Soesja Citroen - Abbey Lincoln
Soesja Citroen interviewed Abbey Lincoln in 1996 + performance
Abbey Lincoln: Where Are The African Gods?
Abbey Lincoln recites "The Man Who Has The Magic" and "Where Are The African Gods?"
Abbey Lincoln a la Villette (1999)
Abbey Lincoln in Concert a la Villette Jazz Festival Paris (1999)
Abbey Lincoln in Marciac
Kelechi Amadi Obi
Keziah Jones
8 August 2010
Kelechi Amadi Obi vs Keziah Jones
We love this beautiful film made by oel 'Kachi' Benson using a Canon 7D.
Kelechi Amadi Obi vs Keziah Jones from Joel Benson on Vimeo.
The Third Annual Donald Barthelme Prize for Short Prose Is Now Open to Submissions!
The third annual Donald Barthelme Prize is now open! This year's prize will award $1,000 and publication to one prose poem, micro-essay, or short story of five hundred words or less. Our judge this year will be poet and essayist Joe Bonomo, author of the 2007 National Poetry Series winner Installations, as well as numerous nonfiction books. Entries will be open until August 31st.You can read last year's winner (Matthew Yeager's "Property of Alvin Flover") and honorable mentions (Tracy Guzeman's "Einstein" and Joseph Holt's "Your Nightmare") in Gulf Coast issue 22.2.
GUIDELINES FOR SUBMITTING:
To enter online (preferred), visit the online submissions manager and be sure to choose "Barthelme Prize for Short Prose" as your genre. Upload up to three previously unpublished prose poems, short stories, or micro-essays, each no more than five hundred words in length, all together in a single file. Do not include a cover letter, your name, or contact info of any kind in your uploaded document; please put this information in the "comments" field.
Once you've clicked "submit," you will be redirected to PayPal to authorize your $18 online reading fee, which also gets you a one-year subscription. You won't need a PayPal account, only a credit card. Multiple submissions are acceptable, but you must pay the fee for each entry, and you will only receive a single one-year subscription or renewal regardless of how many entries you submit. All entries will be considered for publication, though only one will receive our $1,000 prize. We'll contact you if there are any problems with your payment; please do not email us to confirm whether payment was received.
To enter by mail, send up to three previously unpublished prose poems, short stories, or micro-essays, each no more than five hundred words in length. Your name and address should appear on the cover letter only. All entries will be considered for publication, though only one will receive our $1,000 prize. Include an SASE for results. Manuscripts will not be returned. Your $15 postal reading fee, payable to "Gulf Coast," will include a one-year subscription. Multiple submissions are acceptable, but you must pay the fee for each entry, and you will only receive a single one-year subscription or renewal regardless of how many entries you submit.
Send Postal Entries to:
Gulf Coast Donald Barthelme Prize
Department of English
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-3013
Guidelines
Submission of Manuscript
- Manuscripts should be between 60 and 100 pages of original poetry in English with each poem beginning on a separate page.
- The manuscript may not be previously published.
- Include two title pages with each manuscript: one with the manuscript title and the author's contact information (name, address, phone, email), and the other with only the manuscript title.
- Include a table of contents and a list of acknowledgments for previously published individual poems, if applicable.
- Enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope if you want to be notified when your manuscript is received. Manuscripts will not be returned. Please do not send your only copy.
Submission Fee
Include $25 for the reading and processing fee for each manuscript submitted. Make checks payable to Truman State University Press. If you prefer to pay by Visa, MasterCard, or Discover, include your credit card number, expiration date, cardholder name, and signature.
Submission Deadline
Entries must be postmarked by October 31 to be considered for the next year's award. (For the 2011 Award, entries will be accepted if they are postmarked by November 1).
Submission Address
Manuscripts should be unbound, placed in a file folder, and sent to:
T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry
Truman State University Press
100 East Normal Avenue
Kirksville, MO 63501-4221
Multiple Submissions
Manuscripts may be under consideration elsewhere, but please inform TSUP if a collection is accepted for publication. More than one manuscript may be submitted to the T. S. Eliot Prize, and each require a separate fee.
