Tayari's Blog: Guest Bloggers
May 29, 2008
Meet Guest Blogger: Dwayne Betts
I met Dwayne Betts a couple of years ago. He was a nice young man interested in poetry and all around good guy. In a very very short time, he has published his beautiful poems all over the place, scored a wait staff position at Bread Loaf, interned at The Atlantic, been written up in the Washington Post for his outstanding work with kids, enrolled at The University of Maryland, and made a beautiful family for himself.
About a year ago, I got a call from an editor who had read the WaPost story about Dwayne. She wanted him to write a memoir. I put him in touch with my agent. I would say the rest is history, but the rest is about writing the book, and learning what life has to teach us.
Read his story here.
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Guest Bloggers
To Grow, To Change, and To Love
by Reginald Dwayne Betts
Now that I have a baby boy, every day is the start of a story. It's something about a smile, a laugh, or the way Micah will try to summersault from my arms to the waiting floor. He's six months old 
and thinks everything he can grab a hold of is food. The remote control, my poems, socks, receipts, pacifiers and teething rings all fit the same category. My arm, shirt, face and car keys do too. He'll reach from the couch, stretching out his arms unaware of the damage that fall to the floor can do. He smiles when he reaches out. In seconds he goes from smiling beside me, to stretching toward the floor, body tilting. I’m good at intercepting him before he reaches the floor. My improved reflexes are one of parenthood’s true gifts.
Now, my eyes are always open, even when I’m working and I work a lot these days. In addition to being in school, I’m working hard on my memoir, A Question of Freedom. The book contract was a godsend, coming just about the same time Terese and I found out that Micah was on the way. The finished manuscript is due in just a few weeks, and although I’m starting to see daylight, I still have a ways to go.
Yesterday, I was working on the memoir, struggling through a difficult passage with my laptop on my lap, the flash drive sticking out. As engrossed as I was in my own memories, a shout from my fiancé pulled me from my written past to my living breathing present. I jumped, not caring that my laptop fell to the floor; I sprang with my arms out, ready to catch my little boy.
When I looked down, my son was looking up, smiling, a sock in his hand. Terese was holding him, smiling too. A beautiful false alarm. My laptop was beside me. I examined it and it seemed to be working. I breathed easy. How could I afford another computer right now? Then, I noticed the flash drive containing all my hard work. The silver piece of the flash drive that sticks into the USB port was still in the computer. The other part, the important part, with all the data is stuck between cushions of the couch.
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Guest Bloggers
December 16, 2007
Guest Blogger: Sarah Schulman
Sarah Schulman is mentioned quite often on this blog 
because everytime I go out with her, she tells me something I just have to share. Last night, Rigoberto and I were at her home for dinner, and it happened again.
"Did I tell you that Grace Paley was my teacher?" No, she hadn't told me this. She also hadn't told me that she was enrolled in graduate school for exactly one day. And then she told her how Grace Paley saved her life as a writer. "Please," I said. "Will you write it up for my blog community?"
She did, and the story is below. Grace Paley passed away this year at the age of 84.
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Guest Bloggers
Thank you, Grace
A Remembrance by
Sarah Schulman
For ten years I worked as a waitress, and during that time I started publishing books. I really didn't know what an MFA was. But as a waitress at Leroy's, which was the first coffee shop in Tribeca, a lot of our customers were artists just moving into that neighborhood. A friend- got me the job. We were collaborating on plays with titles like "Art Failures", which we performed at The University of The Streets, then on the cheap, and deserted Avenue A. My friend was also a painter and the painters I knew, knew about MFAs. But I was not aware that writers could also get them.
This was probably 1984, when the gentrification of the city was already underway- and a cultural shift was accompanying it. As part of yuppification, the arts were "professionalizing", this meant that work was coming less and less from community and more and more from institutions. There was a kind a Apparatus being put into place that - like most structures of American life right after Reagan's election- was replacing sixtiesque values of access and expression, expansion of representation. This professionalization favored more mainstream and dominant cultural voices and styles and made it harder for civilians to gain access.
