DVD only  84 minutes, 2008,   Producer/Writer: Kristy Andersen, Director: Sam Pollard,  A Production of Bay Bottom News and American Masters

ABOUT THE FILM To celebrate Zora Neale Hurston's birthday, California Newsreel is streaming the entire documentary online for free. Watch the film here.   CRITICAL COMMENT "Does a fine job outlining Hurston's life and her near miraculous achievements, drawing on an unusually impressive and interesting group of talking heads." New York Times "An exhilarating portrait of an exhilarating woman, and a cut above the usual American Masters portrait." Newsday "[Finally] a high-quality documentary to demonstrate the complex and important life of Zora Neale Hurston. This documentary will be eye-opening to students." Lee Baker, Duke University "Continues the revival of interest in this free-thinker who in death has gained stature as a leading literary figure." Orlando Sentinel "Brings Hurston to life for old and new admirers. It shows us what she meant by the difference between 'those who live by quotation and those who live by life.'" Akua Duku Anokye, past chair, Conference on College Composition and Communications, National Council of Teachers of English SEND TO A FRIEND     Send this page to a friend       PRICING       College, Corporation, Gov't Agency:                  DVD $195.00                   $99.00 when you buy 5 or more titles!               High Schools, Public Libraries, HBCUs & Qualifying Community Organizations ONLY                  DVD $49.95                         Home Video - Restrictions Apply                 Not Available                         Educational Preview - Educational Institutions Only!                 Not Available                         Select a license and format and click "Add"                                   Winner, Best Educational Film at the 27th Annual Festival International du Film sur l'Arts Zora Neale Hurston, path-breaking novelist, pioneering anthropologist and one of the first black women to enter the American literary canon (Their Eyes Were Watching God), established the African American vernacular as one of the most vital, inventive voices in American literature. This definitive film biography, eighteen years in the making, portrays Zora in all her complexity: gifted, flamboyant, and controversial but always fiercely original. Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun intersperses insights from leading scholars and rare footage of the rural South (some of it shot by Zora herself) with re-enactments of a revealing 1943 radio interview. Hurston biographer, Cheryl Wall, traces Zora's unique artistic vision back to her childhood in Eatonville, Florida, the first all-black incorporated town in the U.S. There Zora was surrounded by proud, self-sufficient, self-governing black people, deeply immersed in African American folk traditions. Her father, a Baptist preacher, carpenter and three times mayor, reminded Zora every Sunday morning that ordinary black people could be powerful poets. Her mother encouraged her to "jump at de' sun," never to let being black and a woman stand in the way of her dreams. Zora's mother died when she was thirteen and for the next fifteen years she hustled, moving from place to place, taking odd jobs as a maid or waitress. Finally, at 28, she achieved her goal of entering Howard University where she began to write. In 1925, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, she arrived in New York "with $1.50 in my pocket and a lot of hope." Novelist Dorothy West, doyenne of that generation, remembers her as the self-anointed "queen" of the "niggerati," a term Zora coined. She became a close friend and collaborator of Langston Hughes, a Mid-westerner who found in Zora a link to the Southern black experience. Zora next entered Barnard, becoming its first black graduate and a protege of Franz Boas, the father of modern anthropology. He obtained a fellowship for her to document the disappearing folklore of the rural South. She returned to Eatonville with "a camera and pearl-handled revolver," launching her career as one of the leading ethnologists of African American culture. She recorded over 200 blues and folk songs with legendary ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress and filmed "religious ecstasy" in the "sanctified" churches of Beaufort, South Carolina with anthropologist Margaret Mead. Zora combined her skill as a trained anthropologist with an inherent respect for the syncretic culture formerly enslaved people had created in the Americas. Where some saw superstition and ignorance, she saw people creating meaning and joy in the few spaces left open to them by white society. Her ethnographic research lay the groundwork for the books and plays which secured her place as an essential voice in American letters. Zora was not ashamed to show everyday African American life, the life of rail yards, "juke" joints and the front porch of the Eatonville general store. Her work unabashedly embraced "incorrect" black English and celebrated the eloquence of its rhythms and rhetoric. Harvard scholar, Henry Louis Gates Jr, names her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, a classic because its use of black vernacular immerses readers in the consciousness of an oppressed people, exuberantly expressing their freedom, creativity and individual worth through everyday speech. While Zora's writing was by and large well received by the white press, it roused discomfort, if not outright hostility, from the emerging black intelligentsia. Her uncensored pictures of black life and speech, embarrassed some. Black writers were expected to confront their white readers with the injustice of racism as exemplified in Richard Wright's seminal novel Native Son. But Zora's work is notably absent of white characters; she refused to write "protest novels" portraying blacks as victims. In the film, biographer Valerie Boyd suggests that while Wright represents the angry, sometimes self-destructive, side of the African American character, Zora expresses the exuberant resilience of black culture. As the Civil Rights struggle gained momentum after World War II, Zora found herself increasingly out of step with her people. A boot-strap Republican and fervent anti-communist, she denounced the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education integration decision as "insulting to black people." No court needed to order white people to associate with her; bigots were simply denying themselves the "pleasure of my company" and the riches of African American culture. A turning point in Zora's life came when she was falsely accused of molesting two pre-adolescent African American boys. Although the charges were thrown out of court, she was pilloried in the black press. Devastated, even suicidal, feeling her reputation ruined, she claimed, "My own race has sought to destroy me." She lived out her life in relative obscurity and poverty in Florida. She died in 1960 at age 69 and was buried in an unmarked grave, leaving behind numerous unpublished works and seven out of print books. As the reassessment of America's literary canon has expanded to include the works of women and people of color, Zora Neale Hurston has been rediscovered. Alice Walker and Maya Angelou both recall how her work inspired their own while a younger generation of writers follow Zora's lead to speak in their own voices without shame. Chapter Listing 1. Eatonville 2. On to Harlem 3. Queen of Harlem Renaissance 4. Searching for Folktales 5. Voodoo/Hoodoo Culture 6. Mule Bone 7. Jonah's Gourd Vine 8. Mules and Men 9. Celebrating Common Folk 10. Magic of Black Language 11. Lomax/Documenting Black Music 12. Their Eyes Were Watching God 13. Filming Sanctifed Religion 14. Dust Tracks on a Road 15. Out of Step with Civil Rights 16. Rediscovery and Praise Kristy Andersen began her work in media with television stations in Florida, after which she worked for C-SPAN and the House of Representatives Recording Studio in Washington D.C. Her film credits include Bay Bottom Blues, and Sea Turtles Last Dance, for which she received an Emmy. Andersen currently runs her own production company, Bay Bottom News. Major Funding provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Ford Foundation, the Southern Humanities Media Fund, the Maryland Humanities Council, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and the National Black Programming Consortium. ZORA NEALE HURSTON TEACHERS' RESOURCES Zora Neale Hurston in the Classrooom "With a Harp and a Sword in My Hands" – a new publication from the NCTE Approaches to Teaching Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Other Works – a new publication from the MLA Edsitement – a selection of lesson plans made available by the National Endowment for the Humanities Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive – bibliography, criticism, multimedia and lesson plans made available from the University of Central Florida English Department Yale New Haven Teachers Institute – Lesson Plans Florida Memory Project - State archives and Library of Florida (including audio of Zora Neale Hurston) Visit the PBS film page for Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun American Masters Visit the Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress. An online transcript is available for this title.

