Books

The Raw Man

by George Makana Clark - review

An unforgettable epic of Zimbabwean history

Helon Habila

The Guardian, Sat 4 Jun 2011 00.08 BST

George Makana Clark's Rhodesian epic should come with a bold warning: not for the fainthearted. In the first chapter the main character, Gordon, a scout in the Rhodesian army, is taken prisoner by rebel soldiers. The POW camp is a Hades-like underground copper mine where the men are forced to work and live, surviving mostly on the flesh of their fallen comrades. And then there is Gordon's father, also called Gordon, passing for white, who kills his daughter with a pillow because her skin is atavistically dark. As if that is not enough to contend with, the plot is arranged in reverse chronological order.

And yet, once the reader has gone past the first chapter – no, first page – his chances of putting down the book are small: a story-ghost prowls the halls of this book, dragging the reader through its 12 doors, never letting go until the tale is told. It oscillates between realism, fantasy, folk tale, mythology and history. It is set against the Zimbabwean war of independence, from the 1960s to the establishment of black majority rule in 1980 – but the story began long before then.

The main character, the younger Gordon, is only one quarter black, his family passing for white, but his soul is 100% African, and a sense of his mystical connection to the land is one of the things that lends The Raw Man its power. He is a blood reader, an art he inherited from his Xhosa grandmother, which she herself acquired after "dying" and coming back a second time. "Long ago, when people first came into the world, they could read all manner of things in blood. But they grew squeamish at the sight and had no stomach for the unpleasant things they found there."

She made some money giving blood readings, and with it she bought the whorehouse where she grew up; when she died, her children, fair-skinned Alexander Gordon, named after his English father, and his darker-skinned sister, Mahulda, carefully uprooted the house, walls and doors and all, from St Anne Street in Cape Town and "reassembled it in a forgotten glen in the highlands of Rhodesia where no one knew its history". The siblings live in the same house, but because of her dark skin, Mahulda lives as her brother's servant, keeping his secret sealed in her heart.

The story captures liminal characters at a liminal moment in Zimbabwe's history. It is set in a symbolic "never-never country" where the novel's amazing and sometimes puzzling array of characters make their entries and exits. Alexander Gordon and Mahulda's neighbours include the Very Reverend, founder of the Independent Anglican Church of Manicaland, "which is not in communion with the See of Canterbury, and the Very Reverend answers only to God and the Prisons Department". The Very Reverend's rebellion is of course an echo of Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence against British rule in 1965. The Very Reverend has established his headquarters in this particular glen because he is convinced it is the site of the Biblical garden of Eden, the centre of the world. The Very Reverend runs a house of correction for boys, where the younger Gordon is an inmate for a while. Daily the boys ride over the glen on horses, hunting out snakes from the bushes, trying to tame the land: a manoeuvre mirroring the Rhodesian military chasing rebel fighters across the border into Zambia.

There is also the cremator, Mr Takafakare, and his daughter, the silent Madota, who will eventually bear Gordon a daughter, thus symbolically defeating the older Gordon's ambition to make his family white. The younger Gordon discovers he can read blood, just like his grandmother. But his total acceptance of his African heritage happens when he returns to his ancestral village and takes part in an initiation ceremony that turns him from "a raw man" into an adult. Makana Clark seems to be saying that the true essence of a man, his true story, is more than skin deep; it resides in the blood.

Publishers often make ridiculous claims in their authors' blurbs, comparing them to famous writers: Makana Clark has been compared to Coetzee and Conrad – as has almost every other African writer. They also claim "The Raw Man is a revelatory work of fiction, and one that is impossible to forget." It is.

Helon Habila's latest novel is Oil on Water (Hamish Hamilton).

“Viva Riva”

Gets A Red-Band Trailer.

Watch It Now!

In my review of Djo Tunda Wa Munga’s crime drama, Viva Riva!, I highlighted the film’s audacious depictions of the kind of orchestrated sexuality and violence rarely seen in African cinema (specifically cinema of the DRC - the Democratic Republic Of The Congo, where such scenes are taboo).

The below red-band trailer which just surfaced, really only teases the breadth of the film’s unapologetic raunch and brutality, despite being a red band trailer.

I had the pleasure of chatting with director Djo Munga earlier this week, and he was thankfully very expressive; I’ll have that interview for you all shortly. In the meantime, check out the red-band trailer below.

It opens in US theaters on June 10th, next week Friday, and in UK theaters on June 24th:

tambay posted to Trailer

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Black Music Month 2011:

The Thom Bell Sessions

by Mark Anthony Neal

 

When Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, it put again placed a focus on the legacy of “Philly” Soul. The success, in recent years, of Philadelphia based acts like Boyz II Men, Jill Scott, The Roots, Musiq, Eric Roberson, Jaguar Wright, Kindred the Family Soul and of course the timeless presence of Patti Labelle has helped give the very idea of Philly Soul contemporary cache. But all too often memories of the classic days of Philly Soul fail to recall the impact of Philly based doo-wop acts, which featured high-pitched lead vocalist and many of the forgotten musicians and producers that gave the city its signature sound.

