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30 January , 2003
Buriel Clay Theatre
Last night, January 30, Marvin X returned to San Francisco's
Fillmore District and performed a poetic/ritualistic
dramatization of IN THE CRAZY HOUSE CALLED AMERICA. The poet's
career began in the Fillmore in 1966 when he founded Black Arts
West Theatre on Fillmore Street, along with playwright Ed
Bullins, Hurriyah Amanuel and others. The evening began with a
video screening of ONE DAY IN THE LIFE, his drama of addiction
and recovery. He screened the father/son scene described by
James W. Sweeney as revolutionary in African American
literature. In this scene revealing rare father/son love, Marvin
immortalized his son, Abdul or Darrel, who made his transition
last year at the age of 38.
We must note that James W. Sweeney,
who wrote the preface to In the Crazy House, lost his cool last
night while watching a live dramatic depiction of domestic
violence. As Marvin read and actors performed Confession of an
Ex-wife Beater (see Dr. Julia Hare's How to Find A BMW), the
six-foot plus Sweeney ran on stage to assist the young lady
(Judy Jackmon) being whipped to a pulp by her lover. Sweeney
didn't know the next scene was "I Shot Him." The woman
shoots her man and recites a poem explaining why as the classic
song "A Thin Line Between Love and Hate" played and
the audience sang along.
I SHOT HIM
I shot him
because he loved me
he loved me so much
he came home smelling
like his other bitch's pussy
I shot him
I didn't kill him
but I shot him
because I got the phone bill
and saw he'd called his other bitch
on my birthday
I shot him
because I got papers on him
yeah, I got papers on the motherfucker
to use his filthy language
I shot him
and I ain't sharing him with nobody
I don't care what the Muslims say
'bout a nigguh can have four wives
I don't care what the holy Qur'an say
I don't care about the African tradition of polygamy
I don't care how many more women it is for every man
I shot him
I don't care if women are turning lesbian and bisexual
'cause they don't want no man
I want my man
I love my man
But I shot him.
--Marvin X,
from the play IN THE NAME OF LOVE, Laney College production,
circa 1981 |
The live segment of the program began with Master drummer Tacuma
King and his disciple Kele Nitoto acknowledging the ancestors,
joined by dancer Raynetta Rayzetta, sax man Khevan Onaje and the
wonderful, heavenly sounds of Destiny on harp and vocals.
Destiny complied when the audience called for more. She faded
softly into the background when Suzzette Celeste came forward
with words of meditation, offering the audience of mostly
recovering addicts healing words based on the teachings of
Religious Science.
After Geoffrey Grier recited Marcus Garvey's
classic lines "look for me in the whirlwind," Suzzette
Celeste returned, this time as dancer (she trained with Ruth
Beckford, K. Dunham, Ellendar Barnes, et al.), leading the cast
on stage chanting D'Angelo's classic "Shit, Damn,
Motherfucker." Although in total shock, the audience loved
it. D'Angelo song shows how meaning can be transformed by
context and music; rather than profane and obscene, the words
become a beautiful expression of human pain and hurt.
Sister Hunia, tall, elegant in a two piece African dress, read
Marvin's biography. And then it was on. The poet went into a
monologue about America, the Crazy House. Suffice to say this
was the start of his night of ranting in the wilderness. No one
had seen him like this before.
As someone noted, he is not the
Minister of Poetry, simply "The Minister." With drum,
sax, harp and dance accompaniment, the talked, recited and
rapped about the Crazy House Called America. "America knows
what weapons Saddam has because they gave them to him."
"Don't take your addiction personal, it is political--drugs
are introduced to paralyze and neutralize your fight for
liberation." "Let us be clean and sober for our
ancestors who will curse us if we don't fight the good fight
until victory." Accompanied by sax man Khevan and dancer
Suzzette Celeste, Marvin read "The Maid, the Ho, the
Cook," the most popular essay in the book.
A reviewer said,
"The Maid, the Ho, the Cook, is one of the most beautiful
pieces about real love I've ever read. The image of crack heads
as scandalous and without human dignity is destroyed by Marvin's
recollection of this sister
with whom he fell in love." The sister was in the
audience--someone heard her whisper to a friend, "He's
talking about me." Not wishing to put the sister on the
spot, Marvin didn't tell the audience she is an example of how a
person can redeem their soul from hell. After going into
recovery, she completed a legal internship and is working as a
legal receptionist, regained custody of her son and occupies a
spacious apartment near San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
He did
share with the audience that he went from the skid row of SF
Sixth Street to Wall Street. "God took me from Crack Street
to Wall Street. I just walked around Wall Street thinking
prosperity consciousness--I didn't want to go to Harlem,
although let's be clear: I know the history of Wall Street, that
it originated at the wall of the African Village--at the wall
was the slave mart--and even today, it is indeed a slave mart,
as Rev. Cecil Williams reminded me." The poet ended with
his poem "Black History is World History," backed by
the musicians and a great and gracious dance interpretation by
Raynetta Rayzetta.
The evening ended with Suzzette Celeste
leading the cast in a dance to Kirk Franklin's
"Stomp." The show will be repeated tonight at the
Buriel Clay Theatre, 762 Fulton Street, San Francsico. A video
will be available soon.
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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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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 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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February 2012
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