2011 Contests

World's Best Short Short Story Contest
Send up to three short-short stories per submission, accompanied by a $15 reading fee. Each short-short story should be no more than 500 words. Include your name, contact information (email address preferred), and the title of each of your short-short stories in a very brief cover letter. Do not include personal identification information on the short-shorts themselves. Robert Olen Butler will judge. One winner will be chosen and awarded $500. The winner and nine finalists will be published in spring/summer 2012. Label envelope: WBSSSC.

 

The Southeast Review Poetry Contest
Send up to three poems, no more than 10 pages total, accompanied by a $15 reading fee. Include no more than one poem per page. Include your name, contact information (email address preferred), and the title of each of your poems in a very brief cover letter. Do not include personal identification information on the poems themselves. David Kirby will judge. One winner will be chosen and awarded $500. The winning poem and nine finalists will be published in spring/summer 2012. Label envelope: SER Poetry Contest.

 

The Southeast Review Narrative Nonfiction Contest
Send one piece of nonfiction, no more than 6,000 words total, accompanied by a $15 reading fee. Include your name, contact information (email address preferred), and the title of your submission in a very brief cover letter. Do not include personal identification information on the submission itself. Mark Winegardner  will judge. One winner will be chosen and awarded $500. The winning essay and two finalists will be published in spring/summer 2012. Label envelope: SER Nonfiction Contest.

 

General Contest Guidelines

All submissions must be typed and sent via snail mail. Make checks or money orders out to: The Southeast Review. Postmark deadline: March 15th, 2011.

Friends and current or former students of the judge and those who have been affiliated with Florida State University within the last five years are ineligible.

Please do not send an SASE. Winners will be announced on the website in June. All contestants will receive the issue in which the winning submissions appear.

Send all submissions to:
The Southeast Review
Department of English
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306

 

About Our Judges

Robert Olen Butler has published eleven novels and five volumes of short fiction, including two collections of short short stories. His newest book, as well, will be a volume of short shorts, Weegee Stories, forthcoming this fall from Narrative Library. In 1993 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He is the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. 

 David Kirby is the author or co-author of twenty-nine books, including the poetry collections The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems, The Ha-Ha, The House of Blue Light, and The Travelling Library, in addition to the essay collection Ultra-Talk: Johnny Cash, The Mafia, Shakespeare, Drum Music, St. Teresa Of Avila, and 17 Other Colossal Topics Of Conversation. His many awards include the Guy Owen Prize, the James Dickey Prize, the Brittingham Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Kirby''s latest book, Little Richard: The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll (Continuum, 2009), has been hailed by the Times Literary Supplement of London as a "hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense." Kirby is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University, where he has taught since 1969.

Mark Winegardner's books include the novels Crooked River Burning, The Godfather Returns, and The Godfather's Revenge; the short story collection That's True of Everybody; and the nonfiction books Prophet of the Sandlots and Elvis Presley Boulevard. His work has appeared in such magazines as Details, GQ, Playboy, and The New York Times Magazine, and he is a senior writer for The Oxford American. He is the Burroway Chair and Distinguished Research Professor at Florida State University.

 

Dark Moon Books presents:

