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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
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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)
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Kalamu
at MIT
Part 1 of 2
there are two very, very prestigious educational institutions in
cambridge (across the river from boston), massachusetts: harvard
and m.i.t. (masscachusetts institute of technology). one is
elite with a large base of economical privilege and the other
focuses is more of a meritocracy (regardless of the economic
status of the student or the student's parents), both have high
admission standards. between the two of them, and not
discounting other educational institutions in the area such as
boston university, tufts and berkelee school of music, the
boston metro area represents the pinnacle of american education
on a per-square-mile basis. what we have here is a concentration
of wealth, brains and talent, a concentration unmatched anywhere
else in the world. it is not that there are no other important
educational institutions, it is just that no where else do you
have so many in such a small geographical area.
so it was no surprise when i got a call on thursday, our first
full day in residence, asking if paulette and i wanted to go
hear melvin van peebles lecture and meet up with him. we took a
cab to harvard from m.i.t. the traffic was maddening. our
driver, it turns out, was a young black man from haiti. he knew
the back streets and drove with authority but not with the
reckless abandon so common to his new york city colleagues.
soon as we stepped on campus, it was apparent to this negro's
naked eye that we were walking the stomping grounds of wealth
and privilege. inside the ceilings were high, high enough so
that you could have stacked three or four average-sized rooms
atop each other. this was an intentionally impressive use of
space. forty and fifty foot ceilings show you your little 12 to
15-foot rooms ain't shit, and they show you that without saying
a word. these folk are so secure that you don't see no security
guards scowling at you and pawing through your back pack. the
assumption is you wouldn't even be there period if you weren't
supposed to be on the premises.
signage is sparse. no signs out front the buildings. if you
don't know where you're going, you better ask somebody. we were
going to a large room--uh, check that, a small room, it just
looked large to somebody who had been working in an empoverished
public school in new orleans. melvin was sitting quietly in the
corner, his legs crossed, a goblet of water dangling in his
right hand, a power-dressed, middle-aged white woman talking to
him. not far away there was carroll parrot blue, a filmmaker
friend of mine who had done an amazing multi-media book based on
her childhood in houston. her book included an interactive dvd-room.
while carroll and i were sharing a hug, ayedia, our host and a
dean at m.i.t., didn't hesitate as she scoped out the situation,
after waiting for me to return from greeting carroll, ayedia
walked right up to where van peebles was, politely interrupted
the conversation, introduced herself and then introduced
paulette and i, and followed up by telling mr. van peebles that
we would probably have to leave before he finished because we
had a prior engagement back at m.i.t. but she thought that he
ought to meet paulette and kalamu. and then we sat down and
talked for about five or six minutes.
anywhere else we would not have been able to get close to melvin
van peebles, but there is a sort of understanding in the old
boys circles, if you are here than there is something to you.
regardless of how you feel about networking, when you are in
certain territories, the rules of those territories take
precedence. after only the briefiest of smalltalk we are
discussing editing in high def (don't worry if you don't know
what it is, what it is is not as important as the fact that we
had started off cordially--glad to meet you, shake, shake, so
what are you up to, oh, i'm here for a residency at m.i.t.,
yeah, good, this is the last day of a three day series of
lectures that i'm doing, etc. etc. blah, blah.).
melvin van peebles started talking about the creative use of
cinema technology and the absence of much creativity in general,
and then on to wanting to edit in high def specifically and i
responded that he could do it with the latest version of final
cut pro. yeah, huh? yeah, for real. check it out. i will. and
then it was time for brer soul to do his thing, which is exactly
what my man proceeded to do.