After talking to a number of customers I realized that MFAs were increasingly giving people professional advantages, and increasingly excluding those without, so I decided to pursue one of those degrees. Since my work had lesbian protagonists, and was political, I already had enough problems, and I hoped that "getting inside" would help me along. I applied to the graduate program in writing at City College because it was in Manhattan and the cheapest, and I was accepted. In my naivete I didn't fully realize that the City College program was actually an MA. But since it was a graduate writing program, in my mind, it was an MFA.
The first day I went to class, and the teacher was Grace Paley. Grace was the "people's choice" emblematic New York writer. She was Jewish, she was on the left and an active participant citizen. I had participated in many political actions that she was involved in over the years, most memorably the 1979 Women's Pentagon Action. She wrote stories about people's need for justice that were true, complex and funny. And she was both extraordinary and regular. Her three beloved short story collections were : Enormous Changes At The Last Minute, Little Disturbances Of Man, and Later The Same Day. What I now realize is that, despite how well known and beloved she was, she had to work for a living for most of her life. I believe that at that time she was teaching at City College and at Sarah Lawrence.
During the first class session, we sat around a table, and each student read a sample of their own work. Mine, was a lesbian story written in the first person, and my classmates thought that the protagonist was a man. I started to worry about spending the next two years in that environment. Was getting an MFA going to be a endless process of self-justification?
After class, Grace said "Come to my office."
I went to her office and she sat me down. All the warm and fuzzy stuff went out of her demeanor, and she spoke very directly and with a real sense of gravitas.
"Look," she said. "You're really a writer. You're really doing it. You don't need this class."
I felt really relieved. So, I went home and never came back. That's how I had only one day of graduate school. She saved me two years of explaining myself. She knew better than I did what the process would have done to me. It could have destroyed me. That was one of the most important moments in my life as a writer. When someone with authority actually understood the value of what I was doing, understood what the machinery was about, and stepped up to honestly protect me with respect and care.
Now that I have taught writing for 15 years, I can see that many of these programs still don't really know what to do with writers of color, lesbian students, sometimes with gay male students. You hear a lot of "survival" stories, and realize that many current writing programs in 2007, cannot offer minority students the same quality of 
experience as they offer to majority students.
This story has two happy endings: 1) Now I am a Full Professor of English in the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. 2) I later read with Grace and Sonia Sanchez at a reading at Saint Mark's Church at a benefit organized by the late Laurel Shreck for The Committee In Solidarity of The People Of El Salvador. It was one of the most exciting, proud moments of my life.
For the next twenty years, Grace Paley encouraged me every time we met. She nominated me for PEN, she got me a teaching gig at The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Whenever we saw each other, she would say "I keep an eye on you. You're doing so well. I'm so proud of you." This made the difference every time.
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Guest Bloggers
August 30, 2007
Its Not The Points
BY TARA BETTS
This is a brief history of slam, from its birth in Chicago over 20 years ago under the direction of Marc Smith who thought most poetry 
readings were too sterile and polite. It is also my personal slam history, and it’s a report of recent history—the 2007 National Poetry Slam. Before I go further, let me make it clear that if you want to know who won The National Poetry Slam, you won’t get that here. “The point is not the points, it’s the poetry.” It’s the slogan that I’ve heard for at least 10 years.
When I came into slam in 1998, I thought it would a great opportunity to share my work with different audiences. My first slam team was Mad Bar-Mental Graffiti , the first team outside of The Green Mill representing Chicago. We felt overwhelmed and excited to think we were on the precipice of changing the direction of literature. At first, it led to splashes in newspapers and lots of low-paying gigs and lots of teaching, but it also led to much more teaching, much more reading, traveling and meeting people I never would have met in my small hometown of Kankakee, Illinois.
But even as things were expanding, I knew I was starting to see the ceiling of the slam.
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Guest Bloggers
August 28, 2007
Summer Report: VONA
Two members of our blog community, LeConte Dill and Teri Elam, have a summer ritual-- taking part in the Voices of Our Nation summer writing Workshops. VONA is the only multi-genre workshop in the country exclusively for writers-of-color. This year’s faculty included Junot Diaz, ZZ Packer, Willie Perdomo, Chris Abani, David Mura, Elmaz Abinader and Suheir Hammad.
Below you'll find a conversation about thier experiences. But before, let me tell you a little bit about them.