Frightmares! Flash Fiction Anthology Series

FRIGHTMARES! Flash Fiction Anthology (Volume One) Flash Fiction seems to be the newest rage, so we figured we'd jump on the bandwagon. So let's see just how good of a writer you are! Submission to this anthology is open to all writers, published or unpublished as long as you hold the copyright to your story. The story style does not matter as long as it is a horror tale and does not exceed 500 words. Your ultimate mission? scare us! Here are the rest of the submission guidelines: DEADLINE: Submissions for Frightmares! will be accepted until the volume has been filled. We estimate a release date of Fall 2011 which means a closing date of approximately July 2011. (This, of course, depends on the quality and quantity of submissions.) PAYMENT/AWARDS: Flash fiction submissions which appear in Frightmares! will each receive a PDF copy of the anthology. But wait, there's more! ««« Five authors will be awarded cash prizes.««« Over $200 in cash and prizes will be awarded. The top four flash fiction stories will receive cash prizes and, in addition, a random drawing will be held with the names of all submitting authors. These prizes will be awarded upon publication of the anthology. 1st Place  - $100 2nd Place - $50 3rd Place  - $25 4th Place  - $15 Random Drawing - $50 (For promotional purposes, some flash fiction pieces may appear in future issues of Dark Moon Digest. If your Flash Fiction story is used in an issue of Dark Moon Digest, you will also receive a PDF of that issue of the magazine in addition to any future prizes or awards.) ENTRY FEE: There is no entry fee for submitting your flash fiction piece to Frightmares! Your flash fiction horror story must be previously unpublished in print format unless you still hold the copyright. (You must inform us if a story has previously been published and where/when it was published.) Online publication is fine as long as you hold the copyright and are not bound by exclusivity to any person, party or website. All flash fiction short stories must be submitted by the author holding the copyright. (If your story is not copyrighted, don’t worry. Copyright laws protect your work from the moment you began writing it. Check here for more information on copyrights.) Prior to publication, all authors selected for publication must sign a release stating that said flash fiction piece is their work and that Dark Moon Books will not be held liable if this statement is found to be false. Authors keep all rights to their work including the original copyright. Stories published in either the magazine or the anthology will carry notices which stipulate the copyright resides with the author. Please inform us if your story appears elsewhere prior to publication, especially if this effects your copyright or reprint permissions. Submissions cannot under any circumstances exceed 500 words! Title, byline and notes to the editor are not included in the word count. If your story is 501 words or more, it will not be entered into the contest. We will, however, inform you of the problem and allow you to re-submit if you so wish.  Please check your spelling and grammar carefully. You may withdraw your short story from consideration at any point, but this request must be made in writing (e-mail acceptable). Entrants selected for publication in either the anthology or an issue of Dark Moon Digest will be contacted prior to publication. Dark Moon Books reserves the right to edit submitted stories for content. However, all copyrights will remain with the original author regardless of edits. Due to the volume of stories we expect to receive, authors whose work is not used in either the anthology or an issue of Dark Moon Digest will not be contacted. You may, however, at any time inquire about your submission. HOW TO ENTER: Submit all entries via e-mail to frightmares2011@gmail.com" style="text-decoration: none;"> Frightmares2011@gmail.com as an attachment in either Word (.doc) or rich text format. Please use “Frightmares Anthology Submission” in your subject line. No queries are required. Include your name, address, phone number and e-mail address on the first page of your submission and in your e-mail please. Please use a serif type to format your short story. (i.e. Times Roman, Georgia, Garamond, Courier). Do not use headers or footers. Questions? Send them to frightmares2011@gmail.com"> frightmares2011@gmail.com

December 31, 2010

Three Caribbean men of verse:

Geoffrey Philp

Kei Miller

Christian Campbell

 

 

By Charmaine Valere

I spent most of 2010 featuring and reviewing works by women writers from the Caribbean. During that time, male writers from the Caribbean were consistently producing and publishing good work. So I thought it appropriate to end this year's posts with a spotlight on three of those men and their works, with more to come in 2011.

I have chosen writers and works based on my personal tastes and on the writers' successful efforts at garnering attention for their work via the internet (facebook, twitter, blogs, online journals). It's a trend I hope to see more of in 2011.

__________

 Dubwise, by Geoffrey Philp (Peepal Tree Press Ltd, 2010, 72 pp).

Of the 42 poems in Dubwise, all of which I found enjoyable for various reasons, the one I couldn't resist poking a pen at up close was "Summer Storm." It begins with a portentous, two-line condition: 

After thunderstorms have cleared the city,
after the homeless have abandoned their cardboard palaces,

 Whether it's a condition of abandonment or erasure, or a fresh start, what appears next is a fog, which acts in a manner worthy of pause:

fog older than Tequesta circles, Seminole arrowheads
and Spanish jars, dulls the sawgrass’s razor,

turns away from charted rivers,
slithers over the boulevard I could not cross

when the names Lozano and McDuffie rhymed
with necklaces of burning tires, and away

from churches with broken steeples that grow
more vacant each Sunday because their faithful

folded their arms while balseros floundered, boriquas
drowned, and neg joined their sisters and brothers

on the ocean bed. Yet something like music
rises from the sound of gull’s wings beating a path

over Calle Ocho, Little Haiti, La Sawacera, like bells
that echo over the Freedom Tower, bright as the final

burst of the sunset against billboards, gilding the sea
grapes’ leaves washed clean by evening rain.

 The old fog that appears in this post-storm condition of renewal and/or abandonment seems selective about where it goes and how it behaves. It "dulls," "turns away from," "slithers over," and seems to pass judgement on old and new problems associated with racism and apathy. And if there is judgement in the fog's action, then the "yet something like music" in the 7th stanza suggests redemption of sorts at the end of the poem. In these verses, fog, which we might typically expect to cover over things, leaves them exposed for condemnation (one might suppose). But the poem ends on a positive note of hope. It is a poem occupied with place--from Tequesta circle to Freedom Tower and all in between--very neatly and sparingly packaged in each two-line stanza. It may be the only plausible way of fitting large historical and contemporary geographical place into a small space, one might add.

 

This next verse--the second of three--also struck a chord with me, but it was mood that seduced this time, not necessarily the desire to poke at its lines. The speaker finds a certain time of day and/or frame of mind in which he or she can empathize with a woman who desires escape.

There are evenings like this
when I understand why she slipped
from this life, desiring neither hell
nor heaven, no longer wanting to carry
the burden of becoming someone else’s lover,
wife, mistress, to just fall asleep
and let dreams analyse
her choices: the bad ones
that in time would look like wisdom;
the good ones that led to the bedroom
pillow, the stifled screams.

The verse is a compact, evenly punctuated sentence and has a controlled, urbane look and feel, which may fit the speaker's reflective kind of evening setting. But that control is in contrast with the woman (the subject of the speaker's reflection) whose life seems to have unravelled, spun out of control. Yet there is an overall sense of peace in the lines that defies the unravelled life, and even the terror or surprise in the last phrase. 

 

The final verse I've chosen from Dubwise for this particular spotlight is the first one from "Calabash Poem." Its lines are prose-like in length with end rhymes which give it a light-hearted feel as it pokes fun at literary rivalries, literary challenges and paradigms.

