And I am enthralled by black artists and intellectuals who write about publishing, autobiography, slavery and the colonial. There is no greater sorcery than the alchemy of changing yellow manuscript and cold paper to red blood, black flesh, power in exile.
And I borrow Farah Jasmine Griffin words (who writes on the black artists and intellectuals specializing in music, music criticism and black popular culture):
Can’t nobody tell me that black girl media-making isn’t a necessary act of survival.
Can’t nobody tell me that we aren’t here despite the onslaught of academic and publishing institutions, the white literatti, the black literatti, and Western Civ itself.
We make #AntiJemimas out of the disparate parts of ourselves; legs, arms, hearts and nappiness stolen back from the dark. We do this like we breathe.
In a speech at Broome Community College in Binghamton, NY, Austin Kleon, poet, artist and author of Newspaper Blackout gave advice to artists and writers like himself.
Kismet Nuñez is a blogger, writer, student, teacher, researcher, historian, fangirl, lover, sister, daughter and everything in between. You can find her working cures at Nuñez Daughter (http://nunezdaughter.wordpress.com), making gris-gris in the WOC Survival Kit (http://wocsurvivalkit.tumblr.com) or twiddling her thumbs on Twitter (@KismetNunez). Her doppelgängers also roam the web, well-managed and well-fed thanks to the iwannalive production team.
Today in history, June 3rd, 1906... dancer, singer and actress Freda Josephine McDonald (aka Josephine Baker), who gained fame in Paris, France, thanks to her “risque” cabaret and musical hall performances, was born in St. Louis, Missouri.
While Ms Baker did perform on screen in a number of films - Siren of the Tropics (1927), Zouzou (1934) and Princesse Tam Tam (1935), notably - she’s probably more universally recognized for her vaudeville stage musical acts which helped her become maybe the first international black female celebrity.
She was also politically active, making contributions to the Civil Rights Movement here in the United States, and assisted the French Resistance during World War II, becoming the first American-born woman to receive the French military honor, the Croix de guerre.
She died on April 12th, 1975 at age 68.
Since then, there’s really been only 1 true attempt to tell her story on film - the 1991, HBO movie, The Josephine Baker Story, which starred Lynn Whitfield as Baker. Whitfield would go on to win an Emmy Award for her performance!
It’s been ages since I last saw that film; but, having been reminded of it thanks to this post, I’ll add it to my “to-see” queue, and revisit it.
While some critics are rightly noting the confusing and inaccurate message of Beyoncé’s new single “Run The World (Girls)” in the context of a world controlled by patriarchy, her song/video also raises the issue of how peoples, artists, and cultures from the global south are referenced and represented by artists from the first world. Several layers of referencing go on within this song/video, which makes this discussion a lot more complicated, lengthy and, at the same time, all the more necessary.
Please bear with me. This is an important conversation to have because of the ways in which this kind of sampling reinforces disparities of privilege and power. Furthermore, its important to note the ways that the profits and opportunities produced from this referencing are disproportionately transferred to people with white privilege or benefiting from larger structures of white supremacy.
I want to be upfront about my position as a white man from the United States. Recognizing my own privileges in this dialogue, I welcome critique and debate and I’m writing this in large part because I want to see what kind of conversation these issues can generate.
Beyoncé and the Ethics of Sampling
Beyoncé’s sampling from artists and cultures of the global south permeates this video. Her creative team saw a YouTube video of the kwaito dance troupe Tofo Tofo performing at a wedding in Mozambique and decided to reach out to them to choreograph and dance in part of the video. Frank Gatson Jr., Beyoncé’s choreographer, told MTV News that “It was hard finding them. They were really in a remote area; we had to get the embassy people involved. That was a process that took about two months or more. Beyoncé really loved them and I’m pretty sure we’ll see them again. It was magical.”
“Tofo, Tofo”
As “magical” an experience as this may have been for Beyoncé, its unclear what the experience was like for the dancers in Tofo Tofo. The MTV News interview with Gatson, Jr. offers the only information on them that’s available on the web. Nowhere are their names or backgrounds mentioned, let alone their opinions. Furthermore, as The Johannesburg Times notes, “While pantsula dance is nothing new to us Africans, it’s the first time that it has been given such exposure. I’m glad Beyoncé saw something great in them and the movement as a whole. But I wish the genre was as appreciated and respected here. Why do our artists always need the American/ European stamp of approval for us to value them?” We in the U.S. could also ask ourselves the same question: Why do we value third world culture only when its mediated via first world celebrity?
In one scene, Beyoncé is holding the chains of two hyenas, referencing the work of White, South African photographer Pieter Hugo and his photographs of Nigerian “Hyena Men.” This work has been stridently critiqued for the racialized and exotified undertones to his photography. This raises the uncomfortable issue of how so many images in Beyoncé’s video echo exotified, Orientalist representations of the third world (Africa and the Middle East in particular).
Gatson, Jr. explained that “The concept the team ended up settling on was a desert landscape ruled by two forces: Beyoncé and her supermodel minions and a very unwelcoming opposing army.” But these representations don’t take place in a vacuum. Particularly perplexing are the images of “Beyoncé and her supermodel minions” confronting phalanxes of riot police. Its unclear in what context we are supposed to read these images, particularly given the recent events of the “Arab Spring,” where protesters across North Africa and the Middle East have been facing the real life dangers of batons, water cannons, and bullets. Notably -in the context of Beyoncé’s video- many of the participants in these uprisings and revolutions have been Arab women who have fought for their freedom from repressive dictatorships. Many of these women have been met with violence, and even death.
Beyoncé’s audience is left wondering whether there is a clear reason for the imagery that she is using. While its possible to interpret these references as an act of solidarity with the protesters across North Africa and the Middle East, the contrast between the glamourized images of Beyoncé’s video and the violent struggles that those images reference seems disrespectful.