although we had to leave before he finished, it was obvious that
the rabbit was luxurating in the briar patch on the rich man's
plantation. he started off with a long joke about a pig, a
wheelbarrow and sex... you had to be there as my man sat with a
wireless mike, in a chair befitting a duke, on a small raised
platform, holding court in a mixture of folksy wit,
philosophical inquiry and thinly disguised bullshit (or, as he
said "ca-ca") forcing the audience to guffaw one
minute and go "hmmmmm" the next minute--i kept
expected arsenio hall to show up ;->)
like i said, we had to jet to get back to m.i.t. for a meeting
with a group of m.i.t. students who were having a small session
organized around the millions more march. the earnestness of the
students leading the program stood at attention like junior
f.o.i. (fruit of islam) in suit and tie. i was invited to say a
few words and give my take on katrina—invariably i move
the discussion away from "victimology" toward
inquiring, given who they are, what are people doing where they
are in terms of reflecting on the major questions of the
environment and the nature of governance. we had lively
discussion and before you know it, it was time to move on to the
next program, which was a study break session, literally a
gathering of students at 9pm in the game room of one of the
dorms, which dorm game room was better equipped than some entire
student unions i've been in. it was a great turn out with what
seemed to be about 20 to 30 black students. there was a spread
of chinese food and folk informally talked and ate for a little
over a half hour and that was it.
initially, i wondered what was going on. there was no speaker.
no formal program. but then i realized this was a social event.
a chance for students to relax in a non-threatening environment
of comradarie and refuge, a respite, as it were, from the
normal, day-to-day high pressure school environment.
m.i.t. is a major research institution, and as such there are
more grad students than under grads. moreover, with the emphasis
on research there is a concomitant emphasis on academic
excellence and practical application of knowledge and
information. there is nothing easy about going through m.i.t.
but there are safety nets, and this event was one such safety
net. as i talk with more and more students and administrators,
as well as community folk, i begin to understand the rough side
of the m.i.t. mountain. the references to suicides and drug use
that afflict a number of students as they try to cope with the
pressure of high expectations and strenuous work loads.
these are teenagers, many of them only a year or two removed
from high school, although they are among the best students,
someone pointed out that most of them were vals, sals, and in
the upper five percent of their high school classes, still as
more than one student reminded me, "i was at the top of my
class, but i came from the worst high school in the state."
then there is the cost of attending m.i.t. i have not asked
anyone directly how much the tuition is, but it is obviously not
cheap. it's a lot of pressure for a 18 or 19 year old to handle.
friday, we had a late start. turns out this week is the weekend
of the bayou bash. new orleans musicians are on campus. there
was a secondline with the lil stooges brass band from new
orleans. the impromtu parade started outside the student union,
cross massachusetts ave, head straight through one of the large
building (damn thing must have been at least a block long, no
exaggeration), the band was rolling on through the stone
hallways, people popping out from all over to check out the
commotion, you know i was laughing, paulette video much of the
procession.
at one point, after stopping to seranade a bevy of arts funders
(as in the elderly, rich who give out of their own pockets),
from there the band went one way and we went another. my payless
slip-ons were not going to serve through the winter, the rubber
soles already had significant cracks in them and i had though it
would be better to buy sturdy shoes in the north than back in
nashville, so ayida took us to a spot outside of a new galleria,
actually just across the street, an old store that obviously had
been there for a long time, they had all kinds of heavy duty and
attractive shoes. i had an i love black t-shirt on. the guy
waiting on me joked about having some orange shoes when i asked
if he had the brown shoes he was showing in black. and in case i
missed it, he let me know that he was joking with me. we talked
as he showed me shoes and make recommendations. one thing led to
another, he found out we were from new orleans and then that i
was a writer, and his eyes lit up, he had a children's book he
wrote. while we were checking out he showed me one of the pages.