It began innocently when Kwame, Colin and me was to read;
smady shout out, “Oonu cyaan write! Oonu mus a smoke weed!”
Then, a next one, “Do you know Latin or Greek? I doubt if you can even spell.”
We was on JBC-TV, so we couldn’t say, “Man, fuck off. Go to hell!”
Still, we couldn’t take it like that; we had honour, we had to save face.
I said, “We know we’re the best! Meet us on the field, any time, any place!
A week from now, a duel of scrimmage, three man to a side,
to prove the best writers in JA, or make it better, world wide!”
For nowadays you can’t judge a writer’s worth just by the size
of royalties, NEA fellowships or even the Pulitzer prize.
Nobody reads any more, and everything depends
on your agent or if you’re sleeping with your editor’s best friend.

__________

A Light Song of Light, by Kei Miller (Carcanet Press Ltd, 2010, 80 pp).

Since this isn't an essay, I don't have to find an appropriate transition to the next man in my line-up here. I'll just jump right into the 8th verse of Kei Miller's "Twelve Notes for a Light Song of Light," from his collection titled, A Light Song of Light.

It's a verse about transformation. And suggests that transformation is full of loss, full of uncertainty, and restrictive. On one hand the idea of a "light song" is in contrast with the heaviness of change, the idea being that transformation from one language to another, from one tongue or way of speaking to another, undermines one's ability to sing, or at least presents problems with fluency. 

On the other hand, you can hear the "sound" of a talk or tongue that the speaker is obviously comfortable with--a native tongue--and the speaker moves quite effortlessly back and forth between that native tongue and a more standardized English. The verse bemoans a problem that the speaker has found a way to resolve, at least for the moment.

 A light song of light don’t talk
the way I talk most days.
To tell the truth I never know at first
what this country was going do me --
how I would start hearing myself
through the ears of others,
how I would start putting words on a scale
and exchange the ones I think in
for the ones I think you will understand,
till it become natural, this slow careful way
of talking, this talk like the walk of a man
who find himself on a street he never born to,
who trying hard to look like nothing
not bothering him. And maybe nothing wrong
with a false talk like that, but that
is no way to sing.

 

This next speaker gives us a verse with a story which purports to tell the truth about Rolling Calf. This speaker appears to be very comfortable with colloquial language as he or she reverses the roles of good and evil:

Two bwoy with nothing but de devil
inside dem, a cricket bat in their hands

knock out de young bull but not hard enough.
He wake up somewhere between de hacking

through his back leg; and then mooing a sound
that draw poor people from their beds, he escape

into de night. A farmer turn to him wife
and say, I hear like a cow asking de moon

‘Why me, why me?’ De wife nod to say
is that she hear as well. So days pass

and gangrene take over, make de bull’s back leg
useless, make him walk a walk like him was dancing

dip and fall back. Then bitterness grow like a phantom
leg; him start to wait in bamboo patches

or under bridges, just to take revenge on anything
that look human. Listen -- de true story of Rolling Calf

is not that beast evil, but that man evil,
and every buck him get -- is him who cause it. 

 

And for final mention from Miller's  Light Song of Light is the 4th graph from a prose piece titled "A Smaller Song," which is dedicated to Thomas Glave. This one needs no preamble.

 Today a mother phones her son. Her mouth is sweet with gossip. She speaks of a man at the University of the West Indies who was not killed yesterday -- who was saved although, she says, he did not deserve salvation. Although his life had been made forfeit. Although the mob of angry students who chased him from a toilet where he was doing something the newspapers cannot print, made rightful demands of his heart and liver and all of his insides which were no longer his but theirs. Although the crowd reminded the guards into whose small room the man had run -- that nasty people like him must dead! And on the phone this mother agrees to her son that nasty people must dead. And in this moment, a son knows that his mother does not love him. Her words, to him, are like black pepper buried at the crossroads with his name on it. The son imagines himself, his small body delivered to the crowd of students, and then slaughtered. He imagines his mother humming over his corpse, a tune whose notes have stretched over wars and crusades, the song of crows, its melody as crisp as burnt flesh, the tune hummed by killing neighbours.

__________

Running the Dusk, by Christian Campbell (Peepal Tree Press, 2010, 64 pp).

 This first collection, published in the Summer of this year, is already storied with acclaim: shortlisted for the Forward prize for best first collection; winner of the best first collection prize at the Aldeburgh poetry festival in November of this year; and I can only imagine more to come....

The first verses I liked immediately are from "Oregon Elegy." Its informal opening lines pull you in to witty word-play and a wispy take on the adversely heavy dark subjects of race and lynching. The dark images cascade on each other almost effortlessly, ribbon-like, but are carefully measured into neat two-line stanzas, all the way to the powerful image of love at the end.

I once told a friend, who was going
to Oregon for Christmas with his girlfriend,

he’d be the only black person there
and, in fact, if you shuffle Oregon,

like a seasoned minstrel, it spells Negro
but with an extra O as if to make

a groan, nearly a shout, perhaps
a moment of fright: O Negro in Oregon!

He died laughing and told me
that’s word-lynching, and I wondered

if we could also lynch words,
string them up, sever them,

tattoo them with bullets and knives;
if we could hold a barbeque

for language swaying with the branches,
soon picked to silence by crows --

words soaked in coal oil
then set ablaze, a carnival of words

sacrificed over rivers, from bridges,
from trees, too-ripe words dangling

from branches just beyond our reach.
Like Alonzo Tucker in 1906,

shot twice, then hanged
from the Fourth Street Bridge

by two hundred men arched into one
white arm because (we wonder,

we know) a white woman said
he raped her. I want to tell my boy

blacks weren’t wanted in Oregon
at first, but what do I know, I’ve never

set foot on Nez Perce land where
exactly one hundred years after

Tucker, he could go west to one edge
of America because he loves

his woman enough to be
the very last Negro on Earth.

