The piece above is called Planetary Alignment, and it’s one of several of Dillon’s works getting the spotlight over at the Racialicious Tumblr, curated with love by Andrea. Hop on over sometime for more day-to-day R-style goodness.

By Arturo R. García

The Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival contacted us with the heads-up: the submission period has opened for this year’s event, scheduled to run June 16-17 at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

There is no submission fee for entries sent before Feb. 15, but entries submitted between Feb. 16 and March 15 must be accompanied by a $50 fee. We’ve got information on each category, and links to the required submissions forms, under the cut.

Film Submissions

• Subject matter may include but is not limited to: interracial/cultural relationships, transracial/cultural adoption and the exploration of multiracial/cultural identity.
• Please note that there may be a Q&A session at each screening of the Festival on June 16 or 17, though participation is not mandatory.
• Participants are responsible for their own transportation and lodging. The festival is unable to provide an honorarium. (This applies to all categories.)

Performance Submissions

• Open to comics, actors, musicians, and spoken word artists with self-contained, portable acts suitable to a black box theatre.
• Submissions must be complete and run under five minutes. (Performers must be off-book.)
• Performers must be available for both a mandatory rehearsal on June 15 and a performance during the festival.
• No props or furniture will be provided.

Literary Submissions

• Besides filling out the submissions form above, applicants must send a 10-15 page writing sample and a high res jpeg photo of themselves as attachments to mxrootsfest@gmail.com with “Literary” and the applicant’s name in the subject line.
• Participants must be available to read from their works during the festival.

Workshop Submissions

These submissions may address only one of the following:

1. Creation of literary content
2. Creation of film content
3. Providing a historical context for inclusion in film/literary content.

• All presenters’ attendance must be confirmed by applicants at the time of submission.
• Presenters are expected to arrive at the Festival site no later than 45 minutes prior to the scheduled workshop time.

Twenty-year-old Egyptian blogger Magda Aliaa el-Mahdy rose to stardom after delivering a stick of dynamite via her blog, ‘A Rebel’s Diary’, in what she described as being in the spirit of the revolution.

(Editor’s Note: NSFW image is under the cut. – Arturo)

Who is Aliaa? Nowadays she’s known as the Nude Revolutionary and the dynamite was – you guessed it – a nude photo of herself online, which sparked outrage from both conservatives and liberals in Egypt alike. Here’s her take on why she took such controversial measures:

Put on trial the artists’ models who posed nude for art schools until the early 70s, hide the art books and destroy the nude statues of antiquity, then undress and stand before a mirror and burn your bodies that you despise to forever rid yourselves of your sexual hangups before you direct your humiliation and chauvinism and dare to try to deny me my freedom of expression.

The North African country, with a population of roughly eighty-five million, is a largely conservative society.

Earlier this year, inspired by the wave of uprisings that struck the region following Tunisia’s ability to send their long-time dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali packing, Egyptians from all social and political classes took to the streets with a unified dream of doing away with a system that had outlived its stay.

As punishment, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) subjected women to humiliating ‘virginity tests’, which entailed having a soldier insert two fingers into their croch. Once again, as discontent returned to Tahrir earlier this month, women’s bodies were targeted.

Women’s rights advocates like award-winning Egyptian writer Mona Eltahawy believes that El Mahdy’s act not highlights how in times of extreme repression sex and nakedness becomes the only weapon of political repression for women. In a recent article in the Guardian, she argues:

When sexual assault parades as a test of the “honour” of virginity, then posing in your parents’ home in nothing but stockings, red shoes and a red hair clip is an attack towards all patriarchs out there.

While Mahdy’s act has been hashtagged (#NudePhotoRevolutionary) and her name tweeted and Facebooked endlessly, others did not receive such attention.

Samira Ibrahim, the only one of the women subjected to “virginity tests” who is taking the military to court for sexual assault, has neither a dedicated hashtag nor notoriety. Another woman, Salwa el-Husseini, was the first to reveal what the military did to them, but news reports have said she can’t raise a lawsuit because she doesn’t have identification papers.

Not only did el-Husseini speak out, she courageously agreed to be filmed at a session of testimonies on military abuses. Again, hardly anyone knows her name, her recorded testimony isn’t racking up page views, and she was called a liar and vilified for speaking out. Both women have vehemently maintained they were virgins.

If “good girls” in headscarves who kept their legs together only to be violated by the military speak out and no one listens, what’s the message being sent?

Whether or not El Mahdy’s act was revolutionary or not it has definitely sparked a debate as to how far women should go in pushing the boundaries in their fight for a more inclusive society.

One question that probably pops in your head is: had she been a man, would the publics reaction have been different?

Critics argue that the embattled blogger not only insulted revolution but has tarnished the uprisings image.

#nudephotorevolutionary was the most daring conflicting act I’ve seen for a long time but was also the worst thing that happened to the liberal movement in Egypt,” Kamel argued. “Her actions have done nothing but stir a debate and allow the conservatives to have one more reason to call for an Islamic state and blame liberals and seculars for this. You will probably see one of them saying this is how all women will act if Egypt isn’t saved by an Islamic leader.

In the aftermath of her public expression, El Mahdy has been slapped with a lawsuit as the Coalition of Islamic law graduates in Egypt filed a case against the blogger and her boyfriend, Kareem Amer who also appears nude on the site, for ‘violating morals, inciting indecency and insulating Islam’.

In her defense, supporters have established a Facebook page in which they vow to also get butt naked in an act of self-expression. According to Eltahawy, El Mahdy’s nudity was a way of extinguishing the ‘dictators of our mind’.

Perhaps, but is this the way to do it?

I remember when I was still living on the streets and working as a delivery person in New York City while cleaning houses on the side. The delivery service was a family run business and in the midst of being delighted to finally have someone pay me for once, I didn’t even consider that the $20 a day for over eight hours of work was meager. Then a good friend C told me to quit that job and go art model.

I thought she had lost her mind. Now, it’s not like you think. It actually entailed going around to art schools and posing.

To convince me she said, “once you drop the clothes, it’s done and you got a new career.”

The idea didn’t sound bad to me, especially after discovering that NYU paid a hefty $18 per hour and most classes were four hours long. The major feat was challenging a lot of societal mishaps in the process but eventually I saw this as a great way to rekindle the artist in me, revolutionize my thinking and love my body.

So, I did it. After some time I was the most sought after model circulating the art scene and I felt empowered, liberated and I was an entrepreneur.

I use this example in an attempt to paint a visual image of one way in which nudity was used to empower an individual.

However, in the case of Egypt’s nude revolutionary, my question to readers is: Is any time the right time for the clothes to come off when advocating women’s rights? Is this truly an act of self-expression?

By Guest Contributor Rob Fields, cross-posted from Bold As Love

There’s still things black people don’t talk about in 2011 and, to our collective detriment, mental illness is one of them.  I mean, for a people who have survived colonialism, the Middle Passage, slavery, Jim Crow and institutional racism, it would be surprising if we perfectly fine mentally and emotionally after all of that.  And many of us are alright.  But there are just as many who aren’t.

I’ll say upfront that I don’t know Bassey Ipki (above) personally.  What I know about her is that she’s a respected poet, writer, performer (multiple Def Poetry Jam appearances, to say the least) and a fierce mental health advocate who’s been bracingly honest about her own struggles with depression. We’ve had a few short Twitter conversations, and that’s about it.  Just knowing this about her, I thought the launch of this effort made perfect sense.  But I found out the impetus was something beyond her.  It was the suicide of a friend’s 15-year-old daughter.  Here’s what Bassey wrote about it:

Over the summer, I wrote about Siwe Monsanto, the amazing, beautiful, talented 15-year old daughter of my friend, Dionne. I wrote about what a wonderful human being she was. I wrote about how funny she was. I wrote about what a wonderful mother Dionne was. I wrote about how sad Siwe was at times. I wrote about how she took her own life. Since Siwe’s death, I’ve been struggling with ways I could do more as a human being and someone who loved her. I’ve thought about ways that I could use what few talents I had to do something more to honor Siwe’s memory and to prevent deaths like hers. In August, just 2 months shy of Siwe’s death, I came up with the idea of The Siwe Project, a global non-profit whose aim was to spread mental wealth awareness and education in the global black community. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it. I’m only a writer. I have no admin experience but I knew it needed to be done so I began talking to some people.

The project had a kickoff event this past Wednesday in DC. Bassey goes on to say this:

This is just a soft launch, we will be sharing our mission and plans for the future. We will announce our slogan and photo campaign. We are starting small in order to stay focused and on task but we hope to do big things. We need to erase the stigma of mental illness from our communities. We must learn to love and cherish our mental health as much as our physical health. We must encourage and support those with mental illness so that they may manage and seek treatment without fear or shame. These are imperatives. Too many of us our dying or the walking dead. This isn’t about pushing medication or specific forms of treatment on anyone. What works for me, may not work for you. But find something that works. Face it. Treat it. Then live.

The promo video is a version of her poem “Choices,” which chronicles her struggles with mental illness. It was directed by the very talented Pierre Bennu:

A great closing thought from Bassey: “Mental illness is not who you are. It’s what you have.”

If you’ve seen the latest episode of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl (ABG), you probably caught J’s best friend Cece refer to White Jay’s ex as a “tr***y bitch in heels.” Or J’s co-worker Patty ask her if she’s “gay” because J cut her hair to a tweeny-weeny afro (TWA). Or J’s nemesis, Nina, asking her when did she “catch cancer” due to the new ‘do.

