"Four Women"
"Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"
INTERVIEW: "What Does It Mean To Be Free?"
"I Wish I Knew How It Feels To Be Free"
via youtube.com
"My Funny Brown Pinay"
America's leading Filipino jazz and world vocalist.
"Dahil Sa Yo"
via youtube.com
2010 MMM Press Poetry Book Prize Guidelines [updated 06/26/2010] | Printable guidelines
Prize: The winner receives $1,000 and publication by MMM Press in 2011.
DEADLINE: August 14, 2010
Entry fee: $25 {Entitles first entrants to a free back issue while they last and the opportunity to buy a new MMM Subscription for $10.00, and any of the MMM Press Books, They Sing at Midnight, invisible sister, & Feeding the Fear of the Earth, Silkie, Ashes in Midair & All That Gorgeous Pitiless Song for $10. Please use this order form (second page of printed guidelines) if you want a free back issue or anything else.}
Final Judge: TBA
Eligibility:
• Open to all poets and writers whose work is in English.
• Staff and their family members are not eligible to enter.
• Simultaneous submissions are allowed if the poet agrees to notify MMM Press of acceptance elsewhere.
• Entries may not be previously published, but individual poems and chapbook-length sections may have been if the previous publisher gives permission to reprint. (More than half of the ms. may not have been published as a collection.)
Submission Checklist & NEW email submission guidelines:
• A typed ms. of 50–100 pages of original poetry, single- or double-spaced. (The author’s name must NOT appear anywhere on the ms.)
• A cover letter with the title of the collection, a brief bio, your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address(es).
• Acknowledgments may be included in the ms. but are not required.
• A $25 check or money order payable to Many Mountains Moving Press.
• An SASE for the winner announcement. Mss. will not be returned.
• The order form for contest entrants with a choice of discounts on subscriptions and books. This order form is on the the second page of the printable guidelines.
Or via e-mail, send an attachment (RTF, Word, WordPerfect or PDF) to editors@mmminc.org without any identification in the ms. itself.
Send a cover letter on paper along with the paper order form to the address below with a check and identification of the ms. etc.
As with any paper submission, mss. will be acknowledged as received as soon as the check and order form arrive.
Send to:
Many Mountains Moving Poetry Book Prize
Jeffrey Ethan Lee, Senior Poetry Editor
Many Mountains Moving Press
1705 Lombard Street
Phila. PA 19146
via mmminc.org
RULES AND GUIDELINES FOR THE 2010 MEMPHIS MAGAZINE FICTION CONTEST
Cosponsored by Burke's Book Store and Davis-Kidd Booksellers
We are seeking entries for our annual fiction contest. The winning story
will earn a $1,000 grand prize and will be published in a future issue of
Memphis. Two honorable mention awards of $500 each will be given if the quality of entries warrants. Contest cosponsors are Burke's Book Store, and Davis-Kidd Booksellers. Below are contest rules:
1. Authors must live within 150 miles of Memphis.
2. Entries must be postmarked by August 1, 2010.
3. You may submit more than one story but each entry must be accompanied by a $10 entry fee.
4. Stories are NOT required to have a Memphis or Southern theme.
5. Each story should be typed, double-spaced, with unstapled, numbered pages. Stories should be between 3,000 and 4,500 words.
6. With each story should be a cover letter that gives us your name, address, phone number, and the title of your story. Please do not put your name anywhere on the manuscript itself.
7. Manuscripts may be previously published as long as previous publication was not in a national magazine with over 20,000 circulation or in a regional publication within Shelby County.
8. Manuscripts should be sent to
FICTION CONTEST c/o Memphis magazine,
P.O. Box 1738
Memphis, TN 38101NOTE: We cannot accept faxes or E-mails.
Authors wishing their manuscripts returned must include a self-addressed
stamped envelope with each entry.
If you have further questions, call Marilyn Sadler at 521-9000, ext. 451, or email her at sadler@memphismagazine.com. We look forward to receiving your stories.
Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival: March 23—27, 2011
Announcing Our First Poetry Contest
Ben Okri: My family values
The writer talks about his family
- The Guardian, Saturday 26 June 2010
- Article history
Ben Okri: 'We had to hide Mum during the civil war in Nigeria.' Photograph: John Alex Maguire/Rex Features
My father brought back from England an extraordinary collection of books. He came to London [from Nigeria] to train as a lawyer and my mother brought me (aged one-and-a-half) a year later and we stayed for about six years. His plan was that back in Nigeria he would have time to read all these books: the classics – Homer, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky – and the great books on economics and philosophy. But he got carried away with being a successful young lawyer and didn't get round to reading them. They gathered dust, and every now and then he'd say to me, "Ben, dust the books – but don't read them!" That made the books fantastically attractive. I don't know if he did it on purpose. I wouldn't put it past him. I would sit on the floor cross-legged dusting a Dickens or Shakespeare, then I'd read for hours until I'd hear his voice, "Ben, what are you doing?" and I'd start dusting again. Books still have this tension for me – the do and don't, the possibility of danger, of secret knowledge. It makes them very potent.