 

From The United States to Barbados, once again he gives us the inviting first-person opening line into a seductive scene:

I am here in Dover, in Christchurch, Barbados, with my woman
who is beautiful and waiting for me, who has always waited for me.
And when I return from my run, we will spend the day at Accra
Beach. Kamau Brathwaite said, “Barbados, most English
of West Indian islands, but at the same time nearest, as the slaves fly,
to Africa.” We will go from Dover to Accra with my woman’s friends,
two generations of bonda Ma Jacques pretty Dominican women
and I will tell them all that their beaches are nothing compared
to my pink coral sand and water like blue chiffon in The Bahamas,
baja mar, shallow sea. I will go the colour of molasses mixed
with bronze, the tone of a sweet, dark rum in Accra,
and we will all swallow the sun whole on Accra
Beach, near the hotel, in Little England, Little Africa,
in love with the skin on this second day of the year.

And lastly, three verses from "Goodman's Bay" (The Bahamas), one of which contains the unforgettable line: The swing creaks slow, like love in the morning. (Love it!)

We run the dusk
at dusk. Everything
is open and live
with silence. God,
there is too much
red in the sky!

You feel it when you run
the sand. All of it,
the whole of your body
in the world. The swing
creaks slow, like love
in the morning. God,
the night is so blue!

Walking back with our chests
blooming, I taste my sweat.
There are people dusting off
their feet as if dancing.
We pass a woman in a large,
damp T-shirt, nothing but salt.
We can’t see her face,
the smile or the frown, the hard
look of judgement. But the moon
is bareback and blind, and the ground
is an altar of piss and rum, and we know
somewhere on this split tongue of stone,
someone just died, just finished
making love.

__________

As always, if you'd like to receive a free copy of any of the three works in the spotlight, let me know here in the comments or by email: signifyinguyana[at]gmail.com. 

Thanks for your readership, and I wish you all the best in 2011 and beyond!

The Journal of Pan African Studies works to become a beacon of light in the sphere of African world community studies and research, grounded in an interdisciplinary open access scholarly peer-reviewed construct, simultaneously cognizant of the multilingualism of our audience, and the importance of universal access in cyberspace; regardless of geography, economic, social or cultural diversity. ::More Information ::Editorial Board ::Contact The JPAS ::Instructions for submitting a manuscript   Gadgets powered by Google

CURRENT ISSUE   Volume 4 • Number 2 • 2010   This special issue of The Journal of Pan African Studies is edited by guest editor Marvin X and dedicated to Dingane aka Jose Goncalves, the publisher and editor of the Journal of Black Poetry, which has published some 500 poets.   Groundation   ● JPAS: Dedicated to Dingane, Jose Goncalves by Marvin X [ view PDF ]   ● The Poets by Marvin X [ view PDF ]   ● Letters to the Editor [ view PDF ]   ● Dingane Joe Goncalves, The Journal of Black Poetry & Small Non-Commercial Black Journals by Rudolph Lewis [ view PDF ] [ view PDF ]     In My Negritude   ● Shaggy Flores, Ras Griot, Phavia Kujichagulia, Chinwe Enemchukwu, L. E. Scott, Rodney D. Coates, J. Vern Cromartie, Dike Okoro, Neal E. Hall, Marvin X, Mohja Kahf, Ayodele Nzingha, Askia M. Toure, Michael Simanga, Amiri Baraka, Kalamu ya Salaam, Kola Boof, Louis Reyes, Rivera, Aries Jordan, Ptah Allah El, and Hettie V. Williams [ view PDF ]   ● Teaching Diaspora Literature: Muslim American Literature as an Emerging Field by Mohja Kahf [ view PDF ]   ● Mother Earth Responds by Askia Toure reviewed by Kamaria Muntu [ view PDF ]   ●Tainted Soul by T. Ptah Mitchell reviewed by Zulu King [ view PDF ]     The Whirlwind   ● Tracey Owens Patton, devorah major, Anthony Mays, Bruce George, Jeanette Drake, Itibari M. Zulu, Renaldo Manuel Ricketts, Nandi Comer, Al Young, Ghasem Batamuntu, Mona Lisa Saloy, Eugene B. Redmond, Fritz Pointer, Gwendolyn Mitchell, Felix Orisewike Sylvanus, Rudolph Lewis, Kamaria Muntu, Ed Bullins, Mabel Mnensa, Kwan Booth, and Tureeda Mikell [ view PDF ]   ● Poetic Mission: A Dialogue on the Role of the Poet and Poetry by Rudolph Lewis (dialogue team: Marvin X, Jerry Ward, Mary Weems, and C. Leigh McInnis) [ view PDF ]   ● The Poetic Mission: Art II: Reviewing a Life, A Calling by Haki R. Madhubuti [ view PDF ]     Amour of Ancestors   ● Everett Hoagland, Charles Blackwell, Jacqueline Kibacha, John Reynolds III, Darlene Scott, Jimmy Smith Jr., Sam Hamud, Opal Palmer Adisa, Amy ‘Aimstar’ Andrieux, Lamont b. Steptoe, Avotcja Jiltonilro, Anthony Spires, Benecia Blue, Neil Callender, Tanure Ojaide, Pious Okoro, Tony Medina, Dr. Ja A. Jahannes, Brother Yao, Zayad Muhammad, Nykimbe Broussard, Kilola Maishya, Niyah X, Adrienne N. Wartts, Greg Carr, Darlene Roy, Tantra Zawadi, Ishmael Reed, Quincy Scott Jones, Bob McNeil, Ariel Pierson, Marie Rice, Yvonne Hilton, Bolade Akintolayo, Latasha Diggs, Felton Eaddy, and B. Sharise Moore  [ view PDF ]     Baraka, Politics and News   ● Medical Mythology by Ramal Lamar [ view PDF ]   ● Qaddafy’s Apology for Arab Slavery: A Dialogue Between Poets by Rudolph Lewis, Sam Hamud, and Kola Boof [ view PDF ]   ● Prize and Award: Chinua Achebe and Haki R. Madhubuti [ view PDF ]   ● Two Poets in Oakland: Ishmael Reed and Marvin X by Ishmael Reed and Marvin X [ view PDF ]   ● A Pan African Dialogue on Cuba: From Black Bird Press by Dead Prez, Carlos Moore, Pedro de la Hoz, and North American African Activist, Intellectuals and Artist [ view PDF ]   ● Black Arts West Celebrates Amiri Baraka at 75 a photos essay by Kamau Amen-Ra [ view PDF ]   ● Amiri Baraka Entertains SF: ‘Lowku’ versus Haiku Revives Fillmore Spirit by Lee Hubbard and Marvin X [ view PDF ]