 

At the height of their power, Gamble and Huff managed Philadelphia International Records (the groundbreaking black boutique label) and presided over a music publishing company known as “Mighty Three Publishing.” The third member of that triad was Thom Bell, a stanchly independent, Caribbean bred musician and producer who always resisted joining the Philly International’s camp. Instead Bell chose to free-lance giving him the liberty to work with artists that he wanted to work with. The product of that independence are definitive Soul recordings from The Delfonics, The Stylistics and The Spinners. Here’s a playlist of some of the best of the Thom Bell Sessions:

 

“La-La (Means I Love You)”—The Delfonics (1968)

“Can You Remember?”—The Delfonics (1968)

 

The Delfonics were the first Philly Soul group that Thom Bell had regular success with. They would never reach the super-group status of groups like The Stylistics and The Spinners, but like their New York City based peers The Main Ingredient, they were the quintessential East-Coast Soul harmony group of the late 1960s. “La-La (Means I Love You)”, co-written with William Hart, from the Delfonics album of the same title, is just timeless, from the simplicity of the lyrics: “Now I don’t wear a diamond ring and I don’t even have song to sing, all I know is la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la…la mean, I love you,” to the earnestness of lead singer William Hart’s soaring falsetto. “Can You Remember?” was a product of the same session. The genius of both songs song was not lost on a young Michael Jackson—a big fan of Hart—who recorded a handful of Bell compositions including “Can You Remember?” on the Jackson Five’s first Motown recording Diana Ross Presents and “La La” on The Jackson Five’s ABC (1970) recording.

 

 

“People Make the World Go ‘Round”—The Stylistics (1971)

 

As would be a regular occurrence with Bell, once he did all that he could with a group, he would move on to the next challenge. That next challenge was Russell Thompkins, Jr. and the Stylistics. Thompkins, who is one of the most legendary falsettos of all time, fit perfectly into Bell’s Philly-Soul sensibilities. What Bell was able to bring into the mix (literally) that he didn’t with The Delfonics were lush arrangements. With new writing partner Linda Creed in tow, the Stylistics recorded a string of classic recordings including, “You Make Me Feel Brand New,” “Betcha by Golly Wow” and “Break Up to Make Up”. Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin and Al Green, notwithstanding, Bell’s work with the Stylistics in the early 1970s was the definitive Pop-Soul sound of the era—a sound you hear a generation later in the work of Antonio “LA” Reid and Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds. But I always go back to that very first album, when the stakes were less, and find the brilliance of “People Make the World Go Round.” Powerful and subtle social commentary (with the winds of change literally blowing in the background) with an insurgent energy that aimed to find the human connection of it all. The song was never more powerfully employed than in the opening segment of Spike Lee’s period piece Crooklyn.

 

 

“You Are Everything”—The Stylistics (1971)

 

“Today I saw somebody who looked just like you/she walked like you do/I thought it was you/As she turned the corner/I called out your name, I felt so ashamed, when it wasn’t you…” Damn. Thom Bell wrote those lyrics only a short time after mistakenly believing that he saw someone he knew in the street. These lyrics to again highlight how Bell and Creed often took simple everyday experiences and turned them into lyrics and melodies that just tugged at the heart. I mean damn, who hasn’t thought they saw a long lost boyfriend and girlfriend walking across the street or on a passing subway train and then spent the next hour lamenting about what could have been?

 

 

“I’ll be Around”—The Spinners (1973)

 

When signed to Motown in the late 1960s, The Spinners were little more than an afterthought. After a still youthful Stevie Wonder provided them with the gift, “It’s A Shame” in 1970, the group bounced to Atlantic (sans co-lead vocalist GC Cameron) with Philippe Wynne joining Bobby Smith on lead vocals. As the story goes, Atlantic offered Thom Bell the opportunity to record any act on their roster (which at the time included Donny Hathaway and Aretha Franklin) and he choose The Spinners. The rest is history, as the B-side of the first Spinners/Bell single, “I’ll Be Around” can still be heard on cell phone commercials 35-years after its release. Classics like “Could It be I’m Falling in Love,” “Mighty Love” and everybody’s favorite mama song, “Sadie” would soon follow.