Eligibility
The manuscript may include individual poems previously published in journals or anthologies, but may not include a significant number of poems from a published chapbook or a self-published book. Current Truman State University faculty, staff, and students are not eligible to compete.
Competition Results
Results will be posted online in February and announced in poetry magazines.
Judges
The judge will be announced after the finalists have been selected in January.
Previous judges are:
- 2010 –Claudia Keelan
- 2009 – Virgil Suárez
- 2008 – Grace Schulman
- 2007 – Alberto Rios
- 2006 – Naomi Shihab Nye
- 2005 – Ishmael Reed
- 2004 – Diane Wakoski
- 2003 – C. D. Wright
- 2002 – David Wagoner
- 2001 – Lynne McMahon
- 2000 – Dana Gioia
- 1999 – Mary Oliver
- 1998 – X. J. Kennedy
- 1997 – Samuel Maio
CALL FOR PAPERS for The Nairobi Journal of Literature
Written by Kwani · August 13, 2010
CALL FOR PAPERS for The Nairobi Journal of Literature
The Nairobi Journal of Literature is a peer reviewed journal based in the Department of Literature, University of Nairobi. The editorial team invites contributions for The Nairobi Journal of Literature in its 7th issue to be published in October 2010. This issue is open to contributions from current research from and on Eastern Africa. We expect articles that reflect new research from the arts, literature, theatre, film, and other related areas such as media and cultural studies.
The expansion of the East African Community to include Rwanda and Burundi – with the Democratic Republic of Congo also interested – has intensified interregional interaction between peoples and cultures in the region. The movement of people and goods across the countries’ borders significantly contribute to the circulation and creation of ‘cultural commodities’, which in turn reflect the changes in the lives of individuals and communities that are interacting. We wish to receive research papers that deal with how the works of art and culture reflect on how the individuals and societies in the region are dealing with questions of nationhood and national historiographies, transnational relations, war and violence, identities impacted by globalization, urbanization and other related changes from within and without the individual’s immediate society. The 7th issue of NJL is expected to highlight new literary and cultural research from Eastern Africa.
Essays should be formatted according to the MLA style and should be between 4500 and 6000 words. Note that we shall only consider papers that are not under consideration for publication anywhere.
Soft copies of essays to be sent to Tom Odhiambo, tom.odhiambo@uonbi.ac.ke and Godwin Siundu, godwin.siundu@uonbi.ac.ke and copied to literature@uonbi.ac.ke by 30th August, 2010.
Black Looks
Sexual violence at the Limpopo River
Armed gangs operating on the South African side of the Zimbabwe/SA borders are terrorizing women young girls and men. If there are men crossing they are forced to rape other members of the group. After raping the women are stripped and tied up on the side of the road. So far this year 142 women have sought medical treatment following rapes but the actual numbers are probably much higher. The article points out the massive discrepancy between the 53 billion rand spent on four weeks security for the world cup and the zilch spent on protecting vulnerable Zimbabweans at the country’s borders or on protecting people from xenophobic attacks in other parts of the country. South Africa has completely broken down, lost direction and lost its purpose. sense of purpose and leadership...
Sexual violence rife at South African borders
Musina, 5 August. Unlike schools and offices in South Africa, the criminal gangs along the border between the World Cup hosts and Zimbabwe did not take a break because of a sports tournament.
As thousands of foreign fans flocked to the football stadiums and hundreds of journalists arrived to cover the first African World Cup, along the border another influx of foreigners received a different sort of welcome. They were not met with bright green and yellow flags and vuvuzelas, instead, these foreigners faced armed attacks and a pattern of sexual violence employed systematically to traumatise already vulnerable people.
"All I was thinking about was the work that I will do in South Africa," says 16-year old Grace Moyo*, as she sits rocking the two-year-old child she cares for. "I was just saying God help me so that I will find work."
It was the day before the World Cup opening ceremony when Moyo began a journey she had taken once before, crossing, without papers, the parched bush-land, three barbed wire fences and the Limpopo River.