HAITI The Year of Living Dangerously – Part 1 By Ansel Herz* Dieula Rosemond (right) leads a protest outside the prime minister's office on the nine-month anniversary of the earthquake. Credit:Ansel Herz/IPS PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 6, 2011 (IPS) - Dieula Rosemond is tired. A lone swaying palm tree yields a little shade over her plastic chair. Her hands are folded in the lap of her white dress. Little girls play with a ragged, pale-faced doll behind her. Another day in Camp Imakile Deplase. "I want to see change in 2011 in Haiti. And I want to see change from those who say they are helping Haiti too. Because we, the people under tarps, have suffered a horrible year. I feel like..." She stops and takes a long breath, looking up. "I can't live this any longer." Almost a year after the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, Dieula is one of over a million people living in scattered makeshift camps 'anba pwela' - under tarps, or tents - in Haiti's bustling capital city. She and her husband Joseph lost their livelihoods with the collapse of their tiny house in Cite Soleil, which doubled as an electronics repair shop and store.     Haiti by the Numbers 230,000 – the number of people believed to have died in the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake 1,000,000 – the number of people still living in tents one year later 5 – the percent of rubble that has been cleared one year later 3,481 – the number of cholera deaths as of Jan. 5, 2011 5,700,000,000 – the amount pledged by the international community in March 2010 to rebuild Haiti over two years 6.3 percent – the amount of money pledged that had been delivered as of December 2010 4,000,000,000 – the amount raised by private charities for earthquake relief, according to CBS 14,000,000 – the U.S. contribution to Haiti's highly criticised election *all currency in U.S. dollars                 Until last July, they and at least 50 other families lived in Plas Imakile, a public square. They endured nighttime attacks for weeks by a gang trying to force them off the property. Joseph went to a nearby joint U.N. peacekeeper and Haitian police base to ask for help. But the few jeep patrols that came by never stopped. The gang simply waited until they were gone to enter the camp and terrorise the people, slashing tarps with machetes. At the U.N. base, Brazilian Lieutenant Edison Campista told IPS he was aware of the reality but could effectively do nothing about it except to increase the frequency of patrols. He admitted the gang could elude authorities if they communicated by cell phone. Haitian police officers dismissed Joseph, claiming he was exaggerating the threats the camp faced. The attacks continued. One man's phone was stolen and he was struck in the head. The International Organisation for Migration, a U.N.-affiliated relief agency, told them to wait until a new piece of land could be found. Finally, Dieula and the others left, moving a half-mile down the road to a clearing next to a foul-smelling canal. Goats bleat as they clamber over small mounds of trash. The camp is called Imakile Deplase to remind visitors of how the people there were displaced against their will. Deaths from a raging cholera epidemic have surged in recent days to nearly 3,500. In early November, a young man in Dieula's camp contracted the virulent disease and was rushed to a Doctors Without Borders hospital. By the time he came back, his wife and children were infected. His family was the first of several to fall ill. Doctors Without Borders says it has treated about 63 percent of all cholera patients since the outbreak began in October. The head of the organisation recently slammed the U.N. and other aid groups for the rash of preventable deaths, calling their response "the latest failure of the humanitarian relief system". Autumn polls deepen popular anger Dieula did not vote in the election weeks later. Since the summer, she has led protests outside the prime minister's office and at her camp as families banged pots and pans, yelling, "We won't vote until they give us houses!" "The NGOs and the government are continuing to give minimal levels of aid. But that's not what we need. We need houses, as it says in the Haitian Constitution," said Sanon Renel, an activist with a newly-formed committee to stop forced expulsions. "The prime minister is not here," staff politely told Joseph, when he and other camp leaders delivered a letter outlining their needs to the office of Jean-Max Bellerive. Joseph received assurances the prime minister would read it and furnish a response, but none ever came. An expo to showcase designs of houses to be built for earthquake victims was scheduled for October 2010. It was delayed to this month, and then again to March. The November election launched the country into yet another crisis, with leading candidates calling for the vote to be annulled or disputing preliminary results. Thousands were unable to vote. "I voted for [René] Préval in 2006. I thought he would change things. I thought his mind was with the mass pep [the masses]. I thought he would return Aristide," Dieula said. "It's the blan who are holding him in place. He works for them!" she said, using the Kreyol word for foreigners. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former president, was whisked out of the country in February 2004 on a U.S. jet in what his supporters say was a modern-day coup d'etat. The United States says he asked to be taken into exile. An OAS official speaks out – and gets fired In an explosive interview last week, a Brazilian diplomat representing the Organisation of American States in Haiti said the "core group" of the international community met on Nov. 28, 2010, the day of the chaotic election. They discussed removing Préval from the country by plane. "I heard that and I was horrified," Ricardo Seitenfus told Folha, a Brazilian newspaper. Prime Minister Bellerive arrived at the meeting, which included the OAS, U.N. and donor countries. "He asked if President Préval's mandate was being negotiated. And there was silence in the room," Seitenfus said, adding that OAS Assistant Secretary-General Albert Ramdin did not say anything. "But faced with his silence and that of the others, I asked to be able to speak and reminded them of the existence of the Inter-American Democratic Charter [of the OAS] and that I thought any discussion of President Préval's mandate would be a coup." The U.S. Embassy told IPS it supported free, fair and transparent elections in Haiti and "we have no comment to make on Ambassador Seitenfus's descriptions of what he heard at such a meeting." Haiti's electoral council announced Tuesday that the second runoff round cannot take place until late February. According to the Constitution, Préval's mandate should end on Feb. 7 to make way for his successor. OAS observers arrived in-country after the holidays to recount ballots, a process endorsed by the Haitian government and international community. The OAS observer mission said there were only isolated "irregularities" on election day. However, a new study of more than 11,000 voter tally sheets by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, found fraud and inconsistencies rising far beyond levels acknowledged by the OAS. "If the Organisation of American States certifies this election, this would be a political decision, having nothing to do with election monitoring," said the group's co- director Mark Weisbrot in a statement. An OAS spokesperson did not return calls or email messages seeking comment. The Brazilian newspaper Estadão reported Monday that Seitenfus says he was dismissed by the OAS on Christmas Day, shortly after he first spoke out in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Le Temps. "There was an immense repercussion and it surpassed everything I was thinking or imagining," Seitenfus said. He condemned the international community's engagement in Haiti, saying the country had suffered for its proximity to the United States. "Haiti has to be at the centre of its history. These are generous reflections made from the heart," he added, "but that depict the perception of many people who do not have a voice. I was a spokesman for those who do not have a voice." *Ansel Herz blogs at http://mediahacker.org. This is the first of a two-part series on the political and human rights struggles of Haitians one year after the country's devastating earthquake. (END)

