Under the direction of Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, the Manchester Writing School at MMU is launching the second Manchester Fiction Prize – a major international literary competition celebrating excellence in creative writing.
The Manchester Fiction Prize* is open internationally and will award a cash prize of £10,000 to the writer of the best short story submitted. The competition is open internationally to entrants aged 16 or over; there is no upper age limit.
All entrants are asked to submit a complete short story of up to 3,000 words in length. The story can be on any subject, and written in any style, but must be fiction and new work, not previously published, or submitted for consideration elsewhere during this competition.
The Manchester Fiction Prize celebrates the substantial cultural and literary achievements of Manchester, building on the work of the Manchester Writing School at MMU and enhancing the city's reputation as one of Europe's most adventurous and creative spaces. The prizes will be awarded at a gala ceremony hosted as part of the 2011 Manchester Literature Festival.
To download a printable entry form for postal submission, click here. If you would a printed entry pack to be sent out to you by post, or if you have any queries, please contact:
James Draper, Project Manager The Manchester Writing School Department of English Manchester Metropolitan University Telephone: +44 (0) 161 247 1787 E-mail: j.draper@mmu.ac.uk
12th ICCL in Cuba, November 1 – 6, 2011; organized by Morehouse College, Casa de las Américas, and Road Scholar
Conference Theme: An Intimate Connection with the Authors and People of Cuba
This year ICCL has accepted an unprecedented and unparalleled opportunity to interact intimately with some of Cuba’s’ foremost authors and cultural artists. We have also arranged a unique program of meaningful opportunities for you to interact with the Cuban people as you explore important historical and cultural sites in Havana, where lectures, discussions, readings and performances by prominent Cuban writers, artists and intellectuals will be held. For this venture, we are privileged to partner with Road Scholar and with Casa de las Américas. In order for you to be a part of this historic experience, it is absolutely imperative that you register with Road Scholar no later than September 20, 2011. We think that you will NOT want to miss the exciting program ICCL and Road Scholar have arranged for your education and enjoyment during the six days of the conference (see attached program and speaker biographies).
Although this year we are particularly interested in Cuban literature, we invite papers and panels on any aspects of Caribbean literature. Papers may be presented in Spanish, French, or English and should last no longer than 20 minutes. Please send 150-word abstracts (in the language of your intended presentation) to Dr. Melvin B. Rahming, Co-founder of ICCL (marahming@morehouse.edu) (404)-625-3822. Please direct any questions having to do with ICCL panels to Dr. Leah Creque (lcreque@morehouse.edu), (770) 331- 0657 or Dr. Michael Janis (mjanis@morehouse.edu) (770-819-8242), both of whom are co-directors of ICCL. Abstracts and proposals MUST be received by September 20, 2011.
To register or for any questions about the program contact Road Scholar by calling: toll free 800 – 322 – 5315 M-F from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM (outside the US: 1-978-323-4141 or email registration@roadscholar.org). Please reference program # 20225
Again, this conference presents us with a range of literary, cultural, and educational experiences unprecedented in ICCL’s eleven-year history. It also promises up-close and personal involvement with important aspects of Cuba’s historical and contemporary society. Don’t delay and enroll early; due to the nature of this year’s program there are limited spots available. Enrollment is open to all, not only to presenters.
Distinguished Speakers and Presenters
Roberto Fernández Retamar: poet, essayist, internationally renowned scholar. A former visiting scholar at Yale, he has published over twenty volumes of poetry and is the foremost scholar of José Martí working today. His book of essays in the collection Calibán remains among the most widely discussed in the Americas. Since 1965 he has directed the journal of Casa de las Américas, the illustrious literary institution and publishing house he has presided over since 1986.
Pedro Pérez Sarduy: poet, writer, journalist and broadcaster living in London. He is the author of Surrealidad, Cumbite and Other Poems, and a new novel, Las Criadas de La Habana (The Maids of Havana). He is also co-editor with Jean Stubbs of Afro-Cuba: An Anthology of Cuban Writing on Race, Politics and Culture.
Miguel Barnet: writer, essayist and ethnologist, whose studies of Afro-Cuban culture continue the tradition of his mentor, Fernando Ortiz. The canonical Biografía de un Cimarrón of 1966 (Biography of a Runaway Slave) remains a watershed of the testimonial genre. He has published many volumes of poetry, from La piedrafina y el pavoreal to Actos del final. President of the Cuban Association of Writers and Artists, he was recently awarded the Mihai Eminescu International Poetry Prize, granted by the Academy named after the great Romanian poet.
Fernando Martínez Heredia: winner of the 2006 National Prize for Social Science, to whom the 20th International Book Fair is dedicated. A prominent philosopher and political theorist, he has written more than 200 essays and several groundbreaking texts, from El Ejercito de pensar and Filosofar con el martillo to the edited volume Laberintos de la utopía.
Nancy Morejón: scholar and poet whose work is known throughout Latin America and in the U.S. A bilingual edition of some of her greatest poems is available from Wayne State University, Mirar Adentro/Looking Within: Selected Poems, 1954-2000. As in many of the works of the great Nicolas Guillén, “Mujer negra” (1975), Morejón’s most famous poem, carries on the search for African roots and looks forward to a new future for African descendents in Cuba.