 

 

“Mama Can’t Buy You Love”—Elton John (1979)

 

On the surface, Elton John and Thom Bell seem like an odd pairing, but John was a big fan (like David Bowie) of American Soul music, and the Philly Sound in particular; John’s 1975 classic “Philadelphia Freedom,” was in part a tribute to Mighty Three. Though the so-called Thom Bell Sessions did not result in a full album—Bell and John reportedly butted heads in what was John’s first session minus writing partner Bernie Taupin—a 12-inch featuring the hit “Mama Can’t Buy You Love, which was John’s first hit in three years. The full Thom Bell Sessions, with six completed songs was released in 1989/

 

 

“Silly”—Deniece Williams (1981)

“It’s Gonna Take a Miracle”—Deniece (1982)

 

One of the reasons that Bell desired to be more of an independent producer, was the often failing health of his wife; as the professional pressures began to mount, Bell left Philadelphia for Seattle, working much less frequently. One artists who compelled him to return back to the studio was Deniece Williams, one time backing vocalist for Stevie Wonder. Williams had experienced moderate success, most notably with the single “Free” from her debut This is Niecy (1976), before Bell joined her to work on My Melody in 1981. That session produced the now classic “Silly.” Bell and Williams reteamed a year later for Niecy, which produced the cross-over hit “It’s Gonna Take a Miracle.” The song was originally recorded by the Royalettes in 1965 and later by Laura Nyro and Labelle, in a session that was produced by Bell’s Mighty Three partners, Gamble and Huff. The song earned Williams her first Grammy Award nomination.

 

 

“Old Friend”—Phyllis Hyman--Living All Alone (1986)

 

Bell’s writing partner Linda Creed was diagnosed with breast cancer in the late 1970s and as Bell began to retreat from day to day activities in the recording industry, Creed sought other writing partners, including Michael Masser, with whom she wrote “The Greatest Love of All” (initially recorded by George Benson, but a major pop hit for Whitney Houston in 1986, the same year that Creed succumbed cancer. In the backdrop of Houston’s success, the late Phyllis Hyman released her career defining release Living All Alone, which included one of the last major collaborations between Creed and Bell, with “Old Friend.”

 

 

Posted by MAN

Watch “5 Deep Breaths” The Short Film That Helped Launch Seith Mann’s Directing Career

Since we chatted with him during last night’s podcast, I thought I’d reintroduce (or introduce those who haven’t yet seen) Seith Mann’s impressive 20-minute short film called 5 Deep Breaths - his NYU MFA thesis project in 2002, which helped launch Mann’s career, directing several notable television shows – notably episodes of HBO’s hit, The Wire.

Some of the short film’s accolades: premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival; it was one of 4 American shorts selected to screen at the Cinefondation Competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival; It won the Best Narrative Short Film award at the 2003 Los Angeles IFP/West Film Festival. Filmmaker magazine named Mann one of their 25 new faces of independent film in 2003. And the IFP gave Mann the Gordon Parks Awards for Emerging African-American Filmmakers; and there’s a lot more.

Television producer Robert F. Colesberry saw Five Deep Breaths, and introduced the other producers of The Wire to it. The producers approached Mann and asked him to shadow their directors during production of the third season in 2004. And 2 years later, in 2006, Mann joined the directing crew of The Wire’s fourth season, and later went onto helm episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, Cold Case, Entourage, Friday Night Lights, Heroes, and many more shows.

Mann has been working on a feature film script titled Come Sunday, which would be his debut. The script won two development awards (the Emerging Narrative Screenwriting Award and the Gordon Parks Award for Screenwriting) from the IFP in 2004. Most recently, Seith was hired to adapt and direct the graphic novel MISS: Better Living Through Crime, which, as he told us, is still in the works, with a last draft of the script shipped off to the production company, which will be followed by the search for talent and financing. Spike Lee is executive producing that by the way.

So, watch 5 Deep Breaths below; it’s split up into 2 parts (we’ve featured it on the site twice in the last 2 years, so it shouldn’t be foreign to some of you. You’ll also recognize at least one of the faces in this (above), who went on to an acting career of his own.

Part 1:

Part 2:

tambay posted to Shorts,

Watch “The Way of All Flesh”

Documentary On

“The Immortal Life of

Henrietta Lacks”

I’m currently reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks; the non-fiction book by Rebecca Skloot, which Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films will adapt into a feature film for HBO, as announced about a year ago.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of Lacks, a poor African America Baltimore mother of five who died of cervical cancer in 1951 at age 31, and whose cancerous cells from her body, removed and cultured for medical research by doctors at Johns Hopkins (without her family’s knowledge), led to “significant breakthroughs in medical research, ranging from aiding the development of the cure for polio to AIDS-related treatments.”

