|
Books by Kalamu ya
Salaam
The Magic of JuJu: An Appreciation of the Black Arts
Movement /
360:
A Revolution of Black Poets
Everywhere Is Someplace Else: A Literary Anthology
/
From A Bend in the River: 100 New Orleans Poets
Our Music Is No Accident /
What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self
My Story My Song (CD)
John Coltrane CDs:
Ascension
/
Ballads
/
Best of John
Coltrane /
Impressions
/
My Favorite Things /
Selflessness /
A Love Supreme /
Giant Steps
Meditations
Kulu Se Mama /
Interstellar
Space /
The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions /
Stellar Regions /
Expression /
Afro Blue Impressions
* *
* * *
Alabama
A Short Story
by Kalamu ya Salaam
1.
it is late in
december 1998, the weather is uncharacteristically
warm. there is much that is wrong. an old man has
killed himself.
if he had been
an airplane and fell from the sky, the forensic
engineers might have diagnosed: metal fatigue—the
quality of structural breakdown when the weariness
caused by the ravages of time destroy an object’s
physical ability to bear the weight of existence.
but this fellow was not a passenger jet. he was just
a chestnut colored, elderly african american whom
everyone said looked remarkably good for his age.
his eyesight
was fit enough—without glasses he could drive day or
night. and he would step two flights of steps rather
than wait on a slow elevator. he was sensible about
his diet and walked two miles every morning to keep
his weight down. plus, any day of the week, he could
out bowl his son. no, his age was not a problem.
so what was so
disastrous in his life that the permanent solution
of suicide was the action of choice to deal with
whatever temporary problem he was confronting?
we are not sure
what exactly was wrong, but we do know that when he
resolved to end it, he was watching television. got
up and said something to his wife, who was in the
kitchen. shortly thereafter went into his back yard
with a gun in his hand—no one in the house saw him
go outside. but what if they had? could they have
stopped him? probably not. at best they may have
been able to momentarily postpone the inevitable,
but eventually life turns cold. or we are deluged
with the dreariness of chilly rains. and we die.
what did the
slow moving man think as he descended the steps into
the back yard? indeed, did he think, or was his mind
blank with certainty?
his body died
there, but was he already dead in spirit? does it
matter what happens to the body, once the spirit has
been broken? this is a story about death.
2.
i have often
thought about those stark black and white
photographs of lynching scenes. we know what
happened to the lynchee, but what happened to all
the lynchers? the ones standing around. some smiling
into an unhidden camera—look, you can see that these
people know that a photograph is documenting them. a
number of them are looking at the camera full on,
challenging the lens to capture something human in
the grisly scene. a significant number are children,
young boys and girls, leering.
i have heard
stories of whites who were repulsed by those death
scenes. those who were changed forever by witnessing
a lynching, hearing about a lynching, backing away
from their parents come back home chatting about the
nigger who got what he deserved. ok. but what i want
to know is what happened to the lynchers who did not
back away. those who took in the murder scene as
acceptable. later on in life, how did they raise
their children? do they have flashbacks of lynchings—occasionally?
often? never?
does watching a
man or woman die a violent death diminish the person
who enjoys the spectacle? can one revel in the
fascinating flame of a human on fire and afterwards
remain emotionally balanced? and what about memory,
does the extreme violence of mob murder
involuntarily replay years later triggered by scenes
such as oj maintaining he did not slice nicole’s
throat or wesley snipes on the silver screen bigger
than life kissing a white woman who favors irma
singletary, your daughter’s friend who divorced a
black man after he beat her one night and she
refused to press charges against him the next
morning?
in many of
those garish photographs there are a lot of people
standing around. i wonder how many among those
audiences are alive today, driving america’s streets
and buying christmas gifts?
3.
richard
hammonds was a handsome man. he was moderately
intelligent. could work hard but really didn’t like
to exert his body to the point of sweating. believe
it or not what he was really good at was leather
work. give him a piece of leather and his tools and
he could make anything from shoes to hats and
everything in between. and he would do it well, so
well that a number of people have been buried
wearing shoes richard had made—their family knew how
proud the deceased had been of richard’s handicraft,
so that’s what the corpse wore at the funeral.
for example,
brother james sweet—his name was actually james
anthony johnson but, with a twinkle in his eye, he
would raise his left hand, flashing his ruby and
diamond pinkie ring, graciously tip his ever present
gray stetson, and, in his trademark rumbling
baritone, request that you call him “james sweet,
bra-thaaa jaaaames sweee-eat, cause i’m always good
to womens, treats children with kindness and is a
friend to the end with all my brothers”—well,
brother sweet had instructed everyone of concern in
his immediate family to bury him in his favorite,
oxblood loafers that richard had hooked up
especially for sweet. there were no shoes more
comfortable anywhere in the world and he, sweets,
which was the acceptable short form of brother
sweet, certainly didn’t want to be stepping around
heaven with anything uncomfortable on his bunioned
feet (nor, likewise, running through hell, if it
came to that—and he would wink to let you know that
he didn’t think it would come to that). of course,
at a funeral you don’t usually see the feet of the
recently departed but that was not the point.
the point is
that people were really pleased with richard
hammonds’ handiwork. unfortunately, in terms of a
stable income, although richard hammonds excelled at
making leather goods, what he actually loved to do
was watch and wager on the ponies. and since he
lived in new orleans and the fair grounds racetrack
was convenient, well, during racing season, which
seemed to be almost year round, richard spent many
an afternoon cheering on a two year-old filly while
his workbench went unused.
fortunately,
richard hammonds seldom wagered more than he could
afford to lose and on occasion won much more than he
had gambled for the month. however, winning at the
racetrack was uncertain. no matter what betting
system he used, richard could never accurately
predict when he would win big or how long a losing
streak would maintain its grip on his wallet.
routinely,
richard would do enough leather work to pay the
house note and give eileen an allotment to buy food
and then it was off to the races. needless to say,
had eileen not worked as a seamstress at haspel’s
factory in the seventh ward, this would have been an
unworkable arrangement.
but richard
hammonds didn’t drink more than a beer now and then,
went to mass every sunday morning, and was
moderately faithful, so what could have been a
precarious and intemperate social situation settled
into a predictable and manageable state of affairs
until richard was wobbling home one october
evening—he had had a very good day and had indulged
in a few drinks at mule’s, in fact, he had even
bought a round for the guys and stashed a small
bundle in his hip pocket for eileen and still had in
his inside jacket pocket enough money to pay for
every bill he could think of.
when the police
stopped richard his explanations of who he was,
where he had come from, where he was going and how
he came to have so much cash weren’t sufficient to
please the two officers who were looking for a
middle-aged colored man who had robbed and raped a
woman over in mid-city.
we do not have
to go into any details. the focus of this story is
not on the beating, the injustice of his subsequent
death, or even the condemning of the two police
officers. remember we are concerned with death, and
the question is: when, if ever, did richard know he
was going to die and what was his reaction, or more
precisely, what were his thoughts about that awful
fact, if indeed he ever realized the imminence of
his demise?
