Lessons Learned in the 'Hood

When the Dominican-American writer, Junot Diaz, won the Pulitzer Prize last year for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, I was thrilled. I’d been a fan of Diaz’s work for years, so I received the announcement of him winning this award as if my own little brother had won. I was proud and elated and I needed to share this news when I first read of his selection in the New York Times.



I am African-American and I live in an almost exclusively African-American neighborhood. Like many neighborhoods similar to my own, the Mom and Pop corner store is now owned and operated by Dominicans. From my observations, there are little substantive exchanges between these two, ethnic groups given the fact that they have frequent encounters with each other. Diaz’s honor that day was one to be shared. I had my daughter take the news article saluting Diaz to our neighborhood Dominican grocers. The husband and wife team who run the store did not know of Junot Diaz, just like my son’s African-American barber does not know of Percival Everett.


But this couple was just as thrilled to learn about Diaz and his triumph. They posted the news clipping in their store and boasted of his literary prowess to their customers. I later gave Ana, the wife, a copy of Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Ana was amazed that a Dominican-American woman was sharing her immigrant experience and that other people were even interested. Ana and her husband have since moved on, but she had begun to keep a journal she simply called her story.


Our city is a veritable hothouse of cultures to learn from and to celebrate. Philadelphia’s Latino community is large and diverse and we should avail ourselves of this phenomenal resource. On September 20, 2009, we have the opportunity to do just that-Feria del Barrio. This neighborhood festival is one of Philadelphia’s largest celebrations of Latino culture and music and it is hosted in the heart of the Latino community. Everyone is invited. To learn more, visit the website of Taller Puertorriqueno
http://www.tallerpr.org/getdoc/bdf65e3a-246d-4205-9cbf-e5728dcea57d/.aspx

Virgins With Rifles; Revisiting Wilfred Owen

*Discover Cartoonist Hugh Macleod http://www.gaipvoid.com/


I am the queen of Mommy read-alouds, but I also demand that my children read to me. Very recently, my daughter, in a lame attempt to lull me to sleep, read me a poem that so moved her; Dulce et Decorum Est by the English/Welsh poet Wilfred Owen (1893-1918). Needless to say, I sat up and requested a second reading. I am literally crying now as I recall this poem which is about the brutal horrors of war. Owen was not only a master poet in terms of form and content, he was a soldier in the First World War. He seamlessly melded his talent and experience to create a tough, lyrical testimony about war. Take some real time and read Dulce et Decorum Est once and then again and again. Owen was killed in action a week before the war ended.


 Listen to Sting’s Children’s Crusade from his Dream of the Blue Turtles album. The lyrics follow Owen’s poem.

Dulce Et Decorum Est
By Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
------------------------------------------

Children's Crusade

By Sting from Dream of the Blue Turtles

Young men, soldiers, Nineteen Fourteen
Marching through countries they'd never seen
Virgins with rifles, a game of charades
All for a Children's Crusade

Pawns in the game are not victims of chance
Strewn on the fields of Belgium and France
Poppies for young men, death's bitter trade
All of those young lives betrayed

The children of England would never be slaves
They're trapped on the wire and dying in waves
The flower of England face down in the mud
And stained in the blood of a whole generation

Corpulent generals safe behind lines
History's lessons drowned in red wine
Poppies for young men, death's bitter trade
All of those young lives betrayed
All for a Children's Crusade

The children of England would never be slaves
They're trapped on the wire and dying in waves
The flower of England face down in the mud
And stained in the blood of a whole generation

Midnight in Soho, Nineteen Eighty-four
Fixing in doorways, opium slaves
Poppies for young men, such bitter trade
All of those young lives betrayed
All for a Children's Crusade

Patrick Awuah; Restoring Our Faith with His Action

       Last year I won a writing contest sponsored by United Planet, an organization that sends volunteers around the world to work on various social and economic projects. The real outcome of these projects is to foster cross-cultural understanding. My entry for the contest was a poem called Oasis.

      I taught for seven years at The International Community School of Abidjan, an American Embassy -sponsored school in the West African country of Cote d’Ivoire. Prior to Cote d’Ivoire’s civil war, I.C.S.A. had a student body of more than 500 students who represented more than 70 nationalities. What an amazing environment to grow as a teacher and a writer!
      I wrote the poem Oasis as an introduction to a unit study on poetry. I wanted my fourth grade students to recognize and appreciate that understanding poetry requires diligence and many readings. But, I wanted them to approach the task of trying to derive meaning from a poem in spirit of joy and fun. I asked them to imagine themselves as poetry detectives, who were looking for clues that led to meaning. As an introductory activity, I wrote this poem, Oasis. Each day, I would read several stanzas about a particular student and the class would have to reason their way as to what student I was describing. After selecting the student a particular stanza captured, some students illustrated the stanzas. I have included these illustrations as well.
      This poem, these illustrations and The International Community School of Abidjan are testaments that people from different backgrounds, cultures, religions and political views can work together and love each other when such a challenge is presented and then nurtured.
      The students of this fourth grade class are now juniors in college. For many of us, our lives were torn apart by the war in Cote d’Ivoire and necessitated us moving to other places. One of the students involved in this project, who has since relocated to Florida, last year requested from me a copy of the poem and the illustrations. She wanted a tangible complement to her memory of the marvelous life we all had in Cote d’Ivoire because we were, indeed, the world.