Some fans responded to the overt transphobic insult with an open letter on Crunk Feminist Collective Tumblr:

Dear Awkward Black Girl,

We love the show! We also love your continuous engagement with fans and your commitment to staying on the Web to maintain your vision. What we don’t love is the transmisogyny and misogyny in episode 11.

In episode 11, CeCe calls White Jay’s ex a “tra**y bitch in heels.” The word tra**y perpetuates violence and divisiveness amongst women by relying on the idea that trans women are not “real” women; it suggests that White Jay’s ex is somehow less than the main character J.

The word “tra**y” has a very real history of violence and discrimination, often targeting trans women. It has been used as a slur, as a way to objectify women, and as a way of denying the personhood of trans women on the basis of appearance.

We have seen your responsiveness to the fans of ABG and we hope that by raising this concern you will respond accordingly by not using such language in future episodes. There are so many awkward queer, trans, and disabled folks who love the show and it hurts to see and hear our lives used as punchlines. For those of us, the awkward black, queer folks who have lived at the intersections of our awkwardness, our blackness, and our transness, words like “tra**y” erase our lives, and our humanity. Phrases like “No lesbo” and the use of affected speech to imitate hard of hearing people detract from the vision of creating representations for the rest of us who are all too often maligned in mainstream media.

We look forward to many more episodes of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl that are hilarious without the use of marginalized groups as a punchline. We have confidence that you have the creativity to continue to push comedic boundaries in new ways and educate your audience in the process.

With fierce love,
alicia sanchez gill
Claire Nemorin
Moya Bailey
Kimberley Shults
Anonymous Awkward Others

Another tumblrer reblogged a tweet regarding the creators’ response to the Open Letter.

The initial Tumbl’d responses to this:

“This does not look promising.”

“hoping the response letter does not cause more pain.”

“well, shit. so much for finding a non-problematic show to love.”

Here’s the reply from ABG‘s co-creators Issa Rae and Tracy Oliver, found at Clutch Magazine:

Some of our viewers may have been offended by some of the language in our recent episode. We take this matter especially to heart, considering the CFC and members of the LGBT community were among the first to embrace ‘The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.’

Since our first episode debuted in February this year, ‘Awkward Black Girl’ has received an incredible outpouring of support from hundreds of thousands of fans. We love and appreciate each and every one of our fans! In return, we strive to provide a show that uses irreverent comedy and humor to address the oftentimes uncomfortable situations that many people have experienced at some point or another in their lives.

In creating a series of this nature, we are willing to accept the praise when the jokes work and the feedback when they may not.

Sincerely,

Issa & Tracy

Whereas a few Clutch Magazine commenters thought Rae’s and Oliver’s letter was”respectful” and “very well said,” quite a few commenters applauded Rae for “not apologizing” because that “would change the nature of the show.” Even Crunk Feminist Collective’s Brittney Cooper agreed  that it’s an “excellent” response. And the post and the comments at Very Smart Brothers applaud the response, some of the commenters going so far as telling trans people (and the gay, lesbian, and bisexual people who are cisgender–oh yeah, and a few of us cis, trans, and gender non-conforming folks who love bell hooks) to “get over themselves” and “stop being so sensitive” because ABG “offends everyone,” especially with the liberal use of “bitch” and “n***a.” In fact, one commenter states that ABG using the “tr***y bitch in heels” line as a sign of acceptability for trans folks.

Dare I say it? Yes…

What the hell kind of no-pology is this?!?

Racialicious guest contributor Erika Nicole Kendall tweeted exactly why I felt this qualifies as a no-pology:

See, here’s my thing: if you’re saying that folks in LBGT communities are some of the first fans of your show, wouldn’t you go out of your way to not turn off that fan base  by simply saying something like, “I/We deeply apologize for saying the word “tr***y” on the ep. I could’ve used another word to talk about J’s discomfort instead of making trans people–and, by extension, our transgender fans–the butt of a joke,” instead of essentially stating you stand by a transphobic slur that is used in conjunction to do much more damage than just create “oftentimes uncomfortable situations that many people have experienced at some point or another in their lives?”

Because the word “tr***y” isn’t bantered about just to make trans people “uncomfortable.” As @graceishuman pointed out on Twitter:

 It’s only hilarious if you accept that trans women are by definition a joke. There’s no inherent humor to it beyond that.

The history of the word is that a lot of trans people, especially trans women of color, have had it used against them in the context of violence, sometimes as they were being murdered.

This post at the Tumblr a bell and a pomegranate further explains why the fans who wrote the letter–and the rest of us–found the  ”joke” unamusing:

Well, and naturally, what “may have offended” some people is language—as though that’s the important thing, that a nasty word (a word, to be fair, I cringe at) was used.  But of course it wasn’t—the meaningful portion of the trouble is that the use of “tranny” as an insult to cis women is about participating in the cultural notion that trans women are fake/grotesque/doing womanhood wrong/unworthy of respect and that it is shameful/disgusting for a cis woman to be similar to one.  It’s about functioning as a placeholder for certain policing discourses about the comportment and appearance of women in general by deploying the extreme danger of trans oppression as a veiled threat while subtly shoring up that oppression.(*)  That’s why people are troubled by the word in the first place, and why the first critiques of it were brought up—not because it is an inherently evil word, but because it participates in negative, damaging stereotypes about trans women.  It could have been any word.  The problem is that “tranny” is deployed as a shorthand for that cultural idea.  If they’d substituted in a nicer, less-charged word as shorthand to suggest that a given woman was like a trans woman and therefore fake/grotesque/doing womanhood wrong/unworthy of respect, it would still be transphobic.

When we focus over-much on contaminated words, we sometimes miss—and allow the people who use them to sidestep—the larger problem of what those words represent and why they’re hurtful in the first place.

(*) You know, in the same way that young straight men calling each other “faggot” don’t literally mean “I think you are attracted to other men,” but “you are not behaving as I think a man should and if you don’t get in line I am suggesting you be treated as is appropriate for the disgusting people indicated by this word, who also don’t get in line and who you know are visibly punished for it.”  In the same way that “whore” and “bitch” are deployed—they suggest that there is a category of people who you are culturally aware have fewer rights/more vulnerabilities to violence/etc. and that if you do not behave as expected you might be relegated to that category and treated accordingly.  Capitalism does it by threatening people who have money with the constant specter of poverty and homelessness—and then uses that to enforce cultural norms of behavior.  Sexism does it by threatening that men might be treated like “bitches” and “pussies.”  And cissexism/transmisogyny does it by threatening cis women with worlds like “tranny” and “shemale.

As for ABG‘s use of the words “bitch” and “n***a” as a reason why it should be OK for the creators to, therefore, use the words “tr***y,” I’ll say here what I said on a radio interview about those white feminists who defended the sign “Woman Is the N****r of the World” at SlutWalk NYC’s march: unless Rae and/or other people on ABG‘s creative team is a trans person, the word isn’t for them to use because they are outside of those communities. And, even at that, if there is a trans person on the crew, that person’s presence still doesn’t give permission or license for ABG‘s cisgender cast and crew to use it because the other trans folks didn’t vote on that person to give that imprimatur to use the slur.

Even Patti’s comment about J being “gay” because of J’s short cut pivots on both homophobia and transphobia, namely that Black lesbians are stereotyped as “looking” a certain way that is “outside” of the hetero male gaze (and, by extension, hetero male sexual/romantic consideration), namely having a short afro, which is construed as “trying to be manly,” thus policing J’s femininity. Of course, Nina’s comment comment about “catching cancer” is simply ableist.

But I also feel like this is the part in the post where I need to repeat what we say quite a few times around the R: just because a person belongs to one or more marginalized group(s) doesn’t mean that person has an innate empathy for people in other marginalized groups. And “doing it for the art”–or to not be “politically correct”–adds insult to injury. Again, to quote Erika, in response to another tweeter:

…the non-responsive response they wrote, the onslaught of people defending them and saying “you didn’t do anything wrong” as if Black people forgot what it feels like to have you[r] very existence turned into something undesirable and slur-worthy…let’s just say it’s DUMB disturbing.

So, as much as I love J’s misadventures, I can’t quite walk down this transphobic, homophobic, and ableist path with her and her crew in this ep.

Image credit: Get on the Sofa

[Back then, I was] only a year or so into an MFA. I stop by the office of a friend, an older white poet in my department. Publication to me feels impossible then, and the friend means to be encouraging when he says, “With a name like Jaswinder Bolina, you could publish plenty of poems right now if you wrote about the first-generation, minority stuff. What I admire is that you don’t write that kind of poetry.” He’s right. I don’t write “that kind” of poetry. To him, this is upstanding, correct, what a poet ought to do. It’s indicative of a vigor exceeding that of other minority poets come calling. It turns out I’m a hard worker too. I should be offended—if not for myself, then on behalf of writers who do take on the difficult subject of minority experience in their poetry—but I understand that my friend means no ill by it. To his mind, embracing my difference would open editorial inboxes, but knowing that I tend to eschew/exclude/deny “that kind” of subject in my poetry, he adds, “This’ll make it harder for you.” When, only a few months later, my father—who’s never read my poems, whose fine but mostly functional knowledge of English makes the diction and syntax of my work difficult to follow, who doesn’t know anything of the themes or subjects of my poetry—tells me to use another name, he’s encouraging also. He means: Let them think you’re a white guy. This will make it easier for you. [...]