My mum, Grace, was quite different. She was gentle and very tough at the same time, and she never told me things directly. She never said "don't … " – she knew that would make me do whatever it was. Instead, she would tell me a story. There were no clear morals, but her stories had an air around them. They were telling you something, and you had to work out what. Some took me 20 years to get.
Her mother died when she was just three or four, and she was shifted around between aunts. She knew what it was like to grow up unprotected – that raw King Lear condition with nothing between you and the cold winds of the world. It made her very sensitive to other people's sufferings. She would say to me, "I can live next door to a hungry lion." She meant she could get along with all types and bear their awkwardness and nastiness. I can't live up to that.
When we got back to Nigeria (when I was about seven) we moved around a lot. That came to a stop with the civil war. My mother was half Igbo [from the south-east of Nigeria] while my father was Urhobo, from the Delta region, so the war was a family thing. We spent a lot of time hiding Mum – and I nearly got killed. I'm still stunned by what people are able to do to their neighbours.
One of the greatest gifts my father gave me – unintentionally – was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity. We had a bit of a rollercoaster life with some really challenging financial periods. He was always unshaken, completely tranquil, the same ebullient, laughing, jovial man. I learned that life will go through changes – up and down and up again.It's what life does.
My parents lived to see their unruly child come through and win the Booker prize, but one day in my 30s, I got this impossible call from Nigeria to say that my mother had gone. We never think that our mothers will die. It was like suddenly an abyss opened at my feet – I was standing on nothing. It was the strangest thing. Her passing away ripped the solidity out of the world. For a few weeks, I'd be walking along and suddenly I'd be unable to stand straight and I'd hold on to a lamppost and find the lamppost wasn't solid either. That was a turning point for me. It began a great journey. I don't feel I need to lean on lampposts any more. You need internal lampposts – and a few good friends.
Ben Okri's latest book, Tales of Freedom, is published by Rider Books, £7.99
via guardian.co.uk
Meditations on Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth
By James Yaki Sayles
(Kersplebedeb, 2010)
Reviewed by Ernesto AguilarFrantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, a searing indictment of global racism, colonialism and imperialism, is among the foundational writings of postcolonial theory. Originally written in 1961, Wretched stands out among Fanon’s writings, which collectively examine the impact of oppression on the psyche of subjugated people. Most notably, Fanon dug into how institutional mistreatment colors marginalized communities’ members’ ideas of themselves, their potential and resistance.
However, Fanon is by no means an easy writer to access. Black Panther Party activist David Hilliard wrote in his autobiography, This Side of Glory, of struggling to understand Fanon’s lofty prose. He is not alone, and, for a generation of organizers that desperately need to apply Fanon’s writings, it should be a priority to seize Wretched out of the graduate lounge and into the streets. Thus, when writers take on the formidable challenge of making Frantz Fanon understandable to a broad, non-academic and contemporary audience, such works are really nothing short of extraordinary.
With Meditations on Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, its late author, James Yaki Sayles, creates an engrossing portrait of a living theoretical lens for understanding a lexicon of contemporary politics, from modern capital to immigration to race and globalization. In it, Sayles does more than interpret Fanon’s meanings, but dives headfirst into helping readers digest the meaning of what Fanon conveys. At several turns, Meditations literally does the job line by line. If Fanon is only a historical footnote to many readers, Sayles gives a vivid glimpse into an ideological framework informed by Fanon’s vision, sped up for a world more caught up in crisis than when Fanon penned Wretched years ago.
Formerly writing under the name Owusu Yaki Yakubu, Sayles himself is no stranger to radical political theory. A frequent contributor to the Crossroad Support Network’s journal as well as various circles within the New Afrikan Independence Movement, Sayles wrote extensively about Fanon’s theories of revolutionary violence and political independence. Incarcerated from age 17, Sayles’ political education came through prison study and struggle with fellow imprisoned comrades. And it is his non-academic orientation that makes Sayles a perfect writer for explaining Fanon to readers who might not otherwise be equipped to fully discover his prose. Not disposed to GRE essays, Sayles matter-of-factly recounts instances of seeking out a thesaurus to figure out a comment, and frequently does a sterling job of providing the historical, social and political context in which Fanon wrote some passages. In Sayles’ deft hands, Wretched is more than a rallying cry against French colonialism and revolt against their rule by any means, but a blueprint for oppressed people to mobilize revolutionary classes and apply necessary lessons.
How yesterday’s Third World uprisings and Black revolutionary ferment in the First World as well as today’s preeminent questions of race, class and gender play heavily in Sayles’ lessons. For organizers, Sayles’ method is sure to help make a complex theorist relatable. The author is also open in seeing Fanon’s work not simply as a bit of history, but also as a bellwether of how oppressed people go from reaction to revolution. “This exercise is about more than our desire to read and understand Wretched,” Sayles writes. “This exercise is also about us, and about some of the things that we need to understand and to change in ourselves and our world.” Sayles’ Meditations is one of the most effective instructions on Fanon available, and a quintessential polemic for another world.
