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Books by Marcus Bruce
Christian
Song of the Black Valiants: Marching Tempo
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High Ground: A Collection of Poems /
Negro soldiers in the Battle of New Orleans
I am New
Orleans: A Poem
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Negro Iron Workers of Louisiana: 1718-1900 /
The Liberty Monument
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DN16
On
the Death of Marion Badon
[note
dated, but probably late 1944 or early 1945]
His
eyes came back again to the Girl whom he had always called
"My Heart," and his grief began to rise and his eyes
dimmed. He wiped them dry and still stood there alone with the
Girl in the silence of the undertaking parlor. His lingering
last look, took in the folded hands resting upon her belly, her
long tapering fingers--hands that he had kissed so many
times--and his gaze followed the somewhat peach-colored knitted
evening gown on up, passing over the wrinkles of her throat--not
very deep ones--the color of her skin.
It
was now "the tint of Mexican gold," as Lafcadio Hearn
might have said, but it showed much more color than when she had
been alive, he thought. Then she was much whiter, her skin like
ivory just beginning to show the first tinge of yellow. He
looked at her breasts--almost non-existent, and studied her chin
and her swollen carmined lips. Her cheekbones seemed to stand
out more prominently in her swollen face, and the powder was too
heavy for naturalness. Her lips protruded more than he had ever
known them, and the bridge of her nose showed a pronounced ridge
that was almost Jewish. Her hair was browner and fluffier than
he had known it. He had always thought it as black as the
raven's wing. And it was one of the things that accentuated her
Indian blood. But now it seemed dark brown and fluffy like a
white woman's.
When
he reached her forehead that he had studied so long and
remembered perhaps more distinctly than any other part of her
face, he looked at it and did not find the whiteness accentuated
by the hair--black hair--parted in the middle. The brown hair
was now parted on the side. One deep wrinkle cut a small gulley
across her brow, the wrinkle that he had seen grow deeper with
the years. But one caught his attention and held it more than
anything else. it was a slight group of very small wrinkles
which might have been made by one in pain and bewilderment,
fighting hard against oncoming darkness.
It
could have been placed there by the pressure of thumb or
forefinger of the undertaker upon the unresponsive skin, but to
the Man it told of those last few minutes when the Girl, whom he
had so long laughingly called "My Heart," had looked
up for the last time out of the vale of pain, and bewilderment
and attempted to open wider her surprised, dimming eyes at the
approach of the Dark Rider. He looked in vain for the gray hairs
that he had kidded her about only two weeks previously, but they
were not to be seen.
Then,
a great cry welled up out of his soul, "O Marion," and
he turned and went to the side door of the parlor, and stood
studying the nearby houses and rooftops, as the evening Angelus
of the church across the street rang out its benediction of
blessing and peace across the hot city that lay spent beneath
the heat of a slowly cooling day. He stood at the door,
thinking, thinking . . . .
I am
reading through long books on Louisiana history that I have
never seen, documents that I find unfamiliar, but interesting
and true to fact, and I have already dreamed of that
cemetery where Marion is buried.. It is funny that the type of
dreams are so similar to those I had long ago. But these dreams
must be mixed up with my interest in Louisiana history, and
especially New Orleans history, that seems to have been
born a part of me. There is always that damnable feeling that I
was in New Orleans some time long ago, when the houses
were close to the sidewalk, and built in the old style of long
ago.
I
think it a species of incipient insanity, having experienced
that our slight "normal" aberrations are the things
that grow into complexes when the pressure of nerves is applied.
But if ever a man had reasons to believe in reincarnation, I
have those reasons when I stand before houses that I have never
seen but seem as familiar to me as if I had been raised up in
them. I never saw pictures of French houses before I came to New
Orleans and country houses are not built like these queer
specimens one sees in the downtown section of New Orleans, but still
I cannot account for it, and yes, when I first came here at the
age of seventeen, it was the downtown section that awoke
[something in me]. . . .