the book was built around the metaphore of a tree in which
animals lived and three young children played and was told from
the perspective of the tree. it was a touching little story. i
looked at his poem. it was good. i suggested one or two lines
that he could tighten up and, if i remember correctly, one
switch of word order. he responded well, making a few notes and
did not seem the least bit embarassed or offended that i was
critiquing his poem. as i told him the main reason i was even
taking the time to respond in some detail was because the poem
was better than average. we left and went over to the galleria
to best buy to purchase some mini-dv tapes, as we crossed the
street it was clear to me that eventually big business was going
to take out his little family-owned shoe shop. he was working
class white and capitalism was going to wipe him out. inside the
galleria they had three floors of shops. paulette eventually
bought some small, colorful boots on sale (the price was
ridiculous--let's just say she got significant change back from
a $20 bill). my man across the street, outside the galleria
complex, would not be able to compete even though the quality of
the shoes he was carrying was much, much higher than the
particular discount store where paulette got her boots (the
galleria also had ann taylor and other upscale botiques). i
wonder how many working class folk are ready to move beyond
ethnicity to deal with capitalism?
friday night we spoke at a film class that ayida runs. we showed
paulette's video: a luta continua (we had some problems because
we had to firewire connect her laptop to my laptop and run off
her harddrive through my operating system--when i de-assed new
orleans i didn't take my stash of dvds nor any of the hard
drives with movies on them, and paulette had not brought any
dvds, so we were rigging it up. afterwards we showed the
interview adrina kelly, which is the first of the listen to the
people project. adrina graduated from public high school in new
orleans, went to harvard and after graduation secured an editing
job at mcgraw hill publishers. although she has visited
frequently, she has not lived in new orleans in over seven
years. her mix of anger, confusion, powerlessness and concern
reflected the feeling of many of those in attendance. this class
looked at film with an emphasis on content and social
meaning/relevance... we started about 8pm, it was after 1:30am
when we finally closed it down. i guess you could say it was
very successful.
at 10am on saturday morning we met with a program that m.i.t.
students were doing with area high school students, mainly black
but also including hispanic and asian youth. out of about 40
students there was one white student. we spend over two hours
with them including some brief hands-on time using the video
camera. it was a beautiful program.
afterwards, we went out for a late lunch with my good friend
marita rivero, who is a vice president of televison and radio
programming at wgbh, one of the two major public
television/radio stations in the country, the one in new york
city is the other. the npr station in washington dc is not a
local station. we went to "legal seafood." it was
good. the seafood was very fresh and tasty, but there use of
herbs and spices was a bit on the mild side. while we were
eating and talking, the light rain that had been fallling when
we arrived turned to sho-nuff snow, huge, flakes, falling
steadily. somebody commented on how beautiful it looked. i
didn't even smile.
sunday we had a brunch. paulette, who had arrived to m.i.t.
about ten hours before i had, had told ayida that i was a good
cook and ayida in turn had asked me about fixing salmon cakes. i
said sure, no problem. she asked what ingredients i needed and i
had told her the ones i remembered off the top of my head, the
essentials: canned salmon, smoked oysters in the tin, bread
crumbs, green onions, onions, bread crumbs. when we arrived on
sunday, i set in to preparing the cakes. you can bake them or
fry them, i choose to bake them and we had two small pans, maybe
about fifteen medium to large sized cakes. ayida asked could
they be frozed. i quipped, she wasn't going to have to freeze
none cause there weren't going to be any left. i was right.
after the brunch we head out to the jamaica plains section of
the city for the cultural cafe. they had a program in an old
warehouse converted into an art gallery. tony vandameer and my
old buddy, askia toure, were running the shop. it was great
seeing askia. i have met tony before but don't know him like i
know askia. i spoke briefly first, then alexandria, a sister
poet, followed by sandra, a union organizer. we had to leave as
they were starting the question and answer period.
the next appointment was with chocolate city, an all male, all
black dorm. they had a small informal dinner from a nearby
brazil eatery--it was meat heavy so i can only comment on the
rice and a few beans picked out of a dish that had beef... no
comment.
chocolate city is an interesting concept. three floors in one
section of a multi-section dormitory. but the key element is
that the members of chocolate city are serious about their
program. one of the administrators said that they doubted a
racially-based dormitory could get off the ground today and that
there was some resistance to chocolate city, but on the other
hand, the chocolate city gpa was higher than the gpa's in all of
the other "houses" in the dorm complex, which included
an asian house, a french house, etc. etc. that's some serious
studying and academic performance. the brothers are serious. and
check this, at m.i.t. they got more brothers than sisters. by
almost a margin of three to one. it's educationally
unbelievable. at almost every other college or university in
this country sisters outnumber brothers, but here at the most
prestigious science institution you got dudes doing the do. how
is it that m.i.t. is so strange? who knows. i smell one of them
expensive-ass statistical studies coming on. let it come. i'd
like to know the answer to that one myself.