4.
everybody,
sooner or later, thinks about dying. for many
african americans there is even a morbid twist on
this universal reflection on the inevitability of
mortality. for us, it is not just a question of when
we will die but also a more thorny question, a
question we seldom would admit publicly but one that
at some occasion or another consumes us in private:
would i be better off dead? if you had been reared
black in pre-sixties white america, sooner or later,
you probably looked that thought in the eye?
however, the
universality of death thoughts notwithstanding,
there is a big difference between abstract
speculation about the eventuality of death and the
far more difficult task of confronting the stale
breath of death as it fouls the air in front your
nose. death is nothing to fuck with. indeed,
actually facing certain death can make you shit on
yourself, particularly if death not only surprises
you but also perversely gives you a moment to think
about crossing the great divide. like when a lover
in the throes of getting it on, sincerity announces
through clenched teeth that they are about to come,
you respond as any sensible person would by doing
harder, or faster, or stronger, or more tenderly,
more intensely, more whatever, you increase the
pressure and help usher that moment, well, when it’s
death coming what do we do, do we rush to it, or do
we withdraw from it? don’t answer too soon. think of
all the people you have heard of who died as a
result of being some place they really shouldn’t
have been, being involved in some situation they
should never have encountered, at the hands of
someone whom they should never have been near. think
about how often we die other than a natural
death—and then again, what death is not natural,
because isn’t it part of human nature to die, and to
kill?
richard never
expected to die on that day, especially since he had
just experienced the good fortune of a twenty-to-one
long shot paying up on a fifty dollar bet. even when
the tandem took turns trying to beat a confession
out of him, even after his jaw was broken and he
could only moan and shake his head, even then
richard still didn’t think of death. he was too busy
dealing with pain. when they put the gun in his
mouth, he perversely thought, “go head, pull the
trigger, that would be better than getting beat like
this,” but even then, richard didn’t really expect
to die. he just wanted the beating to be over and if
it took death to end it, well, he was feeling so bad
he thought that death might be preferable. yet,
richard didn’t really think he was going to die. in
fact, as is the case with so many of us, richard
died before he realized they were going to kill him.
we blacks
wonder about fate and destiny, justice and karma.
sometimes there seems that there is no god, or
rather if there is a god then he is capricious with
a macabre sense of humor—we grant him humor because
to think of god without humor would be to concede
that we are at the mercy of a monster who enjoys
literally tormenting us to death.
which brings up
another question, would we procreate if it were not
so pleasurable? if sex didn’t feel good, would we
bother with conceiving children? for many of us the
answer is obvious; of course, we wouldn’t. that’s
why birth control was created—to protect us from
disease and children, to make it possible for us to
enjoy the pleasure of sexual procreation with none
of the responsibilities of child rearing. which
means that the drive to have children may in fact
not be as strong as we have been led to believe, or
maybe, it’s simply that in modern times we have been
conditioned to think only of ourselves—the personal
pleasures. but the question i really want to raise
is this: what if death were pleasurable would we end
ourselves? what if it felt really good to die—not
just calming but totally pleasurable?
of course,
richard was not thinking any of these sorts of
questions as the two officers smashed in richard’s
face. formal philosophy is a task engaged in by
those for whom survival is not a pressing issue.
5.
every age,
every people, every society has an ethos—a defining
spirit. and this spirit expresses itself in
sometimes odd and fascinating ways. for much of the
20th century the ethos of african americans was one
of contemplating the future with a certain optimism.
why else march through the streets of birmingham,
alabama and sing “we shall overcome” to bull connor,
a man who was not known for any appreciation of
music?
the birmingham
of bull connor was just about half a century ago.
during that period when bombs regularly sounded
throughout birmingham and the deep south, if you go
back and look at the pictures of black people of
that era when they posed for a portrait, especially
if they were college educated, you will invariable
spy among the men what i call the classic negro pose
of hand to chin in contemplation. a variation is one
temple of a pair of glasses held close to or
between the lips; then there is the pipe firmly
grasped, not to mention the college diploma held to
the side of the head like a sweetheart—these are
iconic images of optimistic negroes, images that
capture the ethos of their era.
today, the hand
has moved from the chin. we no longer pose in
contemplative ways, what is cropping up more and
more is the hand to the crown of the head, not in a
woe is me posture, but more like: damn, this is some
deep shit we’re in.
unconsciously,
during a recent photo shoot, i ended up in that
pose. when the picture was published i was mildly
surprised, i did not remember adopting that look of
serious concern. but just because i don’t remember
it does not mean that it didn’t happen. clearly it
happened. there is my unsmiling portrait. and i see
that pose more and more, particularly when i look at
the publicity shots of writers. we are children of
production—we are shaped and influenced, even when
unconscious of it, by the prevailing ethos. a lot of
us look like we are gravely weighing the upsides and
downsides of both life and death.
and when people
tell you how much they like that photo, then that
tells you just how much the photo reflects our
current contemplation of death. in those photographs
rarely are we smiling. our eyes are wide open. we
are not dreamy eyed romantics. we are not lost in
meditation. we are looking at death. the
disintegration of our communities, the fissure of
our social structures, the absence of lasting
interpersonal relationships, the proliferation of
age and gender alienation. the death of a people.
and when i took
my photo it was supposed to be a happy occasion. but
obviously the myth of the happy negro is long gone.
6.
i wonder when
the old man put the gun to his head did he hold his
head with his free hand?