But that doesn’t even begin to really uncover the story of this mostly unknown black woman, her family, and the contributions she unknowingly made to science. I’m about 1/4 through the book, so still a long way to go, but, thus far, I’m hooked! There’s a lot of meat here, a lot I didn’t know before I started reading it, and I can see why Oprah would be interested in making a film based on Lack’s story, and aftermath.

The book was published in February of 2010, so it’s still relatively fresh, and I encourage you to pick up a copy if you haven’t.

I would say more, but I want to finish reading it, which I hope to do in the next week, and then I’ll post one of my book-to-film review entries.

Oprah reportedly loved the book so much that she “couldn’t put it down,” and read all 384 pages in one sitting. The adaptation was said to be high on HBO’s priority list, thanks to her encouragement. But, as of today, no word on how far along in the production process the adaptation is; I’d assume it’s been given to a screenwriter to adapt, which could take some time:

In the meantime, I learned of this old documentary on Henrietta Lacks and her so-called “immortal cell line.” It’s titled The Way of All Flesh. I haven’t watched it all yet (I only found about it this morning), but I’m told that it’s not comprehensive, and shouldn’t be relied on as a sole source. Consider it a companion to the book.

It’s 55 minutes long, and embedded below.

tambay posted to Preview, Watch Now

The Tenth Glass Woman Prize reading period is now in effect, from March 22, 2011 through September 21, 2011. 

 

GUIDELINES FOR The tenth Glass Woman Prize:  

The Tenth Glass Woman Prize will be awarded for a work of short fiction or creative non-fiction (prose) written by a woman. Length: between 50 and 5,000 words. The top prize for the tenth Glass Woman Prize award is US $500 and possible (but not obligatory) online publication; there will also be one runner up prize of $100 and one runner up prize of $50, together with possible (but not obligatory) online publication. 

Subject is open, but must be of significance to women. The criterion is passion, excellence, and authenticity in the woman’s writing voice. Previously published work and simultaneous submissions are OK. Authors retain all copyright is retained by the author. 

There is no reading fee.  

Previous winners are welcome to submit again for any subsequent prize.

Submission deadline:  September 21, 2011 (receipt date). Notification date: on or before December 21, 2011.  

The winners will be announced on this web page. Submissions will not be returned, rejected, or otherwise acknowledged except for the winner and results announcement on this web page. I promise that every submission will be read with respect and with commitment to the voices of women in this world. 

Only one submission per person per submission period, by email, with "Glass Woman Prize Submission" in the subject line and the text pasted in the body of the email (no attachments!*) to:

glasswomanprize(AT)gmail(DOT)com

IMPORTANT:  

-    "Glass Woman Prize Submission" in subject line
-    Text in body of email
-    Please put your email address in the body of the email as well

 

I will regretfully ignore and delete submissions of anything other than specified above, for example: submissions with any kind of attachment*, more than one piece of writing in a given prize reading period, more than 5,000 words, poetry, plays, or submissions without "Glass Woman Prize Submission" in the subject line of the email. 

*Please note that some fancy email stationery comes across as attachment; almost all illustrations come across as attachments; please do not use them in connection with the Glass Woman Prize.

Call for Papers:

The Queerness of Hip Hop

(Palimpsest Journal of Women, Gender and the Black International)

 

Deadline: 15 December 2011

Call for Papers for a One-Day Symposium at Harvard University and Special Issue of Palimpsest, A journal of Women, Gender and the Black International

Conveners/ Editors: Scott Poulson-Bryant and C. Riley Snorton, Ph.D.

Harvard University Symposium

September 21, 2012

Abstracts due December 15, 2011

As Queer Theory has developed as a discursive space in which to investigate and find intellectual engagement with issues of citizenship, nationalism, globalism, and race, hip hop studies has increasingly become an important site of the study of sexuality, gender and the body.

"The Queerness of Hip Hop/The Hip Hop of Queerness" project seeks to make a critical intervention in both areas of study by placing the fields alongside each other. In other words, “The Queerness of Hip Hop” looks to engage the ways that queer theory can (re)frame various disciplinary approaches in the rapidly growing field of Hip Hop Studies. One of the main goals of the project will be to focus on the emergence of Queer Theory as a viable analytic in the academic areas of hip hop cultural studies and African American cultural production while also and conversely examining hip hop's roots in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender activism and intellectual growth.

We are particularly interested in scholarship that makes use of cross-disciplinary approaches that sustain attention to both the discursive linkages and slippages that may result from bringing hip hop epistemologies to bear on contemporary queer theory and queer canonical texts. Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

- hip hop’s queer historiography
- queer iconography in hip hop music videos and performance
- hip hop’s queer aesthetics
- sampling and remixing as queer sonic promiscuity
- hip hop and gender performance
- style and fashion as modes of hip hop discourse
- queer readings of specific hip hop productions, personalities and performances
- queer Diaspora/ hip hop Diaspora

Submitted abstracts will be considered for inclusion in both the special issue of Palimpsest and the symposium. All submissions will be acknowledged by January 1, 2012 and decisions will be made by February 1, 2012. Essays must be previously unpublished work, and symposium participants are required to pre-circulate their essays with other panelists. Please submit 300 word abstracts, CV, and contact information to Scott Poulson-Bryant and C. Riley Snorton via queernessofhiphop@gmail.com.