Furthermore, that lack of sensitivity for the experiences of women protesters actually undermines the ostensibly feminist message of Beyoncé’s song. Especially given that Beyoncé received $2 million to perform at a New Year’s party for the sons of Muammar Qaddafi, her politics on this issue are questionable. Though she eventually gave this money to Haiti earthquake relief efforts after the uprisings in Libya began, it seems hypocritical to incorporate this kind of imagery with such ease given her history here.
Ethar El-Katatney recently wrote an article (cross-posted on Racialicious), about a song by Sijal Hachem, a Lebanese singer whose video features “women as sexy riot police standing in formation behind barbed wire as men charge them”… “equating men standing up to their nagging wives with people revolting against dictatorships.” El-Katatney writes that “The imagery in the music video is disturbing on so many levels. To see scenes we witnessed in real life paralleled in a music video—of barbed wire, billowing smoke and burning tires and paper; of groups of men wearing masks to protect themselves from tear gas while holding sticks and rocks; and of state security standing in rows and hosing protesters standing peacefully with gallons of water—makes me shiver involuntarily. It was real, it was horrible, and it was traumatic.” Many of these same images also appear in Beyoncé’s video. What is their meaning there?
In thinking about these issues, its also important to examine the idea of “imperial feminism” discussed in Nadine Naber’s recent article “Imperial Feminism, Islamophobia, and the Egyptian Revolution.” Naber discusses the way that first world feminist demands for women’s rights intersect with U.S. geopolitical interests in the Middle East. Naber writes that: “Both rely upon a humanitarian logic that justifies military intervention, occupation, and bloodshed as strategies for promoting “democracy and women’s rights.” This humanitarian logic disavows U.S.-state violence against people of the Arab and Muslim regions rendering it acceptable and even, liberatory, particularly for women.” I wonder at what Beyoncé’s vision of women’s liberation implies when paired with these discourses over the “oppression of women by Islam.”
I’m not saying that Beyoncé’s video intentionally advances an agenda of Imperial Feminism, but that the very character of Imperial Feminism is that it takes a claim that is on one level liberatory -women’s rights- and grafts it onto a political project that in fact destroys the lives of those women, their families, and their communities. So no matter how earnest Beyoncé was in shaping the message of her video, that meaning is malleable depending on her audience. As an artist Beyoncé has the freedom to use whatever imagery matches her vision, but she should be conscious of the potential implications of that vision. Accordingly, does this video’s message subvert or provide sustenance to the imperial agenda that defines women’s liberation as military occupation?
Also striking is the way in which this trajectory of U.S. imperialism coincides with American cultural hegemony, or the way in which American popular culture has become global popular culture. In the video of Beyoncé’s recent performance of “Run The World (Girls)” at the Billboard Music Awards, she is introduced by such pop culture luminaries as Stevie Wonder, Lady Gaga, Barbara Streisand, Bono, and (not insignificantly) First Lady Michelle Obama. This leads into Beyoncé’s re-creating in live performance the music video to “Run The World (Girls)”, which weaves together an array of dazzling digital images, including lion and elephant heads (continuing in animal form the theme of third world inspired imagery). However, one of the most striking images was with the line “Endless Power”, where Beyoncé literally holds (an image of) the world in the palm of her hand. This serves as a powerful visual representation not only of the influence of superstars such as Beyoncé, but also of American cultural hegemony as a whole.
Interestingly, while Beyonce re-enacts the Tofo Tofo dance sequence sans Tofo Tofo (replaced instead by a legion of digitally replicated Beyonce’s), she does include a sequence with Les Twins, a French dance duo made up of brothers Larry and Laurent Bourgeois. Though its troubling that Tofo Tofo’s contribution was absent from this performance (no mention of them in Beyonce’s acceptance speech for the Billboard Millenium Award when she thanked her family, Destiny’s Child, and her husband Jay-Z), they were swapped out as Beyonce’s male backup dancers with Les Twins, two other dancers representing global hip hop culture.
Opening with the words “Power is ever present” echoing through the auditorium, this performance gives little thought the way that power plays out in this very song. Taking this statement at face value, under the guise of a feminist anthem, “Run the World (Girls)” speaks much more directly to the dynamics of power between first world artists and third world culture. But to really get at the racialized dimensions behind Beyonce’s latest mega-hit, its necessary to not only examine her music video and Billboard Awards performance, but also the song and video that “Run The World (Girls)” samples for its beat.
“Pon De Floor”: Major Lazer and the Representation of Black Bodies
“I was immediately excited because the dancing in the video was very much the kind of Dancehall I find fascinating, yet also complex as it is overly sexually graphic. Basically performers are reenacting some sexual activities on the dance floor, yet are doing so in a way that challenges our ideas of athleticism in dancing in this way. Another aspect of the video that I was excited about was that the women dancing were large bodied women. Some may even call them “fat dancers” yet for me their bodies were so much like my own it was as though I was watching myself dance…
My online searching led me to the shocking knowledge that Major Lazer is a fictional Black cyborg created by two White men, Diplo from Philidelphia (of M.I.A. fame), and Switch, from the UK who specializes in “House” music…
At the end of the day I kind of feel duped, hoodwinked, bamboozled. I fell for imagery that was crafted by outsiders to represent something meaningful that I valued as an important part of my Caribbean identity.”
My reaction to the video was different than Laureano’s. Before I saw the video I had followed the work of Major Lazer and knew that the group was composed of two white DJs. Watching the video, as a white person, I immediately felt uncomfortable because it seemed made by and for white people. That is to say it felt exploitative, racist, disingenuous, and totally uncritical of its own white gaze. The video was filmed by a white director (Eric Wareheim) for a group of white DJs. Though the vocalist on the track and the dancers in the video are all people of color and the song, as a Dancehall track, draws on a genre that originates from a community of color, it is interpreted through the gaze of white artists. Eric Wareheim had already created a similarly themed, but even more graphic video “Parisian Goldfish” for the group Flying Lotus and if the comments section of the Vimeo pages for both of these videos are any indication, the majority of the people watching them are white.