Immortal Technique Reports on Situation in Haiti
This is type long, and alot to read (not really), but completly worth it. Tech offers a unique perepective on what is going on in Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake. A perspective you won’t get from watching or reading the news. Tech took the time to go to Haiti and do something substantial to help the people there so the least I can do is post his story on my site. More pictures after the jump.
I recently arrived home from Haiti.
While I was there I worked in a few aspects of the relief effort including a solidarity mission to aid the Earthquake survivors. In addition to all of this Myself, Cormega and Styles P participated in a show to support Haitian Hip Hop and rebuild the community. I would like to thank Arms Around Haiti and Hip Hop for Haiti for inviting me to be a part of this movement. While I was there I saw both devastation and rebuilding efforts. I also broke bread with people who had lost their entire family. Literally, everyone but them was deceased. Then there were those whose grief centered around losing a mother, father, brother, sister, son, or daughter as a direct result of what happened. It should make everyone reading this feel blessed to have anyone in his or her life. Think about that… Now think about it some more.
I saw so many different things as I walked through the slums and rode around Port-Au-Prince (as well as the area surrounding it.) I met mayors, townspeople, and the Arms around Haiti (Sobs staff) introduced me to several visionary Haitians with good ideas to rebuild the country that I am seriously considering investing my time into.
But one of the most powerful experiences came to me when I was holding this little baby girl who couldn’t have been more than a year old. She was crying because she was hungry, thirsty and tired. I picked her up and she hugged onto me with the newfound control her young muscles had recently provided her. She was one of the many orphans that I met while I was there, and as I held her I wondered what the future would hold for this little precious life. Her father would never hold her again and rock her back and forth to sleep while whispering stories to her. She might find good hearted and righteous people to one day adopt her, but her father, the man who created her would never tell her that he loved her or that she was special, save for the length of a dream or a subconscious memory. So I told her in French that I loved her, that she was beautiful and that she was special to me. I gave her all my water and her young face was immediately full of focus and comfort. After a few minutes of holding her, she fell into slumber. I gave her back to her to a 11-year old girl who had also lost her parents and was acting like a surrogate mother to most of the younger children.
Then I looked at my hands, they seemed like such strong hands before I went to Haiti. Strong like my will that is made of iron, and my resolve, which I consider unbreakable. But the strength of this young adolescent Matriarch and her newfound responsibility served as God’s gentle reminder and it humbled greatly as I realized what she carried on her shoulders. I am a Revolutionary but rather than just going to places around the world to bring people freedom, I seem to find it among them.
I felt great sadness leaving this place but I also felt anger at the things I saw. So I began to detail a few observations about Haiti and Revolutionary action associated with it in general. I wrote these things as I saw them or felt them but I waited until I was home for a few days so as to not elicit an emotional response but rather one of logic and understanding concerning the various things I saw.
The Spirit of Toussaint is Alive:
- Although the people have suffered here immensely, I still see their spirit still very strong, unbroken and defiant. Even though the sun floods the day with sweltering heat, the vast majority of people are working in some capacity. Many have their own small business or hustle and they take great pride in what they do. They find no shame in their work, however menial because, as it was told to me they felt blessed to have anyone to provide for. In the camps when dusk settles in, children play soccer with pieces of garbage tied up or maybe an old volleyball. They are survivalists as their history has taught them to be. The tent cities are home to usually 2 or 3 families per tent. Perhaps it is their past dealings with dictators sponsored by this nation, or by years of civil strife and a long Revolutionary history but they have become so resilient, so much so that they now serve as a personal inspiration to me of what mankind/original man can overcome.
All about the Benjamin’s, Mon Cheri:
Foreign Aid. That is a deceptive phrase. Many times the countries who, pledge money to a disaster-ridden nation are not giving that country money at all. They are really pledging the money to their corporation to rebuild the country at an inflated price set by the global conglomerate. It changes the very nature of what that means. Imagine if your house burnt down and I told the news and every local media outlet I was going to “donate” $100,000 to rebuild it. This is the catch the job really costs $20,000 to do. Yes, from the Capitalist pro business point of view I am providing a service that I deserve to be compensated for. But the characterization of what I am doing is purposefully altered so as to disguise the real motivation for “aiding” you. I’m not condemning the idea of foreign aid on a whole although there are aspects of it that create dependency and de facto vassals. But the system by which some of this “aid” is raised and distributed sometimes has little to do with anything resembling a humanitarian effort.
Let’s recap. I give you money, which you’re essentially giving back to me plus interest for doing something at twice the cost. I don’t give you fish anymore. That was Imperialism. This is Neo Liberalism, we teach you to fish, and collect 75% of the profit…forever. This system is actually the one that seems rational to first world powers now and is still implemented today all over the planet. Corporate Non Government Organizations (NGO’s) raise billions of dollars just to spend a fraction of that on the people who are actually affected and suffering. Then as if overpaying themselves wasn’t enough they act like they really did something. This system gives a bad name to real non-profit NGO’s and people that are selflessly doing something out of the kindness of their hearts. The Foreign Aid field is infested with corporate socialites and poverty pimps who troll around the mud with us dark people so you have something to talk about at your bourgeois industry parties. And where is the money going?