Contact Information:

For inquiries: queernessofhiphop@gmail.com

For submissions: queernessofhiphop@gmail.com

Website: http://www.palimpsestjournal.com/

 

 

Kindly mention that you saw the announcement/ ad on Writers Afrika.

 

Critical Ethnic Studies: An Anthology

Call for Papers

Rather than attempting to pose and answer the question, "What is critical ethnic studies?," this anthology seeks to catalyze a more wide-ranging set of critical problems for emergent scholarly work and new forms of knowledge. Building on longstanding critiques of race, imperialism, and capital in ethnic studies and related fields, some broadly framed key conceptual questions for this anthology include: Is it necessary to rethink and reframe some of the central – even taken-for-granted – analytical and theoretical rubrics of ethnic studies, such as "race," "gender," "sexuality," "citizenship," and "class?" How do long histories of multiple, incommensurable racial genocides (e.g., land conquest, racial slave trade, militarized extermination) constitute the historical present? How do we apprehend and theorize the persistent systems and structures of gendered racial violence, on the one hand, while attending to the resilience of political agency and transformation, on the other? How can we rethink the question of (racist/state) violence in rigorous and creative ways, neither reifying nor pathologizing it, but asking instead how a violence of condition produces a condition of violence? What do notions of the "subaltern," "collective," "popular," and "multitude" mean in a white supremacist and settler colonial formation such as the U.S.? What is the relationship between critical ethnic studies and related emergent fields, such as critical prison studies, queer ethnic studies, and settler colonial studies? How can we create the conditions and framework for the ongoing appreciation of marginalized yet dynamic modes of critique, contestation, and inquiry within (and across) various fields, such as: critiques of sovereignty and recognition within Native and Indigenous studies; anti-Blackness as an analytical rubric within Black studies; debates about the politics and theorization of Asian settler colonialism within Asian American studies; and critiques of First World privilege and mobility within (U.S.) queer of color studies?

We invite essay submissions on a wide range of topics that may include but are not limited to the following:

• Race, colonialism, and capitalism
• Warfare and militarism
• Theories of violence
• Settler colonialism and white supremacy
• Critical genocide studies
• Cultural studies, the politics of aesthetic and cultural practice
• Critical feminist epistemologies
• Queer ethnic studies
• Decolonization and empire
• Social movements, activism, insurrection, and revolution
• Immigration and labor
• Multiculturalism and colorblindness
• Critical race studies
• Critical legal studies
• Liberationist epistemologies
• Critical ethnic studies, undisciplinarity, and relationship to other fields
• Professionalization, praxis, and the academic industrial complex
• Relationship between racism and environmental justice movements
• Sovereignty, the nation, and the nation-state
• Ethnic studies in relation to past and current eras of the privatization, corporatization, and defunding of the university
• Tension between institutionalization and movement-building in ethnic studies
• New frameworks for the comparative analysis of differential racial histories, e.g., immigrant and indigenous histories
• The erotic and sexual outlaw
• Academics of color and the erasure of class privilege

Submission Deadline: January 31, 2012
Word Limit: 4,000 - 6,000 words including notes
Format: Word document with citations in Chicago Style
Email Submission to: cesanthology@gmail.com

Abortion Saved My Life

Posted by: karnythia

 

May 24th, 2011

So, there’s this lawmaker out of Kansas who has lots to say about abortion. He’s currently best known for saying that women should plan ahead in case of rape and not expect their regular insurance to cover an abortion if they want one after being assaulted. And we could spend a lot of time going around about the flaws in his logic, or even hashing out when life begins, but really this post isn’t about any of that. This post is about the idea that anyone besides the pregnant woman should get a vote in what she does with her body after finding out about a pregnancy. For a host of reasons we as a society seem incapable of accepting bodily autonomy in women. This is reflected in the existence of street harassment, rape culture, and the million efforts to dictate whether or not women can control their own reproductive health. This attitude that women are shirking responsibility by opting out of having unwanted children has always boggled my mind.