7.
richard
couldn’t put his hands to his head because his hands
were handcuffed behind him.
8.
which story
seems more plausible: the old man or richard? is it
not odd that by piling up details and framing the
story in a believable context it is relatively easy
to believe that richard hammonds actually died as a
result of a police beating and shooting in the late
fifties in new orleans? and that the old man seems
to be a metaphor. but an old man (whose name i don’t
want to reveal because it would add nothing to our
story) actually killed himself during the christmas
holidays (of course i speculate and fictionalize a
lot of the old man’s story, but the suicide actually
happened) and the story of richard hammonds is
totally fictitious except for the cops who killed
him—cops did kill negroes in new orleans.
9.
the old man and
richard hammonds had gone to high school together,
and gone to bars together, making merry, drinking
and acting mindlessly stupid on a couple of
occasions. they had double dated a couple of times,
and had once even engaged in sex with the same woman
(at different times, months apart, but the same
woman nonetheless—she remembers the old man as the
better lover because he was more tender, seemed more
sincere.
(there had been
this untalked about but often expressed rivalry
between richard and the old man. close friends are
often bound by both love and jealousy, so there was
nothing unusual about them being attracted to the
same woman. but remember richard was the handsome
one. he was also glib, perhaps because he learned
how to hold back his feelings. he could talk a woman
into bed, or more likely the back of a studebaker—richard’s
father worked as a pullman porter and made nice
money for a colored man and had bought a car but was
often not in town to enjoy the car and richard,
though he didn’t personally have much money, did
have access to the car. anyway, richard never
thought about what the women he bedded in the back
seat thought about before, during or after he bedded
them. after all it was just a moment’s pleasure.
(but the old
man, well, he was a young man then, he thought about
how others felt about him a lot, and though he
fucked mildred, it was not because she was available
but because he was really, really moved by mildred
and told her so. told her, “girl you moves me.”
(“i do?” she
was used to men wanting to sex her, but not to men
admitting that they were deeply affected by her.
(“yes, you
does,” and he twirled her at that moment—they were
dancing and he was whispering in her ear, dancing in
a little new orleans nite club, to a song on the
juke box—he twirled her. and smiled. and she had
never been twirled quite like this gracefully
dancing young man twirled her. and when she reversed
the twirl and spun back into his arms, he
momentarily paused and said, “i wish i could dance
with you all night.”)
the old man had
not been angling to get her in bed, he was just
genuinely enjoying her company. he liked to dance.
she liked to dance. they were having a good time.
and when somehow they ended up making love on the
sofa in her front room that night while her sister
and her sister’s children soundly (he hoped) slept
two rooms away, he had been a little nervous at
first.
her softness
felt so good, before he knew it, a little cry caught
in his throat. he was trying to be quiet, but
goodness and quiet sometimes do not go together. i
mean, you know how good it hurts to hold it in? well
the possibility that the sound of your love making
will disturb and awaken others nearby, that anxiety
about discovery adds to the covert enjoyment. so,
instead of surfacing upward through his throat, the
cry was redirected down into his chest, but it
bounced back and was about to pop audibly out of his
mouth. mildred felt that sound about to pour forth
like a coo-coo clock gone haywire, and with the
mischief that only a woman can summon she cupped one
hand tightly over his mouth and with her other hand
reached down and gently squeezed his testicles.
ya boy liked to
died. he shuddered. he couldn’t breathe. her hand
tightly covered his mouth and partially blocked his
nose. and he was coming like mad. and he moaned a
stifled moan, air yo-yoing back in forth between the
back of his mouth atop his throat and the near
bursting constriction of his chest. finally, he
wheezed gusts of exhales out of his distended
nostrils, which flared like those of a race horse
heaving after a superfast lap. and then he cried out
and tried to call back the sound all at the same
time. and that was followed with another terrible
quake. in a semi-conscious state, he lay helpless,
wrapped up in the murmured laughter of mildred’s
playful passion.
but he didn’t
hear her soft, soft laughter. he didn’t hear
anything. he was totally out of it. he was
struggling to catch his breath, in fact had almost
slipped off the large couch—if her legs had not
clamped around him so firmly, he would have tumbled
to the floor. after that he didn’t distinctly
remember anything until he woke up the next morning,
at home, in his own bed and didn’t know how he got
there. he must have walked home or something, but
all he could remember was her softness, her touch,
his lengthy orgasm (he had never come that long
before), and the way her legs held him when he
almost fell over. you can easily forget a short walk
home, but there are some experiences that are so
sharply etched in the memory of your flesh, those
encounters you never forget.
a couple of
days later when richard asked the old man about
mildred, whether they had done it, the old man had
said, “no, we just had a good time dancing and i
took her home. then i went home.” richard had
replied, “you should have got it, she likes you. i
got her drunk and got it once but she never would
let me get no mo. but she likes you. you should get
it.” the old man had said nothing further, merely
looked away, certain that richard would not
understand that what the old man felt for mildred,
although initiated by the sharpness of their sexual
encounter, was, nonetheless, a feeling deeper than a
good fuck.
many years
later, when the old man was watching the house of
representatives vote to impeach bill clinton for
lying to the american people about the monica
lewinsky affair, something terrible took hold of
him. although he continued to see mildred for over
twenty years and even had a kid with her, the old
man had never told his wife. and he felt intensely
guilty. intensely.
he felt
horrible. felt like he had felt at richard’s
funeral. sitting in the catholic church before a
closed casket. the body had been too brutalized to
have a public viewing. the police had shot his good
friend richard, shot him in the head.
while he sat
between his wife and two daughters on one side and
his young son on the other side, the old man was
thinking about his dead friend when he looked up and
saw mildred looking over at him with those large,
limpid, brown eyes. nearly every time he stole a
glance her way, she seemed to be looking directly at
him. he could not read her eyes.
but his friend
richard was dead. and his wife and legitimate
children were at his side and his woman was across
the isle staring at him, and the old man felt really
guilty about how he was living his life, and he put
his head in his hands and just wanted to ball up and
die. and he didn’t realize he was crying until his
wife daubed his face with her handkerchief.