Waiting in Vain:
There is about 12 Billion dollars of Aid, waiting to be distributed, (conveniently earning interest for someone by the way) and since world agencies (take your pick) do not trust the shell of government left in Haiti, the situation has spiraled into a game of tit for tat in some instances. Corruption is not relegated to the surviving members of a fractured government. The customs area has thousands of pieces of clothing and non-perishable food that is simply sitting in store-rooms because customs is sometimes demanding $8,000 (US) to allow it into the country. You read it right, $8,000 American dollars to let a few boxes of supplies collected by people like you into the country. There are organizations such as the one I was there with, and Wyclef’s ‘Yele’ that use their longstanding connections with local power players and government officials to navigate around these bureaucracies, but it made me wonder how many good hearted people’s donations were just sitting there in some hangar collecting mold and dust. The supplies I handed out, the stuff I brought myself to give to people, the houses we put people in seemed like a good first step but now I wish more than anything to return and really make an impact having studied the situation. (* I remember after the Earthquake happened the mainstream media did a few stories criticizing smaller Aid Organizations on the ground and encourage people to direct their donation to the Major ones. Now I wonder if it was to promote efficiency or was it to safeguard their corporate partners monopoly?)
Children’s Story:
In Haiti, child trafficking is still going on, because it’s a lucrative business. It hasn’t stopped just because the news has stopped covering it, this right here is still happening. (http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/27/haiti.earthquake.orphans/index.html http://gvnet.com/humantrafficking/Haiti.htm ) I have even heard rumors about aid workers trading food for sex with little girls and boys. I’m not repeating these charges to try and substantiate them in any way. Because I hope they’re a lie, or at worst an exaggeration of an isolated incident. Far be it for me to try and pass innuendo off as fact but when you hear something like that from dozens of people from different walks of life, it makes you think. The reality after the Earthquake was that many of these children were (and still are) stolen and shipped out immediately or taken over to the Dominican Republic whose government is also very corrupt and sold to every corner of the world. Sad to think that the nation that showed the world that a successful slave revolution was possible has it’s sons and daughters sold into slavery in 2010.
The Almighty UN:
When I was young I thought the UN was a powerful entity, like the Super friends from Saturday morning cartoons. I was fed the idea that they provided a solution to arguing nations and would be helpful in taking the side of the underdog, the oppressed and colonized. But as I grew I realized it was just a way of making it look like America and Britain were not acting alone and it rewarded participants who conscripted their troops there. They are a Right Wing punching bag but really that’s duplicitous because they have been used to justify our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. As if it is full of equal partners who are committed to the mission. Truth is the UN peacekeepers are full of many soldiers who would otherwise be getting paid $100 a week to be a soldier in their own country. The UN security-council resolutions have no teeth without the US’s approval, and sometimes they go to a country (like Haiti) and get a paycheck for doing very little. As I keep having interactions with them, my opinion just keeps on worsening. I by no means had any of those young teenage illusions about them going into this trip, but this is my observation. There is no salvation for the 3rd world in this entity. Truthfully, the UN are a war (with a real country) away from being as much of a part of history as the Hanseatic League. As we speak. They act as the de-facto military rulers of Haiti, with the US leaning over them looking at possible candidates. I think in all honesty they want a Haitian Karzai of their very own so perhaps their weakness is deceptive on purpose and they are just the arm of a face that has not revealed itself yet. “Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on, le malheur est qu’il tue ses élèves.”
Jesus’s Power Broker:
- Haiti is flooded with Christian missionaries. There were 40 of them on the plane with me headed to Port-Au-Prince. In case you don’t know what a missionary is kids, it’s not just a sexual position. (Although plenty of people have been fucked over the years.) It means someone who goes to other countries and tells people that their religion or native custom is savage and full of useless ceremonies to God’s & spirits that don’t exist. And while I know some of these people mean well, their very existence and purpose is in complete contradiction to what their religion actually teaches. Some are working to build schools and help out with social programs, but always with the agenda to prosthletize and solidify their religious control over the area. So no matter what their intentions are, they look like their peddling Jesus on a fishing pole with foreign aid wrapped in Bible paper on a hook. In the past they were dispatched to countries to make them as Christian as possible in a direct effort to bring them into the colonial power’s sphere of influence. You see Imperial powers could not win by military force, and so conversion directly aided in our subjugation and apparently still aids in our placation. As long as we let other people define God for us we will not only be the physical but also the spiritual prisoner of our oppressors vision.