But then I’m a mom, and I would never want my kids to grow up an unwanted child like I did. I love my kids more than I could ever explain & I do my best to give them the childhood I never had. Because I love them I had an abortion at 20 weeks. It was my 5th pregnancy (I had two miscarriages while I was trying to conceive my sons), and as it turned out my last. It was troubled from the start, I didn’t experience any of the normal indicators of pregnancy, so I found out when I was already 10 weeks along. No missed periods, in fact I was seeing an OB/GYN who specializes in treating fibroids and endometriosis in part because of the increased heaviness of my cycle. When we found out (that standard pregnancy test before surgery is necessary after all) I talked it out with my husband and we debated aborting (I got as far as the clinic), before ultimately deciding that we would try to make it work. My doctor advised me right off the bat that she wasn’t certain of a good outcome and that my pregnancy would be very high risk. I did exactly what she said in terms of taking it easy, because I wanted to give that child the best possible chance.  But the intermittent bleeding wouldn’t stop and I knew that there was a high chance that I would not be able to carry to term.

I was taking an afternoon nap when the hemorrhaging started. Laying in bed with my toddler napping in his room, and waking up to find blood gushing up my body is an experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone. The placental abruption that my doctor had listed as a possibility was happening and I was going to have to do my best to take care of both of us. Mind you, my husband was at work and my not quite 2 year old sure couldn’t dial 911 for me so I had to make it to the phone & make arrangements for the sleeping toddler as well as his older brother before I could leave the house. I’ll spare you the gory details of my personal splatter flick, but suffice to say by the time I got to the hospital I probably needed a transfusion.

We all knew the pregnancy wasn’t viable, couldn’t be viable with the amount of blood I was losing, but it still took them hours to do anything, because the doctor on call didn’t do abortions. At all. Ever. No one on call that night did them in fact. A very kind nurse risked her job to call a doctor from the Reproductive Health Clinic who was not on call, and asked her to come in to save my life. Fortunately she was home, and even more fortunately she was able to get there relatively quickly. But by the time she got there I was in bad shape. Blood loss had rendered me borderline incoherent, an incredibly ignorant batch of students were fascinated by my case and more interested in studying me than treating me (one had the audacity to show me the ultrasound of our dying child while asking me if it was a planned pregnancy), and then there was the fact that I was on the L & D floor listening to other women have healthy babies while I bled out and the baby I had been trying to save died in my womb.

When the other doctor got there she had me moved to a different wing, got me painkillers (we were many hours into my hospital stay, and no one had bothered to give me anything for the pain despite my screams every time they decided to push on my abdomen or examine me for student edification), and then after checking my labs told us that I would need two bags of blood before she could do anything. Her team (a cadre of students who should all go on to run their own clinics) took turns coming in to check on me and my husband. They all kept assuring me that soon it would be over, and I would feel much better. My husband had to sign the consent for surgery (there was no question of me being competent enough to make decisions), and they took me away along with a third bag of blood to be administered during surgery.

What I didn’t know until much later was that the doctor took my husband aside while they were taking me back. She promised him she would do her best to save me, and then she warned him about the distinct possibility that she would fail. See, that doctor who didn’t do abortions was supposed to have contacted her (or someone else) immediately. He didn’t. His students didn’t either. Because I was their case and they weren’t done with me yet. Or something. Ostensibly there was a communication breakdown and they thought she had been notified, but given the talk about writing a paper on me that I do remember happening over my head? I doubt it. I don’t know if his objections were religious or not, all I know is that when a bleeding woman was brought to him for treatment he refused to do the only thing that could stop the bleeding. Because he didn’t do abortions. Ever.

My two kids at home were going to lose their mother because someone decided that my life was worth less than that of a fetus that wasn’t going to survive any way. Mind you, my husband told them exactly what my regular doctor had said, and the ER doctor had already warned us what would need to happen. But, none of that mattered in the face of this idea that no one needs an abortion. You don’t know what a woman who decides to abort needs, and you shouldn’t need to know in order to trust her to make the best decision for herself.  I don’t care why a woman aborts, all I care is that she has access to safe affordable healthcare. I don’t regret my abortion, and I will never extrapolate my situation to mean that the only time other women should abort is when their life is at stake. Why? Well after the news hit my family that I’d aborted I got a phone call from a cousin who felt the need to tell me that I was wrong to have interfered with God’s plan. In that moment I understood that the kind of people who will judge a woman’s reproductive choices are the kind of people that I don’t want to be.

