Books by Niyi
Osundare
Songs of the Marketplace (2006)
/
The Word is an Egg
(2005) /
Pages from the Book of the Sun (2002) /
Two Plays (2006)
Thread in the Loom: Essays (2002) /
The State Visit (2002) /
Midlife (2005) /
Moonsongs (1988) /
The Eyes of the Earth (2007)
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Poem for Niyi on His 60th Birthday
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PraiseSong for Niyi Osundare
By Mona Lisa Saloy
Niyi, Niyi,
My brotha, my countryman poet
from my Mother/Fatherland.
I did not know you when
you blew into the CAC (contemporary arts center)
with Thomas Covington Dent
after we younger poets performed.
Your smiles, clapping like Ogun’s thunder
before you spoke, and then you said,
“I heard you sista; I heard you.”
You came you said, with Tom, to meet me.
You, whose presence spoke of my homeland,
your accent, Yoruba, my people, my source.
I did not know you were a giant poet
teaching the world to care for us for mother earth.
I did not know of your many awards,
you, renowned in your lifetime.
I knew the ancient sound of your young voice
was a balm to my poet spirit.
I knew if Tom brought you to meet me,
I’d better pay attention.
Your smile, the sound of your voice,
I knew we would be friends.
II Niyi, Niyi
since those many years ago,
I sought your poems like a tapper needing palm wine
like a poet starving for wisdom.
I met your rain of metaphors
and wore them like spring showers
feeding nourishment to poet leaves dried
from lack of homeland truth.
I wear your metaphors like books
teaching me to speak the truth to power,
teaching me like love warming me on cold nights,
teaching me like my ancient motherland
returning to me with every page. |
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Mona Lisa Saloy, Author and Folklorist, is currently visiting
Associate Professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle for
the 2005-06 year; for 2006-07 academic year. Since,
Katrina, she is on leave from Dillard University where she developed their
Creative Writing Program.
Winner of
the PEN Oakland National Literary Award
Mona Lisa’s first collection of verse,
Red Beans and Ricely Yours
(2005), won the T. S.
Eliot Prize in poetry for 2005, published by Truman State University Press;
also, this collection was finalist for the Morgan Prize from StoryLine Press.
Dr. Saloy’s verse appears in the anthology: Furious Flower: African American
Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the Present. Joanne V. Gabbin,
editor. Charlottesville: University of
Virginia Press, 2004. |
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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
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
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
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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March 2012
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