Mission Impossible:
- Spain, Portugal, England, France and Italy, etc… did this “missionary work” all over Africa, Asia and Latin America. Many of you people reading this who are of the aforementioned faith have them to thank, not divine intervention for what you believe. I am not in any way shape or form trying to detract from the individuals who really have the message of Jesus Christ in their hearts. I honestly believe if we lived our lives by the teachings of Christ this world would be a better place. But there are too many frauds making money off of Yeshua these days. The crazy thing is, that as many Muslim and Jewish charities that are working in Haiti, I haven’t witnessed any effort by them to convert people to Judaism or Islam. What is it about this faith that we hold so dear in America that makes us so insecure about what other people believe in? You’re going to have to stop using the excuse you want to “save people” and just admit that you don’t feel comfortable around someone until they believe in what you believe, spiritually. What gives us the moral authority to go around the world and tell the indigenous people of every continent that their religion is a farce and the only real truth was compiled in Constantinople in 325 AD? Isn’t the most “Christian” thing in the world to give charity to the poor and suffering without asking for anything in return? (Least of all, the culmination of all their beliefs.)
Blood Roots:
As I walked through the tent cities full of families waiting for water and cooking whatever they could find for their collective I happened upon a long road. It led me through the scorching slums of the outer area of Port-Au-Prince. While I was walking these two young brothers who ere dressed in red asked me if I was a Blood. I looked at them both and I responded that I wasn’t and one of them then raised his eyebrow, “you Crip then?” He asked with a heavy Creole accent. I said that I was neither and I was more like a Black Panther. After all OG Black Panthers and people from the Indigenous movements have taught me a libraries worth of knowledge. The younger one asked me what a Black panther was. I searched my surrounding for an analogy and there just happened to be a small tree near by. So I walked them over to it. The tree had two branches littered with a few leaves. Holding one branch I said, “this one is the blood” and pointing to the other one I said, “this one is the Crip” and then putting his hand on the trunk close to the roots, I said “this one is the Black Panther”. “Ne de la Revolution” which means Born out of Revolution in my humble French. The young kid smiled at me and asked me more about the Black Panthers. I stood there speaking to him for a little while and then we saluted one another and went our separate ways. Although Haiti is twice as hood as any place in the US, they are such a young country full of children who must become adults before their time. If they are to succeed, someone must educate them to the fact that what people call Black history is in fact world history. I would be honored to be a part of that someday. Don’t worry I won’t NGO them for hundreds of G’s either. I’d settle for a room and some coffee in the morning.
La Revolucion de Latino America:
For those of us who are studying Latin American Revolution, Haiti is the prequel, the seemingly invincible power of France being challenged and overcome. The Napoleonic wars gave America a chance to breathe away from the eyes of Europe long enough to affirm itself. France’s assault on Spain weakened the European states enough for us to take the moment that we cherish as our time for ‘Revolucion’. The story of our Revolution doesn’t begin in the 1950’s but in the Indigenous revolts of the conquest era and the early 1800’s when a small island of enslaved Africans showed the world that it was possible. Estudiantes Latinos, estudia esta Revolucion, sus lecciones son unas de las mas importantes para apprender. Tienen te todo, de raza, de classe, de corrupcion, y por supuesto del sacrificio necessario para obtener la libertad.
In parting:
I learned something very reassuring about myself in Haiti, something I am proud to acknowledge and leave my people on a good note with. When I meet someone who is a better activist, or Revolutionary, (I’ll be happy to make that distinction later) when I see someone whose actions achieve more than mine, or who has a more complete perspective I become inspired. I don’t get bitter or jealous and think about trying to “out-revolutionary” them. That’s so pointless and yet it is something that I see sometimes in the movement, people who think that because another doesn’t adhere to the same ideology or the same faith that we must bring them down. I am a Revolutionary and I need no one’s permission to be. We were successful at breaking ground in Haiti, but my mission there is by no means complete, I wish to plan further actions with my friends at Arms Around Haiti and the staff at SOBS. I would like to thank Jube, Mario, Cormega, StylesP, Herbie, Clef, Yele, Arms Around Haiti, Parrish, BC, and my Haitian Soldiers there for making this trip possible I look forward to returning soon.
“Le travail éloigne de nous trois grands maux: l’ennui, le vice et le besoin.”
Peace & Respect,
Immortal Technique
via nahright.com
Fending For Themselves
By Dahr Jamail
Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010
We drive south on Louisiana Highway 55 towards Pointe-au-Chien. The two-lane road hugs a bayou, like most of the roads leading south into the marsh areas. Incredibly green, lush forest gives way to increasing areas of water the further south we venture, until the very road feels as though it is floating.
We cross over a small concrete bridge over another bayou and find ourselves square in front of the Pointe-au-Chien sign informing us this is their tribal area. We’ve come to meet Theresa Dardar, in order to learn more about how the BP oil disaster is decimating the indigenous populations of Southern Louisiana.
Theresa is a member of the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe. They are a small community of self-described Indians that live in southern Louisiana along a small stretch of the Bayou Pointe-au-Chien. Now, oil from the BP disaster threatens their very existence.
Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010
Historically, they have been a community reliant upon hunting, fishing, agriculture, and cattle. But due to, as Theresa puts it, “devastation of our land by the oil companies,” the lack of protection of the barrier islands and lack of fresh water replenishment and saltwater intrusion, the Tribe has had to rely primarily on fishing to sustain itself.