from chocolate city we went to the bayou bash concert. when we
arrived davell crawford was holding forth. his piano playing
ranged from good to outright excellent. he did a moving
rendition of randy newman's "louisiana."
donald harrison was featured next, playing mostly in a
fusion/smooth jazz format. started off with pockaway, a new
orleans mardi gras indian number. followed with a smooth
rendition of "wonderful world," which most people
associate with louis armstrong, and ended with "cissy
strut." this was not donald's working band, so he was
limited as far as what he could play. the drummer was a brass
band drummer, which means that he mainly plays snare and that he
ended up heavy on the backbeat with not much of the tricky
syncopation that drummers like zigaboo bring to that
"meters" tune. donald also featured an m.i.t. student,
louis fouche who is from new orleans and plays alto sax, plus
donald's nephew, christian scott, who plays trumpet. louis
played extremely well, as, of course, did donald. i really liked
christian's short solo. they were having a ball and it was
infectious as most of the first two rows in the small auditorium
were up and dancing. and yet, here's the rub, as much as donald
likes to play dance music, he also likes to play heavy jazz, and
in this setting there was no room for him to dig deep. judging
from the crowd's warm enthusiasm, i was the only one sitting
there wishing for a deeper hit of jazz.
the program was more like a revue than a concert, with feature
numbers for musician after musician. the high point for me was
the interaction between marva wright, who is known as a blues
singer, and davell on the piano. marva's opening number was an
original about being a blues singer that was more r&b than
strict blues, and then she launched into sam cooke's "a
change is gonna come." at first i thought they were going
to go bluesy with it, but, no, they ended up in church. and
marva started testifying and shouting, and talking about loosing
everything in the flood and staying in maryland, and shouting,
lost her rings and furs and stuff, and shouting and testifying,
and davell was just giving the piano natural born fits, and
everytime i thought they were going to end, the spirit jumped up
a little higher, and they kept going, rolling and rolling, and
pounding, and wailing, and moaning and shouting, and shouting,
and it became clear enough to blind stevie wonder with its
brighness that this was not a pre-aranged sing-it-by-the-numbers
piece. this was an exorcism.
there are moments when the spirit of the music takes on a life
of its own. marva didn't need no mike to be heard clearly all
the way to the back of the auditorium. davell was rising up on
his tip-toes as he dug in, pounding out tremendous tremoloes of
cascading keyboard riffs. every time the drummer hit a backbeat
hard, marva would rear back and holler out harder than that, her
voice drowning out the drum. then she took to stalking the
stage. tamping from one end to the other. waving her hand.
this was crying but way past tears. this was angry crying, you
be choked-up and harking out the syllables and the screams.
sometimes, you just got to holler. this was one of those times.
when the music finally subsided to little after tremors. marva
had walked off the stage. the piano was still shaking. the
japanese guitarist, june yama...(sp) who has been playing around
new orleans for what seems like a good twenty or more years,
well he was worrying them strings to death trying to find a dry
spot to land on as he skipped from high note to high note,
stomping in marva's footsteps. after awhile, davell just jumped
up and ran after marva. they both exited stage right. even
though most of the musicians were backstage, stage left. i ran
up there behind davell. just offstage in the wings. we huddled
together. marva sitting on an old chair. davell and i hovering
over her, encircling her with our arms like we was angels on
special assignment.
like i said this was past tears. there was anger and pissed-off
all up inside the choked up sounds we were making. i don't know
what language we was speaking. i just kept wanting to say: it's
going to be alright. it's going to be alright. it's going to be
alright. i don't know what i actually said. i call this
katrina crying. your face be dry. but you crying. you be mad as
hell. but you crying. you just feel so pitiful. and you crying.
