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Fourth
World Poems
By Rudolph Lewis
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A Sideshow
in Your Mind
I know something
about you
when you are
embracing me
I ain’t as
grand as your flag
You don’t do
much for me
You roll over all
that moves
in the sunny
summertime
You don’t want
me to stay
I ain’t a monk
in your mind
But my cat’s
all right with me
I was born by a
changing sea
I in your blue
sky say I love you
You burn me in
the first degree
I fell long ago
in a wishing well
just wanting to
hold your hand
I prayed with
blood in my veins
we’d make a
record with a king
My blues is
swinging rhythms
Don’t you walk
away from me
New Orleans
chasing me down
It’s our blood
on the mercy seat
—tombstones
have fallen down
My tombstone has fallen down |
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Responses
I am looking forward to meeting you bro.
and hearing you perform your work. Thank you for sharing
your work. –
Summerhill
7
It reads almost like a LOVE LETTER.--Robyn
That's a lovely poem, Rudy, very different
in tone and texture from some of the others. Sort of
playful with wistful images. I like it a lot. --Miriam
Yes, I thought that it was kind of
whimsical. I have been reading Ishmael Reed's Chattanooga. I
like that whole idea of humor and seriousness tightly bound. --Rudy
Yes, I like the combination of the humorous
and serious, because that adds a touch of irony to the verse,
and Black folk are masters of irony. One filmmaker did
that with the Holocaust in the film "A Beautiful
Life," but some Jews didn't like it. He drove home
his point about the tragedy in a completely ironic way. My
friend, Cuban poet Nancy Morejón writes beautiful, lyrical
poetry about the most tragic things: death, war, and
violence. Somehow that underscores the ability of
humankind to transcend the madness. –
Miriam
Nice romantic change of pace, but still
with touch of the political consciousness -- Kam* * *
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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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posted 29 January 2006
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