To the poet, though, the first question isn’t one of class or color. The first question is a question of language. Poetry—as Stéphane Mallarmé famously tells the painter and hapless would-be poet Edgar Degas—is made of words, not ideas. However, to the poet of color or the female poet, to the gay or transgendered writer in America, and even to the white male writer born outside of socioeconomic privilege, a difficult question arises: “Whose language is it?” Where the history of academic and cultural institutions is so dominated by white men of means, “high” language necessarily comes to mean the language of whiteness and a largely wealthy, heteronormative maleness at that. The minority poet seeking entry into the academy and its canon finds that her language is deracialized/sexualized/gendered/classed at the outset. In trafficking in “high” English, writers other than educated, straight, white, male ones of privilege choose to become versed in a language that doesn’t intrinsically or historically coincide with perceptions of their identities. It’s true that minority poets are permitted to bring alternative vernaculars into our work. Poets from William Wordsworth in the preface to Lyrical Ballads to Frank O’Hara in his “Personism: a manifesto” demand as much by insisting that poetry incorporate language nearer to conversational speech than anything overly elevated. Such calls for expansions of literary language in conjunction with continuing experiments by recent generations of American poets are transforming the canon for sure, but this leaves me and perhaps others like me in a slightly awkward position. I don’t possess a vernacular English that’s significantly different from that of plain old Midwestern English. As such, it seems I’m able to write from a perspective that doesn’t address certain realities about myself, and this makes me queasy as anything. The voice in my head is annoyed with the voice in my writing. The voice in my head says I’m disregarding difference, and this feels like a denial of self, of reality, of a basic truth.

It isn’t exactly intentional. It’s a product of being privileged. In the 46 years since my father left Punjab, the 40 or so years since my mother left also, my parents clambered the socioeconomic ladder with a fair amount of middle-class success. We’re not exactly wealthy, but I do wind up in prep school instead of the public high school, which only isolates me further from those with a shared racial identity. Later I attend university, where I’m permitted by my parents’ successes to study the subjects I want to study rather than those that might guarantee future wealth. I don’t need to become a doctor or a lawyer to support the clan. I get to major in philosophy and later attend graduate school in creative writing. Through all of this, though I experience occasional instances of bigotry while walking down streets or in bars, and though I study in programs where I’m often one of only two or three students of color, my racial identity is generally overlooked or disregarded by those around me. I’ve become so adept in the language and culture of the academy that on more than one occasion when I bring up the fact of my race, colleagues reply with some variation of “I don’t think of you as a minority.” Or, as a cousin who’s known me since infancy jokes, “You’re not a minority. You’re just a white guy with a tan.” What she means is that my assimilation is complete. But she can’t be correct. Race is simply too essential to the American experience to ever be entirely overlooked. As such, I can’t actually write like a white guy any more than I can revise my skin color. This, however, doesn’t change the fact that if a reader were to encounter much of my work not knowing my name or having seen a photograph of me, she might not be faulted for incorrectly assigning the poems a white racial identity. This is a product of my language, which is a product of my education, which is a product of the socioeconomic privilege afforded by my parents’ successes. The product of all those factors together is that the writing—this essay included—can’t seem to help sounding white.

— Excerpted from “Writing Like a White Guy,” by Jaswinder Bolina, originally published at The Poetry Foundation

By Guest Contributor May Lui, cross-posted from Black Coffee Poet

Souvankham Thammavongsa is a Laotian Canadian poet, author of the ReLit-winning Small Arguments and Found. Found was also adapted into a short film by Paramita Nath, which screened at film festivals worldwide including Dok Leipzig and Toronto International Film Festival.

Souvnkham has been published in many literary magazines and journals and has been invited to read at Harbourfront’s International Festival of the Authors 2011. Born in Thailand in 1978, she was raised in Toronto.

May Lui for Black Coffee Poet: Why poetry?

Souvankham Thammavongsa: It’s sort of like swimming in the deep end of a pool. You better know what you are doing there because it’s going to become very clear if you don’t. Looking good in a swimsuit isn’t going to help you out.

ML: Tell us about your writing process.

ST: I don’t write everyday. Sometimes I try to do anything but write. I work for a financial newspaper full-time and have been there for ten years. I work with numbers all day and this allows me to think in a language that doesn’t have anything to do with words, to remember that sometimes words aren’t everything. No one at work knows I write poetry and I prefer it that way. I like that there’s a place for me there no matter what happens to my writing, whether it fails or if it’s successful. It doesn’t matter. I also owned a used bookstore with my husband and wrote short stories all day when it snowed and we had no customers, except for the ones who told us we weren’t going to make it or asked us what we were doing there or if the knapsack in our window display was for sale. I learned that there are people in the world who want nothing to do with books, that there are those who at the sight of a bookshelf start to slowly back up towards the exit, that there are those who would buy themselves a three-dollar book and tell their curious and bright son they don’t want to buy him a book of his choosing because they’ve already spent more than they’ve wanted. That was a learning experience for writing I don’t think I would have gotten by writing.

I always let my writing sit around for a very long time and I never show my work to anyone until it’s done. If I give a reading at a festival or at a reading series, I’ll write something new to surprise myself or someone else who has seen me read before. I read whatever interests me like articles about boxing in Sports Illustrated or about the latest fashions in American Vogue. I try to keep up with the Leafs or catch a baseball game. I take sewing classes and learn how to make skirts and quilts, go to the museum or art gallery, get my hair cut or get my nails done to see how other people outside of writing create. I read old diary entries from when I was twelve-years-old to remind myself where I come from and to just have a giggle at myself because I know exactly how things will turn out or I read books written by writers I want very much to be. I try to learn new things like new recipes or garden or swim or drive—so I have new skills or something to talk about that doesn’t have to do with writing but can have something to do with writing. I watch a lot of silly movies and listen to music. I watch Pawn Stars and American Pickers on television. I like to meet with good friends for dinner at Guu and talk for hours and hours. When I do sit down to write, I can do it anywhere: on my lap, in a noisy bar, in the kitchen on the stove (off, of course), on the wall, and only when I must, on the computer.

ML: Found is a remarkable book of poetry. Tell us about what it means to find poetry in everyday items.

ST: For me, to find poetry in everyday items is remarkable. What precisely makes a thing remarkable? I like how the remarkable can come from and is held by what is unremarkable.

ML: How many poetry books have you had published?

ST: I have had two books published by Pedlar Press.

ML: How do you select the poems for each book?

ST: I try to choose the ones that make the prettiest dots.

ML: How long have you been writing poetry?

ST: If I count from the time I was first published in a little magazine, then it’s eleven years—but that isn’t considered to be very much time at all.

ML: Who are your influences?

ST: I like Agnes Martin, Richard Pryor, Alice Munro, Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers, Elizabeth Bishop.

ML: What inspires your writing?

ST: Other writing. And people, how they behave. Or things. I like to look at things especially.

ML: What are you working on right now?

ST: I am working on a collection of poems about light. It’s about what’s in the world, how it’s been given to us, and what we take from it.

And a quilt.

ML: Is there anything you’d like to say to emerging poets and writers?

ST: I think emerging poets and writers don’t want anything said to them. Especially since they’ve already emerged.

I’ve been to a great many plays on race. Some, like August Wilson’s Jitney, manage to survive through the ages and provide a stunningly timeless view on the problems of the colorline.

Others, like David Mamet’s Race or Neil Labute’s This Is How It Goes, make me realize how much of an abstract concept racism’s pervasiveness can be for white people. Unfortunately, much of the mainstream art world is controlled by white people, and therefore what is considered worthy of production is shaped by white perceptions.

Trouble in Mind has been resurrected, but there are always complications. Over at the Arena Stage website, Irene Lewis speaks to the cause of the persistent racial gap in evaluation of material:

For years, the play Trouble in Mind, by African-American playwright Alice Childress, was recommended to me as a show that, as artistic director of CENTERSTAGE, I should produce. I had read the play several times over the years and found it to be “old-fashioned/old hat,” especially concerning the depiction of the character of the white director. Finally, I decided to ask the opinion of an African-American actress whose judgment I have always valued. She read the play and told me that she liked it. When I asked if she found the role of the white director dated and unbelievable, she said, “No.” So I came around to the opinion that this was another case of – what should I call it – whites (me) being “out of touch” with the experiences of African-Americans. I decided to produce and direct the play at CENTERSTAGE in Baltimore. It subsequently transferred to Yale Repertory Theater. I am delighted that Molly is bringing this groundbreaking piece to Arena Stage.

“Out of touch” is the last term I would use to describe Childress’ noted work, considering it was originally performed in 1955. Considering the play was created more than five decades ago, it should not be so fresh and contemporary. And yet, we live in an era in which a white woman’s tale about a white woman and the black maids she liberated swept the bestseller’s list and the box office – clearly, things haven’t changed that much. So why the disconnect between black and white theater aficionados? As Childress herself has stated:

“There aren’t any black critics who can close a white play. But in black theater, black experience has been fought against by white critics. The white critic feels no obligation to prepare himself to judge a black play.”

And so, here we are.

Trouble in Mind is a play within a play, designed to explore racism in the theater industry by allowing the audience to peek at the inner workings of a troubled production. Wiletta Mayer (E. Faye Butler) is an aging starlet, who has spent her life toiling in mammy and sidekick roles, desperate for a big break. She is cast in Chaos in Belleville, along with five other actors – three black and two white. John (Brandon J. Dirden) is a young, black upstart, determined to make it in the business despite the cost. Sheldon Forrester (Thomas Jefferson Byrd) is an older black actor who refuses to rock the boat, for any reason. Mille Davis (Starla Benford) is a friendly rival who boasts about her husband’s desire that she give up acting in favor of homemaking. Of the white cast, young Judy (Gretchen Hall) is the classic ingenue type and Bill (Daren Kelly) is a set in his ways older white man. They are all drawn together by director Al Manners (Marty Lodge), who is mounting a large production against the odds and hopes to make a play “that says something.”