Los Muñequitos de Matanzas: rumba group, founded in the 1950s, known all over the world. The drummers and singers of the conjunto from Matanzas perform traditional rumba (guaguancó, columbia, yambú) as well as the sacred music of the Lucumí, and Abakuá traditions.
Program fee is $2595.00 per person in shared room; single-room supplement fee is $250. Includes: 5 nights at hotels in Miami and Havana, Charter flights: Miami to Havana, Havana to Miami, All program fees, presentations, activities and airport transfers, 13 meals (5 B, 4 L, 4 D), Medical and Medical Emergency Evacuation Insurance, and Cuba travel visa.
To register or for any questions about the program contact Road Scholar by calling: toll free 800 – 322 – 5315 M-F from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM (outside the US: 1-978-323-4141 or email registration@roadscholar.org). Please reference program # 20225
HAVANA TIMES, August 5 — One thing is clear about the Havana Times Cuba photo contests is that each year the selection process is going to get harder with the increasing competition.
The winner of The Color Red in Cuba category was Byron Motley with the photo: “Cooling off on a hot day”. Orlando Luis Pardo took both Second Prize and the Special Mention with “Libertad vs. Bloqueo” (Freedom vs. Blockade) and “Hoy como ayer” (Today like yesterday).
In the Cubans Working category the winner was Michelle Rankin with her photo “Shoeshine”. Second prize went to Angel Yu with the photo “Vendedores en el Latino” (Vendors at the Latinoamericano Stadium). The Special Mention was awarded to Carlos Durá for the photo “Trabajando en mojado” (Working wet).
In the Cuban Women category the winner was Sergio Leyva with his photo: “Napping on the bus”. Second Prize went to Carlos Durá for his photo “Mirando tras la reja de la ventana colonial” (Looking from behind the bars of the colonial window). The Special Mention was also won by Sergio Leyva with the photo: “El último sorbo” (The last sip).
In the category of Cuban Beaches the winner was Alexis Trigoura with the photo “Fishing net”. Second Prize went to Chris Lewis for “Havana Beach” and the Special Mention to Angel Yu for “Playa Baconao”.
The selection process
After painstakingly reviewing the more than 300 photos submitted by 40 participants, in the first two elimination rounds the jury reduced the selection to 13 photos in each category (see the finalists below).
On the final round of selection the 19 HT judges picked their first, second and third place favorites for each category and these were awarded points on a 10, 5 and 3 point basis.
In the coming weeks and months many of the photos submitted for the contest, be them prizewinners, finalists or entries, will be published accompanying different HT articles with credit to the photographers.
Havana Times looks forward to holding its fourth photo contest in 2012.
Statements from the winners:
Michele Rankin: I am from Quadra Island, British Columbia, Canada, and a member of a local amateur photography club. I travelled to Cuba for the first time in February 2010 and fell in love with the colours, character, and people of the country. I am currently studying Spanish and have been returning to Cuba as often as time and funds permit. Ultimately, I would love to spend part of each year submersed in the culture and practicing my photography!
Byron Motley: I am a Los Angeles based singer/fimmaker/author/photographer and activist. I love traveling to Cuba and have adopted it as my second home. I have been fortunate enough to have had my photos exhibited in the U.S., Europe and Cuba. I am also an avid baseball fan, and I’m currently producing a television documentary on the history of the Negro Baseball Leagues.
Sergio Leyva: I was born and live in Havana. My photographic work is concentrated mainly in documentary and social photography, with a style centered in the use of natural light and black and white film, which helps me to achieve a natural atmosphere in my photos. I began taking pictures of the daily life of Havana residents, an obsession that came out of my endless walking in search of unrepeatable moments and unique characters in as sincere a way as possible. My photos are a small testimony of my city and its inhabitants, and my humble effort to preserve them for posterity.
Alexis Trigoura: The winning photo was taken during my añual vacation to Varadero with a nikon d 80.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Color Red in Cuba
First Prize
Cooling off on a hot day. Byron Motley
Second Prize
Libertad vs. Bloqueo. Orlando Luis Pardo
Special Mention
Hoy como ayer. Orlando Luis Pardo
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Cubans Working
First Prize
Shoeshine. Michelle Rankin
Second Prize
Vendedores en el Latino. Angel Yu
Special Mention
Trabajando en mojado. Carlos Durá
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Cuban Women
First Prize
Napping on the bus. Sergio Leyva
Second Prize
Mirando tras la reja de la ventana colonial. Carlos Durá
Special Mention
El último sorbo. Sergio Leyva
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Beaches
First Prize
Fishing net. Alexis Trigoura
Second Prize
Beach in Havana. Chris Lewis
Special Mention
Playa Baconao. Angel Yu
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
HT Photo Contest Finalists
Click on the thumbnails below to view all the photos in this gallery
Click on the thumbnails below to view all the photos in this gallery
Click on the thumbnails below to view all the photos in this gallery
Click on the thumbnails below to view all the photos in this gallery
Alice Walker: Beauty In Truth is a feature documentary film which tells the compelling story of an extraordinary woman’s journey from her birth in a paper-thin shack in cotton fields of Putnam County, Georgia to her recognition as a key writer of the 20th Century.
Alice Walker made history as the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her groundbreaking novel, The Color Purple, which has been transformed from a novel, to a Hollywood movie and latterly to a successful Broadway musical. This universal story of triumph against all odds is not that different from Walker’s own story.