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>via: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/2011/01/110106_outlook_haiti_rap...

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Haiti: Rape warning from human rights group

Hundred of women and girls have been sexually assaulted in Haiti in the chaos following last year's devastating earthquake, a human rights group has said.

A report by Amnesty International says armed gangs prowl the makeshift camps set up after the earthquake, preying on vulnerable women.

It says the camps lack security and that the police response is inadequate.

It has called on the government to do more to reduce the threat to women.

Amnesty International spoke to 50 survivors of sexual violence including a 14-year-old girl in the capital, Port-au-Prince, who was punched and then raped.

Another women said she and a friend were bound and gagged and sexually assaulted in front of their children.

Women and girls in the camps are especially vulnerable because their makeshift shelters provide no protection against attackers, the author of the report, Gerardo Ducos, told the BBC World Service.

"During the night armed youth gangs just go inside the tents or they rip through the tents with knives or rather blades, and they just rape the women they find," Mr Ducos said.

One young woman told the BBC's Mike Thomson in Haiti that she was raped in a camp soon after giving birth.

"I cried, I yelled, but nobody came, there was nobody," she said.

"After they finished, they beat me. They beat me so much that you can see scars on my skin and my knee."

Afterwards, she said she did not feel she could nurse her daughter.

"It felt like the milk inside had been poisoned," she said, "so I stopped breastfeeding. And each night was torture for me."

Kofaviv, a group that has been helping Amnesty International with its research, says it has reports of attacks on children as young as four or five.

The organisation found that "most of these crimes go unpunished," Mr Ducos said.

He added that sexual violence and impunity for rapists was widespread in Haiti before the earthquake.

But attackers were even more likely to get away with their crimes because the Haitian justice system broke down after the disaster and the police lacks manpower.

"Most of the women told us that they don't go to the police because they don't think it's worth it," Mr Ducos said.

In the first six months after the earthquake, at least 250 cases of rape were reported; a year on and serious sexual assault is still taking place.

Amnesty is calling on the new Haitian government to take a number of steps to reduce the threat to women and girls who are forced to live in the camps until Port-au-Prince has been re-built.