Unfortunately, the play was written for to appease white audiences, causing a key conundrum for the black actors in the performance. Wiletta struggles with the play most of all, coming to the conclusion throughout the play that there is something terribly amiss with the script – and having trouble finding an ear for her concerns.

Reviews of the play frustrated me, almost as if I was playing bingo. I heard about the “sassy” back and forth between Millie and Wiletta, and the “stirring gospel renditions,” which made me wonder if the reviewers had read Black Culture for Dummies before scribbling together their responses. These things are in the play, but they are also the examples that appear in review after review – ignored are the more subtle discussions of black cultural frameworks, or the broader idea of the ongoing plight of black actors choosing between regular work and acting on principles of racial justice. And there wasn’t a single reference to Robert Townsend’s “Black Acting School” sketch from Hollywood Shuffle, a more modern update to Childress’ core concepts.

There are other moments gone unnoticed by critics. Of particular interest to me was the relationship between Henry (played by Laurence O’Dwyer) and Wiletta. Initially, Wiletta is unable to voice her dissatisfaction with the director’s commands, and Henry attempts to provide some comfort and support. Henry, a former crew member turned doorman, speaks with a heavy Irish brogue. But Henry is also one of the only whites in the play that does not bother with pity, condescension, and naivety – he just commiserates, person to person. One would be tempted to think that this is a reference to the complicated history that Irish Americans have with whiteness – however, a major part of the acceptance of the Irish into the white majority was abuse and separation from black Americans. Unfortunately, answers are not forthcoming – I couldn’t find any critical analysis of Henry in this context. Taking the play at face value, though, Henry embodies human connection and friendship transcending traditional racial boundaries – even if the two leads had to wait until the stage was dark and their coworkers had gone before they could speak freely.

But the most electrifying part of the play comes from the exchanges between Wiletta and Al Manners, each pushing the other farther and farther outside of the bounds of polite racial conversation, where the ugly truth often lies buried under the veneer of polite society.

Most telling is this monologue, delivered from the beleaguered white director of the production after being accused of prejudice:

Get wise, there’s damned few of us interested in putting on a colored show at all, much less one that’s going to say anything. It’s rough out here, it’s a hard world! Do you think I can stick my neck out by telling the truth about you? ‘

There are billions of things that can’t be said… do you follow me, billions! Where the hell do you think I can raise a hundred thousand dollars to tell the unvarnished truth?

(Picks up the script and waves it) So, maybe it’s a lie…but it’s one of the finest lies you’ll come across for a damned long time! Here’s bitter news, since you’re livin’ off truth… The American public is not ready to see you the way you want to be seen because, one.. .they don’t believe it, two.. .they don’t want to believe it…and three… they’re convinced they’re superior.. .and that, my friend, is why Carrie and Renard have to carry the ball! Get it? Now you wise up and aim for the soft spot in that American heart, let ‘em pity you, make ‘em weep buckets, be helpless, make ‘em feel so damned sorry for you that they’ll lend a hand in easing up the pressure.

In Plays by American Women, Judith E. Barlow notes:

Manners is surely right that few directors in the period would be willing to work on a show about racial themes with a predominantly Black cast, and that White audiences “don’t want to believe” or see people of color as they really are and “want to be seen.” (The failure of Broadway producers to risk showing Trouble in Mind is ironic proof of his claim.) Yet he cannot understand that a White liberal “version” of African American life is no substitute for Black people defining who they are and what they have experienced.

The fraudulence of “Chaos in Belleville” is most obvious when the elderly actor Sheldon offers a moving account of the lynching that he witnessed as a child, a description at sharp odds with the sanitized melodrama of “Belleville.” The ring of authenticity in Sheldon’s account points up the shabby cliches of the interior drama. “Chaos in Belleville” is not only a bad reflection of reality, it is an example of how drama by White authors differs from, and usurps the place of, drama by playwrights of color. “Chaos in Belleville” purports to contain “an anti-lynch theme,” yet it bears little resemblance to the anti-lynch dramas written by African Americans, particularly women. In Angelina Weld Grimke’s Rachel (1916), Rachel’s mother is helpless against the mob that brutally murders her husband and son. The mother in Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Blue-Eyed Black Boy (ca. 1930) appeals to the governor of the state (who raped her long ago) to save their child, while the grandmother in Johnson’s A Sunday Morning in the South (ca. 1925) desperately tries to rescue her unjustly accused grandson. In none of these plays does a mother blame her son for White bigotry and turn him over to an angry mob, and none offers as hero a White man like Renard, who preaches tolerance and pity after Job has been killed. “Chaos in Belleville” is a distorted mirror not only of actual events but of the way those events have been interpreted for the stage by African Americans themselves.

The metatheatrical structure of Trouble thus allows Childress to write a critique of the history of the American stage, where plays by (usually male) White writers purporting to show the Black experience have been embraced while dramas by African American writers are ignored.

Trouble in Mind is currently playing at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC through October 23, 2011. Tickets are $70-85 per show; however, there are student and senior matinee priced tickets, as well as Pay Your Age tickets, military discounts, and Hottix, which are half-priced and first come, first serve thirty minutes before showtime.

Cartoonist Keith Knight had a busy time at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con: he was part of The Black Panel, hosted his own panel, Nappy Hour, and promoted his own work, Too Small To Fail, the latest collection of work from (th)ink, his one-shot cartoon published in alternative newspapers around the country.

Too Small breezes through a host of topics, sometimes with sensibility, as in the case of a series of informational posts about Black History Month, and other times slinging barbs at targets both political:

and social:

As a result, the compilation can go from funny to affecting to edifying within just a few pages, making it a good introduction to Knight’s work for those who can’t read it in their own local papers. Meanwhile, at Comic-Con, Knight has been using a similar rapid-fire strategy for “Nappy Hour,” which he brought back this year with a panel that included “Black Panel” host Michael Davis, Bad Azz Mofo head honcho David Walker, and writer/performer Pam Noles.

I caught up to Knight at the convention to talk about the panel, his memories of McDuffie, and his impressions on fandom and race. The clip and a full transcript are under the cut.

Keith Knight: Hey, Racialicious, I am Keith Knight. I am creator of The Knight Life, and the K Chronicles, and Think, which I have a new book collection of. Check it out at Kchronicles.com.

Arturo: So how’s your con going so far?
KK: So far, so good. Today’s been gangbusters, actually, Saturday. Which actually in the past couple of years has been the slow day, ’cause everybody usually goes up to check out the movie panels. But, maybe that’s to do with the drop in movie studios coming here this year, ’cause it’s been less than last year. But it’s much busier today.
AG: For the second year [in a row] now, you’ve done Nappy Hour. You said you created that panel as a way to bring some of the conversations you’ve had with other black creators … take some of those conversations and put them into a con setting.
KK: Yeah, yeah. Nappy Hour originally was this thing where we met up in a dive bar just off the beaten path in the Gaslamp District. But, as everything has gotten busier and they did the baseball stadium, that little dive bar is no longer the empty place anymore, so I said, “this is good timing to try and make this happen inside the con.” So I got a great line-up last year with Dwayne McDuffie, Ned Cato and C. Spike Trotman, and an egg timer, which is the key to making a good, quick fast-paced panel. And it was a real big hit, so this year we did it again.
AG: And this year you had Michael Davis from The Black Panel on. There seemed to be a bit of synergy between Nappy Hour and the Black Panel in that both of them were tributes to Dwayne McDuffie … could you give us a quick memory of Dwayne for our readers?
KK: Yeah, Dwayne … he was … it’s funny, ’cause everyone has the same story about Dwayne, about how this guy, who was so busy, who did so much, who accomplished so much in the industry, would take so much time to talk with you. And he was a real big supporter of me – especially me being a newspaper cartoonist, among all the superhero stuff, he was always there, and picked up every piece of work I did. And, it was just really nice, that he supported me so much, and it was a conversation with him that really got me to bring Nappy Hour inside. It was nice of him to be on the panel. Just, after he passed, was hearing everybody’s similar stories, just how smart he was and how she shared so much with other people. Great guy, great person, and one to emulate.

Twenty years ago, it used to be 40-year-old white guys in the audience. That audience has changed, but it’s still 40-year-old white guys in the comics.