As Laureano points out, the Major Lazer project is itself a bizarre racialized fantasy where two white artists created a Black “cyborg” Major Lazer, who serves as their vehicle for representing Jamaican Dancehall culture to the world. What I question are the meanings conveyed when a predominantly white audience views this video and how it plays into racialized depictions of Black people as hyper-sexualized beings– stereotypes that go back to slavery and serve to reinforce characterizations of people of color as animalistic and inhuman (fundamentally Other and inferior to White people).
While “Pon De Floor” incorporates “Daggering” from Dancehall culture, the “Pon De Floor” video, as well as a subsequent one, titled “Major Lazer’s Guide to Daggering”, de-contextualize Dancehall as just another ironic commodity for white people to gawk and laugh at. Clearly these racist attitudes continue to this day (you need look no further than the YouTube comments sections to see this). So to play around with these hyper-sexual depictions of Black people in the name of hipster irony is not only confused but also dangerous. These images are not being controlled by people from the communities that are being represented. The lens is fundamentally different than if, for example, the video was conceptualized and produced by the women who appear in the video, and if they possessed the same level of creative control as Diplo, Switch, and the director Eric Wareheim.
“Major Lazer’s Guide to Daggering”
To highlight the importance of context in determining the meanings these images convey, it is necessary to understand where Daggering comes from. For example, A Newsweek article by Kate Dailey on “Daggering” quotes Jamaican DJ Jah Prince: “The majority of the time it [is] done with full disclosure to the patrons and only enacted by a hand few of ‘characters’ in the crowd.” Dailey writes, “‘Dancehall’ in fact, refers to music so suggestive that it could only be heard in clubs.” Dailey then quotes Annie Paul, a Kingston-based blogger who says “Jamaican society is extremely stratified, and people at the bottom are the core participants of dancehall culture… It is one of the few spaces and phenomenon they have control over.” The context that Dancehall comes from influences the meanings that the culture conveys. When “Pon De Floor” is posted on the internet and viewed by a majority white audience, those meanings change drastically.
And those meanings change even more live. This video interview with Diplo which showcases footage from Major Lazer’s SXSW showcase makes it clear that Diplo has no doubt about who his audience really is…
“Major Lazer Showcase at SXSW”
“We have this wild Daggering video *laughs*, its called “Pon De Floor”… anywhere you go, you can watch it. Its crazy and its just nuts. You can see it today, we’re gonna do it live. We have Skerrit Bwoy… You can expect a party that looks kinda like that video.” – Diplo
Major Lazer can’t be ignorant to the racialized dimensions of Black dancers performing a Daggering routine live in front of a majority white crowd. Diplo seems to glory in the irony of it all. But as with all minstrelsy, the contradictions do not diminish the racism involved. White artists presenting Black bodies as a sexual spectacle to a predominantly White audience is loaded with racism, however ironic it may be.
Diplo’s Relationship to Third World Artists/Artists of Color
Diplo (Wesley Pentz), even before Major Lazer, made a name for himself as a “musical Columbus” discovering the cutting edge of third world musical genres originating in some of the most impoverished and oppressed urban communities of color on the planet. He has been given credit for bringing introducing these styles to the global north, at tremendous personal success. Diplo, a former producer (and ex-boyfriend) of indie hip hop artist M.I.A. -producing her first mixtape “Piracy Funds Terrorism” as well as hits such as “Bucky Done Gun” and “Paper Planes”- is famous for bringing attention to the musical genre of Baile Funk (or Funk Carioca), originating in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The underside of Diplo’s rising success is his history of using the work of third world artists without attribution. This includes his baile funk mixes “Favela on Blast” and “Favela Strikes Back”, as well as the anonymous baile funk tracks he included on MIA’s Piracy Funds Terrorism mixtape, and the song Bucky Done Gun on MIA’s first album Arular, which reproduced without acknowledgement a beat from Brazilian funk DJ Marlboro. M.I.A.’s label later took steps to acknowledge DJ Marlboro (as well as Deize Tigrona, the MC whose song the beat was originally used for), and Diplo attempted to bring more attention to baile funk artists in Brazil through touring with some of them and even producing a documentary on Baile Funk called “Favela on Blast.” However, he continues to come under criticism for exploiting artists of color. This recently resulted in a heated twitter debate between him and DJ Venus Iceberg X (covered in a recent Racialicious post), a queer woman of color producer who played shows with artists signed to Diplo’s record label Mad Decent and noticed some of the shady patterns to Diplo/Mad Decent’s business practices. She called him out publicly after he tried to record one of her shows without permission. As described in another post on Racialicious, “Its Complicated: DJs, Appropriation, and a Whole Host of Other Ish”, Diplo has a pattern of using the work of artists of color who make music in the latest genre that he takes interest in and then leaves those artists behind as he moves on to the next genre that grabs his attention.
What will Major Lazer’s newfound mainstream success mean for all of the artists of color who Diplo has worked with who have not seen similar success? Diplo is now producing for some of the most powerful superstars in pop music. “Pon De Floor” was sampled not only for “Run The World (Girls)” but also for “Ass On The Floor” a Swizz Beatz produced track on Diddy’s Dirty Money album and Diplo recently co-produced Chris Brown’s hit “Look At Me Now.” Furthermore, Diplo recently starred in a BlackBerry commercial and continues to tour all over the world. In contrast, Maluca, an ex-girlfriend and artist signed to his label, recently released a video showing her life beyond the limelight. In the video Maluca contrasts appearing in fashion shows and touring as an opener for Robyn with qualifying for EBT and living with her mother. In the Fader article “Diplo Cannot Keep You Out of the Poorhouse”, the author zings Maluca for holding a Mud Truck coffee cup in her video, and in the comments section someone critiques her for showing up to apply for food stamps wearing a fur hat. But another commenter notes “In her interview with T Magazine she says that she doesn’t have a cell phone, so I think going out and buying a cup of coffee is a fair exchange. Just because she isn’t the poorest person in the world doesn’t mean she is not poor.”