       Here is the link to poem Oasis and its illustrations. http://www.unitedplanet.org/documents/OasisbyOctavia_000.pdf



      I share all of this to say that I am so thrilled by the vision and action of many young people, particularly young Africans who recognize that they are the solution to the African continent’s challenges. Such young people remind me so much of my students.
Here is video link to Patrick Awuah,a young man from Ghana, who went to Swarthmore College and then on to a lucrative career with Microsoft. But, after becoming a parent, he became more ambitious in his expectations and faith for Ghana. He returned home and founded Ashesi University, an oasis where progressive and ethical leaders are being groomed. Listen and have your faith restored.


http://www.ted.com/talks/patrick_awuah_on_educating_leaders.html

Mona R. Washington-Provincetown; An Essay on Race and Gender

*Last summer, Ms. Washington and I were fortunate enough to take a workshop at the renowned Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. The following essay, which originally appeared in the North Star News, was inspired by Ms. Washington’s observations of Provincetown; a very unique arts colony and gay summer retreat. To read this essay in its entirety, click on the North Star News link below.


Provincetown is about the only place I’ll buy a white man a drink.



I need a break after my writing workshop, so Monday night I go to a drag show with my friend Octavia, and we’re standing in line. Early. Too early she says. We’re second. She wants a soda or something, so we flag down this cute brother who’s working there and he says stay in line because the rush is about to start. Sure enough twenty-five white guys get in line within the next five minutes. Then more, and more, until there’s a line out to Commercial Street.


I turn to Octavia and smugly say, “Aren’t you glad we didn’t leave to get that soda?” As soon as I finish my sentence six white boys walk up to the front of the line to cut. I’m as hot as fish grease! I have my Black women’s hair issues standing in line in all that humidity, losing my curls and now these white boys.....

http://www.northstarnews.com/opinions/contributors/article/1412

Sea Breeze: A Journal of Contemporary Liberian Writings

Sea Breeze; A Journal of Contemporary Liberian Writings is another gem of online publications. As its name indicates, it is a journal that addresses the concerns of Liberia and its Diaspora.

My poem, Deliver Me From the Hands of Strange Children, first appeared in Sea Breeze.

Please take time to discover a wonderful and needed journal. Here's the link. http://www.liberiaseabreeze.com/

Deliver Me From The Hands of Strange Children

By Octavia McBride-Ahebee

On the Day of the Dead,

On the day we plead on their behalf,

he *naked me,

stripped my body

in front of carved saints, elegantly stoic

cloistered in their own uselessness

he naked me

in front of bands of soldier boys, spellbound and spoiled,

wearing their sisters’ dresses and their mothers’ wigs

their necks encased in feather boas and forest paint

their waists jeweled with the feces of Cold War arsenals

in a church garden wild with perfume

under a bush plum tree

the kind we make our Christmas pudding from

he naked me

he naked me

as I quietly pleaded to the holy queen

as he told me her ears were stuffed with cassava leaves

and her son’s many failures

as he pissed his discontent in my face

he laid me beneath a neighboring mango tree

magnificent in its promise to shield

and he used a bayonet like a crochet hook

pushing through my vagina

in search of hidden bounty

in search of buried cell phones and soiled cash

pulling from its walls only prayer beads

christened by frightened menses

for such a gross disappointment

he placed mary’s head

machete-sharpened and faceless

in there instead

*Naked, used as a verb, is a Liberian description of the military tactic employed by boy soldiers in which they stripped civilians, particularly women, of their clothing as a means of humiliation.

Damazine; An Online Journal of the Muslim World

My most recent publication is in the current issue of Damazine, a new and growing voice of the Muslim world, which is our world. My poem, An Engagement For Burning, which appears in Damazine, was inspired by the problem of women burning themselves, self-immolation, particularly in Herat, Afghanistan.

Here's the link www.damazine.com

Here's a link to a series of news stories about this problem.

http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/03/17/an-afghan-woman-commits-self-immolation-in-herat.html