AG: Talk about your experience hosting a panel. ‘Cause it’s different from just having a conversation with your buddies at the bar. The timer’s a great aide, but what else have you had to adapt to pull this off?
KK: I was a little loose yesterday. I let Michael talk a little bit, because I was a half-hour late to his panel, so he could pretty much do whatever he wanted. But, you want people to make their points, have their points made, but one thing … I let it go a little but I wanted to make sure our panel’s constructed without a lot of complaining, and I think there was a little bit too much complaining, but you gotta reel that in, because there’s so much positive stuff that we can talk about, and so many things that we can accomplish in a positive way … A con isn’t a con without a little bit of complaining, right? Isn’t con the short version of convention? Pros and con, negative connotation?
AG: How do you see conversations about diversity – not just at this convention, but in fandom in general – how do you see those evolving over the past couple of years?
KK: Evolving? Well, I really liked David Walker’s point [during the panel]: the convention crowd has become so diverse – I mean, just look around. I’m looking around right now at people who walk by, there’ve been like Six brown people, two white people just walked by. There’s a white guy. Black girl. White guy. Kids. Two brown kids. You know, it’s very diverse. Age-wise, sex-wise, it’s great to see, and Dave Walker was saying, let’s see that reflected in the comic-books now. Twenty years ago, it used to be 40-year-old white guys in the audience. That audience has changed, but it’s still 40-year-old white guys in the comics.
AG: One of the points made in the panel was, we’re responsible for our own stories. Having the internet now is a great equalizer now, I’ve found, ’cause we have more outlets. I’ll ask you what I asked the panel yesterday: why is there still so much of a blind spot around fandom when it comes to race in particular, even among those who would normally define themselves as kind of progressive?
KK: Well, it’s one of those things where people need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future, and a lot of folks may not admit to their own biases or what they’re used to all these years. Making that transition may be hard. They may be forced to do that transition. I’ll tell you this: I’ve had more than a few people, after the panel, come down and say, “I just want to tell you, I wasn’t there for your panel, I was there for the panel after – I was squatting – but your panel was, like, the best panel I’ve seen at the con. You guys touched on a lot of issues that we just don’t hear in some of the other panels.” So those folks were tricked into hearing it, you know … sometimes people need to be tricked into learning about that stuff. I tell you, I always talk about the Ken Burns documentaries on PBS, because many of his documentaries have a lot to do with race in America – the Civil War, baseball, jazz, even the national parks, how they talked about the Buffalo Soldiers, who were the first park rangers, and a lot of people were being told for the first time, “You can’t do that in this park,” by black people. Those aren’t Black History specials, they’re Ken Burns documentaries, but people learn about black history through those documentaries.
AG: They get snuck in there.
KK: They’ll see something during black history month, like a Black History Month special, and a lot of white people won’t watch that, you know?
AG: But everybody likes baseball.
KK: Either you like or hate it. Still, even if you don’t like the game, that documentary was great. The biggest thing, though, was … what’s his name? … the guy who was the Negro League player who became a big -
AG: Buck O’Neill?
KK: Yeah, Buck O’Neill! He didn’t make it to the Hall of Fame when he was alive. These writers wouldn’t get him in the Hall of Fame in his last year, and then when he passed, they put him into the Hall of Fame. That’s something that bugged the hell out of me. But just for his performance in that documentary, being the star of that documentary was worth him getting into the Hall of Fame.

Sometimes there’s love in laughter. And the cast and crew bringing the new web series East Willy B have a lot of love for the real-life neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn, and (most) of the fictional characters.

The series’ heart is Willie Reyes, Jr. (Flaco Navaja) the 30-something Puerto Rican-proud bar owner who inherited the business from his dad, including the barfly crushing on him, Giselle (Caridad “La Bruja” de la Cruz). Wille is trying to keep his bar, which has served as the nabe’s hangout and nerve center, from closing down due gentrification in the form of his ex-girlfriend Maggie (April Hernandez) and her new white beau (and Willie’s longtime rival), Albert (Danny Hoch), and the incoming white hipsters looking for cheap(er) rent.

Transcript of the premiere episode after the jump.

(Music plays in the background. Willy and Gisele laugh. )

Willie: What do you need, Gisele?

Gisele: What I need or what I want? ‘Cause, if you ask me what I want, I’ll tell you.

Willie: OK, what do you want?

Gisele: I want me…a little bit of what you got going on right down there.

Willie: You’re crazy! You want another one?

Gisele: You asked me what I need? (Laughs)

Willie: (under his breath) Jesus!

Gisele: (Grabs for Willy) Oooo-hooo—

Willie: Hey hey heeeey! I’m working here!

(Gisele laughs)

Maggie: …yeah. (Laughs.) Si, mi amor. I’ll talk to you later. ‘Bye. (Blows kiss. Sighs.) I saw you, Willie.

Willie: Maa-ggiiiie!

Maggie: We need to talk.

Willie: Yeah, I’m sure we do.

Maggie: So. I was thinking: I have some ideas on bringing this bar alive.

Willie: Yeah, where’d you get ‘em? From your mom?

Maggie: Funny. OK? You know I’ve been taking classes—

Willie: Where at? Nuyorican College? That shit ain’t school.

(Maggie sighs)

Willie: That’s like ghetto babysitting or something.

Maggie: (exasperated) OK, anyway. Listen: I’m thinking…we can make this bar? More. Emo.

Willie: What the fuck is “emo”?!

Maggie: “Emotional!” You know: slightly depressive dive. We can have some 80s video games, some confederate flags. You also need to start selling $6 malt liquors. Those rich white hipsters love that shit!

Willie: This is still a Latin bar, aiight? I don’t know why everybody’s trippin’.

Maggie: Because no one cares, Willy. OK? You need to let go.

Ceci: Oh hell no! The dog run is around the corner.

Maggie: Whatever, Ceci.

Ceci: Por favor, Willie. You’re not still sweating this bougie-ass bitch, are you? She dumped your ass! Really?

(To Maggie) Looook, whatever it is you’re selling? We ain’t buying it.

Maggie: Shouldn’t you be chasing dudes with tattoos and bulldogs?

Ceci: Are you going to kick her out or do I gotta to do everything around here?

Maggie: Look! Mama? I own half this bar, and I’ll come here whenever I want.

(To Willie) This is what I’m talking about. If you want more people, get rid of these hoodrats.

Gisele: You bitch! (Screams)

Maggie: You know what? I don’t need this ghetto shit anymore! As a matter of fact, I’m gonna sue your ass.

Willie: For what?!?

Maggie: I am going to get controlling interest in this bar.

Willie: Like hell you are!

Maggie: Yeah? OK. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.

Willie: Fine! All right? ‘Cause I got your Colby and Meyers, and they got TV commercials and all that. So bring it!!

Ceci: Yeah? When you gonna grow your balls back?

Gisele: Don’chu worry, Willie. I’ma get her next time!

I’ll admit it: it took me a minute to get into East Willy B. Part of it is simply being an ethnic outsider: I’m not Latina and felt odd laughing with—and sometimes at—the jokes. Then I had to check myself: like I couldn’t recognize That Alcoholic Lecherous Auntie in Giselle (don’t lie: I know some of y’all Racializens have a Giselle in your fam and y’all love her antics at the family gathering); got-your-back (and sometimes gotta-be-in-your-face) Ceci (played by EWB co-creator Julia Ahumada Grob) ; or even soft-hearted-though-over-his-head Willie. And like I couldn’t recognize laughing in the face of New York City’s ongoing gentrification.

What I think East Willy B does best is put a biting laugh on the class politics aggravated by gentrification, ongoing colorism and “authenticity”, and ethnic pride (which comes out sometimes as ethnic chauvinism). Yes, there’s the leitmotif of the white hipsters seen as invading Bushwick, but for the most part, they are a joke in absentia. (And we can argue about the presence of hipsters and other gentrifiers of color.  However, it’s also real that the face of this demographics shift is white for quite a few communities. This definitely holds true for Bushwick.)  And Albert, the “token white guy,” isn’t viewed as “white” (the website describes him as “browner-than-thou,” complete with Latina girlfriend). White gentrification, says East Willy B, is aided and abetted by people from within the community who may see the financial and social upsides of it but may get caught up in some form of false consciousness due to getting some post-high school education (Maggie) or just overall sleaze (John the Realtor). (It’s also that awkward relationship with education that’s my biggest critique of East Willy B.)

And what I love about East Willy B is that it’s a complete online experience, reflecting Internet use among Latin@s. Yes, there’s the show and a vid of the on-camera and off-camera crews, but there are spot-on commercial spoofs and an emerging web series about the real Bushwick, with local activists speaking about the changes. (I like what Jesus says in the vid: “We’d love to have more people come by and see us, but don’t replace us.” I think the same holds true for enjoying East Willy B.) More importantly, the viewer is invited to be a part of East Willy B, both online and offline: the creators asks us to get the word out about the new web series (they have more episodes lined up for the summer) by hosting viewing parties and attending upcoming East Willy B-related events during the summer.

If the events (and the viewing parties) are anything like the series, then I think you’ll have a great time.

Photo Credit: John Walder

When Erykah Badu walked naked for 13 seconds (when the video was shot, she had the full song sped up to one minute and 32 seconds, then slowed back down in editing), it was for her art and not sexual consumption. It’s a stance she feels contributed to the outrage. “We’re just not fashioned for [nudity],” says Badu. “Especially the Black women, the ‘Hottentot Venus’ women, big-booty women, the large posterior, with no shoes on and a scarf on her head, you know that ain’t sexy.” [...]

“Society has a problem with female nudity when it is not . . . ”—Badu pauses to get her words together; she wants this point to be very clear—“. . . when it is not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. Then it becomes confusing.” [...]

“To me it’s like traditional performance art like Yoko Ono, or Nina Simone. Research some of those women. They all seem to live by the same theme: Well-behaved women rarely make history. Even looking at people like Harriet Tubman and those types of women. When you have strong convictions about something you know what you already gonna do. I look at some other videos. I’m not naming names, because I don’t want that to be mentioned. There is the thing with sexuality. I’m naked for 13 seconds, and these people are naked the whole time and gyrating and saying come “lick on my lollipop,” and “suck on my cinnamon roll,” and, you know, suggesting sex. People are uncomfortable with sexuality that’s not for male consumption. Could be ‘cause I did it in public too. Do you think people would have been complaining if I had on high-heel shoes?”

— From the June/July Vibe Cover Profile of Erykah Badu

Arise: Earlier, you called performance your therapy. Is performance how you deal with pain?

Erykah Badu: I accept pain as part of growing. Everyone goes through it. And in the process of it, it’s unpleasant, but I’m still peaceful and happy.