Born in 1944, eighth child of sharecroppers, her early life unfolded in the midst of violent racism and poverty during some of the most turbulent years of profound social and political changes in North American history. Alice Walker’s inspiring journey is also a story of a country and a people at the fault line of historical changes.
Alice Walker: Beauty In Truth offers audiences a penetrating look at the life and art of an artist, a self-confessed renegade and human rights activist. In 2010, Yoko Ono honored Walker with the LennonOno Peace Award, for her ongoing humanitarian work.
Remmie Bourgeoise, raising hand - react to seeing themselves broadcast on a big screen before President Barack Obama delivers the Commencement address at Hampton University May 9, 2010, in Hampton, VA. (Photo by Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Ten years after arriving in the United States as a refugee, Daniel Majok Gai, one of the famed Lost Boys of Sudan, is back in Africa. Now 30, Gai is on a quest to build a sustainable education system in his homeland.
Armed with bachelor degrees in psychology and sociology from the University of Colorado at Denver and a year-long, representative in residence position for NGO, Project Education Sudan, Gai presents the sort of immigration success story that makes philanthropists ecstatic -- and elicits worry in other corners that U.S. born African-Americans will be viewed as inferior to their immigrant kin.
By all accounts, those concerns are valid.
"The same conversation took place in the 70s when African-Americans were compared to Jamaicans," says Charles Gallagher, PhD, professor of sociology and chair of the sociology and criminal justice program at La Salle University. "'Why are Jamaicans doing so well? What's wrong with these blacks from the United States?' This kind of narrative emerges every time there's a new immigrant group that comes to the United States that's black."
In 2007, Camille Zubrinsky Charles, PhD, professor of sociology and director of The Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, coauthored a study that showed black immigrants or their U.S. born children comprise a disproportionate number of black students at top universities. Although four years have elapsed, she says the data are still relevant, and she agrees with Gallagher's observation that findings such as hers tend to be oversimplified.
"I get frustrated because what ends up happening is that the conversation very quickly devolves into American blacks have bad culture and immigrant blacks have good culture," Charles says. "We're comparing apples to oranges. When we look at the immigrant black population, we're looking at a subset. These are the people with the wherewithal to leave everything they knew for something different, something better. They're here for a particular reason and that reason is upward economic mobility.
"When we look at the domestic black population, we get all of it. Yet [many] assume immigrants place greater value on education or on work ethic," Charles adds. "We underestimate the motivation, the potential and the desire of black Americans, particularly those who disadvantaged. We're too quick to believe that blacks from other places are better."
One size doesn't fit all
Although three-quarters of the immigrant students Charles studied had fathers with advanced degrees, others, like Gai, who arrived with nothing, are also in the mix. Millete Birhanemaskel was born in a Sudanese refugee camp. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was three months old.
"My family was poor. We were refugees who lost everything in Ethiopia," Birhanemaskel says. "My father attended Bible College but dropped out when his father died. My mom never went to high school."
Today, Birhanemaskel is a licensed financial advisor, an MBA candidate and a member of Project Education Sudan's board.
"The story of many successful immigrants is that their children are given opportunities their parents only dreamed of. That's what America provides," Birhanemaskel says.
"Coming to America cost our parents their dignity, working as maids and janitors given little respect. But they brought the American dream within the grasp of their children. That's why first-generations succeed -- they owe it to their parents and to themselves."
Omissions and similarities
There are several important stories that are often omitted during comparisons between immigrant Africans and their U.S. born African-American counterparts.
"If you just look at enrollments, you'll find that African American enrollments are pretty close to what their percentage of the population is, and that's a huge improvement over the last generation," says Robert Bruce Slater, managing editor of the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.
Another is that African-Americans from deprived backgrounds who make it to college often arrive with the same determination to succeed as immigrants.
"I will take the valedictorian of one of the worst schools in the city over the valedictorian of some prep school where life was easy any day of the week," Charles says. "The kid who managed to make the most of a jacked up environment knows how to survive, knows how to overcome obstacles, and understands how important getting education is."
During slavery, blacks were denied access to education of any type. After emancipation, learning became a top priority for many African American families. Today, immigrants share similar stories of a need to triumph over adversity.
"They can take your clothes, your home, even your life. But education is the one thing no dictator, communist, enemy or any other perpetrator can take from you," Birhanemaskel says.
Return on investment
Although he became a U.S. citizen in 2007 and plans to obtain a Ph.D. from a U.S. university in the future, Gai says building an education infrastructure in the Republic of South Sudan is his current, top priority.
"My experience of being a child born into an uneducated family, leaving home at gunpoint, going into exile and starting education without someone to support me was terrible," Gai says. "Sudanese like myself, who are in the diaspora, value education more than anything else. There is nothing more valuable to bring back to your country."
This is a refrain Project Education Sudan's executive director, Carol Rinehart, hears frequently. It's part of the reason her organization is spearheading Climb for Sudan, an effort to raise funds to build additional schools in South Sudan.
"The Lost Boys of Sudan are often the first in their ancestral families to graduate from college or university. They are considered as emergent leaders in their new country," Rinehart says. "Parents realize their children need to become educated in order to be a part of the modern world."
Are African American students equally committed to bettering their communities? Anecdotal evidence indicates they are.
"There are plenty of domestic students who know deprivation in our context and who understand the importance and value of an education," U. Penn's Charles says.