__________________________

That's the street name... The Bitch Who Knew She Owned The Moon

			08:45 pm June 2nd, 2011

		The storm seems to be dying down. I got some Twitter comments & such but today was much quieter than yesterday. No doubt courtesy of the Internet's short attention span & Stanek's lie being so obvious. This is my first experience with going viral & I have to say I don't recommend it. On the up side, I have a greater faith in a specific section of humanity than ever before, though umm...I really do wonder about some folks. Feminists who I have critiqued in the past on various points came out in force to stand by me, folks who love me stood by me, people who only kind of know came out swinging, & some complete strangers saddled up too. It was amazing & kind of horrifying at times. Because they were bringing facts & logic to a conversation that hinged on propaganda and hate.  These hardcore prolife women would insist that babies can survive at 20 weeks (despite that never happening in the history of recorded healthcare), or that a hysterectomy was better than an abortion, or some thing else equally illogical. And they'd insult folks & then get butthurt when people stopped listening to them. It was just some of the goofiest behavior ever. And it was like logic burned them or something. Especially the ones who object to social programs, contraception, & abortion. Apparently poor women are just supposed to be incubators for the wealthy or be content sans sex. Some of the people saying the most ridiculous things to me over the last few days claim to love life. But they sure seem to hate women. Not just WOC (though there is a lot of racism in the hate), but all women. Poor, well off, middle class, young, old, single, married, you name it? They hate it.  I know more than a few pro-life folks & they've always kept their stance relatively quiet. I see why now, because OMFG I would not want to be identified with these people. And funnily enough my pro life friends have never favored making abortion illegal, for them it has always been about making it unnecessary by making it possible for every pregnancy to be a wanted pregnancy. I remain pro-choice, but I have so much more respect for sane pro lifers now. I can't imagine trying to fight that kind of hate inside a movement along with trying to advance it. I'm blogging across two platforms. Feel free to comment here or there. You decide! Tags: thinking thinky thoughts I'm feeling...:  contemplative 21 curious souls / Are you a curious soul?

			09:46 pm June 1st, 2011

		I decided to turn off comment emailing for a while. They can scream into the aether or at each other or whatever, but I'm tired of looking at hate & stupidity. People keep saying I'm brave, but I don't feel brave. I want to cry & pack up my family for a vacation & a dozen other things that don't include another week of this shit. But, I can't avoid reality entirely so I'm just going to do what I can to take care of myself emotionally while this all plays out. I really really appreciate all the support I've gotten from you guys. I'm blogging across two platforms. Feel free to comment here or there. You decide! Tags: adulthood is hard I'm feeling...:  exhausted 52 curious souls / Are you a curious soul?

			01:09 pm June 1st, 2011

		Attack Of The Cult Of The Fetus Aside from a willful refusal to read past Stanek's misleading headline (I never admitted embellishing anything. Because I didn't embellish anything. But hey, keep letting Stanek lie to you instead of reading for yourself.), I'm getting the same few criticisms leveled at me in the spam comments over and over. Apparently I'm cold, not graceful enough in my response to the attacks by Stanek & her followers, and too angry. Also, if I were telling the truth I'd act just the way the commenter demands (that ranges from naming the doctor to filing a lawsuit to publishing my medical records to not talking about what happened to me at all to providing them with a platform to blogging how many tears I cried), and all I can do at this point is roll my eyes and wait for the trolls to figure out that I'm not going to be bullied.  Stanek's lies about me aren't going to become the truth no matter how many times she plasters her delusional interpretation of my words on any site that will accept them. People that claim to be pro life demand to know why I didn't just die that day instead of having an abortion to save my life. Others insist major surgery (that is what a c-section is for the record) was a better option than the abortion. Fascinating how many people claim to be medical professionals and then display a complete lack of medical ethics in trying to prescribe treatment for a patient they've never seen. I'm 99.9% certain that most of the people making demands would swear they were acting this way out of concern for their cause or my kids or some other batch of buzzwords that masks the reality of their hatred for women. I suspect my race adds a layer to the conversation (I'm also getting lots of comments about knowing my place which would be upsetting if it wasn't so ridiculous), but then this wouldn't be the first time misogyny and racism have intersected in the life of a WOC. So, once more the new folks who will undoubtedly be dropping by today. Stanek is attacking my experience to raise her profile. I can't stop her from doing that, but I'm not going to be bullied into pretending that I lied about the treatment I received. Nor am I going to pretend that this harassment is coming from any place but one of hatred. I'm blogging across two platforms. Feel free to comment here or there. You decide! Tags: going to war I'm feeling...:  awake 59 curious souls / Are you a curious soul?

			08:40 am May 31st, 2011

		In a fit of...something I decided to start a blog & podcast called Hood Feminism. Clearly, I have issues. Fortunately I have friends with issues, so a lot of other folks are going to join me in this wild endeavor. Stay tuned for further details of budding insanity guaranteed to bolster the impression that I'm a cold hearted bitch. So, it's Tuesday, it's hot as hell, how are you? I'm blogging across two platforms. Feel free to comment here or there. You decide! Tags: gallows humor you might not understand, going to war I'm feeling...:  awake 23 curious souls / Are you a curious soul?

