Review: Mississippi in Africa

Mississippi in Africa
Mississippi in Africa by Alan Huffman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mississippi in Africa details the extremely fascinating story of enslaved black people who were repatriated back to Africa in the early to mid 19th century and who, eventually, became the “founders” of the country known as Liberia. In 1836, one Isaac Ross, a plantation owner in Mississippi, died. In his will, he specified that the humans he held in bondage should be freed and passage would be paid for their relocation to Africa, if they so chose. By 1849, 200 of the 225 enslaved had emigrated to Liberia. Huffman details the histories of these settlers, as they are known, as they transition into becoming Americo-Liberians.

One of the more stunning premises in the book is that a prime cause of the Liberian Civil War was the undemocratic control of Liberia’s economic, military and political infrastructure, etc by the the Americo-Liberians. However, as unsettled as I was by that assertion, I could not deny the fact that they were very oriented toward America and American culture. They built houses in Liberia that were replicas of the ones they built their former owners. Their names were (and continue to be) of European origin. Upon declaring themselves free from the American Colonization Society in 1847, the Americo-Liberians did the same thing the fighters of the American Revolution did – declare themselves free from tyranny while holding people in bondage (the ward system).

It seems so predictable a behavior that I am left wondering how it is that the family of Fela Kuti, whose ancestors were also repatriated, managed to re-integrate into African society so successfully that they are integral to an understanding of modern Nigeria.

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Review: Someone Knows My Name

Someone Knows My Name
Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I came across this book while doing research into Black people who chose the British team in the competition for control of resources known as the American Revolution. Narrated by the fictional Aminatta Diallo, the majority of the book is delineated by Diallo’s desire to return to the home she knew as a child. That home, Africa (a word she hears for the first time in the then colonies) turns out not to be the same home she remembered. It has been extremely negatively impacted on by the trade in human beings. Drawn from an actual historical document known as Book of Negroes, Hill does such an effective job of bringing to life the “reality” of the Black Loyalists listed in the document, I would be remiss not to wholeheartedly recommend this piece of historical fiction which won the 2008 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize.

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Review: Black Women Writers at Work

Black Women Writers at Work (Black Women Writers at Work, Paper)Black Women Writers at Work by Claudia Tate
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love Toni Morrison’s take on "writer’s block:

"When I sit down in order to write, sometimes it’s there; sometimes it’s not. But that doesn’t bother me anymore. I tell my students there is such a thing as ‘writer’s block,’ and they should respect it. You shouldn’t write through it. It’s blocked because it ought to be blocked, because you haven’t got it right now. All the frustration and nuttiness that comes from ‘Oh, my God, I cannot write now’ should be displaced. It’s just a message to you saying, ‘That’s right, you can’t writer now, so don’t.’ We operate with deadlines, so facing the anxiety about the block has become a way of life. We get frightened about the fear. I can’t write like that. If i don’t have anything to say for three or four months, I just don’t write. When I read a book, I can always tell if the writer has written through a block. If he or she had just waited, it would’ve been better or different, or a little more natural. You can see the seams.

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Review: Black Women Writers at Work

Black Women Writers at Work (Black Women Writers at Work, Paper)Black Women Writers at Work by Claudia Tate

I had read this initially more than 20 years ago and it’s definitely time for a revisit. So I started today with Claudia Tate’s interview with Toni Cade Bambara. Even though on one level, the interview is dated, as Bambara refers to 1980’s in future tense, when it comes to a writer’s life….and the role of a writer in society, it’s as timely as well….time.

Some quotes from the interview:

CT: How do you fit writing in your life?

TCB: "[…}I just flat out announce I’m working, leave me alone and get out my face. When I "surface" again, I try to apply the poultices and patch up the holes I’ve left in relationships around me. That’s as much as I know how to do…so far.

CT: What determines your responsibility to yourself and your audience?

TCB: I start with the recognition that we are at war, and that war is not simply a hot debate between the capitalist camp and the socialist camp over which economic/political/social arrangement will have hegemony in the world. It’s not just the battle over turn and who has the right to utilize resources for whomsoever’s benefit. The war is also being fought over the truth: what is the truth about human nature, about the human potential. My responsibility to myself, my neighbors, my family and the human family is to try to tell the truth. That ain’t easy. There are so few truth-speaking traditions in this society in which the myth of "Western civilization" has claimed the allegiance of so many. We have rarely been encouraged and equipped to appreciate the fact that the truth works, that it releases the Spirit and that it is a joyous thing.