Just as her small group reached South African territory she saw four armed men waiting. They forced the women to remove their clothes before raping each one of them in turn.
"When they were trying to rape me - I fought against them and so they put a gun to the baby's head and so I let them rape me," continues Moyo. "I think that if I didn't have a child they would have killed me."
Known as the magumaguma, from a word meaning "to grab", the men took all of Moyo's clothing when they left, a final indignity to punish her resistance. Tied up on the side of the road, the women were left in the midday sun. None of them filed a case with the police.
The civil society organisations working along the border say her story is typical: If there are men crossing, they are forced to have sex with the others in the group. If there are no Zimbabwean men, as in Moyo's case, themagumaguma, both men and women, do the raping. Condoms are never used.
"It is a crisis," says Mikael Lepaih, head of mission for Medicins San Frontieres (MSF). "We are seeing a pattern," he says. "It leads to questions as to if the gangs are using HIV as a weapon." Since January of this year 143 rape survivors have sought medical treatment at MSF clinics in Musina, some as young as 14 years old.
"These numbers are only those that register with us," says Tambu Matambo, the MSF Musina deputy field coordinator. "We think the numbers are much higher."
Matambo had recently worked with Moyo and put me in touch with her for this story.
Forced rape of family members is now so common that Zimbabweans deny being related: "If the gangs realize you are related they force you to have sex with each other," says Matambo.
While special courts set up for the World Cup offered rapid justice for fans visiting the country, the police seldom register sexual violations along the border, and nobody has been prosecuted for the attacks. The South African government spent 53.5 billion rand, or six percent of the country's budget, on stadiums and transport infrastructure. Along the border Zimbabweans were met only with humiliation.
Despite ending deportations last year, South Africa's treatment of Zimbabweans is partly to blame for their vulnerability, says MSF. In a country where domestic workers earn on average R75 a month, most Zimbabweans cannot afford the R1100 needed to buy a passport, leaving people with little choice but to cross the border without documents, and dependent on the very criminals who rob and rape them. Once they cross many apply for asylum status.
"Most of the people say political problems as such are not the issue, it is economic problems." says Thabe Mogoboya from Lawyers for Human Rights, a legal organisation that works in Musina. Coming to South Africa, "is a recipe for a better life. But if this is the case, your claim for asylum is unfounded according to the refugee act," he says.
The asylum process allows people to stay for 30 days while their case is decided, but 99% of cases are turned down. Even with the option to appeal it is a system that fails to recognise the reality of migration between the two countries, says Lepaih from MSF.
Worse still, the systematic nature of the sexual violence, regardless of gender, may suggest the collaboration, or at least tacit consent, of border officials and police officers, says Thabe Mogoboya, particularly on the Zimbabwean side. "It needs both governments to say let's do something about this problem," he says. "More so when there are allegations that the Zimbabwean soldiers are involved."
For a country anxious about foreigners, turning a blind eye to systematic abuse along its border is a way of dissuading further migration.
About 300 Zimbabweans, like Moyo, file for asylum at the Department of Home Affairs in Musina every day. Hundreds more cross without papers and are never registered.
South Africa is being congratulated on its success, but now that the world's largest sporting tournament is over, it is time to apply the same urgency and efficiency used to host the World Cup to its problems along the border.
*Grace Moyo is a pseudonym.
Becky Palmstrom is a Rotary World Peace Fellow at UC Berkeley. This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service.
>via: http://www.genderlinks.org.za/article/sexual-violence-rife-at-south-african-b...
i’ll do what the hills tell me to…
By Somi
we arrived in kigali and the city was abuzz with a performance by a miseducated beauty and the promise of renewing kagame’s promise. each time i’m in rwanda, i’m certain the the hills and valleys are breathing deeply – first sucking in bitter cassava leaf truths then spitting out strength and survival. this trip marked my first visit home since my father’s passing and i was longing for those ancestral hills of mine to whisper more directives – although i was not sure what exactly i was waiting to hear.