"They know what their families have sacrificed and they know what they've overcome. Some do go back to their communities and try to make them better. They do some amazing things."
by: Preston Randolph and Dan Battaglia, Truthout | Op-Ed
Leonard Peltier, a great-grandfather, artist, writer, and indigenous rights activist, is a citizen of the Anishinabe and Dakota/Lakota Nations and has been imprisoned since 1976. (Photo: Leonard Peltier Defense Committee)
Your visit to one of America's prisons may last only a few hours, but once you pass the first steel threshold, your perception of humanity is altered. The slammed doors, metal detectors and body frisks introduce you to life on the inside, but the glaring hatred from the guards and officials make it a reality. When you creep back into your own world afterward, you wonder what is really happening to the people who permanently languish behind bars.
In June 2006, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons released "Confronting Confinement," a 126-page report summarizing its 12-month inquiry into the prison systems. The commission follows up the analysis based on its findings with a list of recommendations. Topping the list of needed improvements is better enforcement of inmates' right to proper health care and limitations on solitary confinement. Five years after the report's release and despite its detailed and well-researched studies, inmate abuse continues. More recently, news reports from California's Pelican Bay Prison amplified the need for change, but after the three-week inmate hunger strike ended, the torture of solitary confinement continues nationwide.
More than 20,000 inmates are caged in isolation in the United States at any one time. Originally designed as a temporary disciplinary action, solitary confinement has drifted into use as a long-term punishment. This act of inhumanity is a clear contradiction of the Eighth Amendment. During the Pelican Bay hunger strike that rippled into prisons across the country, a 66-year-old man with extreme medical needs, Leonard Peltier, was forced into "the hole" at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.
Nightmarish as it is, what follows is fact.
In 1977, American Indian activist Leonard Peltier was convicted of murdering two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Peltier has now served more than 35 years in federal prison. His trial remains one of the most controversial in the history of the American judicial system.
Since Peltier's conviction, overwhelming information has been released confirming extreme misconduct by the FBI and the government prosecution's withholding of evidence and use of coerced testimonies. It is obvious that Peltier, despite overwhelming reasonable doubt, was considered guilty before the trial began. It is now well known that during the time of Peltier's involvement with the American Indian Movement (AIM), the FBI's Cointelpro programs were running secret, illegal tactics to eliminate political organizations of dissent, including the strategic assassination and imprisonment of activists. Cointelpro was officially abolished in 1971, but the illegal tactics it used continue. The political agenda formulated against Peltier did not end with his trial, but persists as he serves his prison sentence. In 1992, Amnesty International deemed Peltier a political prisoner and stated that, "FBI misconduct prejudiced the fairness of his trial."
Former Bureau of Prisons (BOP) official Bruce Smith served nearly 20 years at Leavenworth State Penitentiary in Kansas. Smith experienced firsthand the wrongdoings and mistreatment toward Peltier during the decades Peltier spent at Leavenworth.
"It's obvious they [the FBI and the BOP] have an agenda out against Leonard. What has happened to him is wrong. See, they have the tendency to know where they want to go in a case, and then build their evidence to that point, and that's exactly what happened to Leonard," said Smith.
The FBI's "blood for blood" agenda to railroad Peltier has merged its way into the prison system, where, it is noted, he has received inadequate and abusive treatment. Since his incarceration, Peltier has endured several hardships at the hands of the BOP, some of which have been labeled inhumane and immoral.
Currently Peltier is facing serious health issues, including diabetes, hypertension and, recently, symptoms of cancer. Many of these issues have been directly caused by lack of medical treatment and poor nutrition during his imprisonment. But this does not appear to have prevented the BOP from mistreating - or, more specifically, torturing - Peltier.
Since 2009, we have been producing a documentary film exposing the Peltier case.
As filmmakers, we are personally committed to exposing the truth and having an impact in serving real justice. We have accessed archives across the country pertaining to this case and have been in communication with key players on both sides of the story. Our intention is to tell the truth, much of which will be shocking to audiences. The more information we uncover, the more obvious it is that Peltier is an innocent activist, placed in hell because of extreme and illegal FBI actions. What is really shocking is how the mistreatment of Peltier behind prison walls continues even into his old age and as his health declines.
On June 27, the day after the 36th anniversary of the FBI agents' deaths on Pine Ridge, Peltier was abruptly moved from a cell among the general prison population into solitary confinement. The reasoning for the move was hidden from his legal team and supporters for days, and concern for his well-being grew. Nearly a week after, the entire fiasco as to why the prison guards at Lewisburg decided that a 66-year-old man was a major risk to the security of the supermax prison was revealed.
The BOP incident reports linked immediately above do not tell the whole story.
The first charge indicated Peltier received a letter the previous day from a supporter in Scotland that contained a 20-pound note. Peltier had asked the mailroom to send back the enclosed money, but this request was not followed up. He then addressed a letter, including the 20-pound note, to a friend, with the intent to send it out of the prison, knowing that possession of unauthorized money was a violation of prison rules. This violation can only bring up the question: why did the BOP allow the 20-pound note into the prison in the first place, and why did the mailroom not take action when Peltier brought it to their attention?
The second charge relates to dangling wires found within Peltier's cell. The incident report claims that an officer was inspecting the cell when he observed two exposed wires above the top bunk. The guard then pulled on the wires and was shocked with a jolt of electricity. (Who in his right mind would pull on exposed electrical wires?) Even though Peltier was not in the cell at the time, the BOP classified the incident as an "assault." The report concludes by saying that Peltier was the only occupant in the cell. The BOP did not explain that a cellmate was recently transferred out of Peltier's cell. This inmate was occupying the top bunk, which Peltier cannot access. Nonetheless, he was the one punished.