What’s particularly complicated is that Diplo has placed himself in the role of ambassador and intermediary for an array of global hip hop genres originating in the global south (in particular Baile Funk and Dancehall). On the one hand, Diplo presents himself is as someone concerned with the well-being and success of the communities that he engages with. He claims to be committed to their development and has engaged in a number of projects that have brought considerable attention to artists and communities in the global south, as well as artists of color in the global north. He has worked on projects such as the “Favela on Blast” documentary on Baile Funk in Rio’s favelas and the Heaps Decent NGO that supports the development of indigenous hip hop artists in Australia. And certainly Baile Funk has received greater attention and audiences in the global north as a result of Diplo’s work. The same with Dancehall culture via Major Lazer. However, no artists in these communities have gained even a fraction of the mainstream success and attention that Diplo/Major Lazer has. Not. Even. Close. And if Diplo’s career continues to move in the direction that it has been going, that disparity will only continue to grow. Perhaps he will be able to bring increased attention to even more artists and will use his resources to support projects that create genuine impacts on these communities. I wonder, though, for how long and how deep will the impact be.
“Interview with Diplo”
“I’ve gotten a lot of criticism, from journalists mostly, and also other people who do what I do in America. I’ve tried to confront all of them because I think its really important to at least recognize that I’m a white guy from America and I can work under the guise that I’m a White guy from Mississippi, from Florida, I’m from a working-class family… [but] I have a passport and I have access to travel outside my country, which 90% of the world doesn’t have. Probably more. Doesn’t even recognize that they can do these things that I can do. So its important to confront that reality because it exists. I have the freedom to come to Rio and work, while at the same time almost all the favelados don’t have the freedom to leave the favela, or even have the notion in their mind that they’re capable of doing that because of the social aspects in Brazil…”
In this quote it seems like he understands that there are some serious imbalances in power between himself and the artists he works with in the global south. But what does it mean to “confront that reality because it exists”? And, really, what does that mean in practice, as in getting the people who came up with this music in the first place paid? It is significant that Diplo makes attempts to engage his critics, albeit in ways that are often cynical and dismissive. Perhaps this is just a publicity ploy, a learned tactic of leaning towards controversy, because of the resulting buzz. But Diplo doesn’t have to respond to these criticisms. No one is forcing him to acknowledge them, especially as he enters the rarified air of stardom. So it’s interesting that he continues to do so. It seems like a lot of his response is: What do you want me to do differently? That’s an important question for all of us who critique him. And a question that we should consider the answer to, not just when directed at him, but also when the answer is turned on ourselves.
Global Hip Hop: Creating the Alternative
Beyonce’s incorporation of Dancehall, as well as Kwaito through Tofo Tofo and “New Style” hip hop dance through Les Twins offers a glimpse into a more holistic, global hip hop culture. However, this global vision is still mediated through the work of a U.S. superstar. This is symbolic of the overarching global balance of power. However, while the U.S. still acts as the global center of media, music, and film, immense networks of media production are burgeoning across the global south.
It seems like Diplo wants to create networks, audiences, and opportunities for the communities he engages with. But so long as he is the necessary Western interlocutor for artists of color from the global south, I question how much will these artists and cultures actually be “represented” globally. Like other forms of Western “development” that created the very conditions of poverty that these musics and cultures exist in, Diplo’s brand of development reproduces the very inequality that it claims to solve.
Yes, Diplo plays a part in this and should be held accountable…but so should all of us. But what would it mean for us as consumers, fans, critics, and so forth, to genuinely support the work of artists from the global south, particularly women of color/queer artists (both in the U.S./first world and in the global south)? More specifically:
What kind of music do we buy?
Who do we spend our time writing about?
What kind of shows do we go see?
What groups do we ask venues and promoters to book?
If we’re involved in the music industry or the media, which artists do we focus on promoting?
In conversations with our friends, on Facebook, and other places on and offline, who do we talk about, recommend, listen to?
And…
What if we spent as much time supporting these artists as we do criticizing the artists who do the things we find problematic?
When it comes down to it, this conversation is much larger than Diplo or Beyonce. They are not the creators of the systems of oppression that they participates in (consciously or not). Diplo is not the first white artist to perpetrate cultural appropriation. Beyonce is not the first First World superstar to capitalize on third world imagery and culture. And they will certainly not be the last.
If global hip hop is this vibrant, then we—white people and people of color, celebrities and everyday people– in the global north need to help create genuine collaborations and infrastructures with these artists to get them paid instead of continuing to feed off the global south’s creativity.
Lagos, Nigeria's financial capital, is one of the fastest growing megacities on earth. Every day thousands of people arrive in the biggest city in Africa to start a new life and forge a new, better future. Many come from outside Nigeria.
Jean and Christian, both teachers, are from Benin. They came to Lagos to seek their fortunes and live and work in one of the most famous slums in Africa, Makoko. Here they take us on a journey of their adopted city, showing us the spirit of enterprise and survival that its residents need to make a living.
A canoe or a motorbike can make a huge difference, while those with a generator or those scavaging the rubbish heaps all try to get by in this tough, vibrant city.
Street Life in Lagos can be seen from Tuesday, May 24, at the following times GMT: Tuesday: 2230; Wednesday: 0930; Thursday: 0330; Friday: 1630; Saturday: 2230; Sunday: 0930; Monday: 0330; Tuesday: 1630.
Even if you're only a casual fan of reggae we urge you to check out Ghana's international reggae star Rocky Dawuni, one of the heavyweights we mentioned in our overview of the African reggae landscape a few weeks ago.
But you don't have to take our word for it, coz he just beat off competition from K'naan, Sunny Ade, 2Face Idibia and Angelique Kidjo to win the "Best African Artist" Award at the 30th Annual International Reggae & World Music Awards in Trinidad. (Give him a virtual high five on his Facebook wall.)