On May 29, the shrimping season was closed in their area, putting most of the tribe out of work. On June 19, shrimping season reopened when oil in nearby bays abated somewhat, but shrimping was and still is only allowed in the Cut-Off Canal-a tiny area compared to what they are usually allowed access to.
This is what Theresa is most concerned about-behind of course, their land vanishing beneath their feet as it is, like much of the rest of southern Louisiana, swallowed up by the Gulf of Mexico.
Today, members of her tribe, including her husband, spend their days contracting their shrimp boats to BP in order to lay out boom, instead of being in the midst of a busy and fruitful shrimping season.
Outside her home, like that of her neighbors, huge green nets hang from trees. Other fishing gear sits idly in yards, indicative of a way of life being placed on indefinite hold.
Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010
Theresa invites us inside her home, located among several other elevated houses that perch on the bank of the bayou. It is an area surrounded by marsh-much more water than land. It’s an amazing experience to be in Louisiana’s marsh-whether driving on the roads, or walking to someone’s home, the water is so near, and the land barely above it, one often feels as though the water is actually higher than the land. The feeling of it possibly spilling onto the land is ever present.
“We are praying we don’t have a hurricane, because if we do it’ll blow the oil up here, they’ll condemn this place and not let us back in until we clean it up,” she explains. I later learn that this is a fear shared by basically everyone in the area.
Given the encroachment of what’s left of their land by the Gulf, Theresa and the rest of her tribe intend to hold onto what they have. This is among their priorities listed on the Tribes’ website, that includes the following goals:
-Protect Village, Sacred Sites, Fishing Grounds, and Cultural Sites.
-Plan needed for evacuation and relocation to keep tribal members together in the event of flooding–even with a tropical depression–for an unknown period of time.
-Workforce training and development in the event the oil spill contaminates fisheries for an extended period of time.
-Build tribal center to be used for relief and recovery efforts.
-Health issues associated with change in diet and stress from oil spill.
-Houses that haven’t been elevated are at risk for condemnation if oil enters the community.They are a people used to looking after themselves. “We fend for ourselves,” Theresa continues, as we sit in her living room talking, “We can’t wait for the Parish, or the State, to help us. The only time we see a politician is during election time, or when they come after we have a disaster and we’ve pretty much cleaned everything up ourselves.”
Theresa says they want to put a sign up near the bridge one must cross to enter their area, one that reads, “No politicians allowed.”
The area is also home to Indians that align themselves with the United Houma Nation and the Biloxi-Chitimacha Confederation of Muskogees. The land here is considered precious by the tribal community, and it includes at least seven cemeteries that contain the remains of their ancestors.
The livelihood of generations of these people is now threatened on multiple fronts-but for now, the most imminent threat seems to be oil lurking off-shore. According to Theresa, her tribe is now down to only 680 people, and the majority of them live in Pointe-au-Chien.
Like indigenous people around the world, place is paramount. Theresa speaks of their tie to the area in reverential tone. To be removed from this place is to disintegrate, figuratively and literally, her tribe.
“If we have to leave, we’ll be spread out and no longer be a community,” she explains, “We don’t know where we’d go. BP should try to keep this community together because it’s their oil that’ll cause us to separate. Our attachment to our land is everything to us. We live off the land, so when you take us away, it won’t be the same. It’s like taking a fish out of water and seeing how long it will live.”
She stops talking, and simply says that she doesn’t know how to describe this.
Her 54-year-old husband has been a fisherman since he was 16. Now he’s laying out boom for BP-a job that is temporary. Theresa tells me her husband is angry at BP for having put him out of his fishing job, but he needed the money so took the job laying boom for the company that destroyed his livelihood. It’s a job that won’t likely end soon, but when it does, he won’t likely have his old job to return to.
She walks us outside, because her brother-in-law, Russell Dardar, is sitting out near the bayou after having just returned from crabbing. He shows us one of his boxes of crabs. One of the blue crabs reaches into the air, pincher open. “He’s giving you the peace sign,” Russell says with a half-smile.
Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010
Russell, wearing cut-off jeans and a t-shirt, is shoeless and completely in his element. He’s going to take us out on his boat to show us where he’s seen oil soiling the marshes in the area where he usually crabs. He’s free to do so since he won’t work for BP.
After looking at his photos of oil-affected marsh, we climb into his boat and start idling down the bayou. It’s a tight waterway, lined with shrimp boats that would, in a time without an oil disaster, be out harvesting.
Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010
Russell doesn’t talk much, but when he does, it is impactful. He tells me he used to work on a tugboat, work that is common with many of the people in this area of southern Louisiana, until a back injury led him back to crabbing and shrimping.
I ask him how many of the folks in his community are working for BP laying boom. “Maybe there are four or five of us left crabbing,” he replies while looking straight ahead as we pass empty boats. I eye stacks of empty crab traps sitting on vacant piers.