10.
a murder is a
crime against society. we look at pictures of
murderers and wonder about them. wonder what led
them to do it. wonder do they have feelings like the
rest of us.
what motivates
one human to lynch another?
in the case of
a suicide, everyone who survives wonders not only
what led to the murder but also, particularly for
those who were close to the victim, we wonder what
could we have done, what “should” we have done to
prevent the murder.
murder is a
crime condemning society and suicide is particularly
damning of those who were close to the murderer (who
is also the murderee). if you think about someone
close to you committing suicide, you have to ask
yourself, what did i fail to do that would have
prevented that person from committing self-murder?
while sometimes we ask that question of a mass
murderer—what could have been done to prevent them
from acting the way they did—we always ask that
question of a suicide. and why? if we can not stop
people from committing large and impersonal murders,
how can we hope to stop small murders, the most
personal of murders: the suicide? the question is
perplexing.
after awhile
though, you come to an awful realization: maybe it
is impossible to stop people from killing each other
and themselves. indeed, is it not a certainty that
it is impossible to stop suicide?
11.
if you are shot
in the head with a large handgun it can be messy.
12.
if you shoot
yourself in the head with a large handgun it can be
messy.
13.
the old man’s
casket was sealed before the funeral mass just like
richard’s had been. a closed casket is a terrible
death for it is a death which suggests that this
death is much more worse than ordinary death. this
is a death you can not look in the face. and what
can be more horrible than imagining how horrible
death looks when the corpse is too horrible to look
at?
14.
mildred was at
the old man’s funeral. so was their son who favored
his mother but had his father’s skin color. mildred
had not talked with the old man in over two months,
and then it was only briefly over the phone. he had
said something about being sorry he had never been
brave enough to marry her. and hung up. mildred had
waited in vain for him to call back. as anxious as
she had been, she had never once broken their
agreement. she knew where he lived, knew his phone
number, but she never called. never. and now he was
dead, gone. life is so cruel, especially when much
of your life is lived cloistered in a box of
arrangements shut off from what passes for normal
life. to everyone mildred looked like the statistic
of single mother with one child: a son, father
unknown. but what she felt like was a widow, a widow
whom had never been married but a true widow
nevertheless, her de facto husband’s corpse
sequestered in a closed box, not unlike her whole
life, lived unrecognized outside of sight. isaacs (mildred
and the old man’s son) used to ask who his father
was, but he stopped asking after weathering junior
high school taunts. and once he was married and had
children of his own, he understood that what was
important was not who his father had been but what
kind of father he would be for his children. when
his mother called and asked him to accompany her to
the old man’s funeral, issac at last knew the answer
without ever having to rephrase the question.
mildred and isaacs both remained dry-eyed throughout
the service even though inside both of them were
crying like crazy.
you can not
gauge the depths simply by looking at the surface.
printed on the program was a smiling snapshot of the
old man. next to the closed casket there was an
enlargement of this same posed photograph. but what
picture of the old man was in various people’s mind?
moreover, what
does a self murderer look like whose death has left
the corpse too gruesome to witness? certainly not
like the smiling headshot on the easel surrounded by
flowers.
was the look in
the old man’s eye as he pulled the trigger anything
like that wild look in the eyes of white people
staring at a lynched negro—of course not? but what
did he look like looking at his own death?
15.
have you ever
seen a picture of the man who was convicted of
bombing the baptist church in birmingham, alabama
and killing those four little girls? he looks like a
white man. and once you get beyond the racial aspect
of the murderer, he looks like a man. and once you
get beyond the gender aspect of the murderer—a grown
man killing four little girls—well, then, he looks
like a human being. murderers are human beings. they
look like what they are. it is a conceit to think
that murderers look different from “ordinary” human
beings. what does a killer look like? look at the
nearest human being.
16.
while i admit i
have not seen a lot of pictures of white people—and
then again i have undoubtedly seen more pictures of
white people than of black people when you consider
how the image of whiteness surrounds us and bombards
us in school, in commerce, in television, in
entertainment, in advertisements, everywhere—but
anyway, i don’t remember seeing many white persons
in the classic negro pose of yore nor in the
contemporary iconic hand to the crown of the head
pose.
in examining
the photos of lynchings i see none of the concern
for the future that the hand to the head would
indicate. that hand to the head indicates that a
person has a heart. that a person is feeling life,
and though the life that is felt may not be
pleasant, at least we are still feeling.
but when you
watch and listen to and smell a person dying, and
when you cut off your feelings for the fate of
another human being, well . . .—and you know it is
not biological. have you read about the civil wars
in africa typified by the hutu vs. tutsi conflict?
how literally thousands of people are hacked to
death. it is one thing to fire a gun or drop a bomb,
it is another thing to whack, whack, whack with a
machete slaughtering a human being as though
assailing a dangerous beast or a tree that was in
the way of progress. when any of us, be we white,
black, or whatever, when we severe our feelings to
the point that not only do we methodically and
unfeelingly commit acts of mass murder or acts of
ritual murder, when we can watch murder and not feel
revulsion then obviously we have moved to the point
that death gives us pleasure.
when i first
raised the issue about death and pleasure you may
have thought, “oh, how absurd.” but the next time
you are chomping your popcorn and sipping your
artificially flavored sugar water while watching
thrilling scenes of mayhem, murder and mass
destruction on the silver screen (perhaps i should
add that you have paid for the privilege of this
pleasure), but the next time the bodies fly through
the air, the bullets rip apart a young man in slow
mo, the very next time you watch an image of death
and get pleasure from it, see if you can remember to
say “oh, how absurd.”
i think you
won’t be able to, any more than at the moment of
orgasm you would holler “oh, how absurd.” for you
see pleasure in and of itself is never absurd,
perverse perhaps, but never absurd. and taking
pleasure in someone else’s death: oh, how . . .
what? how do we describe that pleasure? what is
human about enjoying death? or perhaps, since
deriving pleasure from someone else’s demise seems
to be a norm today, maybe i should ask, what is
inhuman about enjoying death?
there is much that is wrong.
First published in
Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (2004) edited by F.
Brett Cox and Andy Duncan.