A: Does pain ever blind you?

EB: Not at this point. Joy blinds me. Joy, happiness, sadness – they are all blinding, if you lose yourself in any of those things. I feel that I have to stay very accepting and in the moment and not get to a point where I am complacent. I am continually evolving.

A: Do you practice meditation?

EB: Yes. It’s at a point where I walk in meditation. I practise being here, being present, and not being consumed with the chatter of my mind. Being aware of my experiences and the people that I meet. Truly giving them my full attention. I am practising it now.

A: Do you feel fear?

EB: I don’t know if it’s fear I feel. Sometimes, I have caution. And it’s based on fears I’ve had in the past. Neurologically, sometimes I see something that reminds me of something I’ve feared before. I caution myself. But I don’t think there are very many things that scare me right now. Especially human beings.

A: Have you ever experienced betrayal?

EB: [Long pause] What I perceived as betrayal. But it wasn’t really betrayal. Each person has his own path. I mean I don’t blame people for the things they do. That is not for me to judge. I can’t believe I am saying all these things to you because I generally don’t get into conversations like this. Because sometimes, when it’s written, it’s not written in the spirit that I’m saying it. So it becomes confusing. I’m cautious of that. But I don’t believe in betrayal. People follow their own minds and hearts. I guess that’s a part of what detachment is about.

A: How can you be present and detached at the same time?

EB: Well, being present means you are aware of everything around you. When I say detachment, it means that you don’t connect with the emotion that others have for you. The fear or envy someone has for you, the need to leave you, or leave the situation. That’s their stuff. What they feel or think about you is really none of your business. Your business is to be aware and always know that you are synonymous with what is going on around you. And that way, your feelings don’t get hurt when they make a decision that doesn’t agree with you.

A: Which brings us to love. What is love?

EB: Love is the opposite of fear.

—From “The Naked Truth,” published in Arise, Issue 11

(Image Credit: Vibe)

By Guest Contributor Ay-leen The Peacemaker, cross-posted from Beyond Victoriana

Native steampunk has been presented in many different ways and, like the comic Finder (which had been reviewed here a couple of weeks ago), The West Was Lost is another drawn tale that speaks in layers and plays with the concept of linear storytelling.

The creators Beth Aileen Lameman (née Dillon) and her husband Myron Lameman are both Native (Beth has Irish/Anishinaabe/Métis heritage and Myron is from the Beaver Lake Cree Nation) and passionate about indigenous representation in their creative projects. Beth Aileen’s past work includes her comic Fala–which is described as a Native “Alice in Wonderland”–, the urban fantasy animated series Animism, and the games TimeTraveller–about a time-hopping Mohawk man from the 22nd century– and Techno Medicine Wheel. Myron is an independent filmmaker whose previous work includes his recent documentary made with support from National Geographic All Roads called Extraction, about the Beaver Lake Cree people’s fight against the Canadian federal government over tar sands expansion on their land. He has also done the short films Blue in the Face (also working with Beth Aileen), Indigenous Streets, and Shadow Dances and Fire Scars.

The comic itself is a one-shot 24-page piece, but the story it contains weaves in and out of time, consciousness and space. The summary of The West Was Lost is probably the most linear way to describe it:

The cold north wind brings with it chaos and harsh reality when decisions are made by Nezette, who leads members of the Sovereign to rid the west of the intruding Zhaagnaash people by putting flame to oil. Nezette must confront her worst enemy: the temptation of Windigo in herself.

What struck me most about this comic is how much of it was sparsely told with very little dialogue. Nezette as the group leader is both strong and capable, but, as with any one-shot comic, it leaves you wanting just a bit more afterwards. What happens to these characters? They succeed in their mission against the Zhaagnaash, but what awaits them next?

The comic also boasts wonderful, engaging artwork, and the character designs and art are bold, colorful, and striking. This was purposely described by the creators as Native steampunk, and I appreciated how both Native and steampunk imagery wasn’t stereotyped. The layouts aren’t spilling over with a thousand gears and brass bits; there is a steampunk train that runs on water vapor (green and steamy!) and really interesting arrows they use. Additionally, the characters are dressed in understated but distinctive clothing that both emphasizes their heritage without succumbing to an overload of the “buckskin, beads, and feathers” trap.

What interesting in the response this comic has gotten about its time-jumping storyline is Beth Aileen’s emphasis that non-linear storytelling is part of Anishinaabemowin oral tradition. The purpose behind this framework is not something done for “experimental” sake, but as a new form of listening which relates to how Anishinaabe people understand their language. In response to one review, she explains how a “word is not only a single word but also a description,” and asks “Ultimately, are you curious? Do you want to know more? Listen again, and keep listening, until how to listen becomes clearer.”

This is the second installation of Pierre Bennu’s Black Moses Barbie series.  In this ep: Black Moses Barbie has to use her Motivational Freedom Rifle…but not on whom you’d think.

Black Moses Barbie commercial #2 of 3 from pierre bennu on Vimeo.

Transcript after the jump.

Music: Mmmmmmmm (woo woo woo)….Black Moses Baaaar-bieeeee.

(Doorbell rings)

Slave Catcher 1: Hey, Cat Lady.  Sorry to barge in unannounced, but we’re looking for some escaped slaves that may have popped through here. You know the type: big, brawny, built like a stallion–

(Cat meows)

—golden-brown skin, and they absolutely hate to do work.  We need them to build this country’s infrastructure, of course, but they can’t seem to get their savage minds around the concept of working for free under inhumanly brutal conditions. They hate it.

I hope you don’t mind if we take a look around, do you?

(Cat meows)

Cat Lady: Feel free to take a look around, boys. But there’s nobody here–

(Cats meow randomly)

–but me and my cats.

(Cat purrs)

Runaway Ken: (murmurs) Oh my gosh!

Runaway Christie: (murmurs) Oh my gosh!

Runaway Ken: Oh my gosh!

Runaway Christie: Oh my gosh!

Runaway Ken: Oh my gosh!

Runaway Christie: Oh my gosh!

Runaway Ken: Oh my gosh!

Runaway Christie: Oh my gosh!

Runaway Ken: Oh my gosh–

Black Moses Barbie: Sh!

Slave Catcher 1: You know, there’s one thing I loathe more than cats, and that’s the n-word: “non-truthtellers.”

(Cat purrs)

Now if I were to find you were harboring slaves on the premises, that would make you an nnnnon-truthteller.  And the penalties would be quite severe. Quite!

(Cat hisses)

Slave Catcher 2: Hey, boss, I think I smell something.

Slave Catcher 1: Nyeah, I smell somebody.

Slave Catcher 2: Yeah, or maybe three-fifth of somebody. Heh heh heh.

Black Moses Barbie: Kiss three-fifths of this!

Slave Catcher 1: Why, it’s Black Moses herself!

Slave Catcher 2: (simultaneously) Harriet Tubman!

(Rifle cocks. Cat screeches. Gun shots.)

Slave Catcher 1: Nyeah.

Cat Lady: Ahhh, Harriet? What is that scent you’re wearing, dear? I absolutely love it.

Black Moses Barbie: It’s the sweet scent of freedom.

(Black Moses Barbie and Cat Lady laugh)

Black Moses Barbie: You really need to change that kitty litter.

Music: Mmmmmm mmmm mmmmmm.

Announcer: Black Moses Barbie Underground Dream House comes complete with Cat Lady Abolitionist. Scent of Freedom fragrance sold separately.

Okay, so it doesn’t address the issues stirred up by Marvel Comics’ “Women Of Marvel” covers. But this variant cover to FF#5 by Skottie Young for the company’s “I Am Captain America” marketing campaign still made me smile.

Now, what are the odds that a) a person of color will figure into the actual comic and b) a woman of color will be depicted on another cover for the campaign? Well … Uh, isn’t this drawn nicely?

By Guest Contributor Jorge Antonio Vallejos, cross-posted from Black Coffee Poet

Dub poet Lillian Allen continues to define the form and explore its leading innovative edge. She has performed her work in many major venues in North America taking poetry to larger and larger audiences. She has produced Juno award winning recordings, critical acclaimed publications, and she has performed her work for television, film, radio, and print media across the world. Lillian is also a professor of creative writing at the Ontario College of Art and Design, inspiring students to claim space for their dreams in the world and to use their creativity to make revolution.

BCP: Why poetry?

LA: You ask why poetry? To that I would say, why not poetry? Poetry is the deprogramming faculty we have as humans that they would like us to believe is, or should be the purview of only a few. With poetry we can create our own textures and our own picture of life, we can create community, name the nameless and put out a point of view, a way of seeing that says we are unique and we can think for ourselves. Poetry is the answer to the roll call those in control have forgotten to do. Poetry is the “present” to this imaginary roll call.

BCP: How did you come up with Dub Poetry?  Can you please define Dub Poetry for BlackCoffeePoet.com readers?

LA: I was doing what I was doing from I was a little child, later when I did formal English Literature and learned about poetry in the Euro tradition, I love it! It seemed to me that poetry was already everywhere in my community.

In church, the preacher, my Grandma, my friends, the guys on the corner, even the sports commentators. I remember how joyed and elated my parents and their friends were when a certain radio commentator made a particular vivid commentary, filled with metaphors and simile. They would talk about the beauty of his verbal chops for days on end. I was inspired.