LeConté Dill is a 29-year-old with roots in South Central Los Angeles, branches in Atlanta, and leaves now blossoming in the San Francisco Bay Area. A public health scholactivist by day, LeConté has been writing poetry and fiction since elementary school. Her work has been featured in ProperGanda magazine, CityFlight newsmagazine, and others.LeConté is passionate about the power of writing for healing, empowerment, and social justice. She credits her mom, sister, and Nanas for fueling her creative endeavors.
Teri Elam-Blanchard is an Atlanta resident whose poetry has been published most recently in the Cave Canem anthology, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South. She is also a poetographer whose photos have been featured in Chops, a book of poetry by Cherryl Floyd-Miller that has become part of the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. Teri, an HRD Consultant and Corporate Coach, is currently working on her M.Ed. at UGA as well as her first collection of poems that VONA has helped bring to life, Southern Black Female.
Click here to read "VONA has Saved My Life"
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Guest Bloggers
"VONA Has Saved My Life"
TAYARI: Okay, you first, LeConte: How did you choose VONA?
LECONTE: I feel like VONA choose me…in all sincerity. Four years ago, I wasn’t searching for writing workshops, wasn’t subscribed to writing listservs, or reading literary journals. Nevertheless, an email about VONA came my way, and I applied. I realized that I was entering something bigger—a movement. Although I’ve written since I was a child, even minored in Writing in college, I always listed 
writing as a “hobby”—something that I love to do. VONA helped me gain the confidence and consciousness to identify myself as a writer.
TAYARI: And Teri, you have been coming back to VONA every year since 2002. It’s like you can’t get enough!
TERI: My first year there, I was brand new, you know? Even after years of living, I was a baby of sorts. And it felt as if I was given birth to by all of the writers and workshop leaders there that year…and especially by my workshop facilitator at the time, the beautiful Ruth Forman. That week back in June 2002 changed the entire trajectory of my life experience. Each year, I leave different. Each year, VONA has saved my life, so to speak.
LECONTE: Literally saved your life?
TERI: Sometimes, LeConté, quite literally…but that’s another story…another day.
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Guest Bloggers
August 01, 2007
Summer Report: The Cave Canem Song
by Guest Blogger, NICOLE SEALEY
In 2004, I applied and was accepted to Cave Canem’s (CC) New York regional poetry workshop with Patricia Smith and, as my mother would say, “[began] to smell myself” soon after. In other words, I got cocky. I just knew I was a shoe-in for the summer retreat that same year. I mean, I got into Patricia’s workshop, and she’s an award winning stage and page poet. How hard could it be? So, I decided to apply for—and get into—the summer retreat, and wear the coveted title of “fellow” humbly. All that to say, I did not get in that year…or the next.
Though I’ve been writing creatively since I was eight (even won an essay contest in 3rd grade for my letter to Santa), I wasn’t quite ready to be a poetry fellow. CC knew this and demanded more of me and my work. Come to think of it, I am grateful for that time and the opportunity that followed. Rejection gave me the time needed to ready myself and my writing. In 2006, I was accepted. The third time was definitely my charm.
To prepare I began thinking about subjects I want to write about, writing in different forms and reading, reading, reading. I thought a lot about women in prison and teen-aged mothers. I tried my hand at Sonnets and Villanelles (my favorite form). I read Tyehimba Jess’ Leadbelly, Terrance Hayes’ Hip Logic, Patricia Smith’s Teahouse of the Almighty and others. And, after all that, I was still felt unprepared and anxious—not at all knowing what to expect or what they expected of me. This was just the prep, the warm-up…CC would be the intensive, and I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.
Posted at 07:58 PM | Comments (0)
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Guest Bloggers
, The Writing Life
July 23, 2007
Summer Report: Tin House Workshops
FeLicia Elam, a member of our blog community, attened the Tin House Summer Writers Workshops this summer. Now that she's back, I asked her 
a few questions. See our Q&A below. (If you are interested in summer workshops in your area, visit the AWP website or pick up a copy of Poets & Writers Magazine!)
Q&A with FeLicia Elam:
Tayari: How did you first start attending workshops? How did you choose the Tin House workshop?