*
* * * *
|
Unfinished Blues
(featuring Walter "Wolfman" Washington -
guitar)
By Kalamu ya Salaam
sometimes i never
think of you
other times seems
like i never get through
seasons pass, rain falls
i never think of you
some recorded singer sighs
i wonder how you do
the ache in my heart
got a key
to my mind’s back door
comes and goes
as it please
i don’t miss you all
of the time
just
sometimes
2 May
2010 |
* * *
* *
Responses
Reading
“Alabama”
By Rudolph Lewis
Death is
one of those events that happens in life that is
not easily talked about with friends or
strangers, especially with one’s brothers that
one has known for decades. Maybe it is easier
when one is young and fearless, easier to have
such a tryst with one who is young and capable
of sitting still with a literary interest.
Death is a
startling occasion when one looks in the mirror
and sees the gray hair, the sag in the chin, the
loss of teeth, the hang of one’s belly,
and the eyes no longer as bright and optimistic
as they used to be, as one remembers when one
looks ever for the next feminine conquest. The
body speaks loudly to one now if one has ears to
hear. The love of conquest of a woman’s body has
lost its power over one's impulse and the
question rises, “What am I going to do with it?”
Oh one
still has memory of those moments when one had
to conceal the self in the shadows of a juke
joint after a dance (the Georgia Grind) or
behind low hanging garments or a jock strap to
conceal one’s youthful embarrassment of being
exposed as moved uncontrollably by the
mere sight of beauty and feel of a woman’s body
intimately against one's thighs. Those moments
have flown to the frigid regions of one’s brain
to the back door that seldom opens to man or
woman. Of course, Cialis and Viagra can keep
physical demise at bay. But when masturbation
has lost its thrill, you know a change has come.
Death comes
and one minds death more as one comes near to it
in the flesh. It is of no great import to the
man of 20 or 30. He does not really believe in
it or its immediacy. He does not believe it when
his mentor grey haired, tells him he is dying.
He lets it pass as if he is being put on as
some con to manipulate the mind and the
imagination. For he expects, especially if they
are walking and talking “normal” that all
remains of life is ever eternal. And that
teacher dies and he passed his moment of saying
goodbye. I pray I see you on the other side of
the placid blackwater pond. And you don’t know
his family well enough as you have known him to
be informed of his passing and you hear of that
beloved teacher’s death third hand. You don't
even know where he is laid to rest. Or whether
he will visit you in dreams.
Well I
really did not begin this writing to talk about
my lack of ease about the approach, the
stalking. of death in my own life. I want to
say a few things about Kalamu ya Salaam’s short
story “Alabama,” which is a strange title, for
the setting is in New Orleans. I suppose then
Alabama is a cultural symbol of death and
of those who
died for freedom in Alabama. The
narrator speaks of lynching and of the four
little Negro girls. He might have mention Selma
as well as Birmingham. New Orleans is life and
the pleasure of living.
But it is
difficult what to say about this narrator,
whether he really can be trusted. He tells us
that his story is about death. But after reading
after listening to him one wonders whether he
knows what he is talking about. Death is not
something one can really get a hold of, get your
arms around, understand it. Plus, this cat, this
narrator may be a con man. One never knows about
such storytelling. He may know what he is saying
and really don’t want us to know what he really
knows. That one cannot really know what death is
unless one has died, gone to the other side, and
returns with all the memory of that experience.
That never
was and that will never be. One can only tell us
how one responds to death. We each do it
differently. So we can say that really “Alabama"
is about two brothers. They are not really blood
brothers . . . well maybe in a way. I mean they
don’t have the same mother and the same father,
but they brothers in the life they have shared.
No one really ever comes between them, other
than the narrator. Richard
and James were brothers in the deeper sense:
they were of the same gold coin. They had
something special and intimate between them,
something that was rare, that made them each
whole and fully of this life. That something
that is not talked about with one’s wife or
one’s lover. It’s a silent knowledge that they
cannot even voice between them. They have a deep
respect—a deep love between them.
I like
Kalamu’s “Alabama.” I like it very much, Maybe
it will have a greater moment with those who are
over forty. The young are fearless, especially
the black young these days in the hood. They
expect very little out of life. That’s the way
the white folks of power have organized our
lives in the 21st century, organized
for the next generations. We still running up
against the wall that has been labeled ever in
America, “No Dogs or Niggers Allowed.” It’s a
great oddity that's beyond the understanding of
the 100 grand blond Tea Baggers who dread the
demise of white male superiority: they fear
being over-run by the “coloreds.”
Those days
of a picnic at a Negro lynching is one of those
deadly events counted as a loss at the back door
of their deteriorating sense of self, a struggle
against cultural dementia. It is in the image of the eyes
in a photograph that these others do not hide
from the camera's reality and the pleasure one
takes in the mutilation and flames
consuming the flesh of the hated Other. That
alien that foreign being that exists in one’s
midst that one never knows truly as a fellow
human being. The skin is an eternal wall
for them, that one cannot see through, cannot
see beyond, cannot visit in one’s own
humanity, that next door neighbor that ever
remains the Stranger There is the absence of desire for
wholeness. The worship of the material, of
wealth.
The
narrator raises this issue as part of his
wonderment about death and how one deals with
this matter of death of a fellow human being, of
a brother, of a lover. He
questions how one can live with murder, how
death can be a pleasure by one’s hand, by one’s
participation as spectacle, or as a popcorn
eater sitting in the dark before a silver
screen. Of course, we can only speculate on the
pleasure of death, of dying because there is no
return in which one can do a journalistic query
on the subject—there are no pundits, really, on
death.
Death
raises more question than it answers. That too
is true about speculations on death. Maybe there
are indeed some certainties about death. There
is its permanence, except for the Christ. At
times it is welcomed, like the suicide bomber,
who defeats and throws in reverse today's Western
imagination. The death of others and at times of
one’s self is shut down in our creativity in our
attempts to take hold of the fullness of our
humanity. Evil—which has little resonance in our
post-modern reality, except in the rhetoric of
demagogues—is the provocateur in these matters
of life and death. Hurt too and fear as well—standing in
the way of one’s sense of comfort and being in
the world. Love too takes its place, its role as
well, as an agent provocateur.
I have seen
my father and my mother on their death beds—one
struggles first against death and then when you
know you ain’t gone get no better, when the mind
can never be what it was, that memory has
altogether lost its pleasure of memorizing, when
all of that you knew as yourself is gone, I
imagine, death is a welcomed relief.