"Winning the Best African Artist Award is a great honour for me in terms of a broader recognition for my music. At the same time, It also brings me renewed inspiration and serves as a catalyst for me to aspire to break new musical boundaries," Rocky told This Is Africa.
Rocky's fusion of reggae, soul and traditional African sounds has gained him worldwide popularity and he's leveraged this to champion a range of social causes, serving as a personality for Product (RED), travelling on behalf of UNICEF and The Carter Centre, using his annual music festival - Rocky Dawuni Independence Splash - as a rallying point for his humanitarian and advocacy work on clean water, HIV AIDS, poverty eradication and girl child education issues, among other such activities.
Rocky also received a "Best Album" nomination for Hymns for the Rebel Soul, an album he crafted to reflect and articulate the common spiritual, political and social aspirations of ordinary folks around the world. The album has also received nominations from the NAACP (Image Award) and the Ghana Music Awards.
The Ghanaian star has some European and American spring and summer dates lined up, and we asked what fans can expect from the first of these in Hannover, Germany on the 12th of June:
"The fans at the June 12 show in Hannover should expect a powerful concert of inspiration and celebration at the show. My brand of Reggae and Afrobeat fusion will rock and uplift all who will be there." [Location: New Rathaus Platz. Rocky's on stage at 6pm, so don't be late coz you don't wanna miss this.]
Other shows include the much anticipated Hollywood Bowl concert with Stevie Wonder, Janelle Monae and Sharon Jones on July 24th, and the 13th August gig in De La Perriere, France with Shaggy & other special guests. Check Rocky's schedule for all dates and locations.
Submit one story per entry, 1000 words or less. Multiple submissions accepted.
To submit electronically: 1. Send submission/s to monkeypuzzlepress.prose@gmail.com / Subject: Flash Fiction Contest 2. Pay entry fee/s via PayPal (below)
To submit hardcopies: Send your submission/s and entry fee/s (payable to Monkey Puzzle Press) to: Monkey Puzzle Press PO Box 20804 Boulder, CO 80308 Attn: Flash Fiction Contest
All submissions must include the writer’s contact information on the first page: name, address, phone number, and e-mail address. Include a SASE if you would like a reply via USPS.
We won’t be judging stories based on any particular content or context, just send your best piece of flash fiction. For a flier, click here. For additional information, dig our website:
monkeypuzzlepress.com/magazine-submissions/
All entries will be considered for publication!
Contest Judge: Nicholas B. Morris, author of Tapeworm
The West Virginia University Press invites the submission of proposals for book-length fiction manuscripts from new, emerging, and established authors. Special consideration will be given to works centering on or connected to the Appalachian region of North America. We are open to different styles and genres of writing.
At this time we are not accepting proposals for historical fiction, children's fiction, and novellas.
Proposals should consist of the first two chapters of the work, together with contact information. Please send hard copies only. We will not accept e-mail attachments.
All submissions should be sent to:
Hilary Attfield Fiction Acquisitions West Virginia University Press PO Box 6295 Morgantown, WV 26506-6295
As part of events to mark the one year remembrance of the tragic death of Professor Esiaba Irobi, Loneranger Comprehensive Theater Services, Owerri, Imo State, has undertaken to sponsor the publication of Rhythms Through Cancer-an anthology of poems on cancer. The anthology will be dedicated to Ezenwa Ohaeto.
Interested writers are therefore invited to send in their entries through e-mail to lonerangerfilms@yahoo.com
GUIDELINES:
The subject column of the mail should be addressed (2011 Anthology: Poem)
Entries must not exceed 3 works.
Entries must be sent in a Microsoft Word attachment with a biography of not more than sixty words pasted on the body of mail.
The deadline for receiving entries is 31st July, 2011. Any work sent in after the deadline will not be considered
ABOUT THE POETRY ANTHOLOGY
The title is Rhythms through Cancer: an anthology of poems on cancer and cancer related issues
It shall have two editors comprising the main editor and a coordinating editor.
Each poem must not exceed hundred words. Contributors are expected to explore but not restricted to the following themes
1. The state of medi-care in developing countries 2. Healthcare and the fate of the Nigerian writer 3. Cancer in varying shapes and shades 4. Cancer around the globe 5. The writer, the exile, the doctor, and cancer 6. Cancer and effective cure: foraging into the future 7. Symptoms of cancer 8. Factors that promote the prevalence of cancer 9. Traditional African and Orthodox Western medicine: the struggle for the soul of cancer 10. Cancer, children and Gender issues
NOTE:
The editors reserve the right to either include or reject any work as they deem appropriate.
Contributors still reserve the copyright of their individual works and are free to use them for any other personal reason.
Rejected works will not be returned to their owners but deleted from the e-mail inbox.
The owners of works accepted for the anthologies will be notified.
Every contributor whose work(s) appears in the anthology is entitled to a complimentary copy.
Theresa Traore Dahlberg talks about her Swedish-Burkinabé heritage and her film Taxi Sister
Theresa, you grew up in Sweden and Burkina Faso, how have your experiences in these very different cultures shaped you personally and professionally?
I grew up with a mother from Sweden and a father from Burkina Faso. They met when they both received grants to study abroad at Washington State University. When they had children, my three brothers and me, the decided that they wanted us to grow up with both cultures. In Sweden we lived on the island Öland, south of the mainland, and in Burkina we lived in the capital, Ouagadougou. For me, I enjoyed having two homes in different countries, and it helped me to get a greater understanding and perspective of different cultures and values. Since I am so used to moving around, I have noticed that I am always travelling a lot, going from place to place. Working with film allows me to be mobile, and to explore my curiosity in different projects and subjects that I find important.
Taxi Sister, is your thesis film for your studies at the Royal Dramatic College in Stockholm, how did you choose the subject and location for the film?