These miniscule infractions are excuses to punish Peltier, who is now set to serve six months of solitary confinement in a small cement hellhole for 23 to 24 hours a day. The conditions to which he is subjected are horrific. Lewisburg Prison is a notoriously old penitentiary, and the solitary confinement cells are not properly ventilated or air-conditioned. This raises further concerns about Peltier's health as a major heat wave passes through the Eastern United States. Recently, another inmate was moved into the small, isolated cell that Peltier inhabits. The inmates who are forced into solitary confinement are not allowed personal visits or personal items of any kind. In the scorching heat, Peltier has sweated profusely, has been unable to sleep and has lost his appetite. It has been acknowledged that solitary confinement creates new health problems in inmates and can exacerbate pre-existing conditions.
This is torture, especially when used as punishment for such minor and questionable infractions.
According to Smith: "What's happening is wrong. Their goal is to make Leonard miserable. They are out for blood because of the deaths of the agents, and they will not be satisfied until they get it."
It seems that, since Smith's retirement in the 2000's, this agenda has not changed. Peltier continues to be harassed, mistreated and denied proper health care and living conditions. Once the facts are presented, it's quite obvious that from the government's perspective, Peltier is meant to die in prison.
In the United States, where our Constitution opposes "cruel and unusual punishment," we must ask ourselves what has happened. The imprisonment and harassment of an activist whose guilt is still in question is an outrage to our justice system. Everything pointing to Peltier's guilt has been debunked, to the point that the prosecutors themselves have admitted that they couldn't prove who killed the agents. Now, after 35 years of a wrongful imprisonment, Peltier, an ailing, 66-year-old man, continues to be harassed and tortured in prison. A six month-sentence to solitary confinement could very well be a death sentence. Immediate action is needed before it is too late. This case is contrary to everything America claims to stand for, and until Peltier is freed, this atrocity stains the hands of all of us who stand by and watch it happen.
More information on the Peltier case, his current situation and how to take action can be found here.
For more information about the film can be found here.
UCLA historian Robert A. Hill has spent 30 years archiving documents that tell the story of prominent black activist Marcus Garvey. In this UCLA News|Week interview, Hill discusses his latest edited volume of the Garvey papers, which reveal the importance of Caribbean people in American race relations.
Conventional wisdom has long held that Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, which advocated racial self-help and the unity of the African diaspora, grew out of the heady political and cultural environment of the Harlem Renaissance and benefited African Americans above all other black people. Any Caribbean role, according to this view, was separate and incidental to the primary legacy bequeathed to American race relations by the charismatic Jamaica native.
Now a UCLA historian argues the reverse in the first book of a multi-volume series on the Garvey movement and the Caribbean. From the UNIA's organizational structure to its most valuable foot soldiers during its first half-decade, Garvey's Caribbean links were indispensable to the movement's success, and the region ultimately proved to be its most important theater, contends Robert A. Hill in "The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers: The Caribbean Diaspora 1910–1920."
Researching the volume "was an eye-opener in many, many ways," said Hill, a UCLA history professor and a leading authority on Garvey and the UNIA, which began in Jamaica but attained its greatest influence after Garvey established it in the U.S. in 1917. Caribbean nationals, both in America and abroad, Hill says, were the seed that grew the movement.
"Although the movement developed here and was based in America, it was predominantly a Caribbean movement, at least until federal prosecution of Garvey in the early 1920s drew the attention of African Americans and galvanized their support of him," he said.
"The Caribbean Diaspora 1910–1920" is scheduled to be published Sept. 6 by Duke University Press. With more than 400 documents, many of them newly discovered, it is the opening salvo in the third and final series of a vast collection of primary materials by and about Garvey and the UNIA, considered the largest mass political movement in black history. Highlights from the volume include Garvey's earliest known published work, a 1911 letter to the editor of a newspaper in Costa Rica, where he was living among fellow Caribbean expatriates employed on banana plantations; a 1912 letter to a Belize newspaper criticizing social conditions under British colonial rule in that country; and a 1920 letter written from New York to the governor of British Guiana in which Garvey says that the majority of his followers are from the English-speaking West Indies.
Hill, who is now on the cusp of retirement, has been collecting documents that relate to Garvey and the UNIA since the early 1970s. The archival results have been housed since 1977 at UCLA in the Marcus Garvey & UNIA Papers Project within the university's James S. Coleman African Studies Center. The project is sponsored by the National Historical Publication and Records Commission of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
"The Caribbean Diaspora 1910-1920," the 11th volume so far in Hill's publishing project, comes on the heels of a three-volume series exploring Garvey's links to Africa. The project started with a seven-volume series relating to Garvey's role in the United States. The complete edition, of which Hill is editor-in-chief, is expected to fill 15 volumes and more than 13,000 printed pages. He hopes to complete the project in 2015.
Next year marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of Garvey, a journalist, publisher, orator and political activist who was a staunch proponent of black nationalism in the United States and who is best remembered for his "back to Africa" movement of the 1920s and his support of African freedom, all under the banner of the slogan "Africa for the Africans." He founded the Black Star Line shipping venture, which attracted wide support and helped fund his movement, but his efforts to sell stock in the venture eventually led to his conviction on mail fraud charges in the U.S. After serving three years of a five-year sentence, Garvey was deported to Jamaica in late 1927.