FeLicia: Attending workshops came as a natural progression of my writing career. Initially I wrote stories until I felt comfortable sharing them. Then I found a critique group and stayed with them for three years, completing nine stories and getting two published. When I wanted a challenge as a writer so I could grow, I started attending week-long, intensive workshops.
This year I was accepted into Tin House at Reed College in my new city, Portland, Oregon. I applied to Tin House because they have an excellent quarterly magazine and a publishing company. Additionally, Tin House is known for pulling in top notch writers, and their students have a habit of returning. I have attended two ten-week long workshops here and could tell how much my writing has improved.
Once you decided on Tin House, how did you decide which writer you wanted to work with?
I had to select three teachers from the short story section in order of choice; not all workshops give that option. I got my first pick, Colson Whitehead. He’s one of today’s top writers, well-respected with four published works since 1999. A key to getting the most from workshops is to choose carefully. Find a writer who writes similarly to you. If you’re not familiar with the writers, read some of their work and then determine who best fits your style.
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Category:
Guest Bloggers
, The Writing Life
July 02, 2007
Martha's Director's Cut
Martha Southgate has written this piece to accompany her essay in the NYT. She explains her motivations for writing the piece and also includes a few quotes that didn't make it past the editors cut.
"Writers Like Me: an addendum"
by Martha Southgate
Four years ago, I had the honor of reading with Edward P. Jones as a part of Paule Marshall’s New Generation reading series. In introducing him, Paule Marshall, who was the evening’s organizer, told of how Jones wrote “The Known World” in six months, 10 years after his first short story collection. He said that he’d been thinking about the book and forming it in his mind the whole time he worked at the magazine. But what if he hadn’t been laid off? What does it mean that he felt compelled--both financially and emotionally-- to return to that day job for so long? What did it mean that he didn’t feel safe enough to quit and let his brilliance shine through?
That’s when I started thinking about the issues that led me to pitch this piece to the New York Times Book Review. In writing it, I can’t say that I found anything I didn’t think I would find: The publishing industry is still overwhelmingly staffed by white people, a lot of whom are oblivious or disingenuous about how race plays out in this country and it’s damn hard for anybody of any race to get a book published and get people to buy it. I also had something confirmed that I suspected—partly because it was so much my own experience—that it’s very hard to step out and be a fiction writer unless you feel safe enough to try. It’s very hard to feel safe enough.
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Guest Bloggers
June 01, 2007
Jazzing My Way Through
by Renee Simms
Not long ago, I sat in a workshop where everyone was asked to describe their writing routines and the spaces where they write. I began to sweat as we went around the table. Writing routine? Does writing inside your shower stall before the kids find you count as routine? Everyone else had very detailed descriptions: certain pens they liked to use, clothes they needed to wear, or exercises they did beforehand. Some described windows through which they gazed as they wrote. It was all so…nice.
With two kids, aged seven and two, my writing is everything but routine. I couldn’t think of one place or a single set of circumstances under which I’ve written anything. I grab slices of time when I find them, and when there are no slices to grab, I’ve learned how to drown out a swirl of activity, including: boys kickboxing, boys break-dancing, husband on cell phone, baby climbing me as I write, Dora the Explorer singing, I play the maraca, shake-a shake-a shake-a.
Posted at 10:35 AM | Comments (8)
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Guest Bloggers
May 01, 2007
The Novel as Nightcap
This year, I will write my second novel. I’ve been thinking about 
writing this book for a while now. I began it once before and somehow lost steam. I’m a very goal-oriented person and I had a detailed outline of how the novel would unfold and develop, a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the story. After writing a few of the chapters, I realized that nothing in my pages excited me anymore; I loved the premise and the hearts of the characters, but the story lacked a fundamental sense of passion. I realized that I had regimented the life out of the story.
I had the goal of writing three pages a day, six days a week. I marked page goals in my daily planner. If I missed a day, I promised myself that I would make up those pages on the weekend, but that never happened. The result of this tough love approach was that I felt like an uncommitted slacker—a failure--when I couldn’t squeeze in my self-imposed, daily page quota. Never mind the fact that I’d published a novel, a collection of poems, completed my law degree and my MFA, moved to New York City, started a tenure-track teaching position, am knee-deep in a challenging poetry collection, and am about to attend the college graduations of two of my four children—I’d missed the mark, had the tangible proof of my neglect in my planner, and carried the weight of this guilt with me daily.