Such is the
case in “Alabama” when Richard (or is it James
or both, in a way) is murdered by New Orleans
finest—the brotherhood in blue brutalizes the
flesh, that skin that wall which they cannot see
beyond, or do not want to see beyond, this
nigger with money they don’t think he should
have, like Skip Gates in Harvard. They love that
easy detective work that they crave to mark down
“case solved”—the nigger, this nigger, did it
(robbed or raped), and the gun goes off
accidentally in the nigger’s mouth. But we know
torture is no accident.
The last
seven months have been tremendous for me in
contemplative death. That is what we have in
“Alabama.” The narrator contemplates death and
the response to death of the Other, one's
brother and one's enemy. The story was first
published in an anthology—
Crossroads: Tales of the
Southern Literary Fantastic (2004) edited by
F. Brett Cox and Andy Duncan. But is death
really “fantastic.” The horrid fantasy of death
makes me think of
Poe
or such writers of the
horror as
William Faulkner. They both were
Southerners, that species of being who are ever
trying to resurrect that which is dead and best
left dead. These Euro-American romantics are a
special species of being, never seen fully in
the light of their true being in the world. They
are well concealed by the walls they erect for
themselves and for the blindness of others.
Death has
no norm in Southern life—this romantic has no
place that it is welcomed with open arms, as
that which is desired for itself, as it was for Achebe's
Okonkwo (liberty or death), the knowledge
there is a greater pleasure of leaving this
world and going over that placid pond or walking
through that field of grain its head brushed by
the hand in anticipation of meeting again those
who have gone ahead and they long and look in
the distance for your coming. For the faintly
civilized, for the medieval romantics, death is
a blackness, a wickedness that is ever
consuming, they have no faith that the horrors
of the life they live can be surpassed by any
other reality beyond the horizon of a present
misery, beyond the walls they erect in their own
image.
There are
two deaths in “Alabama.” There are two funerals.
One is murdered by the cops while in custody;
the other dies at his own hands. Both cases a
gun—a bullet—to the brain. That one left behind
walks into his back yard and leaves a life no
longer to be tolerated. He leaves a wife behind,
a lover, and his lover’s son who never really
knew his father. (Sometimes a mother is
enough.). It is the story again of
Okonkwo,
again, maybe the narrator knows Achebe, or maybe
the reality of the Negro in a white man's world
is universal, that the oppressed wherever knows
too well. Maybe
Nathaniel Turner knew it too—
that is, his murder was a suicide, the use of
another's, an exposure of another's inhumanity.
One can say that "Alabama" is a kind of cultural
exposé.
I had two
brothers to die within the last seven months.
One I said goodbye on the phone. He had come to
see me here in Finksburg. We sat out on the back
porch. He faced death boldly, made arrangements
to be buried as a Muslim. I wept . . . I
feel the loss of the talks we had about the
world. There was a distance in which we never
really got beyond to know each other in the
intimacy that goes beyond being fellow warriors
on the intellectual battle field of maintaining
one’s sanity living in a white man’s world.
That was
Amin Sharif. I was far away at Jerusalem, too far to
go to get back to his funeral, a day after his
death. I have been wordless . . . He had
been dying a decade for sometime of cancer.
Modern medicine has its limits of keeping death
at bay. I have not known what to say about his
death. The obituary his family (his mother and
his brother) authored is a tiny sliver of the
fullness of his life. They never really talked
to him, never really read the genius of his
imagination, the creativity in creating a self
in which one can live as a man in another’s
lynching imagination. He had a consciousness
that they only had a glimmer. I miss our
telephone conversations.
Mama died
just before the New Year, just after Xmas. She
was 99. Of her five daughters she left two
behind, one almost 80. At 90 she could still have
her weight and could stand up straight and proud
in her blackness. It is extraordinary how
quickly the body and the mind can fall apart to
nothing to dust. She fought and struggled
against her demise until she welcomed death with
open arms, an intimate embrace, as greater than
the life to which she was reduced. The smile,
the storytelling was gone, and she just lay
there on her death bed.
There was
just a wisp of her life, of her tenderness in
holding my hand. I said goodbye without tears.
They came later when I sat alone outside in my
truck in my tears. I was overcome with the
sadness, the knowing that none could replace her
in my life—that a bit of me was dead as well.
One does not press these mediations too hard,
unless one is wholly overcome.
Aubry’s
death came suddenly and wholly unexpected. His
wife ill for years. I expected she would expire
before him. Even in all his misery, Aubry
always had a smile, a humor about life and its
twist and turns. I went to
see his widow and I was in her presence and in
his house and I wept uncontrollably. I was
surprised in the back of my mind the state I
found myself, tears coming down like waterfalls. It was such a contrast to these
other deaths I lived through in such a short
space of time. I conclude it was the intimacy of
me and Aubry: it was something special. His
family was from South Carolina and he knew that
rural life when he was a boy during summers. He
grew up here in Baltimore. He was a lover of
dogs and he was a dog trainer. Of course he was
others things as well. he was a storyteller and
a blues man. What we
shared went beyond that of my mother or
that of my fighting-against-the-odds brother, my
brother Muslim.
I recommend
“Alabama.” Kalamu ya Salaam has done yeoman’s
work; that is, he has written a very creative
and thought-provoking story about how we respond
to death, to the torture of life and our fellow
human beings. He has written in “Alabama” about
the uniqueness sexual pleasure can be, of love
as well—love between man and woman (in this
case, among Richard and James and Mildred), man and man (Richard and James),
mother and son (Mildred and Isaac). This is a
story worthy of contemplation. Ironically, there is a
distinctive
pleasure in this contemplation of death.