oh, how i miss him. a lover of live music and the outdoors, he would have enjoyed our bonfire-lit garden concert at kifaru art studios in nairobi. that was, afterall, the city where my parents met. and so between rubbing elbows with east africa’s art cognoscenti, between almost being car-jacked in the upscale, forest-like neighborhood of karen, between a wee-hour drop-it-like-it’s-hot group dance session in the city’s seedy but staple nightclub known as florida, between sightseeing with kenyan hip-hop artist octopizzo who started a children’s art center in africa’s largest slum, between eating the most amazing brazilian food ever, i saw them. i saw my parents walking the streets of newly-independent 1960′s nairobi. my mother in her miniskirts, my father in full beard and british neckties. i often found myself juxtaposing my east africa to what i believe theirs must have been as young adults.
constantly zipping across the region on this tour enabled me to admire the contrasting rhythm and personalities of the three cities my parents once called home. as new yorkers, the band felt most comfortable in nairobi – a city that swaddles itself in a cosmopolitan self-confidence that aches of the late 90′s black brooklyn bohemian beauty. just next door, kampala charges through each tropical day with a nature that is at once charming and industrious. kigali, on the other hand, seems to grow newer with age as it brims with ideas, initiatives, and nationalist action. in each city, i came back to the same questions about what my east africa would be and is. most of those questions negotiating my relationship to the region in both spiritual and musical terms. most of those questions suspending themselves only once i stepped on stage to perform.
on our last evening, i went to say goodbye to my 93-year old grandmother. as she always does, she asked about every single one of her 20 or so grandchildren and great-grandchildren living in the states and told me to greet each one of them for her. there was a picture of my father on her bedside table and the smell of pineapples and menthol in the air. there were no whispering hills in the ugandan dusk, only a chorus of tree frogs and hungry mosquitoes. my grandmother’s message to me was unchanging and clear: pray, love, and be thankful. perhaps those were the simple directives i’d been longing to hear in the hills all along.
Born as Laura Audrey Kabasomi Kakoma, she is an Uganda Origin but was born in Champaign, Illinois. That was when her father was completing post-doctoral studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Following her father career as an officer for UN-WHO, at three of age, Somi moved to Ndola, Zambia. Later in the 1980s, the family went back to United States when Somi's father became a professor at the University of Illinois.
Somi herself is a graduate from the University of Illinois where she majored in Anthropology and African Studies. Before the college time, Somi attended both University Laboratory High School and Champaign Central High School .
After college, Somi spent a year doing medical anthropological research while working with AIDS orphans in some countries in Africa.
The time to pursue music career came when Somi moved to New York on August 1998. An album entitled "Eternal Motive" was released in 2003 on her own label SanaaHouse Productions.
Like father - like daughter, Somi is truly a school learner. She continued her study to get a Master's degree. This she got from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts where she took Performance Studies. Somi keeps continue her music recording, though.
Somi got into international Jazz music industry when she made a contract deal for her "Red Soil In My Eyes" to the Harmonia Mundi/World Village label. This single gained a Top 10 position on U.S. World Music Charts.
Her latest single in 2009 is "If The Rains Come First", released on October 13 in USA, and on October 27 in Canada.
Eno's Story
Eno lives happily with her father, until one day he disappears in an accident. Her uncle says that she is a “witch” who has caused her father’s death. She goes through many struggles before moving in with other children who have also been called “witches” and have been sent away from home.
This moving story, with moments of humour and sadness, shows how Eno uses courage and her imagination to make the best of a difficult situation. Young readers will be gripped while also learning about how an organisation such as Stepping Stones Nigeria can help children in Eno’s situation.
Eno's Story was created in partnership with Stepping Stones Nigeria. 50% of all profits will go to Stepping Stones.
For sales enquiries, email info@cassavarepublic.biz
Who Are We?
My man Gary Younge, New York-based feature writer and columnist for The Guardian, has a new book out on 21st century identity politics: Who are We–And Should It Matter in the 21st Century? The clips above and below, are from an interview with Gary about the book on the BBC program, “Booktalk.” After the jump, as they say, is part two. (What’s sort of surreal is that Gary gets to finish his sentences. This is not American TV.)