What I have learned is that I need to practice being kind to myself and my work. Demanding unrealistic requirements of my writing is certainly not being kind to me; it’s cruel and it needs to be unusual. Nowadays, I work on my novel daily but I write a single page and only a page. My novel page is my daily nightcap: a tiny way of rewarding myself for a day well-lived, a time to convene with characters that I like and enjoy visiting. I don’t overstay my welcome; I don’t put crazy demands on them anymore or make them do anything they don’t want to do. My novel page has become an adventure and I’m surprised and delighted daily. And so what if it takes me an entire year to finish this draft? If I didn’t write a page a day, it would take me longer. I’m not in a hurry: it is the process of writing this novel that is joy to me now, not the promise (or the threat) of publication.
Jacqueline Jones LaMon
22 April 2007
Brooklyn, NY
Posted at 07:01 AM | Comments (4)
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Guest Bloggers
April 10, 2007
Remembering Phebus
On March 31, 2007, the beautiful, talented poet Phebus Etienne passed on. Phebus-- whose name meant light-- meant poetry. Phebus, crafter of language that captured the spirit of loss and of love and of longing, whose quiet smile could make you smile, whose smart, sly wit rode out on her every word.
I have her unpublished manuscript, Chainstitching, on my shelf with all my books of poetry because this book, printed at her desk and bound only by a clip, deserves a dust jacket, a cover photo, an ISBN. And this is part of why I mourn the loss of Phebus Etienne.
Although her gorgeous book was never published, know that she was not unsung. Those of us who knew her and knew her work know her unique relationship to beauty and the way it has benefited all of us. We understand why she has been anthologized in Cave Canem's Gathering Ground, in Edwidge Dandicant's The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States. We understand how her manuscript was often recognized as a finalist in first book contests (Tupelo Press, 2005, Alice James Book, 2006…) But we don't understand how any judge could resist choosing her as a winner. We understand that this brilliant Haitian-born, New Jersey-based woman, whose mother "packed for diaspora in one suitcase and left Port-au-Prince with warning to none," had the power to speak through her poems, and that her poems, thank heavens, will live on with us.
But there will be no more of them. No more of her soft words, the gleam of her smile, no more of the quiet support she unselfishly offered the people and organizations she believed in.
No more Phebus? She was only 41. She could not be with us long enough. I've said it to others, and I'll say it again. This is how it will be for a lot of us, for a long time. We're going to be steady missing this one. This marvelous, talented, brilliantly beautiful one.
--Camille T. Dungy
To read some of Phebus's poetry, click here.
Photo credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Posted at 08:47 PM | Comments (0)
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Guest Bloggers
March 13, 2007
A Healing, A Welcome Home
Last month, while hanging out with Remica Bingham, I noticed that she shared the same last name as the artist who designed the cover of her book.
"Are you related?" I asked.
She smiled and said, "It's my father."
"Really," I said. "How did that happen?"
She answered me in writing.
A Healing
by Remica Bingham
It’s a strange thing to find your father where you never thought he would be. So when I found my father pouring through the rows of poetry on my bookshelves I was a bit taken aback. He wasn’t reading any poems, just looking at spines and covers, examining each book, its texture, style. This was July 2006, after I found out I’d won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award and that my book, Conversion, would be published, in a matter of months, by Lotus Press.
When Lotus Press asked me if I had any input as to what I’d like to see on the cover of the book, I knew this was the right press at the right time. I told them my father was an artist and that I’d like him to do the cover art. Not only were they agreeable, but they seemed fond of the idea as well, without even knowing our story. I suppose they had read the book, though, since they’d chosen it for their book prize, and did get to glimpse into our past. My father takes a bit of a thrashing (as do many others—myself included) in the book. I tell so much about the dark times in his life, in our lives. My father and mother divorced when I was twelve and remarried when I was twenty. After many years of turmoil and distance, they found their way back to each other, older, wiser and more open to the possibility of happiness, of trust.