I was on Skype talking with a good friend of mine, Valerie Traore who works and lives in Dakar. She mentioned the Taxi Sisters Project and immediately I became interested. I did some research and found out that today there are only 15 women who drive taxis in Senegal compared to the 15,000 male taxi drivers. I wanted to get to know one of the women drivers and explore her everyday experiences and to know more about why she made the choice to go against the norm and the consequences for doing so. Being in the film industry I could also relate to being a woman in a male-dominated profession. I also wanted to make a movie that was inspiring for women all over the world, and to give a different picture of a country in Africa, from what I am used to seeing in the western media.
Boury, the protagonist of Taxi Sister, is a fiesty and assertive woman, how were you able to get to know her and her life as a taxi driver?
I spent a lot of time with her on the phone before coming to Senegal. I talked to her while she was working, even when she had clients. Sometimes she would have to stop the call in order to collect the fare for the taxi ride. While there I had hours and hours of in depth interviews. I also spent time driving around in the taxi, though not filming, but just to get a sense of her daily routine on the job. The photographer and I were guests at her house a couple of nights during which time we got to know her family and her best friend Fari, who is also a taxi driver.
Your film has travelled quite a bit to many festivals, what has been the audience response to the film? Has it been screened in Senegal?
I am still working on arranging a screening in Dakar, hopefully it will be sometime this fall. But there are a lot of Senegalese people that have come to my screenings and they have all loved the movie. Even people who have never been to Senegal want to go there after seeing the movie. When it was recently screened in Italy, there was a great reaction by the audience: "In Italy we have a lot of Senegalese people selling things on the street, I would never have thought that they came from such a beautiful place. All I see on the news is war and famine”.
The film has been popular amongst women and men, young and old, and with feminist organizations. At the pre-show in New York there were a lot of young enthusiastic artists from all over the world. I am now looking for a distributor.
The film was screened at the CineAfrica Film Festival in Stockholm, what was the reception to the film in Stockholm?
In Sweden it received coverage in the largest newspaper and was actually on the cover. In addition, it has been reviewed in a lot of magazines, and has been the subject of discussion on the radio. The screening at the Festival was sold out and the reactions from people were very positive.
Taxi Sister by Theresa Traore Dahlberg
Future projects?
Yes. Lots of them, but I am developing them as we speak. I am moving to New york this fall, and hoping to be in Ouagadougou this winter.
Saturday night I was surfing the net when I finally read last week’s buzz worthy story of Janet Mock, the transsexual Associate Editor of People.com. Marie Claire’s June issue details Mock’s story in the beautifully written piece by Kierna Mayo, “I Was Born a Boy.” Janet Mock, born Charles Mock, describes knowing she was a girl as early as five-years-old. Throughout her childhood she struggled with her feelings of being trapped in a boy’s body. At 18, Mock’s dream came true when she traveled to Bangkok for her gender reassignment surgery.
Kierna writes in Mock’s voice:
Though I had been born a boy to my native Hawaiian mother and African-American father, I would never be a man. It was the birth of my choosing this time. And now it was official: Charles had died so that Janet could live…
There are key moments in a person’s life when you just know your destiny is about to change. For me, this moment came when Wendi, whom I remained friends with despite being in different schools, started taking female hormone pills. When she graduated to injections a few months later, she sold me her pills for $1 a pop. The timing was divine, as I’d already begun to detect a hint of an Adam’s apple on my throat. The changes in my 15-year-old body horrified me. Sometimes while showering, my thoughts got dark: What if I just cut this thing off? Wendi’s pills were my savior. For three months, I took estrogen and watched my body’s slow metamorphosis: softer skin, budding breasts, a fuller face.
Two weeks after her surgery, Mock attended college as a woman. She has since pursued graduate school as a woman, a career in journalism as a woman and she dates men as a woman. She lives with her boyfriend Aaron who she describes as a “gorgeous, astute, caring man.”
The journalist in me, or perhaps I’m just nosy, was curious to read what others thought about Mock’s intriguing story. Over on the popular celebrity blog Necole Bitchie, people went in. Comments ran the gamut of “this is disgusting!” to “live your life girl and be happy.” (Side note: the chick is gorgeous! Werk!) But one reoccurring theme that kept coming up among those who oppose her choice was religion.
Seventy-eight people agreed with the following commenter:
“I don’t care what ANYONE says anyone saying the gender they were born is incorrect has some issues in their head. May [sic] a chemical imbalance or something but God doesn’t make mistakes and I think this is disgusting especially the two puberties.”
A dissenter rebutted with only 25 approvals:
“Sadly people skip COMPLETELY over the part where God teaches us not to judge others. Because guess what? The same ones going to church every week saying how there [sic] so Godly and God speaks to them and they read the bible every night before bed are the very first ones to cast a stone and judge. IMO I don’t care if you’ve got a adams apple and a 5 o clock shadow if you want me to call you Susie, girl I’m gonna call you Susie, her, she, that woman. This is why so many LGBT’s are having high suicidal rates because it’s so much easier for people to blame, judge, and call names rather than to understand. Find me that passage in the bible that says we can judge rather than understanding our peers, elders, and youth.”
The dialogue continued on the thread totaling 300 plus very opinionated comments.
In my hometown everyone knew Asha was born a boy. It was no secret for those of us from the city. But people from all over the country, who moved to our city for college, had no clue. When I was in college we would laugh about Asha having so many men fooled, until the conversation turned serious. We expressed our fears that she would get killed one day for deceiving the wrong man.
Unlike Mock, Asha did not have a reassignment surgery. And she was not upfront with men about the sex she was born.
When I read some of the blog comments on Mock’s story I wondered why I was always on the fence about transgenders and transsexuals.
My views on homosexuals were lucid as sunny skies. I am an advocate for homosexuals to receive the legal rights and benefits of heterosexual married couples; and I have very little tolerance for homophobia. Period. I’m not of the belief that being gay is an abomination. I also don’t believe it immediately grants you a one-way ticket to hell. Yes, I’ve read the scripture. I’m familiar with Sodom and Gomorrah. And I’m still not convinced.