but don't nary a tear fall. it's a hard crying.
we did that for about three or four minutes. and then we
un-entwined, unraveled like do braids when you been in a fight.
marva asked for some water. after ministering to her. davell and
off stood off to the side talking about new orleans. talking
about what they done to our town. not katrina. we could deal
with katrina. no what the powers that be did and are continuing
to do. how they taking advantage.
the crowd was still cheering and screaming for more. the mc came
over and asked marva would she do an encore. on the one hand she
had only done two numbers. on the other hand that last number
had been worth a whole night of work. it didn't look like she
had too much gas left in the tank, her breathing was labored,
her eyes were glazed over. she was looking at me and didn't even
see me--i know she didn't, cause she agreed to do "i will
survive" as an encore. it was anti-climatic. she kind of
coasted through it. and then when they were changing over for
the next group after she had left the stage, she came from back
stage headed out to sit in the audience, saw me from a distance
of about fifteen feet and said, is that kalamu. i hollered,
yeah. but it was not a happy moment. i had been embracing her
and she had not... that's how deep off into it she was after
doing a chang is going to come. we talked for a little bit. and
then she went to sit down and i went back stage to talk some
more to davell.
bo dollis, big chief of the wild magnolias, passed by. i know bo
only from seeing him around. he don't know me from nobody. bo
know davell. they hugged briefly. bo smiled half of his
brilliant smile. that's all he had left of his smile. half of
it. katrina took a heavy toll on him. as bo walked off, davell
shook his head and said how he was watching bo. davell whispered
out loud, he's aging right before my eyes. i half turned to peep
at bo. he didn't look good standing near by the chair marva had
been sitting in when she first came off. marva had looked worser
than bo. i turned back to davell. he looked me dead in the eye.
i don't hink i'm going back, he quietly admitted. there ain't
nothing to go back to... and we talked on nothingness for a
minute, talked on how the politicians and the business mens was
treating us worse than a two-bit whore on bourbon street.
back on stage rocking dopsie jr. was cutting up. the stooges
brass band was getting ready to come on parading from the back
of the auditorium. there was plenty, plenty music still to go.
but at that point i was ready to retreat somewhere and try to
close my eyes, try to close my mind, try not to think on it. in
the auditorium peoples was dancing they ass off, or, for the
most part, shaking they asses off--you ever notice how smart
people have a lot of problems with kinetic coordination of their
body movements to the rhythm of funky music? whatever. i was
sinking into a foul mood and rather than making me happy, the
music was making me mad and angry because it was reminding me of
our home that is gone... they done fucked our mama and done run
or shipped us children all over the goddamn place...
Part 2 of 2
monday we started another round of meetings. generally
speaking, I hate meetings, not that I hate the participants or
don’t want to meet people and discuss ideas; I really enjoy
learning, crave new experiences and am pretty good at
appreciating others, especially others who are significantly
different from me. however, there is something artificial about
a meeting, especially when one considers that at a meeting
everyone is usually wearing their meeting face, has donned their
meeting attire and attitudes. I prefer meeting people as they do
what they do or at events where they demonstrate what they do.
but, that’s my particular bias and I struggle to overcome that
bias less I end up isolating myself from others.
we were meeting with people who worded in areas I didn’t know
existed at m.i.t., including subsets of urban planning and
science writing, which as I reflect on it, makes sense that a
technology institute would be into those areas, but I guess I
most often associate m.i.t. with research and applied research,
with the hard sciences, such as engineering, and related fields
such as physics. boy, was I wrong.
indeed, I was looking forward to these meetings because of our
listen to the people project and the interface with the computer
technology that I was sure existed at m.i.t. in the long run, I
learned far more than I expected, especially about recent
developments in terms of software and the internet, which is one
of my areas of daily activity. plus, as I correctly suspected
m.i.t. has mega-capacity in terms of computer power. one of
listen to the people’s goals is to stream video interviews on
the internet and I could be at no better place to discuss that
objective.
although these were only introductory meetings, it appears that
they were bear fruit in the long run, when we do follow-ups.
tuesday was my first day off in what seemed like forever. I
spent most of the day doing email and finishing off a Katrina
poem, which I had committed to do but which I really didn’t
feel like doing. Decided to read it at my feature on Wednesday.