Garvey lived out his last years in Jamaica and England. Although he died in political obscurity in London in 1940, he eventually came to be considered the progenitor of the "black is beautiful" and Black Power movements in the U.S. in the 1960s.
"Garvey was the first man on a mass scale and level to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny and make the Negro feel he was somebody," Martin Luther King Jr. once said. Yet until the federal government's 1922 indictment on mail fraud charges and his 1923 trial, only a smattering of African Americans took a major interest in the man who many would come to refer to as the "Black Moses," Hill found.
Before that time, Garvey's followers were largely fellow Caribbean nationals here and abroad. Hill said the UNIA, which Garvey first founded in Jamaica two years before coming to the U.S. and which he launched in New York in 1917, "took off like a rocket" between the November 1918 armistice ending World War I and the UNIA's first major gathering in August 1920, which drew some 20,000 participants to New York's Madison Square Garden.
The bulk of UNIA members and followers in this critical period were immigrants from British colonies in the Caribbean, who, bitterly disillusioned with the experience of British racism after patriotically serving in World War I, turned to Garvey and the UNIA. Many had worked on the construction of the Panama Canal and, following its completion in 1914, had flowed into the United States. Some 150,000 Caribbean natives are estimated to have worked on the building of the canal.
Caribbean nationals not only constituted Garvey's main body of followers, but they served as the primary vectors for disseminating the message of the UNIA. Within the U.S., Caribbean immigrants spread Garvey's reach by introducing his message to widely scattered communities outside of large African American population centers, including Detroit; Pittsburgh; Newport News, Va.; New Orleans; Charleston, S.C.; New Madrid, Mo.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Miami; Los Angeles; and Riverside, Calif. Meanwhile, Caribbean nationals spread Garvey's message throughout the West Indies and the countries of Central and South America, where they had been employed on the Panama Canal and on the railroads and banana plantations of the United Fruit Company, a U.S. conglomerate that specialized in the tropical fruit trade.
"Without the immigrant base, it seems unlikely that the Garvey movement would ever have arisen on the scale that it did nor as rapidly as it did," Hill said. "The two were symbiotic."
In fact, the UNIA's basic organizational structure was modeled on the "friendly societies" of the Caribbean. Caribbean immigrants brought these popular fellowship organizations with them to the United States, Hill found. Between the period of slave emancipation in the 1830s and World War II, these "friendly societies" formed the organizational bedrock of Caribbean society wherever these immigrants settled. Offering funeral and sick benefits, the societies served as gathering places, melding social and cultural needs with political organization. To attract followers, the UNIA adopted the same roles and became practically indistinguishable from these ethnic fellowship organizations.
"No matter where they lived, large numbers of immigrants from the Caribbean identified very strongly with the UNIA and with Garvey because the UNIA became a way of maintaining their cultural identity and connection with the rest of the Caribbean," Hill said. As a result, Garvey's efforts helped forge a common ethnic identity for immigrants from Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, Antigua, Grenada, St. Vincent, St Lucia, the English-speaking Virgin Islands and the Bahamas.
"Even though Garvey was from Jamaica, citizens of other West Indian territories identified in large numbers with him," Hill explained. "The Caribbean diaspora's new sense of ethnic unity forged in the United States became the launching pad for this amazing movement, as well as reinforced the wider sense of Caribbean identity."
Following his deportation from the U.S., Garvey returned to Jamaica, where he was involved in politics and sought but failed to get elected to the colonial legislature there. However, he succeeded in launching the English colony's first political party. Indeed, the most lasting impact of Garveyism was felt in the formerly colonial Caribbean, where his followers went on to agitate successfully for the establishment of trade unions, political parties and cultural institutions and, ultimately, for self-government. "Garveyism was the political spark that led the way forward and fed that transformation," Hill said.
Garvey's resulting impact created a long paper trail, enriching and complicating Hill's task. "Because the Garvey movement represented such a novel challenge to colonial rule, every territory in the Caribbean collected and carried out surveillance on the movement and on Garvey," Hill said. "So the archives in each territory had a copious amount of material that had to be collected, edited and annotated."
UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of more than 38,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 328 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
When I told Vox Sambou of the Montreal hip-hop collective Nomadic Massive I had an interview lined up with Emrical his face lit up. “He’s very….” The Haitian emcee paused and silently did his best Tommie Smith impression lifting a black power fist like the African American sprinter atop the podium at the 1968 Olympics.
Survey a few of Emrical’s tracks and you’ll quickly see that Vox isn’t joking. While his style bares a greater similarity to MC Solaar’s soft spoken lyricism than to Chuck D’s socially urgent anthems, listen closer and it’s easy to detect a simmering anger just bellow the surface. Indeed the Haitian-Québecois rapper is just as likely to dive into a heated debate about a community centre founded by the New Black Panther Party in the Parisian ‘banlieues’ (of which he’s in favour) as he is to pen introspective poetry.
Lately Emrical’s anger has begun to bubble over in a song called Reste debout, written to commemorate the third-year anniversary of the death of Fredy Villanueva, a teen that was shot by police in Montreal-North on August 7, 2008. It is a succinct and scathing critique of what Emrical considers a racist and inept police force, a justice system with no teeth, and local media who have distorted the Villanueva story from the beginning. He is also putting the finishing touches on Combien de morts?, which tackles racial profiling in Montreal-North, a low-income borough with a racially diverse population.