Later when I started to write my own poetry and listen to High School poetry, I yearned to make it my own, to put some of my culture and everyday language into it. The late great Jamaican Louise Bennett paved the way with her witty, intellectually flawless down to earth poetry in the Jamaican language. Bob Marley building on Miss Lou work emphasized the musical elements and did his thing. But it was the fabulous Oku Onoura who burst out on the scene and gave what himself and a number of compatriots were doing at the time, the name ‘dub poetry’. So when I met up with Oku, I saw that we were doing very similar things, so I figured that I was part of a movement, so I called myself a dub poet. From then on I set out to consciously develop both the form and the movement.

BCP: What is your creative process?

LA: My creative process has a lot of incubation; I like to think about things for a long time. I love warm round sound, and the sound of meaning. I like to write the kind of poetry I would love to hear. The musicality, the rhythms, pre language nuances and post language impulses. I go for creating a full experience.

BCP: Was it hard finding a publisher for your controversial book Psychic Unrest?

LA: Jill Battson invited me to publish with Insomniac Press, in Toronto. I gathered up a few pages, then spent a few weeks working to refine and finalize on the page.

BCP: In your video performance piece for BlackCofeePoet.com (to be posted Friday February 25, 2011) you sang a lot of African based notes and rhythms. How much does your spirituality and ancestry play a part in your writing and performances?

LA: My spirituality and ancestry is core to my writing. It is a site where all these things get connected, my special ‘cathedral’, so to speak.

BCP: Do you see poetry as a form of prayer?

LA: My poetry is definitely a form of prayer and ritual and communion.

BCP: As a woman of colour was it a difficult road for you in the poetry scene?

LA: I identify as a feminist woman.

BCP: The poetry you have shared with me is history based and focuses on dismantling colonialism.  Is a lot of your poetry like that?

LA: A lot of my poetry focuses on opening up possibilities, to counter the veneer of the ‘God given norm’ and empowering ideas and people to assert and fight for what is just.

BCP: What does Black History Month mean to you?  What changes would you like to see happen for future Black History Months?

LA: Decolonizing our minds, and fighting those structures and systemic social relationships that justify and keep oppression in place. We have to fight oppression in all its forms, not just colonialism.

BCP: What are you working on now?

LA: I’m just getting ready to make the old recordings available to the public. I am planning on doing some recording this year and am writing all the time.

BCP: What advice do you have for other writers out there who are having difficulties with their writing, or who have yet to see their work in print, or who are afraid to perform their poetry?

LA: For young writers who want to, and are afraid to, perform, I say practice and attend readings, network, do open mics, join up with a group of writers, take a course, whatever you can do to get going; and many writers today self publish their own work.

by Latoya Peterson

I thought I knew Oedipus Rex.

The first time I read Sophocles’ masterful Greek tragedy was in the 11th grade.  There, scribbling out an analysis as part of a 40 minute timed writing, I focused on what epitomized Oedipus for me – the struggle between fate and free will. After hearing from the Oracle that he was fated to murder his father and to sleep with his mother, Oedipus does what any rational person would do – he tries to put as much distance as he can between himself and the only family he knows. Unfortunately, prophecies are not so easily averted – Oedipus never knew he was adopted, and thus did not know the man he slew on the road to Thebes was his father; nor did he know the beautiful widow he would eventually marry was his birth mother.

Back then, I wrote about the icy hand of irony in Oedipus’ journey -  how he closed himself to what would have revealed the truth because of his hubris, but once he finds out he literally blinds himself.  But what really stuck with me was the idea of fate.  If your life is predestined – and all roads will lead to your eventual path – what is the point of having free will? Life never promised to be fair, but the fates are needlessly cruel, especially in Greek mythology.  And so, when I heard about a retelling of Oedipus Rex, set in the barrios of LA with a Chicano protagonist, I could immediately see the connection.

Indeed, the idea of being trapped by larger, unseen forces makes a lot of sense when thrust into a modern context. Oedipus El Rey bases its narrative in California’s penal system, with the title character Oedipus (also nicknamed patas malas due to the torture inflicted by his father at his birth) growing up in juvenile detention.  At one point, Oedipus confesses that after he was released at the age of seventeen, he robbed a Costco without a gun, just so he could be returned to jail.  It was a powerful admission – that so many boys who go into the criminal justice system at an early age come out without any sense of what it means to function in society, that there are people who come to prefer the steady monotony of incarceration than be forced to cope with the unstructured chaos of real life. The idea that regardless of your own intentions, one might still end up ensnared in forces beyond your control resonated with me. I could understand that.

So, playwright Luis Alfaro threw me for a loop when he replied to one of my questions, saying the play, at its core, was “about love.”

I stumbled over my next question, mind reeling. Love? Oedipus isn’t about love! It’s about the cruelty of the Gods! Man vs. spiteful assholes who would happily smite you to punish your father! It’s about hubris! Incest! Patricide! Defilement! What the fuck is love in the time of oracles?

But there is a reason why Luis Alfaro won the MacArthur Genius Grant. Having delved deeply into the works of Sophocles before, producing the Electra send up Electricidad, he knew the source material – and saw more than the obvious message.  Alfaro explained to me that the whispers of longing, of need, of separation and pain in the text were all about love.  From what I remember, Oedipus married Jocasta as a sort of thank you – “We, the people of Thebes, appreciate you killing the Sphinx, and hey, here’s our king’s widow! She’s a total MILF!” But Alfaro’s take was informed by the time he spent learning about the toll that California’s penal system had on people.  In an interview on the Woolly Mammoth blog, he explains:

Recidivism, it seems to me, is a symptom of a larger issue. Why is it that more than half of all Americans who end up in jail, when released, go back? A lot of times this happens within hours. My state, California, has the highest recidivism rates in the nation. As a playwright, interesting facts like this sort of lodge in my brain when I hear them. When they are coupled with some fascinating images or one’s own history—I have worked in the Juvenile Detention System as a poet and writer since I was young—they start to form the thread of an interesting story. When I think about recidivism among prisoners, I wonder not about what’s ahead, but what one leaves behind when they get out. The comfort of a family one never had, a structure where one might not have lived with rules, the need for protection in a world that seems unsafe. What fascinates me most about prisoner recidivism is that there might be an alternate society out there—actually in there—that functions differently from the one we live in, and for some this is a better place. [...]

I studied with Maria Irene Fornes, who in my first day of workshop asked me what kind of plays I wanted to write. I had already been arrested for civil disobedience a number of times, and I said that I wanted to write political plays. She laughed and said that she hated political plays! I was ignorant and didn’t know her work, so I didn’t realize she was lying. She said I should stop writing and go live these political ideas and then come back and write a play about nothing, a rock, and she promised me it would be political. So, I did just that. I spent over ten years protesting, working with at-risk youth in the California Youth Authority. At one point, I even worked for the ACLU teaching protesters how to get properly arrested! But sure enough, I came back to writing and wrote from my heart, and politics and humanity were simply part of a larger organic mix. People who have made really big mistakes in their lives are very complicated people. They represent the complexity we are looking for in our work. Incarcerated children are missing elements that many of us take for granted—a notion of family, security, love, or even intelligence about the world. The first gig I had in a youth prison was a poetry workshop with teen felons, 12-17 years old. Five minutes into it I realized that none of them could read and few could write—which didn’t seem to matter because I couldn’t use pencils or pens anyway. No one told me this beforehand. Out of sheer terror and desperation, we stood in a circle, created a rhythm with our hands and bodies, and each student had to tell their life story through rap. I set some parameters about language and violence, and they were able to adapt. I could not ask them to write down their lives and crimes, but there was no law saying that they could not say out loud their histories. And they did, and the stories were extraordinary and sad and full of regret and fear and lack of hope. And that is when I realized that everyone is a playwright. Some of us just have training.

Alfaro infuses this complexity with wit, heart, and inside jokes – definitely intended for the Chicanos in the audience. Oedipus El Rey has been produced before in other cities – here is a clip from an earlier production:

Still, the beauty of live theater is that you never truly see the same performance twice. The clip above is not familiar to me – the Oedipus El Rey I watched was a bit slower in pace and delivery. Michael John Garcés, directing this version chose a more contemplative mood, shot through with music and sound director Ryan Rumery’s selections of eerie, single voice a capella renditions of classics like “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” providing the background for Oedipus and Jocasta’s ill-fated tryst. Andres Munar’s Oedipus flows through yoga poses, holding plank while other men do chin-ups, balancing in shoulder stand until his body gives out, conscious of, but not defined by his disability, which Jocasta likens to “a cholo walk.” (Side note: I would love to see a PWD analysis of Oedipus El Rey.) And this interpretation marks the only tragedy where I’ve seen the chorus break to deliver a physical beat down to match the verbal one they normally spout from the sidelines.

Still, Oedipus El Rey isn’t quite perfect.  I never felt as if I connected with Jocasta, in all of her grief and sorrow.  Her character has the potential to be rich – and yet, Sophocles’ original also left her as a question mark, a tragic, devoted figure, but with little else underneath.  This may be due to Sophocles’ to the societal norms in his age.  In Aristole’s treatise on writing, Poetics, he refers to Oedipus, as well as other classic works. Being a fan of Sophocles, it is interesting that Aristotle makes a point to note (emphasis mine):

In respect of Character, there are four things to be aimed at. First, and most important, it must be good. Now any speech or action that manifests moral purpose of any kind will be expressive of character: the character will be good if the purpose is good. This rule is relative to each class. Even a woman may be good, and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless. The second type of thing to aim at is propriety. There is a type of manly valour; but valour in a woman, or unscrupulous cleverness is inappropriate.

If Aaron Sorkin is correct in his assertion that Artistotle laid out all the rules of writing in Poetics, then it kind of makes sense that representations of women on screen and stage are still stuck in the hookers-victims-doormats loop, so eloquently exposed by Shirley MacLaine.