Wednesday informal meetings and then the reading that evening.
My man Everett Hoagland and his wife did a long drive from up
state Massachusetts to attend. There were a dozen or so people
at the reading, by far the least attended event of the whole
mini-residency, even though it was the best advertised flyers on
bulletin boards throughout the main building. Everett later
emailed me, commenting on how appreciative he was that I read
like it was an audience of thousands. I smiled when I read his
words. It’s my jazz training. 20th century jazz musicians were
used to performing to small audiences, often just a handful of
the faithful in some club in could-be-anywhere usa. The
musicians would do it to the max even if there was a minimum
audience on hand. And I believe that. I really believe. If
you’re going to do it, do it to the max or leave it alone.
I ended up reading an except from a novel I had been working on
pre-katrina: “walkin blues: a speculation and meditation on
the life and legend of Robert Johnson.” Paulette asked me to
read from the section that describes the 1927 flood. I also read
the new Katrina poem and closed out with “system of thot.”
Turns out the sister who introduced me, Helen Lee, who, if I
understood correctly, heads up the writing program at m.i.t.,
also is the fiction editor for Callaloo magazine, one of
three major literary journals that focus on African American
literature—the other two are: African American Review
and Obsidian III. Shortly after the event Helen emailed
me asking to see the manuscript for possible excerpting in Callaloo.
Unlike other writers I know, I’m not worried about people
stealing my shit, nor am I worried about sharing stuff before
it’s finished. Far as I’m concerned the more feedback the
better, besides the goal is to communicate. I am not at all
interested in trying to create a masterpiece or trying to write
the great American novel.
At the end of the reading, I had a laugh at Helen’s expense as
I briefly held court declaiming my personal aversion to the
novel as a form. Laughing the whole time, I said that I got into
the Robert Johnson novel by accident. I really started off
writing a short story about Robert Johnson in Louisiana. It
starts out with Robert walking down the road, just left a
woman’s house, 40,000 words later, my man had still not got to
Louisiana. At that point I figured, well this is not going to be
a short story. I guess it’s a novel. And then I mischievously
did what I like to do with self-acknowledged novelists and
defenders of that genre, I asked the magic question: what is a
novel?
Helen looked at her watch—she had to deal with a baby sitter
and, as I knew when I asked the question, there was no simple or
short answer. I laughed some more. So why, I cruelly twisted the
knife, yall be doing something you don’t even know what it is
you’re doing? I knew that she knew and I knew that she knew I
knew that she knew, and I knew that the answer, like the form
itself, was involved and complex and that there was no simple
answer, and I knew that she knew I understood, but I was still
cutting the fool and laughing. I said, I can define a short
story. I can define poetry. Can you define a novel? And then I
told her I was messing with her. We laughed together.
Helen had done a real introduction for me, must have read some
of the stuff she googled, even included an intelligent quote
from something I had forgotten I had written. I liked the light
in her eyes as she talked about writing. She was in love with
writing. I liked that. But at the time I had no idea she had
anything to do with Callaloo. Indeed, I was surprised
that there was a writing program at m.i.t. and that a black
woman would be all up in it. You see, you just can’t go on
assumptions and impressions from a far. You got to study the
reality before you speak on the reality. Sure you can give your
impressions and beliefs but that’s not the same thing as
understanding the reality.
m.i.t. was a good residency. And my dear sister Ayida was the
perfect host. Early the next morning we were out of there. I was
flying down to Clemson for a symposium on public education in
New Orleans and paulette was heading back to Atlanta.
A luta continua more in a minute
posted 15 November 2005* * *
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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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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
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