For the past three years Emrical (born Ricardo Lamour-Blaise) has been part of a core group of Montreal activists including Montréal Nord Républik who have supported the Villanueva family through a coroner’s inquest into Fredy’s death. He has also helped organize candlelight vigils to raise awareness around the issue. Despite all this, the MC has adopted the alias Emrical, found time to stay on his musical grind: In 2010, Emrical brought his act to Montreal’s Place Des Arts and grabbed the mike at Les Francofolies, one of Montreal’s premiere outdoor music festivals.
In addition, he released a haunting video for Mon rêve, a song that runs the gamut of social ills from racial tension to high rates of depression, and sees Emrical condemning the perils of an unexamined life in a fast-food society: “We jump into life’s activities without direction / We swallow without chewing and suffer indigestion.”
The opening shot of Mon rêve features the rapper kneeling in front of a headstone of a recently deceased friend in a cemetery blanketed in snow. As the video plays out, Emrical imagines an alternate history in which the young woman’s suicidal attempt is thwarted.
Although Fredy Villanueva is not directly referred to in Mon rêve, the grave could just as easily be his. April 6, 2010, the day the video was posted to YouTube, is also the day that the Honduran teenager would have celebrated his 20th birthday. Now, three years after officer Jean-Loup Lapointe fired on Fredy and a group of his friends in a park where some members of the group were playing dice, the Villanueva family is still awaiting the results of the coroner’s inquest.
To make matters worse, the Villanuevas’ elder son Dany may be deported to Honduras. On Wednesday, August 3, the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board ruled against Villanueva’s appeal in which his lawyer argued that he should be allowed to stay in the country based on humanitarian or compassionate grounds (mainly that Villanueva would be targeted by gangs back in Honduras).
While the decision to deport Dany Villanueva is based on his criminal record (Villanueva was charged with armed robbery in the Spring of 2006 and served an 11-month sentence that same year), Emrical agrees with Dany’s lawyers who say the timing is all too convenient. While these types of removal proceedings are generally initiated eight to ten months after a conviction, Dany received the news that he was to be sent back to Honduras in August 2009, more than three years after he was charged. Blaise is also quick to lash out at the Montreal media who he feels focused more energy on demonizing Dany than on the inquest into Fredy’s shooting.
In the following email interview Emrical cuts through the sensational headlines and gives me his raw uncut take on the Villanueva affair, Montreal-North, and his role as a politically conscious emcee.
Art Threat: What do you think of the Montreal Gazette’s recent coverage of the march to commemorate the third-year anniversary of Fredy Villanueva’s death?
“We are working part-time against a system that is strangling us full-time.”
Emrical: Some portions [of the article] are garbage: “A social worker who was there, and who works with youth in difficulty in the area, told a Gazette reporter that she found it ‘so sad’ to see children so young so full of hate for police.” It is indeed. Why is it sad? The kids are aware of the truth, that’s it! The sad thing is that the police did murder Fredy and wounded Denis Méas and Jeffrey Sagor Métellus. All this without punishment.
Dany is not a member of a street gang. We have no proof that Fredy was playing dice as mentioned. It’s police hearsay. [Quoting again from The Montreal Gazette] “The police aren’t perfect, and it’s going to take time for preschool kids in Montreal-North to stop calling police officers murderers to their faces.” What is that? As long as Fredy’s assassin doesn’t pay for his crime the kids will call a cat a cat and a dog a dog.
Tell me a little bit about the song you wrote about Montreal-North. When did you write it? What issues do you discuss?
The song is called Combien de morts?. I think our western systems are psychopathically cold on a certain level and I think that the lack of strong institutionalized mechanisms for introspection sends a very sad message. It’s “Shut up or die” at a certain point.
So this song is inspired by the events that caused Fredy Villanueva’s death. I’m working on the fifth version of this song and I’m never satisfied. There’s too much stuff to talk about and since I’ve been very involved in this situation, I feel like I have to make extra efforts to connect the dots artistically and emotionally on behalf of the people who skim over the news of Fredy’s death and the riots in Montreal-North that followed.
The aim of the song is to talk to those who don’t want to come to Montreal-North for various reasons, and have a strong crystallized opinion about the Villanueva affair.
How has Montreal-North changed since Fredy’s death?
Well, I don’t live in Montreal-North, but I know for a fact that there are way too many cops patrolling that area. There are solitudes between the wealthy folks on Gouin Boulevard and the less fortunate ones in the “hood”. This remains the same.
There’s also a lack of consensus between the community organizations. It’s nothing like St-Michel, another Montreal neighbourhood that has suffered from the presence of youth gangs and racial profiling. Some organizations are forgotten while some are seen as the reference to explain the ailments of the youth. The problem is that these very community organizations act as if the youth were the ailment, as they try to temper them just like cops. Do they want the kids to smile broadly while police chase them out of parks, parking lots and off the street corners?
“Do they want the kids to smile broadly while police chase them out of parks, parking lots and off the street corners?”
Sometimes, you can spot initiatives to implement basketball games between police and citizens. They want kids to go with police officers hand in hand while Fredy Villanueva’s face can’t even be painted on a public building. It’s as if his name was a taboo. His memorial (a decorated tree behind the arena at Parc Henri-Bourassa) is constantly sabotaged.