But when it came to the transgender and transsexual community I was always toying with why a part of me was apprehensive to accept them as the sex they chose to live their lives as. I used to think, ‘if you were born a female then you are a female pre and post surgery.’ And vice versa with males. It took my significant other to challenge my righteous thinking for me to really see the error in my thinking.
My reasoning had nothing to do with religion. It just was what it was. But in reading the vile, hurtful, holier-than-thou comments, I realized why people are turned off by Christians.
We have to stop claiming to know the will of God. “God doesn’t make mistakes” does not cut it when dealing with someone’s psychological belief they were born the wrong sex. There has to be more in depth discussions around such issues.
Janet Mock, never, not once, mentioned God. People who don’t believe in your God are not held to the same religious standards as you. You can’t make them accountable to a set of principles they don’t believe in.
If Janet does believe in God, ok. She made a decision that was best for her life. I don’t see how that affects or hurts any of us. Nor do I see that God made anybody on this earth the final judge to determine what is morally acceptable or unacceptable. Christians are doing a disservice to God (and Christianity) with their misguided interpretations of the very scriptures they use to condemn others.
Janet Mock’s reassignment gender story may be one you disagree with. But it is a story of courage. Determination. Happiness. With the suicide rate of teens and adults in the LGBT community, it’s a story that is necessary. For those teens suffering in silence, there’s a good chance her story will do something the same Bible being used to condemn may not- give hope to live. Mock, for the LGBT community, may be their light at the end of the tunnel. Preachy Christians shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss that with their interpretation of religious doctrines. And I say this as a believer.
Janet Mock has an enviable career, a supportive man, and a fabulous head of hair. But she's also got a remarkable secret that she's kept from almost everyone she knows. Now, she breaks her silence.
By Janet Mock as told to Kierna Mayo
PHOTO CREDIT: PERRY HAGOPIAN
The flight to Bangkok's Don Muang Airport felt far longer than I'd imagined. It was Christmas break during my freshman year at the University of Hawaii, and I was 18, anxious, and alone. After high school graduation, many of my classmates were throwing big graduation parties and buying new cars. Those kids went looking for good times and great memories, but I was desperately searching for one thing only: a chance to be in the right body for the first time in my entire life. I had traveled more than 6,000 miles to have gender reassignment surgery — a sex change.
At the arrival gate, I was greeted by two smiling nurses who assured me that everything was going to be OK. But I already knew that. I was the one who had lived with the sheer torment of inhabiting a body that never matched who I was inside, the one devastated by the quirk of fate that had consigned me to a life of masked misery. By the time I set foot in Thailand, I knew there could be nothing worse than living another day with a penis dangling between my legs.
Counting backward as the anesthesia took hold, I surrendered to what I believed with certainty would be a better future. And then, just like that, I was awake again. The sound of Muslim prayers rang through the air, echoing in my brightly lit hospital room. Even though I'd spent the last three hours on the operating table — I could already feel the first tinges of pain in my lower body — I felt completely reborn. Though I had been born a boy to my native Hawaiian mother and African-American father, I would never be a man. It was the birth of my choosing this time. And now it was official: Charles had died so that Janet could live.
Once, when I was 5-years-old, a little girl who lived next door to my grandmother dared me to put on a muumuu and run across a nearby parking lot. So I did. I threw it on, hiked it up in one hand, and ran like hell. It felt amazing to be in a dress. But suddenly my grandmother appeared, a look of horror on her face. I knew immediately that I had crossed some kind of line. After yelling at me, she banished me to our patio, where I played quietly with my sumo action figures for a while. I loved them because they had long hair, and they were the only "dolls" OK for me, a boy, to play with.
It didn't take very long before the social cues got louder and clearer. My parents started scolding me over the way I walked and held my hands. I learned to hide aspects of my personality. Playing with girls was fine, for example, but playing with their Barbies was something I could do only behind closed doors. After my parents split, my mom said my younger brother and I needed a strong male role model and sent us to live with our dad in Oakland, California. Stern and critical, my father couldn't accept how feminine and dainty I was in comparison to my rough-and-tumble brother. "Get outside and play!" he would bark. One time, I pretended to be a girl named Keisha — I wasn't dressed like a girl, but in my baggy jeans and colorful top and with my longish hair, I easily passed for one. A boy who didn't know me told my cousin Mechelle that he thought I was pretty. "Isn't she?" Mechelle said, playing along. She. It spoke to my soul.
It was my father who first dared to ask the question: You're not gay, are you? I was 8 and wasn't even sure what that meant, but I knew from his tone that it was unacceptable. "No!" I shouted defensively.
When I was 12, my brother and I moved back to Honolulu to live with our mother. Hawaii felt like another universe, and reflecting on it, I am struck by how much more open and accepting it was. The searing social issues there had more to do with locals versus "foreigners" (aka "haoles") than with kids like me. In fact, I even found other boys like me there, and I eagerly gravitated to them. Together we envied girls, their ability to express their femininity without shame; I admired the way their bodies bloomed and rounded out. Not mine. I was beginning to loathe my shapeless body, the straight lines and hard angles.
During recess one day, I met Wendi. A year older than me, she was part of a small, tight-knit group of transsexuals who went around town wearing makeup and skirts hitched up to the thigh. They congregated outside our school at night, where they practiced the dance routines of Mariah Carey and Toni Braxton. They were a revelation, and I was emboldened just watching them. Wendi lived with her grandparents, who supported her and allowed her to wear girls' clothes and makeup, a freedom I envied. I spent hours in her room, playing with her cosmetics, plucking my eyebrows, trying on bras. The more time I spent with Wendi, the more comfortable I grew expressing myself as a female. By the end of my freshman year in high school, I was regularly wearing women's clothes to school.