It is gray, and dark rain clouds loom out in the marsh where we are headed. The rain begins slowly as we motor down the tight canal-green marsh on either side as we voyage down towards the head of the bay. The rain increases into a full shower, lightening flashes in the distance. We’re all soaked within minutes. Erika sits in the front of the boat taking photos, her camera wrapped in its storm jacket. I’m in front of Russell, sitting in a white plastic patio chair while he pilots us along. I look up at him amidst the warm downpour and he smiles, which is a rarity, as he is usually completely focused on whatever it is he is doing.
He pulls us up amongst white booms bobbing in the small waves. They are held in place by flimsy white PVC pipes stuck in the mud-bamboo poles hold them in other areas.
Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010
Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010
Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010
Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010
We are struck by how useless they are. Several oil-scarred areas of marsh lie behind booms that are sometimes unattached to their support poles. Other areas float half a foot below the surface. In many areas, booms are washed ashore and sit amidst oil-soaked marsh.
I look back at Russell to find him looking off into the distance, across the marsh, with a stern face.
Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010
“These are completely useless,” I say to him. “It’s good for show,” he responds while swinging the boat around in the surf.
He takes us along many areas to show us more of the same-sunken boom, boom washed ashore, oil-scarred soiled areas of marsh that is already dead.
“There was far more oil out here last week,” Russell explains, “But the high tides that reached here from Hurricane Alex pushed all the oil deeper into the marsh.”
The rain slackens as we head back home. Incredible bird life fills the marsh as we motor back…flocks of birds, everywhere.
Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010
I wonder how long they’ll last.
As we arrive back at the marina, I see that it has been turned into a staging area by BP. As though to intentionally underscore the futility of the so-called clean up effort, mountains of boom sit in plastic wrap on the shore, waiting to be taken out into the marsh. To the right of the marina building a statue of Jesus stands near a US flag, facing the mounds of boom, his arms outstretched as if he is questioning the futility of it all.
Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010
In the front of the Marina another US flag stands above more piles of boom. Erika later finds, upon closer inspection of the photo, it has an indigenous man atop a horse painted on the flag.
Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010
When she shows this to me, blown up on her computer, we can only shake our heads.
We idle the rest of the way up the bayou to Russell’s dock and park the boat. Back on land he tells me how BP has promised everyone it’s safe to work laying boom. “Somethin’ don’t sound right about that to me,” he adds.
I thank Russell, shaking his hand, telling him I hope to see him again, and we walk over to Theresa’s house to tell her goodbye. She brings us inside, however, and says, “I knew you’d be wet and hungry, so I made you lunch.”
We sit down and feast on the crab casserole and fried shrimp she has made us while she tells us about a recent meeting at their town hall.
“About two weeks ago a BP spokesman held a town hall meeting,” she explains, “He said, it’s not if but when the oil comes here again. There was not one state or parish official at the meeting. BP is running things here now.”
We finish eating and talk a little while longer before we thank Theresa again for her time and hospitality.
“We hope we don’t have to wait as long as the Alaskans did for our marine life to come back,” she says, referencing the Exxon Valdez disaster from 1989, “They had to wait 17 years for their shrimp to return, and they are still waiting on their herring.”
It’s a slim hope, considering the fact that to date 14 percent of the 250,000 barrels spilled in the Valdez disaster have been recovered. Even by the most conservative estimates, the ongoing BP disaster has erupted many times that amount of oil into the Gulf-and kept most of it underwater via dispersant. Higher-end estimates of the amount of oil erupting from the floor of the gulf show an Exxon Valdez worth of oil injected into the Gulf every two and a half days.
“I’m worried about health problems associated with this disaster,” Theresa tells us before we leave, “And we’re hoping we can avoid the divorces, suicides and alcoholism that hit so many communities up in Alaska. I’m telling people to stay busy and not think of the oil. Otherwise, you’ll drown in it.”
About Dahr Jamail
In late 2003, weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail went to the Middle East to report on the war himself.
Since then, he has become world renowned for documenting the human cost of the Iraq war: the everyday violence and terror, the deterioration of the healthcare system, the shortages of clean water and the resulting rise in sickness, the lack of jobs and economic opportunity, the refugee crisis, and the detention and torture of civilians and resistance fighters. Through his uncompromised reporting and news photos, Dahr reveals a map of Iraq’s misery and resistance, politics and everyday survival in the face of overwhelming military destruction. His website offers a forum where readers discover realities of the war not found in the conventional press.
Dahr has spent a total of nine months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country. Dahr has also has reported from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan,. He has also reported extensively on veterans’ resistance against the war. Dahr uses the DahrJamailIraq.com website and his popular mailing list to disseminate his dispatches.
Dahr currently writes for the Inter Press Service, Le Monde Diplomatique, and many other outlets. His stories have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald in Scotland, Al-Jazeera, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, and the Independent to name just a few. Dahr’s dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into French, Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic and Turkish. On radio as well as television, Dahr reports for Democracy Now!, has appeared on the BBC and NPR, and numerous other stations around the globe. Dahr is also special correspondent for Flashpoints.