* * *
* *
rudy, fyi:
the story is called 'alabama'
because i'm a
coltrane freak. one of
john coltrane's
most famous musical compositions is 'alabama,'
which was written as a tribute to the four
little girls who died in the birmingham church
bombing. and it was written based on and
influenced by the cadence and musicality of one
of dr. king's speeches.
if you have not already done so, you should
check out coltrane's magnificent composition and
his even greater performance, greater in the
sense that beyond the notes on the page,
coltrane's sound, the profound sadness of his
saxophone, the moving eloquence of his melodic
meditation, and the life force of elvin jones'
drums, especially towards the end, all of that,
is what i was directly working towards achieving
in my writing.
i was also cognizant of the seriousness of the
issues i wanted to address, and was consciously
linking sex and death—another literary conceit
up in there is the french reference to orgasm as
'petite mort' (the 'little death').
plus, this is post-modern writing, i.e., it is
self referential. in the story i directly tell
the reader that i am writing a story and that i
am making up part of it and that part of it is a
retelling of factual incidents. the suicide
actually happened. it was the father of a friend
who was a classmate of my younger brother, and
who also was a person with whom i worked and who
was in one of our writing workshops. but,
because this was not a newspaper article, and
because of the way i was writing the story,
giving the specifics of who the person was would
add nothing to the story, in fact, would
distract from the story.
finally, i wanted to address a deep, deep
question about the nature of murder—both ethnic
murder and suicide, i think both those forms of
murder profoundly affects us and i wanted to
write about that as well.
i wanted to achieve with words on paper what
john coltrane achieved with his saxophone and
musical sensibility.
as you know, i don't usually go on too much
about 'how i write' whatever i write but you
have championed my work for so long and so
broadly, and now when you write your reflections
on 'alabama' i feel compelled, nay, almost
obligated to share with you a little of the back
story.
finally, these are notes about how i wrote 'alabama'
and should not be misconstrued as a template for
how i write in general. sometimes i just be
funking around. sometimes i'm writing for other
purposes. sometimes i'm on assignment. and
sometimes, as in this case, i'm deadly (pun
intended) serious.
i'm speaking up this time partially because you
were so obviously moved by the story and
wondered about the provenance of the title. 'alabama'
comes from john
coltrane, specifically inspired by and named
after coltrane's
great composition/performance. —kalamu
* * *
* *
There is a
genuine beauty in wisdom that reaches far beyond
the eye can see—a beauty that cannot compare to
the one-dimensional figures found on t.v. and in
magazines.
Memories of
love, being loved, and even lost love will
always be deeply cherished in spite of time.
Even if wandering someplace in the back of the
mind, it still remains—lingering; and can be
triggered by the most insignificant moment.
“Most
people judge by what they see without knowing
the troubles deep-rooted within me…”. I cannot
speak for man, only for being black and being a
woman that has shouldered more burdens than half
the people I know. The thought of death and
dying is no stranger to me. For I have come
close more times than I care to admit. I,
personally, am not afraid to die. I’ve reached
many souls in my short lifetime—I have loved
effortlessly and given of myself sincerely,
expecting nothing in return even when my heart
was weary.
The world can be a cruel, callous place—not the
world, per say, but the people in it. In spite
of this, I continue to give of myself and love
hard until that day comes when I take my last
breath because God has assured me that there is
a method to this madness, and I am His angel
blessed with a gift.—Terry
O’Neal
* * *
* *
I love
Dudley Randall's poem/The Ballad of Birmingham/I
want to read all of your work too/I'm tired of
reading right now/Thank-you for the never-ending
energy—Francy
Stoller
* * *
* *
Brother
Rudy,
I am shooting from the hip here, reading your
first four paragraphs on "Death," an important
subject of all aware humans—moved to comment
quickly before reaching your concluding
argument. Death is a subject that is often
evaded by except when dealing with directly with
those who are dying; or celebrating the lives of
the dead.
.Actually your raising of the subject has led me
to thinking about the Materialist idea on the
death--one that I have not spent much time
considering beyond the idea that, "When a Man
(or Woman or any living thing) is Dead, it is
Dead." The materialist worldview--as I
understand it, is a philosophy about survival in
life.
Notwithstanding, about two years ago, a
colleague suggested that I read the book, Sogyal,
Patrick Gaffney, and Andrew Harvey. 1992.
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying .
[San Francisco, Calif.]: Harper San Francisco.
I find the book, different and interesting. It
is a non-western perspective on Death--welcomed
because in the community of African Diasporans
in the West, our perspective on death is
influenced by Christian ideas.
The fact is, even for materialists or the
religious, we do not have a complete idea about
death. So we tend to fear the unknown.
Notwithstanding, my own position still remains
that when a man is dead, he is dead! Hence, I
respect life and all living things.—Yao
* * *
* *
Yao, yes,
in the materialist sense, you are right, when
you dead you dead and you ain't coming back, no
more.Though these things can't be really argued,
as I suggested above, none of us have had the
experience of dying and coming back to talk
about it. The view also rest on what is it that
we call living. Does the materialist view set
certain boundaries on the discussion that cannot
be overcome. Scientifically, I suppose it does.
But is scientific experience all there is too
life.
As you
suggested in your recommendation of the Tibetan
Book, it is not. There are other "experiences."
Whether they can be verified is uncertain. What
of the dream world can that be verified
scientifically other than by signs. What if I
tell you my fathers visited me in my dreams
though dead. Of course, you or none other can
know this experience and whether it is real or
not.
But as I
said the discussion must begin where one sets
the parameters of life and living. Black people
I do not know that they are Western or Eastern,
or some combination of both. Surely, those of
the East and West have written creatively about
life, living, dying, and death. What is true
and false I cannot really wholly tell. I cannot
even say with certainty all that I have
experienced in the bright sunlight or in the
darkness of night.
What is
indeed true is that when one can write
creatively and passionately and seriously about
that which occur in life one can indeed be moved
by even that which is fictional. Loving you
madly, Rudy
*
* * * *
music website >
http://www.kalamu.com/bol/
writing website >
http://wordup.posterous.com/
daily blog >
http://kalamu.posterous.com
twitter >
http://twitter.com/neogriot
facebook >
http://www.facebook.com/kalamu.salaam
* * *
* *
Guarding the Flame of Life
*
* * * *
*
* * * *
New Orleans Jazz Funeral for tuba player Kerwin
James /
They danced atop his casket Jaran 'Julio' Green
* * *
* *
John Coltrane, "Alabama" /
Kalamu ya
Salaam, "Alabama" /
A Love Supreme
A Blues for the Birmingham Four
/ Eulogy for the Young Victims
/ Six Dead
After Church Bombing
*
* * * *
John Coltrane A
Love Supreme /
My Favorite Things—John Coltrane
*
* * * *
My Favorite Things
is a 1961 jazz album by John Coltrane. It is
considered by many jazz critics and
listeners to be a highly significant and
historic recording. It was the first session
recorded by Coltrane on the Atlantic label,
the first to introduce his new quartet
featuring McCoy Tyner (Piano), Elvin Jones
(Drums) and Steve Davis (Bass) - neither
Jimmy Garrison nor Reggie Workman featured
as yet.