Montreal in general suffers from a lack of vision. They will build an arena in Quebec before they will connect Montreal-North to downtown Montreal via the metro. They will build a Université de Montreal campus in Laval before they will open up campuses in popular areas. What a shame. The only thing that stays and sometimes grows is the number of people with black skin and white masks who work for city hall. I have nothing in common with them besides the melanin of my skin. They aim for integration. I aim for restoration.
The Villanueva shooting was a catalyst for the creation of grassroots citizen groups like Montréal-Nord Républik. Have you seen any signs of progress?
We are still in the fight and we are rarely approached by those in power. We have to make random appearances in a way that makes it kind of impossible to refuse dialogue. When those folks are campaigning they will speak with a rat.
Besides that, you have to be a little naïve like me in order to keep on creating opportunities for dialogue. There was no progress as some of my colleagues were arrested in the G20 summit held in Toronto and had to do the impossible to make Hoodstock 2010 (a social forum in Montreal-North) happen.
We are working part-time against a system that is strangling us full-time. Some of the Montréal-Nord Républik leaders keep quoting American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” This motivates us to keep going.
In August 2009, Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay called veteran police officer Gilles Deguire the perfect candidate to help build a united and strong community in the borough. How would you rate Deguire’s performance?
I give Deguire a perfect 10. He is who he has been asked to be, a screensaver with a perfect hairdo. Denial was and still is his profession. I always wanted Will Prosper (one of the founders of Montréal-Nord Republik) to run for mayor, as I thought that the momentum was great, but I know that some think that the system cannot be changed from the inside, but that it has to be uprooted. My only question is: Since the universe does not like what is empty, what are we proposing instead?
How do you respond to those who say that despite his role as a key witness in the coroner’s inquest into the death of his brother, Dany is a criminal who should be deported?
The only reason we know Dany is because of what happened to his brother. Oh, the other reason why you still hear about him is because he is not a Canadian citizen. Dany will be killed if he returns to Honduras. His family receives death threats. He has paid his debt to society.
Last year, he was arrested in Repentigny on the night of April 15th. His brother Fredy was born on April 6th. People should do the math. How can you find peace, sleep and freedom when the media portray you as a criminal and as responsible for the death of your little brother? The strength that this gentleman has is singular. If the wealthy cynics could just extend a hand for full rehabilitation instead of trying to choke him into a corner, I think it would be constructive for all of us.
As a socially conscious artist do you find yourself at odds with other musicians who produce art that doesn’t question the status quo?
I think that who we are as artists and human beings is not always far from who we were as kids. We asked numerous questions. We each had a way of doing it. I have this in-your-face style because my sensitivity tells me to rap a certain way and talk about certain things. If everybody around me used the same tone, I’d probably be different.
The clip "Le Meilleur Du Monde" of French rapper TLF and French R&B singer Corneille is nominated for the French "Trophées des Arts Afro-Caribéens (FAAC)" ("Afro-Caribbean Arts Awards") in the category Clip of the Year 2011. The awards ceremony will be held on September 12, 2011 in Paris France. You can vote for your favorite artist at the website of France Ô at http://participer.franceo.fr/lestaac/
2012 National Writing Contest in Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, and Poetry
$15 Entry Fee
*** $1,000 First-Place Prize ***
Postmark Deadline: October 1, 2011
Our annual contest awards $1,000 plus publication for the first-place winner in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Finalists will be noted as such in our journal, selected for publication, and paid in copies. $15 entry fee, checks or money orders payable to Alligator Juniper. Every entrant receives one copy of the 2012 issue, a $10 value. The issue will come out in late spring 2012. There is no theme for the 2012 issue. Work is selected upon artistic merit. By entering our contest you agree to allow us to select your work for publication even if it does not place first. We encourage submissions from writers of all levels, especially emerging or early-career writers. We accept simultaneous submissions; please inform us in your cover letter and contact us immediately if your work is selected elsewhere.
Submission Guidelines
Submissions accepted August 15 through October 1, 2011 (postmark deadline)
--NO EARLIER OR LATER SUBMISSIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED, nor will they be returned.
Include a brief cover letter, including the statement below (see "Important").
Include S.A.S.E for response only; manuscripts are recycled, not returned.
Include a $15 entry fee payable to Alligator Juniper for each story or essay (30-page limit per entry), or up to five poems.
Additional entries require additional fee.
Indicate category with a large F, NF, or P on cover letter and mailing envelope.
Manuscripts must be typed with numbered pages. Prose double-spaced.
Double-sided copies encouraged.
No email submissions.
Send to: Alligator Juniper, Prescott College, 220 Grove Ave., Prescott, AZ 86301.
IMPORTANT: Unfortunately, due to recent problems with misinformed entrants and withdrawals, we ask that you include the following statement in your signed cover letter: “My work may be considered for publication, even if it doesn’t win the contest. This signed statement constitutes permission for publication if it is selected.”
Selection Process
All entries are read and discussed by Prescott College students in the Alligator Juniper practicum class. This class is overseen each fall by two faculty members, both of whom are published writers, one a poet and one a prose writer.
All entrants receive a personal letter from one of our staff regarding the status of their submission. We usually inform in late January. The individual attention we devote to each manuscript takes time. We appreciate your patience.
