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Books by Marvin X
Love and War: Poems /
In the Crazy House Called America /
Woman: Man's Best Friend /
Beyond Religion Toward Spirituality
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* * * * Death and Spirituality
By
Marvin X
The only death is to be forgotten.—African
proverb
Death is when we realize the power of spirituality
and the impotence of materiality.
Suddenly we see clearly the
life-force has departed and the body an empty shell,
still, stiff, cold and soulless. Where did the soul go,
we wonder, into the air, heaven, hell, where? Mythology
and folklore is full of stories about death and the
departed spirit.
My first experience with death was
accompanying my father to funeral homes with flowers for
the departed. Dad was a florist in Oakland and I'd often
go with him to deliver flowers, sometimes I went along
willingly or unwillingly. I wasn't particularly
interested in placing flowers atop the coffins of dead
Negroes. But he sometimes insisted I come inside with
him, rather than stay in the car. He didn't say so, but
I supposed he was trying to teach me a lesson about
death, not to be afraid of it. For sure, I never got
used to seeing those bodies laying there still, silent,
cold, grey with makeup looking like a manikin.
Sometimes I would look and turn my
head real fast, glad when Dad finished placing the
flowers on the coffin or standing a bleeding heart of
roses next to it. I had no personal attachment to the
dead until grandmother died. Since I loved grandmother
so much, her transition was absolutely crushing.
Grandma's hands had meant the world to me and I was
devastated when she passed while I was a teenager.
When grandpa died I was a young man
and spoke at his funeral while a musician friend played
the flute. After the funeral, my favorite cousin, Carol,
made me promise to give her a similar funeral. I
confess, I did not keep my promise to her because when
she passed I was on drugs and too busy to attend her
funeral.
Dealing with the deaths of Mom and
Dad were nothing compared to the suicide of my son at 38
years old. Suffering manic-depression, they say he
walked into a train. When my oldest son called me with
the news, he said coldly, "Darrel is no more."
I was speechless. How could this be,
my beautiful son who looked like me, walked like me,
talked and laughed like me, so young, so bright, a world
traveler and Fulbright scholar in Damascus, Syria, a
grad student at Harvard. How could he be no more? I
retreated deep within myself. My woman friend tried to
make me talk but there were no words, just silence and
total disbelief, even though I knew it was possible.
My pain was indescribable for he was
more than my son, he was my friend, my critic, who
promised he would preach my funeral, telling people
about the real me, revealing my contradictions and every
secret thing. But he was no more. A great spirit had
departed. I was too shocked to understand why and how my
son could do such a thing, so I pretended to deal with
it as best I could. Inside I was horrified: how could
God do this to me? I heard Job's wife say, "Why don't
you curse God and die." I ignored her as Job did. But
there was guilt, shame, a potpourri of emotions that
lingered for months, years.
Yet I had to ultimately realize that
spiritually, he had not nor would he ever leave me.
I had enjoyed him for 38 years in the
physical, now I would enjoy him forever in the
spiritual.
Rev. Cecil Williams taught us to
accept the pain, enjoy the pain, don't medicate, don't
deny, face the pain and turn it into joy, like the
second line of a New Orleans funeral.
For all the mothers and fathers in
the hood who have lost children—for
all the parents who've lost children in the filthy
capitalist wars of America, I salute you for enduring
one day at a time. The spirit is greater than the
physical, for we can see and feel the spiritual when we
cannot see or feel the physical.
Source:
Toward Radical Spirituality, Black Bird Press,
2007 (c) 2006 by Marvin X (El Muhajir)
Marvin X has given permission to
Harvard University to publish his poem "For El Haji
Rasul Taifa" from Love and War: Poems by Marvin X
(1995). The poem will appear in The Encyclopedia of
Islam in America Volume II, Greenwood Press, edited
by Dr. Jocelyne Cesari of Harvard's Islam in the West
Program. Mr. X is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology
Muslim American Literature, University of
Arkansas Press, edited by Dr. Mojah Khaf. He is also in
the forthcoming Muslim American Drama, Temple
University.
posted 23 June 2006
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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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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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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Negro Digest /
Black World
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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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
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 22 December 2011
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