But the fallout was swift and merciless. Fag! I can see your balls! The insults reverberated off the lockers and echoed down the school hallways. Though I was never physically threatened and never feared for my safety, the harassment was relentless. Not a moment went by that wasn't accompanied by a taunt, a slur, a cruel reminder that my classmates could not, would not, see me as I saw myself. "You're making people uncomfortable," one vice principal said while he looked me over with disdain. Soon he gave me an ultimatum: Wear a skirt to school again and get sent home for the day. But it was too late to turn back. I liked how I looked as a young woman, even though it meant exposing myself to ridicule. After that, I held my head high as I strode through the hallways in my miniskirts, past the haters who called me a freak, past the teachers who looked on disapprovingly, and past the vice principal who routinely sent me home. By the end of sophomore year, my mother, who condoned my wardrobe, had had enough. Together, we decided it was time to transfer schools.
Though most of the students at my new school had heard whispers about my past, it was a much more open environment. There was even a Teen Center staffed with social workers who counseled gay kids. One of them joined me as I introduced myself to teachers as Janet and helped them get comfortable with calling me that name instead of the one listed on the attendance sheets.
There are key moments in a person's life when you just know your destiny is about to change. For me, this moment came when Wendi, whom I remained friends with despite being in different schools, started taking female hormone pills. When she graduated to injections a few months later, she sold me her pills for $1 a pop. The timing was divine, as I'd already begun to detect a hint of an Adam's apple on my throat. The changes in my 15-year-old body horrified me. Sometimes while showering, my thoughts got dark: What if I just cut this thing off? Wendi's pills were my savior. For three months, I took estrogen and watched my body's slow metamorphosis: softer skin, budding breasts, a fuller face.
But I knew that taking them without the supervision of a doctor was risky. I needed someone to monitor my progress. That's when I finally confessed to my mom what I'd been doing. A single, working mother, she didn't have the luxury or will to micromanage my life and allowed me to do what I wanted so long as I continued making honor roll. That was our unspoken deal. But the medical changes were different — she recognized that my desperation to be a woman was not just teen angst or rebellion; it was a matter of life or death. "If that's what you want," she said, looking me straight in the eye, "we're going to do it the right way." So she signed off on a local endocrinologist's regimen of treatments, which involved weekly hormone shots in the butt and daily estrogen pills. For the first time, I could visualize heading off to college as a woman, pursuing a career as a woman. No more dress-up, no more pretending.
PHOTO CREDIT: PERRY HAGOPIAN
While on these hormones, I lost my virginity at age 17 to a guy I met while I was working at a boutique. He knew my background but said he didn't care. Even though I trusted him, I couldn't relax and insisted on keeping the lights off. I was a woman with the wrong parts, and tried to cover myself up. After that awkward encounter, I knew that I could never share myself that way again. If I was ever going to finally feel at ease with my body, I had to have a total sex change.
I knew a woman, a friend of a friend, who had gone to Bangkok for gender reassignment surgery. She told me that it cost only $7,000, much cheaper than getting it done in the U.S. Though that was still an extraordinary sum of money for me at the time, I'd have paid any amount — nothing was going to keep me from my destiny. By year's end, I'd saved up enough to purchase my ticket to Thailand.
I spent 10 days in the hospital recovery room, doped up on pain relievers. During the operation, my surgeon had masterfully refashioned the tissue and nerves from my male organs to construct a vagina. Finally, every part of me made perfect sense. I didn't have to "tuck" anymore. Were I to change right next to you in a locker room, you wouldn't think twice about my body, wouldn't doubt for a second that you were in the company of a woman. A doctor signed off on my gender reassignment papers, enabling me to legally change the sex on my American birth certificate to female. With my male organ gone, I continued a reduced hormone therapy regimen, which was ultimately phased out six months later. If there was a secret now, it was mine to keep.
Two weeks after the surgery, I was in class at the University of Hawaii, finally focusing on something other than my gender. Four years later, I left Hawaii, a beautiful, confident woman armed with a journalism degree and bound for graduate school and a career in New York City.
I was 25 minutes late and racked with nervous energy for my first date with Aaron. We'd met at a Lower East Side bar — he didn't know anything about me when he approached me — and our connection was so intense that it scared me. He was good-looking but also, as I learned dating him over the next few weeks, an open and thoughtful person. I decided that if the relationship was to go further, if we were going to be intimate, I had to tell him my truth. One night at his apartment, I took a deep breath. "There's something about my past I need to share with you," I calmly said. "I was born a boy." I felt as though the words were made of concrete, and I waited to hear them crash loudly to the floor. Aaron looked at me with obvious concern, took my hand, and asked, "Are you OK?"
We spent the rest of the night talking. Slowly, I unpacked all the secrets and shame I'd been dragging with me all these years. He was braver than I could've dreamed. We didn't make love that night, but eventually we did, and I felt safe with him. Revealing my story to Aaron was about finally embracing my authentic self. Despite all the shit — the childhood spent fearing my father's judgments, the high school bullying, all those years mourning what I thought I could never have — here I was, in a blossoming relationship with a gorgeous, astute, caring man. After 10 months of dating, we moved in together, and I've never been more fulfilled.
Aaron is among just a handful of people who know about my unbelievable adventure. I have a thriving career as a Web editor for a very popular magazine. My coworkers don't know about my past, mostly because I never wanted to be the poster child for transsexuals — pre-op, post-op, or no op. But the recent stories about kids who have killed themselves because of the secrets they were forced to keep has shifted something in me.
That's why I decided to come out in the pages of Marie Claire, why I'm writing a memoir about my journey. It used to pain me to hear my birth name, a heartbreaking insult classroom bullies would shout to get a rise out of me. But talking and writing about my experiences have helped me finally accept the past and celebrate the fact that I was once a big dreamer who happened to be born a boy named Charles. I hope my story resonates with other big dreamers, lets them know that no matter how huge, how insane, how unreasonable or unreachable your goals may seem, nothing — not even your own body — can hold you back if you are certain and fearless and, yes, even a little ballsy in your quest.
In thinking about these issues, its also important to examine the idea of “imperial feminism” discussed in Nadine Naber’s recent article 