Dahr’s reporting has earned him numerous awards, including the prestigious 2008 Martha Gellhorn Award for Journalism, The Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship, the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, and four Project Censored awards.
Colorism, Race, and Dominican Hair Salons
By Jo Nubian
White civilization and European culture have forced an existential deviation on the Negro… what is often called the black soul is white man’s artifact. ~ Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks
While up, online, and “fighting sleep”, which I often accuse my daughter of doing, I received a chat from a friend who I always have great debates with. The brother is bad, a beautiful Dominican philosopher who self identifies as black. I heart him. Anyway, this night, he forwarded me the following article on colorism and race in the Dominican Republic . My shoulders immediately began to sink, inch by inch, until it seemed as though my face lay on my laptop by the article’s end. It pains me when people don’t accept those things about them that they can never change. I understand what self-hatred does to the soul , and regardless of its origins, it prohibits freedom. Each of us deserves to be our own kind of free, it is an inalienable right, and as close to God as we can ever hope to be while here on earth.
While visiting New York City a few months back, I had the pleasure of staying uptown in Washington Heights. One eve, full of smiles and cocktails, I got lost after exiting the train station and walking towards my friend Gwendolyn’s apartment. Actually, what I became lost in was the beautiful culture of the Dominican people, and how they expressed it so vivaciously. The anthropologist in me had to watch, study, and interact. Okay fine, that was a fancy way of saying I’m nosy. One of the things I noticed immediately was the number of hair salons in the community and the fact that women were being serviced at 11 at night (I just found that odd and awesome). I also noticed that a great majority of these women were having their hair straightened. Consequently, on the same night a Dominican brother asked me if I was “Dominicana” to which I replied, “Now you know my hair is to nappy to be Dominican”, we both laughed as he sort of escorted me back in the direction I should have been walking all along.
After reading the article linked above, that “nappy hair” conversation feels weighted. How many Black women do I know who rock naturals, and will only trust the Dominican sisters to temporarily straighten their hair? I don’t know that any of us considers what having “pelo malo” translates to for them. I believe I have some idea, however, being born into a “Creole” family from Louisiana where skin color and hair texture, just like in DR and Brazil and countless other places, is everything. At least for me though, there are only a hand full of titles one can designate in reference to race and social standing (yes the two are most certainly connected) where I’m from. In Opeleusas, one can be white, yellow, red, Indian, or black- I may have missed a few, but essentially that’s the list. Those few titles are a far cry from the hundreds of cognomen associated with Dominican, Brazilian, Cuban and other Afro-Latino groups. The colorism fight, however, is not specific to the southern US or places like DR. I was reminded by this when a twitter friend @sylphanne forwarded this documentary to me about skin bleaching in Jamrock. Straight hair, light skin, etcetera, represent a vast number of issues that all tie together in one way or another within our collective community. The ties that bind then are the ideas of a superior race, social darwinism, and of course capitalism. Colorism has kept us divided, it continues to keep us divided, and at some point we are going to have to deal with the effects of it holistically.
In attempting to understand the break down of race in Afro-Latino and even some African nations (like South Africa for instance) and why their inhabitants shy away from acknowledging their African ancestry, I was told that I was viewing the issue through American eyes where race has very narrow definitions and prescriptions. I absolutely agree. My western eyes attempt to oversimplify something that is very dynamic, complex, and multi-layered. In the US someone with ANY African ancestry is considered black-period, so the idea of hundreds of adjectives used to describe varying levels of blackness leaves me a bit perplexed- especially since we are fully aware that race in itself is a social/political construct, and is not biological at all.
Where does one attempt to begin to understand the color lines prevalent in Dominican culture as outlined in this article? Do we start with the many issues that DR has with Haiti, who ruled their portion of Hispanola for a little over twenty years? I mean, one could easily tie Haiti to Africanness or blackness and argue that some Dominicans, in rejecting blackness, reject those who once oppressed them. Or maybe we must examine the Trujillo dictatorship that was responsible for what many consider a genocide or ethnic cleansing of Haitians. If we examine the idea of “complexion” in these historical constructs, one could imagine that “lighter skin” could better, or possibly save, one’s life. The same could be said for Blacks living in the US during and after slavery (and some may argue still to this day). These issues sit at the base of those Dominican Salons, in some ways define colorism, and even more so enjoins our ideas of race and racism.
At story’s end, we have to acknowledge that all of these references to complexion and hair texture mirror the psychological issues that Frantz Fannon thoroughly examines in his book Black Skin White Masks. What we celebrate as good is what moves us closer to “whiteness” and is often the result of oppression, brutality and rape. Essentially, what we see as affirming our beauty only further reminds us of the crimes committed against us- which I find much uglier than “dark skin”.
What say you readers?
How has colorism affected your life?
Also consider these references:
NYT: As Racism Wanes, Colorism Persists
Beyond racism: race and inequality in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States
Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola
via jonubian.com
Thu, Jun 3, 2010
Education, Globalization, Publication Reviews, Race