>via: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12125810

HAITI Women Wonder if They'll Ever Feel Safe Again By Jane Regan and Kanya D'Almeida PORT-AU-PRINCE/NEW YORK, Jan 6, 2011 (IPS) - Up a rubble-strewn street, turn right past a crumbled house, and 60 men and women are in the yard and parlor of the offices of the Commission of Women Victim-to-Victim (Komisyon Fanm Viktim pou Viktim, KOFAVIV) association. The women are members of KOFAVIV, and they live in the squalid refugee camps and some of the capital's toughest and poorest neighbourhoods. Today, they each brought along a male friend for a workshop on how to prevent violence.  Dressed in their Sunday best, the participants joked and jostled as they broke into groups.  "Happy New Year!" said one young woman with huge hoop earrings, but then she corrected herself - "No, I won't say 'happy,' but I'll say, 'good health to you.'"  As the discussions started up, smiles melted away.    MINUSTAH – Too Little, Too Late? While a few pockets of international and local activists are stretching themselves thin, powerful bodies like the U.N. have been accused of doing too little, too late.  "There is definitely a lot more that MINUSTAH can be doing," Amnesty International's Kerrie Howard told IPS, referring to the U.N. Stabilisation Mission in Haiti.  "Their policing function needs to have a much stronger gender focus," she said. "They also need to help the Haitian government to train their security forces and build the capacity of the forces to address gender violence if they are to ever deliver a solution for the women."  Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, is highly critical of the way MINUSTAH has handled the situation.  "The U.N. announced last summer that it would bring in a special all-women's police unit from Bangladesh to provide protection for the women," he told IPS.  "The unit arrived, but is patrolling U.N. facilities, not camps. It's been reported that this is because of a lack of translators, but it seems that a force spending 2.5 million dollars per day could afford to pay for translators to make one of its priority projects work."  "As we mentioned in our petition to the IACHR, U.N. officials in charge of gender violence have been downplaying the reports of rape coming from poor women's groups, and marginalising the grassroots groups – which are much more effective – in favour of the traditional women's organisations," Concannon added.  "The woman in charge of the Gender Violence Subcluster wrote a blog post a month after she arrived in Haiti, saying that she had not yet met a rape victim. She took this as evidence that the rapes were not happening as reported. In fact, it was evidence that the U.N. subcluster did not have access to the information about rapes that was readily available from poor women." "Okay, let's make a list. What do we have at the Runway Camp?" asked an older woman who lives in a tent on the runway of Haiti's former military airport. "Okay, robbery, youth prostitution, rape, domestic violence and verbal abuse."  "Well, that's what we have in our camp too," said a young girl in blue jeans and a spaghetti strap top.  A man wearing a perfectly ironed white shirt interjected, "Okay, but what are we going to do about it?"  A full year after a 7.0 earthquake in Haiti obliterated 230,000 lives, injured 300,000 and rendered a quarter of the population homeless, Haitian women are now weathering a second catastrophe.  In the 2,000 makeshift displaced persons camps clustered across the country, women and girls are caught in the midst of an onslaught of sexual abuse, savage beatings and heinous crimes against humanity. Two million people are still crammed into enclosures, which have become microcosms of pre-earthquake patterns of the gross income inequality, social exclusion and abject poverty that has plagued Haiti for centuries.  A report released Thursday by Amnesty International lays bare the appalling conditions in which Haitian women are forced to live - the paltry shelters in the open-air camps seldom comprise anything more than flimsy tents, or tarps stretched over a patch of earth.  According to the report, "Aftershocks: Women Speak Out Against Sexual Violence in Haiti's Camps", over 250 rapes, in various camps, were reported a mere 100 days after the earthquake first struck. Many women and girls have been raped multiple times, often by several different men at once. Virtually every victim has also been beaten and tortured.  Medical and sanitary conditions in the camps are appalling; women and girls are forced to bathe in public and walk long distances to communal toilets at night. A total absence of privacy, lighting or solid barriers against perpetrators leaves even girls as young as 12 and 13 years old entirely vulnerable to the wave of sexual violence, most of which occurs after dark, the report says.  "Women's organisations on the ground helped us access the victims," Kerrie Howard, a Haiti expert at Amnesty International, told IPS. "Because the camps are a very closed community, it's extremely difficult for women and girls to speak out."  One of Amnesty's key local partners, and arguably the most active organisation working through the crisis, is KOFAVIV.  "At KOFAVIV we believe in education and we believe in preventing violence before it happens," Jocie Philistin, KOFAVIV's project coordinator, told IPS. "All of our members are survivors who are rehabilitated, and we are now trying to help others. And the solution doesn't lie with women only. We need men and women to work together."  But neighbourhood watch patrols and training sessions aren't the only answer, Philistin admits.  "Violence has two aspects – one is poverty, meaning it's economic. The other is politics," she said.  Whenever there is political turmoil or the economy worsens, violence against women increases. Rape has been used as a political weapon. Young people, especially girls, trade sex for a meal or a roof over their heads.  Now, one year after the quake, KOFAVIV admits a sense of hopelessness.  "In the camps, in the communities, things have gotten worse," Philistin said. "We have a completely absent state, we have NGOs who are in the camps mostly for public relations and they aren't even allowed to work in the 'red zone' areas, which are the most dangerous neighbourhoods."  A ray of hope  In early October, a coalition of prominent legal and social justice groups, including MADRE, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and the Bureaux des Advocats Internationaux filed a formal request with the Inter- American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of 13 Haitian women and girls.  On Tuesday, the IACHR accepted the request and issued unprecedented recommendations to the Haitian government, which are binding under Haitian national law.  The measures include providing medical and psychological care such as emergency contraception and culturally sensitive female medical staff members; implementing effective security measures like street lighting and increased patrolling by security forces; and, perhaps most importantly, ensuring the full participation and leadership of grassroots women's groups in planning and implementing policies to combat the sexual violence.  Lisa Davis, the human rights advocacy director of MADRE, was the primary author of the request.  "We have been working with women's groups in Haiti since the rape crisis in the 1990s," Davis told IPS. "And we consult with our local partners every step of the way."  While Haitian women are of course concerned with long-term political changes that address the root causes of sexual violence and the blows of patriarchy, the need for immediate safety now trumps all, she said.  In a report entitled "Our Bodies Are Still Trembling: Haitians Women's Fight Against Rape", the parties of the IACHR request record in chilling detail testimony from women and girls in the camp. Women as old as 60 and as young as eight or nine have all been subjected to unspeakable cruelty which has increased sharply since the 2010 elections.  "We have reports of men going into camps and randomly shooting women who were wearing politically-charged t- shirts," Davis said.  "Every single woman I talked to said what she wants more than anything is housing," she stressed. "And if they can't get that - because it's not being offered to them right now - then they want to feel safe."  *Jane Regan reported from Haiti.  (END)

Opera Singer Angela Brown Debuts Her New Album

Author: Johannah

OPERA SENSATION ANGELA BROWN’S NEW ALBUM “OPERA…FROM A SISTAH’S POINT OF VIEW” MAKES #1 DEBUT

Indianapolis, IN (December 16, 2010) – Receiving standing ovations on some of the most celebrated stages in the world, internationally known opera star Angela Brown has astonished opera lovers and critics alike with her powerful vocals, lavish elegance and magnetic allure.  A natural performer whose gifted soprano voice and exuberant personality are unforgettable the moment you meet her, Brown’s new album, “Opera…from a Sistah’s Point of View” debuted as the #1 downloaded album for the week of its release on The Weather Channel Music.

Newly-released December 1^st on The Weather Channel Music and available for full download at http://www.theweatherchannelmusic.com/album_detail.html?id=154, Brown’s latest album presents an incredible live concert of her popular one-woman program “Opera…from a Sistah’s Point of View”.  Recorded earlier this year on the campus of her alma mater, Indiana University, Brown’s live performance of “Opera…from a Sistah’s Point of View” bubbles with the Indianapolis native’s witty commentary, show-stopping arias and moving African-American spirituals that unravel common myths about opera and classical music, bringing audiences the essence of opera with a modern-day perspective.  Over 20 tracks, the acclaimed Verdi soprano enraptures listeners on a journey of drama, mayhem, romance, and history, intertwining music and performance in a way they haven’t heard before.

“The biggest misconception about opera is that it’s only geared towards elitist audiences,” explains Brown on creating her program to bring awareness of opera to wide-ranging audiences.  She relates, “Anybody can really enjoy an opera. Opera is about rich and poor. It’s about love, heartbreak, family, friends, lovers, hard times and happy times. There are stories set in Africa, Asia, Spain, Italy, America and elsewhere; it’s about all audiences.”

Through her solo performance “Opera…from a Sistah’s Point of View,” Brown has educated all ages and all races about opera, breaking racial barriers by erasing opera’s widespread falsehoods and opening young minds to the possibility of becoming opera singers and sparking interest in others.