			05:34 pm May 29th, 2011

My life is not your life So, I’m looking at some of the comments and emails that are flooding my inbox demanding to know all the inner workings of my life when I had the abortion that saved my life. And I know I don’t owe anyone an explanation, but there seems to be an ongoing assumption that I had tons of family support, disposable income in abundance, and that my two kids were self sufficient. At the time my oldest was 8 and my youngest was 1 1/2. My friends are supportive, and one of them stepped in to take care of my kids that night but I’ve never had the kind of family of origin that will pitch in to help me (or each other) with more than the most basic things most of the time. It was better before my grandmother passed away, but she’s been gone a while now and without her we’re not a close family by any stretch of the imagination. When I say my family will help, I’m mostly referring to my aunts or my husband’s family. My parents? They aren’t helpful. They got the phone call that I was in trouble while they were en route to St Louis for a televangelist’s convention. They suggested I call someone else to come get my kids, and then they continued their drive to St. Louis. I did get a phone call from my mother the night after the surgery. She was more concerned with me interrupting her weekend away than anything else as far as I could tell from the conversation. Admittedly I stopped listening after she launched into her latest version of ” This would be shocking, but this is the same woman that didn’t bother to name me and then got mad when I was 13 and filled out my own birth certificate with the name I’d been using at school instead of the moniker she’d always planned to saddle me with so I wasn’t shocked. It was the last straw for our already tenuous relationship, but that’s a story for another blog. On the disposable income front…at that point we were a one income family and just barely getting by on that one income. It was cheaper for me to stay home with our two kids (childcare costs in Chicago are astronomical), but that also meant we had very little wiggle room financially. So, there was no question of my husband taking off work for weeks on end to allow me to stay in bed all day every day. And while his family will help to their best abilities, they have their own households to run and must go to their jobs too if they want to pay their bills. Same thing with our friends. I don’t know where people live that folks can just stop working and keep living, but I don’t live there. Someone else asked why I didn’t take my kids with me to the hospital. Aside from not wanting to traumatize them, there was also the part where my oldest was at school. We lived close enough to his school that he could walk home, but having him come home to an empty house was not an option. Nor was waiting for him to get home since you know, I was bleeding profusely and all. My friend cleaned my blood off the walls and hid my sheets so that my son wouldn’t be scared. As for the demands that I have a c-section just in case a micro-preemie could have survived? You should go look at the survival rates for 20 week preemies again. Death wasn’t going to be averted, it was just a question of whether we both died. There seems to be this assumption that major surgery was a better idea than a less invasive procedure. Umm..no. The first thing discussed when I got to the hospital was the lack of viability for a child born at that point, then there was the part where I was in active labor & had no amniotic fluid when they did the ultrasound. But hey, go ahead and assume you know every detail of what was going on in my life so you can pass judgment on the decisions made by the person actually living it. Lastly, no I wasn’t paid by Salon or anyone else to write that post. It’s not fiction, and the title of my blog isn’t an indication that my nonfiction should be taken with a grain of salt. It is an indication that I’m a published author of fiction and non fiction. The idea that this was a publicity stunt is laughable. I don’t know what planet some of the folks making that comment are on, but on no planet that I work on is having a blog post about a tragedy a way to boost attention for a closed company. Yes, I said closed. Verb Noire is defunct and has been for some time. My writing career has been developing for years and really, I know enough people to have a good chance at selling the book I’m working on. Mind you, I wrote that post after an argument on Facebook with someone who insisted (as many people do) that abortion is not a medical procedure and that no one ever needs one. I posted it on my personal blogs & on a blog that I co write with several other angry black women. Most of my posts are made in a similar fashion. Most do not go particularly viral. This one has, and yes I did put myself out there when I agreed to let Salon re-post it. Not for an agenda, but simply to write what happened to me and talk about the fallacy in “No abortion is ever necessary” arguments. Did we file a lawsuit? No. I had a lot of other things to do (like mourn and heal) and the hospital staff that did eventually treat me encouraged me to go through internal channels so that patient care would be improved. I did that, and then for the sake of my sanity and my family I put away what happened to me and got on with the business of living my life. Some say I should name and shame the doctor that refused to do the procedure. If I knew why he refused I might have done just that, but since I know that there are many possible reasons that he did not do it? I’ve left him to deal with the internal procedures in place. Same thing with the hospital where this happened. I could name it (funnily enough many people have correctly guessed and more than a few remember me naming it when it happened), but I didn’t write this post to shame the hospital any more than I wrote it to shame the doctor. Hard concept to grasp for some, but this post wasn’t about revenge or money. It was about me coming to terms with what happened and about my disdain for a particular pro-life argument. Believe it, don’t believe it. That’s up to you. My life will go on either way. I'm blogging across two platforms. Feel free to comment here or there. You decide!

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