It is classed as another album in which
Coltrane made a break free of bop,
introducing complex harmonic reworkings of
such songs as "My Favorite Things", and "But
Not for Me." Additionally, at a time when
the soprano saxophone was considered
obsolete, it demonstrated Coltrane's further
investigation of the instrument's
capabilities in a jazz idiom.
The standard “Summertime” is notable for its
upbeat, searching feel, a demonstration of
Coltrane's “sheets of sound,” a stark
antithesis to Miles Davis's melancholy,
lyrical version on Porgy and Bess. "But Not
For Me" is reharmonised using the famous
Coltrane changes, and features an extended
coda over a repeated ii-V-I-vi progression.
The title track is a modal rendition of the
Richard Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein's seminal
song “My Favorite Things” from The Sound
of Music. The melody is heard numerous
times throughout the almost 14-minute
version, and instead of soloing over the
written chord changes, both Tyner and
Coltrane taking extended solos over vamps of
the two tonic chords, E minor and E major.
Tyner's solo is famous for being extremely
chordal and rhythmic, as opposed to
developing melodies. In the documentary
The World According to John Coltrane,
narrator Ed Wheeler remarks: “In 1960,
Coltrane left Miles [Davis] and formed his
own quartet to further explore modal
playing, freer directions, and a growing
Indian influence. They transformed ‘My
Favorite Things’, the cheerful populist song
from The Sound of Music, into a
hypnotic eastern dervish dance. The
recording was a hit and became Coltrane's
most requested tune—an abridged broad public
acceptance.”
A cover of the title track appeared on the
OutKast album The Love Below.
It is one of the most well-known examples of
modal jazz, set in the Dorian mode and
consisting of 16 bars of D minor7, followed
by eight bars of Eb minor7 and another eight
of D minor7. This AABA structure puts it in
the format of popular song structure.
The piano and bass introduction for the
piece was written by Gil Evans for Bill
Evans and Paul Chambers on Kind of Blue. An
orchestrated version by Gil Evans of this
introduction is later to be found on a
television broadcast given by Miles' Quintet
(minus Cannonball Adderley who was ill that
day) and the Gil Evans Orchestra; the
orchestra gave the introduction after which
the quintet produced a rendition of the rest
of "So What".
The distinctive voicing employed by Bill
Evans for the chords that interject the
head, from the bottom up three perfect
fourths followed by a major third, has been
given the name "So What Chord" by such
theorists as Mark Levine.
While the track is taken at a very moderate
tempo on Kind Of Blue, it is played
at an extremely fast tempo on later live
recordings by the Quintet, such as Four and
More.
The same chord structure was later used by
John Coltrane for his standard
“Impressions.”
*
* * * *
 |
The Tibetan Book of
Living and Dying
(1992)
By Sogyal Rinpoche, Patrick
Gaffney, and Andrew Harvey
In 1927, Walter Evans-Wentz
published his translation of an
obscure Tibetan Nyingma text and
called it the
Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Popular Tibetan teacher Sogyal
Rinpoche has transformed that
ancient text, conveying a perennial
philosophy that is at once
religious, scientific, and
practical. Through extraordinary
anecdotes and stories from religious
traditions East and West, Rinpoche
introduces the reader to the
fundamentals of Tibetan Buddhism,
moving gradually to the topics of
death and dying. Death turns out to
be less of a crisis and more of an
opportunity. Concepts such as
reincarnation, karma, and bardo and
practices such as meditation,
tonglen, and phowa teach us how to
face death constructively. |
As a
result, life becomes much richer. Like Elisabeth
Kubler-Ross, Sogyal Rinpoche opens the
door to
a full experience of death. It is up to the
reader to walk
through.—Brian
Bruya:
* * *
* *
|
Track List
1. Congo Square (9:01)
2. My Story, My Song (20:50)
3. Danny Banjo (4:32)
4. Miles Davis (10:26)
5. Hard News For Hip Harry (5:03)
6. Unfinished Blues (4:13)
7. Rainbows Come After The Rain
(2:21)/Negroidal Noise (15:53)
8. Intro (3:59)
9. The Whole History (3:14)
10. Negroidal Noise (5:39)
11. Waving At Ra (1:40)
12. Landing (1:21)
13. Good Luck (:04) |
*
* * * *
Africa Makes Some Noise—Documentary on contemporary music from
Africa
*
* * * *
The transcendent power of music has long been
recognized as a vehicle for spiritual practice
and a path to spiritual fulfillment and
enlightenment. Spiritual music, a universally
powerful form of prayer, has for millennia
provided human beings with a sense of the
greater spiritual universe. Chanting forms part
of many religious rituals, and diverse spiritual
traditions consider music as a means of opening
the individual to spiritual experience. I
n this
episode of Global Spirit, host Phil Cousineau
explores the transcendent qualities of spiritual
and sacred music with guests Rev. Alan Jones and
Grammy-award-winning singer and member of the
Native American Onondaga tribe Joanne
Shenandoah. Experience the power of liturgical
musical performances in Latin from Grace
Cathedral in San Francisco (where the Rev. Jones
serves as Dean) and witness powerful, live
studio performances by Joanne Shenandoah and her
daughter.
This
episode also includes a hauntingly moving,
seven-minute sequence from Peter Brook’s film,
Meetings with Remarkable Men, in which
the young mystic Gurdjieff learns the power of
sacred sound as it resonates from the Afghan
mountaintops.—Music,
Sound and the Sacred
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Among the
many forms in which the human spirit has tried to express its innermost
yearnings and perceptions, music is perhaps the most universal. It
symbolizes the yearnings for harmony, with oneself and with others, with
nature and with the spiritual and sacred within us and around us. There
is something in music that transcends and unites. This is evident in the
sacred music of every community—music that expresses the universal
yearning that is shared by people all over the globe.—His
Holiness the Dalai Lama
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John Coltrane A
Love Supreme
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 13 May 2010
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