Each
time that he felt sobs rising to his throat, he forced them down
and went on, but suddenly someone began singing "Danny Boy,"
over the cheap radio next door, and grief came down in
torrential tears. He went towards the front of the house so that
the people next door could not hear him through the thin walls
of the kitchen and bathroom. Snatching up a soiled sheet, he sat
down, shaken with the first onrush of incoherent grief --
bitter, wringing grief -- long-delayed grief, and gave himself
up to it.
He
tried to reason it out even then. He had not ever loved the Girl
wildly, nor hardly hoped to love her possessively, but he did
remember that he had often said, that she was one of his dreams.
He had never had any wild desire to marry or be with her.
Maybe it was the funeral or the sadness?
Then
he commenced thinking how for years he had kept in touch with
her and she with him, how it was only meet and salute and then
gone, but it was always--sooner or later--that meet and salute.
He had held on to other woman that long and in just that sort of
way. . . .
Down
through the streets of Old New Orleans the procession slowly
wheeled its way. the Man could remember with vivid exactitude
several insignificant things which never would have been noticed
at all. Somehow the sinking rays of the sun -- although still
hot -- took on a look similar to that other funeral procession
in which he had rode almost thirty years before. It was his
father's funeral and he could remember how the children at the
school where he attended, stop from their play to look up at the
horse-drawn plumed hearses and carriages as it passed by.
Pass
old houses that awoke dim, nostalgic memories out of some
other-life that the Man might have lived, and into the oak-lined
old French avenue, to the large cemetery with its rich tombs of
marble and granite. Although he had oft-times passed there when
he was a chauffer twenty years before, he never knew that
colored people were buried in that fine cemetery. He turned to
Rev. Holmes and asked: "Are the white and colored
segregated in here, Reverend?" and was answered. "I do
not think so, in fact, I am quite sure they are not. these old
cemeteries of more than a hundred years, haven't got much segregation--never had."
<<---Previous Next--17->> * *
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Selected Letters
Selected Diary Notes Memories of Marcus B. Christian
(Cains) Christian's
BioBibliographical Record Introduction to I AM NEW
ORLEANS
A
Theory of a Black Aesthetic Magpies,
Goddesses, & Black Male Identity
Activist Works on Next Level of Change
Intro to I Am New
Orleans
Letter from Dillard University
A
Labor of Genuine Love
Letter of Gift of
Photos
Letters from
LSU and Skip Gates * * *
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Negro Iron Workers of Louisiana: 1718-1900
By Marcus Bruce
Christian
Study of the blacksmith
tradition and New Orleans famous lace
balconies and fences.
Acclaimed during his life as the unofficial
poet laureate of the New Orleans
African-American community, Marcus Christian
recorded a distinguished career as
historian, journalist, and literary scholar.
He was a contributor to Pelican's
Gumbo Ya Ya, and also wrote many
articles that appeared in numerous
newspapers, journals, and general-interest
publications. |
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Audio:
My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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Hopes and Prospects
By Noam Chomsky
In this urgent new book, Noam Chomsky
surveys the dangers and prospects of our
early twenty-first century. Exploring
challenges such as the growing gap
between North and South, American
exceptionalism (including under
President Barack Obama), the fiascos of
Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S.-Israeli
assault on Gaza, and the recent
financial bailouts, he also sees hope
for the future and a way to move
forward—in the democratic wave in Latin
America and in the global solidarity
movements that suggest "real progress
toward freedom and justice." Hopes and
Prospects is essential reading for
anyone who is concerned about the
primary challenges still facing the
human race. "This is a classic Chomsky
work: a bonfire of myths and lies,
sophistries and delusions. Noam Chomsky
is an enduring inspiration all over the
world—to millions, I suspect—for the
simple reason that he is a truth-teller
on an epic scale. I salute him." —John
Pilger
In dissecting the rhetoric and logic of
American empire and class domination, at
home and abroad, Chomsky continues a
longstanding and crucial work of
elucidation and activism . . .the
writing remains unswervingly rational
and principled throughout, and lends
bracing impetus to the real alternatives
before us.—Publisher's
Weekly
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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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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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