Other than those minor gripes, the update just works, providing a beautiful retelling of the quintessential tragedy. But still, I found myself sitting in the theater and relating most to Creon – brother to Jocasta, next in line for the throne before Oedipus showed up. While Alfaro’s interpretation revolved around the love between Oedipus and Jocasta, it is Creon’s anguished cry protesting the idea of a pre-destined life that stays with me:

If it is all simply fate, then why not me?

Oedipus El Rey, written by Luis Alfaro, is currently playing at the Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington, DC. The show closes March 6th.

(Image Credit: Luis Alfaro)

By Sexual Correspondent Andrea (AJ) Plaid

I’m glad I saw the legend, at least.

I had heard about Samuel Fuller’s film White Dog in whispers, like a deeper-than-the-FBI-and-the-Illuminati-plotting-in-Area-51 conspiracy theory among my more “conscious” Black acquaintances — mostly because the film was banned, though no one ever said exactly why.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I attended a screening of the film at the the Maysles Cinema in Harlem, hosted by the the Ego Trip hip hop collective – who are, in full disclosure, the R editrix’s heroes – as part of the movie’s house series, “I See White People,” billed in the theater’s program as a “quarterly series on the visibility of white racism, white privilege, and unacknowledged white culture.” Ego Trip’s Chairman Jefferson Mao added, deadpan, that the film was chosen because “we’re fans of the racist dog horror genre.”

To say the film’s history is “complex” should qualify it as one of the word’s understated synonyms. The history of the book upon which it’s based would qualify as another synonym. Spoilers and highlights from a Q&A discussion Ego Trip hosted after the screening are under the cut. (If you have a slightly deeper quick-and-dirty curiosity, read here.)

SPOILERS AHEAD

The plot is rather simple: Julie, a young white actor (played by 80s teen star Kristy McNichol) decides to adopt a white German shepherd she hit during a nighttime drive.  She thinks the dog is the perfect pet. However, other people suss something’s wrong with it, starting with the actor’s white boyfriend (Jameson Parker).  What’s wrong is the white dog is a “white dog,” a canine trained to lethally attack Black people, from the sanitation worker to the actor’s Black co-star to a random pedestrian.

When Julie finally recognizes this, she sends the dog to a wild-animal training refuge for re-education. The refuge’s owners are divided on what to do with it: Carruthers (Burl Ives), a white man, tells her the dog is a lost cause; Keys (Paul Winfield), a black man, reluctantly, then determinedly, tries to reform it.

Keys also explains to Julie that the dog’s behavior was probably the result of conditioning: the original owner paid homeless and/or drug-addicted Black people to abuse the dog when it was younger, to the point that the dog was conditioned to associate Black people and being attacked. This is underscored by an encounter between Julie and the owner, an older white man and his two granddaughters. Later, the dog, retrained to not attack Black people, hesitates about attacking Julie, then turns and runs towards Carruthers in teeth-baring mode. The dog leaps, and Keys shoots.

Director Roman Polanski was hired to direct White Dog in 1975 before his being brought up on statutory rape charges led him to leave the U.S.  Six years and several creative teams later, screenwriter Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential), who was to have worked with Polanski, and director Samuel Fuller took on the project (with the encouragement, curiously, of ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner.)

At the time, the NAACP, along with other civil-right leaders and organizations, expressed concern that the film would spark racial violence, questioned using a book written by a white man (and a “pulpy” book at that), and criticized Paramount for hiring the mostly white film crew. The studio brought in two Black consultants to critique the Black characters. One, a vice-president at the local PBS station, said he found nothing wrong with the depictions; the other, an NAACP vice-president, thought the film would aggravate race relations in light of the Atlanta child murders occurring at the time.

Fearing a NAACP-threatened boycott, the studio shelved the project without telling Fuller. Infuriated by Paramount’s action, Fuller moved to France and “never directed another American film.” White Dog was theatrically released in France and the U.K. to positive reviews in 1982. The first time the movie appeared in wide release in the U.S. was as an edited-for-TV movie for cable in 1983. NBC planned to broadcast White Dog in 1984, but scrubbed the plan due to continued pressure from the NAACP. At best, some people may have caught the flick in the subsequent years in art-house movie houses and at film festivals. Finally, the Criterion Collection released White Dog on DVD in 2008.

The ensuing Q&A became a fascinating discussion of why the dog would have become such a trigger for the NAACP’s fear. As Ego Trip’s Gabriel Alvarez noted, “Using the dog to symbolize racism is interesting because the dog is seen as part of family.”

One audience member said that, because of the furor surrounding the Michael Vick dog-fighting scandal, the pop consciousness around dogs and African-Americans, especially men, would drastically alter White Dog’s reception if released today — especially in light of Keys having to kill the dog at film’s end. Other audience contributions from that night:

• “The symbol of dog is ingrained into the consciousness of Black people with the civil rights movements with dogs and hoses.”
• “I remember hearing about an MLK park where some people wanted to have a dog park.  But it became a big issue along racial lines.  What I found out was Black people felt it was disrespectful to have a dog park in a park named after MLK due to the history of dogs and Blacks and violence.”
• “What the movie shows is that there’s a need to be truth and there needs to be reconciliation. What I’ve noticed is that young white people need to be aggressive with their parents regarding racism.”
• “I want to know from white people how can white people facilitate change….”
• “By creating such things as film. Yeah, the film is cheesy, but there’s also a film language that Fuller uses.”
• “What people need to do is to understand and deconstruct that the country has been founded on inequality.”

The discussion turned to how the film dealt with racism itself, a topic I engaged in with Jefferson:

Me: It was a very ’80s message film.
The moderator responded that White Dog was “straightforward” about white racism.
Me: It was straightforward because it was the ’80s. So the racism was (more) obvious, so the message was obvious. Now it’s morphed into Glenn Beckian ‘I can be racist, but don’t call me a racist.’
Jefferson: Stylistically, it’s very 80s. But it was ahead of its time. Fuller’s career was interesting. He was known for a lot of B movies but tried to sneak in social issues. Yes, it’s 80s exploitation, but there are powerful moments, like the child getting whisked away while the dog is hunting.
Me: But saying that it’s very 80s isn’t a slag, but a simple observation.

After the Q&A, I shared my opinion with Gabriel that every decade has a “message” film about racism that is reflective of not only of time period stylistically, but also where ideas about racism were and are. The 80s had White Dog and John Sayles’ Brother from Another Planet. The 90s had John Sayles’ Lone Star, Anthony Drazan’s Zebrahead, and Tony Kaye’s American History X. All of them were “race message films” that were very much of their time.

Exiting the theater that night, I noted the strange irony — and hope – of the series being housed in an indie theater located in the nexus of white-gentrifying Harlem. Perhaps this series is a good tonic, if not a great meeting point, for whites and the PoCs left in Harlem to gather to talk about the transitioning nabe and how well-off whites gentrifying it isn’t simply viewed as a “the neighborhood changing” so much as a blithe takeover, fortified by unaddressed white privilege, of a perceived spiritual and physical home of some Black people and our allies in the US and the world. However, considering that two white couples who came to watch the flick left as soon as the film was over—and, as a result, tipped the Q&A audience to majority people of color. We’ll see.

The Maysles Cinema crew wants to take their “I See White People” series on tour. Next stop: Brooklyn, NY.

SFW? This should be required viewing at your work. From the film Stormy Weather, Cab By Goodness Calloway serves it up for The Nicholas Brothers, in a sequence Fred Astaire called the best tap-dancing scene ever filmed.

World Festival of Black Arts and Culture Promo v. 2 from BKFN.org on Vimeo.

#WishIWasThereNow

Okay, I’m a little bummed that the family and I aren’t spending the holidays in Dakar, Senegal. I mean, how hot would that be? And then to be able to attend this festival, only the third of its kind? Wow. I just learned about this from our friends over at Society HAE, who have a correspondent there. So, we’ll all have to live vicariously through Raquel Wilson’s dispatches, which I will post here as they’re available.

It’s a multidisciplinary event that features a broad range of art, including architecture, dance, theater, literature, visual arts, etc. The music program features artists such as Manu Dibango, Archie Shepp, Youssou Ndour, Angelique Kidjo, Somi, The Refugee All Stars, Akon, and a ton more from across the diaspora.

In the meantime, here’s some background on the festival:

In 2010, the focus of the world will be Africa. At the heart of sporting news with the recent Football World Cup, the continent is also celebrating fifty years of independence of French-speaking Africa. It is in this context that we present the third World Festival of Black Arts and Cultures, an international event which has been entrusted by the African Union to his Excellency Abdoulaye Wade, President of the Republic of Senegal.

Initiated by President Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first edition of the World Festival of Black Arts and Cultures was held in Dakar in 1966. The first Festival brought together people from all generations and disciplines in order to make the rest of the world aware of the struggle and persistence of Black peoples in the face of colonization. In 1977, Nigeria hosted the second edition.

The 2010 Festival conveys a new vision of Africa as free, proud, creative and optimistic. With Brazil as the guest of honour, which is a country rich with artistic cross-pollination and cultural diversity, the Festival will emphasize dialogue between peoples and cultures.

Access to the Festival will be free in order to encourage people from all over to participate, and many of the educational activities will be focused on engaging children.

We all have a duty as sons, daughters and friends of Africa to do everything we can to make this unique event a resounding success, an experience that will ignite the African Renaissance.

Love the part about it being “an experience that will ignite the African Renaissance.” That’s a win in any book!