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Word of Mouth

I just bought this book today. The first poem I read, and absolutely love, is by Kevin Young:

 

Eddie Priest’s Barbershop & Notary
Closed Mondays

is music   is men
off early from work   is waiting
for the chance at the chair
while the eagle claws holes
in your pockets   keeping
time   by the turning
of rusty fans   steel flowers with
cold breezes   is having nothing
better to do   than guess at the years
of hair   matted beneath the soiled caps
of drunks   the pain of running
a fisted comb through stubborn
knots   is the dark dirty low
down blues   the tender heads
of sons fresh from cornrows   all
wonder at losing   half their height
is a mother gathering hair   for good
luck   for a soft wig   is the round
difficulty of ears   the peach
faced boys asking Eddie
to cut in parts and arrows
wanting to have their names read
for just a few days   and among thin
jazz   is the quick brush of a done
head   the black flood around
your feet   grandfathers stopping their games of ivory
dominoes   just before they reach the bone
yard   is winking widowers announcing
cut it clean off   I’m through courting
and hair only gets in the way   is the final
spin of the chair   a reflection of
a reflection   that sting of wintergreen
tonic   on the neck of a sleeping snow
haired man   when you realize it is
your turn   you are next

 

Word of Mouth: Poems Featured on NPR’s All Things Considered

Reading Matters

The public library has become my new bookstore. Yesterday, I went book shopping there and got the following books:

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter

If you know me, then you know I am in no way, shape or form, a supporter of mainstream politics, let along presidents of the united states, former or current. However watching “history” the day Obama was installed as the “new face” of america, I was struck by the difference in physicality between George, Sr and the “peanut farmer” from Georgia. George, Sr looked like he could barely walk (and old Barbara didn’t seem to want to help him at all – if how far ahead she was walking is any indication). However, the peanut farmer defined sprightly. The image stuck with me and lead me to watch a documentary about said peanut farmer. In that documentary, I learned about this book…and the reaction to it. So even the back cover blurb includes quotes from the bible (something that interests me even less than mainstream politics), I decided to get it and yes, read it.

A Change of Skin by Carlos Fuentes

On the header over at Whirlwind Publishing, I have a quote from Fuentes: writing is a struggle against silence. When I saw this book, my mind flashed to that quote and also the realization that I had never actually read anything by Fuentes. So the book got added to the small pile. Because I have no experience with him or his writing (aside from the quote), I have no expectations. If A Change of Skins resonates with me enough, I will review it in the future.

The Hindi-Bindi Club by Monica Pradhan

The cover of this book seems like it was designed to capture the eye of readers who get titillated by the “exoticness” of Indian cultural attire. But what decided me on it was the back blurb which said the following:

In the celebrated tradition of The Joy Luck Club and Like Water for Chocolate comes a lyrical and deeply moving debut that explores the intricate bond between mothers and daughters – and the universal quest to live a life of love, beauty and truth.

This book and the one I’m going to discuss next will be read as part of the 2011 South Asian reading challenge.

Brick Lane by Monica Ali

Honestly, I bought this book because I’ve seen the movie and want to read the original, as is my wont.

Both books will be reviewed.

Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful – Alice Walker

When I first started reading Black lit as a teenager, this was one of the books I got. Back then my favorite poem in it was First They Said. I think it might actually be the original hardcover book because the picture on the back cover shows a young Alice Walker wearing what looks like braid extensions.

Land without Thunder: a short short reflection

I don’t know if the Heinneman African Writer Series (AWS) was one of those Chess record label deals where the artists didn’t get paid according to the value of their work to the music appreciating audience but rather according to the skinflint economics of record label owners. I haven’t researched it so I can’t say. I can say I sincerely hope not because I am thankful for it connecting me to so many African writers they’ve become part of my interior landscape.

For instance, earlier today, I was mopping my floor and for no reason I can think of one of the stories in Grace Ogot’s Land without thunder crossed my mind. In a beautiful story called the old white witch, a group of african nurses go on strike because they’ve been ordered to carry the feces of patients and that is against their cultural practices. As their spokeswoman, Adhiambo (but called Monica by the white missionaries who run the hospital) says:

Long before you came, we agreed to nurse in the hospital on the understanding that we were not to carry any bedpans. We want to be married and become mothers like any other woman in the land. We are surprised that senior members of the staff have sneaked behind us to support you when they know perfectly well that no sane man will agree to marry a woman who carries a bedpan. A special class of people do this job in our society. Your terms are therefore unacceptable, Matron.  You can keep your hospital and the sick. And if being a Christian means carrying faeces and urine, you can keep Christianity too – we are returning to our homes.

I don’t know why this occurred to me in the midst of cleaning but it is a fine, fine story. Land of Thunder is full of such stories. Click the book cover to visit Ogot’s Amazon page.

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A more thorough review of Land without Thunder