Gary has also been interviewed by Andrew Marr and The Socialist Review.
Here is an excerpt from the book. I am reading it now. Gary writes about his ambivalence with identity politics and its uses and abuses after 9/11. The writer Margaret Atwood tweeted that it is an “excellent” book. The early reviews are also encouraging: Bookbag called it ”thoughtful … incisive [and] accessible.” There’s also a good review here.
– Sean Jacobs
Sarfraz Manzoor considers a world in flux
On a recent visit to Amsterdam I fell into conversation with a woman who owned a gift shop. "Tell me, where are you from?" she asked, after we had been chatting for a few minutes. "Oh, can't you tell?" I said, smiling and taking care to over-articulate my words. "Well, you speak with a British accent," she said, "but you're not white like me, so where are you from?" For non-white travellers, such incidents are familiar and a reminder that identities are not wholly ours to define. Neither my passport nor my accent nor the fact that I had spent virtually my entire life in Britain qualified me, in this woman's eyes, as British. Since she appeared not to be persuaded by my honest answer that I was British I eventually explained that my family were originally from Pakistan, and this satisfied her. It was only after readingWho Are We?, Gary Younge's penetrating and provocative new book, that I realised the best response to her question would have been to turn the tables on my interrogator and demand to know where she was from.
"The more power an identity carries, the less likely its carrier is to be aware of it as an identity at all," Younge notes. "Because their identity is never interrogated they are easily seduced by the idea that they do not have one." Among the great merits of Younge's book is that he reminds us – and them – of the falseness of that assertion. There are few journalists better equipped to navigate this territory than Younge, not only because of his experience as a foreign correspondent for this newspaper but because his own biography demonstrates the fluid nature of identity.
In the book he weaves his own story – the working-class son of a single mother from Barbados, who was raised in Stevenage and now lives in the United States – with powerful reportage from across the globe that reveals the changing nature of identity. There are fascinating tales, such as the black girl born to white South African parents and the son of a Jewish leader who was judged not to be Jewish. Younge correctly notes that identity is dependent not only on the individual but also the behaviour of the wider world. This helps explain why Barack Obama, the mixed-race son of the white mother who raised him, defines himself as black, and it is also a factor in the emergence of political Islamism across Europe. Younge cites compelling statistics that depict the weak position of Muslims in Britain: more than a third of Muslim households in Britain have no adults in employment, a third of young British Muslims leave school without any qualifications and those of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent are eight times more likely to be victims of racial attacks on the streets than whites. That, coupled with what is happening to Muslims globally in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere helps explain, Younge suggests, the growth of Islamic identity among young Muslims: "Muslims will be more likely to organise around their religious identity both home and abroad, so long as they feel attacked as a result of that religious identity." This, surely, is only part of the explanation. After all, the first generation of Muslims who came to this country suffered far more discrimination and yet they expressed far less hatred towards this country than some young Muslims today. Indeed they often urged their children towards education precisely so that they could prosper in this country.
Moreover, the biographies of many British jihadi terrorists reveal that they were not especially the victims of discrimination. Thus the question of why some young Muslims assert a form of religious identity that runs counter to a British identity cannot be simply about economics or racism: it has to also be about a weakened sense of what it means to be British. Islam is a potent potential identity precisely because it offers clarity at a time when no one is quite sure what Britishness is. Younge is, of course, right that identity is formed in the crucible of politics and economics, but identity is also about having a sense of belonging, and that is not measured in pounds and pence; it is about having a stake in a country, feeling that it is a home and realising that the myth of return to the motherland is likely to remain only a myth. There is a lovely passage in the book which demonstrates how that sense of belonging can be subtly transmitted when Younge describes buying his nephew and niece England football tops emblazoned with David Beckham's name.
Younge ends his book with a plea that we search for a common higher ground that lies beyond our conflicted and confused identities. To reach this promised land he suggests the familiar routes of greater equality and more democracy. That common ground would be likely to be reached sooner, I would suggest, if we had more in common with those who we elect to power. Of the 23 members of the new cabinet, 22 are white, 18 are millionaires, 15 are Oxbridge graduates and 13 went to private schools. It is not just those who run the country who are overwhelmingly from this background, but the media too. It is hard not to reflect on the privileged clique and conclude that although the world is becoming ever more mixed up, and identities ever more complicated, the identities of those in power are the same as they ever were.