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Category:
Bookshelf
, Guest Bloggers
January 23, 2007
The Original Old Girl Goes On An Artist Date
Hello, I am Ladylee, one of the many readers of Tayari’s blog. I am currently reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist's Way with Tayari
and a few of you. Tayari asked if I would take a moment to describe my Week 1 “Artist Date”. (For those of you know on the program, an "Artist Date" is when you treat yourself to an outing, just to see something new, to entertain and indulge your inner artist.)
First of all, a little about myself: I am an Atlanta native in my mid-thirties and I am a chemist holding a doctorate degree in the area of organic chemistry. I have published numerous papers in my area of expertise, and consider myself very well grounded in the area of technical writing. Herein lies my issue: I have a habit of approaching any and everything from a scientific, technical, and/or formulaic point of view. When I try to apply my knowledge in technical writing to creative writing, well, there’s a problem. So needless to say, this book and its exercises are providing much needed help, helping me to think a bit differently about my writing and attitudes toward it.
At first, I was a bit perplexed by this whole “Artist Date” assignment, especially the requirement of doing something once a week. Personally, I thought that was a bit much. What would I do? Where would I go? I am finding through the first and now the second week of this process that I have a tendency to pontificate a bit too hard about such things. I even got caught up in trying to make a straight list of twelve things I could do. I found that a bit annoying. I stopped discussing it with people because for some reason, they are just more than ready to tag along. I really needed to just find something interesting to do, stop trying to analyze it all, and just DO IT.
Posted at 02:24 PM | Comments (5)
Category:
Guest Bloggers
, The Artist's Way
November 29, 2006
Debate Is A Metaphor
by Joe Miller, Guest Blooger
I want to complain for a minute.
I'm not happy with the response to my first book, 
Cross-X: A Turbulent, Triumphant Season with an Inner-City Debate Squad.
I know that sounds crazy, because the book has gotten good reviews and a lot of media attention. It's selling well.
But still. I'm not happy. I'm pissed, to be perfectly blunt, because a few dozen people have decided they don't like the book. They've chosen to ignore it. To pretend it doesn't exist.
So during what should be the time of my life, when I'm traveling around giving readings in cozy little independent book stores and appearing on NPR, I'm actually miserable because I'm carrying out this ongoing argument in my head with a small group of people who just don't get it.
My book is, as the title suggests, about a debate squad from an all-black high school that routinely beats the pants off of debaters from all-white high schools. That's the story. But on a deeper level, it's about power and education, and the ways in which our nation remains divided and unequal.
In the end, debate becomes a metaphor. It signifies injustice in the corridors of power.
Posted at 01:53 PM | Comments (3)
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Guest Bloggers
September 19, 2006
Remembering Jenny Moore
I have the honor this year of serving at the Jenny McKean Moore Writer in Residence at George Washington University. It's a lovely position-- I get to live on the campus and teach a reduced course load. The best part is that I teach a community workshop to DC writers who are not in school. All this was specified by Jenny McKean Moore, whose estate funds the position.
Through a series of coincidences, I found out that the poet, Honor Moore is the daughter of Jenny Moore. I asked Honor to write a short remembrance of her mother so the people in the community class could know whose generosity made this all possible. She was kind enough to contribute the piece below, a small but loving tribute to an amazing woman:
Posted at 07:34 AM | Comments (0)
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Guest Bloggers
September 01, 2006
Jelani Cobb on Rio
I have been in touch with Jelani Cobb about a Q&A for this site regarding this trip to Rio, which he wrote about in Essence. His revealations about African-American men and the sex trade in Brazil have caused quite a bit a controversy. He has received so much feedback, postitive and negative, that he has prepared a sort of FAQ about his trip. The questions range from "Why did you write this aticle in the first place" to "What can women do". Interesting stuff.
Posted at 07:11 AM | Comments (1)
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Guest Bloggers
August 13, 2006
Shot Up, Locked Up, or Somethin by Eisa Ulen
I sat on the steps of a Washington DC row-house one day back in the murder capital crack years of the 1980s, and I heard a young woman walking with her friend up the street past me say: “I’m just gonna go on and have his baby before he gets locked up or shot up or somethin.” I never lost that resignation – and eerie, twisted strength, the kind of strength that endures physical assault and survives, sort-of – in her voice. I never lost her. I wrote about this moment more explicitly in my “Letter to Angela Davis,” which has been anthologized and favorably reviewed. However, I needed to give that voice an entire world to occupy.
