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Books by Naomi Ayala
Wild Animals on the Moon
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This Side of Early
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Naomi Ayala
Reading
At Montgomery College
April
2, 2003,
7 p.m Contact: Paul Peck Humanities Institute:
301-251-7417
Judy Gaines:
301-251-7452
Montgomery
College’s Books and
Ideas Features Naomi Ayala
Date:
April 2, 2003
Time:
7 p.m.
Location:
Montgomery College, Rockville Campus
51
Mannakee St.
Rockville
Books and More
Campus
Center
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The
Paul Peck Humanities Institute at Montgomery College through its Books
and Ideas will feature poet Naomi Ayala on April 2, 2003 on
the Rockville Campus.
Books and Ideas is
a series of six literary events celebrating the work of local
historians, critics, poets, or novelists of influence and stature.
Naomi
Ayala is the author of one book of poetry, Wild
Animals on the Moon, selected by the New York City Public
Library as one of 1999’s Books for the Teen Age.
Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and
anthologies around the U.S. and beyond – among them, Callaloo,
The Village Voice, The
Caribbean Writer, The
Massachusetts Review, Red
River and Potomac
Reviews, Hanging Loose, and Terra
Incognita.
“Ayala’s
poems are bold, surrealistic, freewheeling.
She plays with placement on the page.
She pares punctuation and capitalization, and often uses
enjambment to propel her text forward . . .Ayala is courageous in
the agenda she sets for herself:
racism, poverty, immigration, relationships and separation,
the power of words, the struggles of women, and violence in
individual lives, in neighborhoods, and in other countries. . .Her
voice is at times soft, at times ferocious.
She is a woman who will be heard.”
--Margaret
Huntington, “Ruptured Lives,” American Book Review
In
2002-2003, Books and Ideas brings Hilary Tham, Michael Dirda, Lisa Couturier,
Naomi Ayala, Robert Giron, Teresa Bevin, and Joyce Reiser
Kornblatt to Montgomery College.
"As
you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you
think." -- Toni
Morrison * * * * *
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This Side of Early
Poems by
Naomi Ayala
Naomi Ayala’s
poems explore wide-ranging themes in an
ever-changing landscape—from the city streets to the
introspective solace of the woods. These lyrics
deconstruct the political world of man, offer hope
through a compelling, lyrical, spiritual intimacy,
and bridge the gap between the two with words full
of ecological intensity.
Her deep
connections with the working class combine with a
love of the land to offer us lilt and dream,
revelation and foretelling.
In
This Side of Early, Naomi Ayala exhibits
astonishing range, proving that great poetry is
worth waiting for. Like Whitman, Ayala contains
multitudes; she is a poet with an ethereal vision of
another world, and a woman with a sweet hope for
this one: “Drink from this tree/and ye shall be
saved."—Honorée
Fanonne Jeffers, author of
Red Clay Suite |
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Hole
By Naomi Ayala
One morning
they dig up the sidewalk and leave.
No sign of the truck—only the large,
dark shadow digging and digging,
piling up sludge with a hand shovel
beside the only tree.
Two o’clock I come by
and he’s slumbering in the grass beside rat holes.
Three and he’s stretched across a jagged stonewall,
folded hands tucked beneath one ear—
a beautiful young boy smiling,
not the heavy, large shadow who can’t breathe.
Four-thirty and the August heat
takes one down here.
He’s pulled up an elbow joint
some three feet round.
At seven I head home for the night,
pass the fresh gravel mound,
a soft footprint near the manhole
like the “x” abuelo would place beside his name
all the years he couldn’t write. |
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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 |
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The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great
Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a
sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi
for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin
was falsely accused of stealing a white
man's turkeys and was almost beaten to
death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling,
a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem
after learning of the grove owners'
plans to give him a "necktie party" (a
lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for
the United States Army and couldn't
operate in his own home town." Anchored
to these three stories is Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's
magnificent, extensively researched
study of the "great migration," the
exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into
the novelistic narratives of Gladney,
Starling, and Pershing settling in new
lands, building anew, and often finding
that they have not left racism behind.
The drama, poignancy, and romance of a
classic immigrant saga pervade this
book, hold the reader in its grasp, and
resonate long after the reading is done.
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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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updated 9 April 2008
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