Sarfraz Manzoor's Greetings from Bury Park: Race. Religion. Rock'n'Rollis published by Bloomsbury. Gary Younge is at the Guardian Hay festivalon Monday 31 May.
GO HERE TO USE THE INTERACTIVE HAITI MAP
This project has been percolating in my brain for years, but it got off the ground in the spring of 2007, when I finally started visiting and revisiting sites across the country. When I was a graduate student, I was so disappointed to see how many professors had read about and taught the Haitian Revolution and colonial Caribbean literature but had never seen the places. I hope this site can be an academic resource as well as a sort of map for historical nerds. In the future, I plan on translating it into French and Kreyol as well. My goal is to make as complete, collaborative, and inclusive a site as possible.
This project started as a visual record of colonial and early-national ruins in Haiti (1830 and before), but it’s grown and will continue to grow in both scope and depth. For instance, I’ve included gingerbread-style and other architecture from Port-au-Prince, Cap-Haitien, and Jacmel that is, of course, from much later periods. I would like to tie these records to online historical sources and appropriate bibliographical resources where appropriate. Please see resources for some suggestions.
While there are current ISPAN (Institut de Sauvegarde du Patrimoine National), UNESCO, and other NGO-sponsored rehabilitation/restoration/stabilization projects on some notable sites (including the Citadelle LaFerrière in Milot, the Palais de Trois-cent-soixante-cinq Portes in Petite Rivière, and the new ISPAN/tourism complex in Cap-Haitien, to name just a few), there are hundreds—if not thousands—of sites that are undocumented—visually or otherwise—and being destroyed. Often, forts are taken apart stone by stone to be used in construction, cannons are stolen and melted down, and the ruins of mills might be destroyed for farmland. Without the tourism dollars or historical organizations that would make keeping or restoring many of these ruins feasible and even profitable, most are soon to be only memories or mere shadows of what they are now. This is particularly so in the countryside; in bigger communities, ruins have higher visibility, while in the country they’re rarely remarked upon or protected at all.
I’ve been traveling to Haiti since 1978 in a variety of capacities, and I’ve seen the same sites slowly disappear. I have a particular interest in the colonial period of Haiti, as I did my master’s thesis at Brown University on the effect of early writing about the Haitian Revolution on pre-Civil War American writing.
Of course—and unfortunately, the majority of Haitian history can not be seen in physical ruins. The majority of actors of Haitian life didn’t live in big forts or sugar mills. I hope, however, that seeing these ruins can give an idea of the lives of both the wealthy and the oppressed, if only as seen through the instruments of their own oppression.
I try to get to Haiti as often as possible and am always in search of new sites to photograph. Please send on ideas, corrections, additions, etc. Additionally, I have more information and pictures on all sites, so please contact me if you are interested in a particular place.
Thanks to my many guides over the years, including (I’m sure I’m forgetting many): the contributors to Windows on Haiti and the Bob Corbett list (including Yves, John, Deb, Eugene, Lois, Tim, Michael, and Michelle), Benoit Du Kerlange (in St Louis du Sud), Pierre Jean Eloge and Elis Idovick (in Carradeux), Drew Kutschenreuter (everywhere), Hyppolite Roosevelt, Sulmé Jean and everyone at Klédev/Chedev (in Port-au-Prince), Walter Marcelin and Maxine (in Camp Gerrard). I was able to use a generous Kenan grant from Phillips Academy Andover (where I’m an English instructor) to travel around the country in the summer of 2007. A special thanks to Chantal Laroche who took me around for an entire day all over the northern plain. Another special thanks to Kesler Pierre whose own pictures inspired me, took me to Carradeux, and welcomed me into his home. My deepest thanks to Michael Curci, who decided it was a good idea to take his toddlers with him to Haiti in the first place.
