September 30, 2011 (postmark dates)

This contest is not yet open, and the rules below may change. Please wait until December 15 or later to submit. However, if you are here to complete an entry to the eighth contest that you initiated before October 1, then you may proceed.

--> What to Submit
Poetry in any style or theme. Your entry should be your own original work. You may submit the same poem simultaneously to this contest and to others, and you may submit poems that have been published or won prizes elsewhere, as long as you own the online publication rights.

Prizes and Publication
First prize: $3,000. Second prize: $1,000. Third prize: $400. Fourth prize: $250. There will also be six Most Highly Commended Awards of $150 each. The top 10 entries will be published on the Winning Writers website (over one million page views per year) and announced in Tom Howard Contest News and the Winning Writers Newsletter, a combined audience of over 35,000 readers.

Entry Fee
The reading fee is $7 for every 25 lines you submit. If you submit a sonnet of 14 lines and a haiku of 3 lines, totaling 17 lines, the fee would be $7. If you submit three poems of 15 lines each, totaling 45 lines, the fee would be $14. Exclude your poem titles and any blank lines from your line count. There is no limit on the number of lines or number of poems you may submit. Please note: Generally entry fees are not refundable. However, if you believe you have an exceptional circumstance, please contact us within one year of your entry.

Deadline
September 30, 2011. Your entry must be postmarked or submitted online by this date.

How To Submit
Click here to submit online (credit and debit cards)
Click here to submit by mail (checks and money orders)
Click here to submit via PayPal

Announcement of Winners
We are pleased to present the winners of the eighth contest here. The winners of the ninth contest will be announced on February 15, 2012. Entrants with valid email addresses will receive an email notification.

English Language
Poets of all nations may enter. However, the poems you submit should be in English. If you have written a poem in another language, you may translate your poem into English and submit the translation. You may also submit a translation of a work that is in the public domain.

Privacy
Your privacy is assured. Neither Winning Writers nor Tom Howard Books will rent your information to third parties. Winning Writers processes entries and fees for this contest as a service to Tom Howard Books. Winning Writers is not a sponsor and does not judge the entries.

Copyright
If your entry wins any cash prize, you agree to give both John H. Reid and Winning Writers a nonexclusive license to publish your work online. From time to time, selected winning entries may also be published in printed collections. If you win a prize, we may ask you for permission to include your entry in one of these books. You may accept or decline this invitation as you choose. Your entry will not be published in print without your consent, and you retain all other rights. You are free, for example, to publish your work in print or online elsewhere, and to enter it into other contests, whether or not you win a prize in this contest.

John ReidJudges
Final judge John Howard Reid has won first prizes and other awards in prestigious literary events. A former journalist and magazine editor, he has published several historical novels, a collection of poetry, a guide to winning literary contests, and over fifty books of film criticism and movie history. See his work at Lulu. He lives in Wyong, Australia. Mr. Reid is assisted in the judging by Dee C. Konrad. A leading educator and published author, Mrs. Konrad was Associate Professor in the English faculty of Barat College of DePaul University, and served as Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences for the year 2000-2001.

About Winning Writers
Winning Writers finds and creates quality resources for poets and writers. Our expert online literary contest guide, Poetry Contest Insider, profiles over 1,250 poetry and prose contests. We directly sponsor the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest and the Sports Poetry & Prose Contest. We also assist the Tom Howard/John H. Reid Short Story Contest, the Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse and the Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest. Winning Writers is proud to be one of "101 Best Websites for Writers" (Writer's Digest, 2005-2011) and a recipient of the Truly Useful Site Award (Preditors & Editors, March 2006).

Questions about this contest? Please see the Frequently Asked Questions or johnreid@mail.qango.com" class="someclass1">click here to email a note to the contest administrator.

 

John Reid's advice for Tom Howard Poetry Contest participants...

I enjoy judging poetry. It's a snack compared to reading other forms of literature. A story may start poorly, but soon develop into a fascinating character study, a fanciful adventure, an engrossing slice-of-life, or even a riotous comedy. But poetry, you need to read only a stanza or two and you know instantly whether it's going to make the grade to WORTH FURTHER READING or pop instantly into the REJECT basket.

We critics can argue from now to Doomsday as to what exactly poetry is. But we all agree on what it is not. I believe poetry can be and should be anything and everything: A vehicle for ideas, a simple description, an emotion, a thought, a time capsule, a conversation, a tirade and even a story or straight narrative. The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, And the highwayman came riding— Riding—riding—The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door. I don't care that narrative poems are now out of style. If Alfred Noyes can do it, so can you.

I have only one bugaboo. Only one. I will not tolerate doggerel. All other forms, types, genres of verse are welcome. But I don't consider doggerel "poetry". It's just plain simple rubbish.

So what exactly is doggerel? My dictionary says "bad verse". So what makes it bad? In a word: clichés. In doggerel, June always rhymes with moon, never with bassoon or octoroon; love is almost always coupled with above, rarely with shove or glove. Doggerel forms a compulsory ingredient of greeting cards. A warm hello, a friendly smile, a word of cheer, and then...A special wish that you will soon be feeling well again! By the humble standards of doggerel, that's actually not too excruciating, but it's still an inevitable candidate for the recycle bin.

Would you believe that 95% of my instant rejects belong to the doggerel class of poetry entries? 95%! I blame the internet's multitudinous, non-discriminatory websites for this sudden rise in the popularity of instant trash. I want no part of it. Yet budding poets will insist on entering this garbage by the truckload. A complete waste of money. There's no way I'd award A warm hello a single cent, let alone a thousand dollars.

If you must use rhyming verse, for heaven's sake, be original!

The contest winners have been a varied lot. But they all have one quality in common: Originality!

             Originality!

                          Originality!

                                       Originality!                                                                                                                                                                                                       

 

PUB: Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award > Red Hen Press

Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award

For publication in the Los Angeles Review
$1000 Award
Deadline: September 30, 2011
Final Judge: Elena Karina Byrne

Established in 2003, the Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award is for an unpublished poem. Awarded poem is selected through an annual submission process which is open to all poets. This year’s final judge is Elena Karina Byrne.

Award is $1000 and publication of the awarded poem in the Los Angeles Review published by Red Hen Press. Entry fee $20 for up to 3 poems, maximum 120 lines each. Name on cover sheet only. Send SASE for notification. Entries must be postmarked by September 30.

Guidelines

Eligibility: The award is open to all writers with the following exceptions:

A) Authors who have had a full length work published by Red Hen Press, or a full length work currently under consideration by Red Hen Press;
B) Employees, interns, or contractors of Red Hen Press;
C) Relatives of employees or members of the executive board of directors;
D) Relatives or individuals having a personal or professional relationship with any of the final judges where they have taken any part whatsoever in shaping the manuscript, or where, for whatever reason, selecting a particular manuscript might have the appearance of impropriety.

Procedures and Ethical Considerations

To be certain that every manuscript finalist receives the fairest evaluation, all manuscripts shall be submitted to the judges without any identifying material.

Bios, acknowledgments, and other identifying material shall be removed from judged manuscripts until the conclusion of the competition.

Red Hen Press shall not use students or interns as readers at any stage of its competitions.

Red Hen Press is committed to maintaining the utmost integrity of our awards. Judges shall recuse themselves from considering any manuscript where they recognize the work. In the event of recusal, a manuscript score previously assigned by the managing editor of the press will be substituted.

Please submit materials to:

Attn: Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award
Red Hen Press
P.O. Box 40820
Pasadena, CA 91114
www.redhen.org

Red Hen Press will only accept submissions that have been mailed to the above address; please no email attachments or faxes.