That’s why I wrote Crystelle Mourning. It’s not a story about that particular girl, it’s a story about all the nameless, countless, girls and women who watched, powerless, as the boys and men they loved most “got shot up or locked up or somethin.” How were their bodies responding to this destruction of Black male flesh? How were their souls?
Posted at 01:36 PM | Comments (3)
Category:
Bookshelf
, Guest Bloggers
July 04, 2006
We Still Wear The Mask, by Jelani Cobb
You all might remember my moking response to Ice Cube and other hip-hop stars' critque of Oprah Winfrey. Ice Cube, et al, accuse Ms. Winfrey of having a "problem" with hip-hop and demand that she invite them onto her show. Jelani Cobb, professor of history at Spelman College (my alma mater), intense culture-critic, and all-around righteous brother, has written a more serious and thought-provoking response. Meet Jelani, and read his essay.
These days, camouflage is the new black. Hip hop now operates on a single hope: that if the world mistakes kindness for weakness it can also be led to confuse meanness with strength.
Posted at 03:59 PM | Comments (7)
Category:
Current Events
, Guest Bloggers
June 17, 2006
Q&A With Shalema K. McGee
Fresh out of college, Shalema K. McGhee moved to New York to try to make a career in trade book publishing. If you read Black Issues Book Review, you’ve read plenty of articles about the young black stars of publishing. But I thought we would spend a little time with Shalema and hear from someone still in the trenches, someone who is still trying to make her way.
Posted at 07:29 AM | Comments (3)
Category:
Guest Bloggers
, Writing
June 07, 2006
Why I Self-Publish by Tinesha Davis
Who likes poetry? No one. Nor do they like romance or mystery but especially not poetry. This is the unofficial message that I’ve heard for years. This is the message that I let become my truth.
I’ve participated in many conversations that went a little something like this:
Me: I’m a writer.
Them: Oh really, what do you write?
Me: Poetry.
Them: [Silence. Then,] Oh, that’s nice.
Or
I don’t really read poetry –its boring… don’t understand it… just don’t care for it.
Or
Poetry. Well, what black woman doesn’t write poetry?
With comments like these shaping my opinion of public opinion writing poetry has not only been my greatest honor but my greatest shame. I even stopped calling myself a writer in public just so I wouldn’t have to answer the dreaded “what do you write” question. No one likes poetry. And if no one likes poetry, who was going to publish it?
Posted at 09:42 AM | Comments (6)
Category:
Guest Bloggers
May 24, 2006
Joy Castro, author of THE TRUTH BOOK
I get a lot of email from people who feel they have a life story worth telling, so I thought it would be cool to devote some blog space to someone who has written a memoir. I asked Joy Castro a few questions about the process of writing and publishing, The Truth Book, her memoir about growing up in and escaping an abusive childhood among Jehovah's Witnesses. This description doesn't do justice to this beautiful and moving book.
Posted at 05:32 PM | Comments (3)
Category:
Bookshelf
, Guest Bloggers
May 23, 2006
Flanked by Andria Cole
My name is Andria Cole and I am a fiction writer depending on literature to save my life. I used to feel guilty about the wishes I send along with the stories I submit every month: “Please God, let them publish this, and then please let Oprah happen to see it and read it and love it and bring me on her show and make me a millionaire.” But I stopped feeling sorry when I read a quote of James Baldwin’s (I can’t recall it exactly) where he said essentially the same thing: that he needed writing to save him.
Posted at 08:30 AM | Comments (3)
Category:
Guest Bloggers
March 25, 2006
EVER WONDER WHY POETS WEAR BLACK?
My good friend, poet Camille Dungy, author of the recently released WHAT TO EAT, WHAT TO DRINK, AND WHAT TO LEAVE FOR POISON, has written for us a blog entry to answer that age-old-question: Why do poets wear black? And just to make this more fun, write in comments the most remarkable experience you've had with an in-person poet (good, bad, sexy, weird.. go for it!) and I will give away autographed copy of Camille's book for the best story!.
Meanwhile, here's her essay:
Posted at 08:10 AM | Comments (2)
Category:
Guest Bloggers