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Books by E. Ethelbert
Miller
How We Sleep
on the Nights We Don’t Make Love
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Fathering Words /
In
Search of Color Everywhere
First Light: New and Selected Poems /
Where are
the Love Poems for Dictators? /
Whispers, Secrets and Promises
Beyond
The Frontier: African-American Poetry for the 21st
Century /
Season of Hunger/Cry of Rain
Synergy:
An Anthology of Washington D.C. Black Poetry
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On Silences and Father's Day
By E. Ethelbert
Miller
June
20, 2009
Tomorrow is Father’s Day. I’m
hundreds of miles away from my son and daughter. They
are 22 and 27 and living in two different cities. I’m
not a missing dad. I’ve never been missing. Neither was
my father. I come from the tradition of quiet and silent
men. The tradition of fathers who never left their wives
and children, but instead “disappeared” into basements,
backrooms, back porches and bedroom corners. The
tradition of men who could always be found asleep in
front of a television set or sitting in the dark
mumbling at walls.
I come from the tradition of
fathers who were watchers and providers; men who were
ignored or unable to help during emergencies. My
fatherhood has been defined by such things as the
inability to drive, master the tools in a toolbox, or
place a star at the top of a Christmas tree. How many
times during a family crisis did my wife just pick-up
the phone and call her brother in Iowa or a friend
living down the street?
Within his own home, my father was
never viewed as “the smart one.” This title was bestowed
on my brother Richard, his first born and later my
sister as a result of her becoming a nurse. Every family
should have someone in the medical profession. It’s like
having a second key or a smoke detector that works.
I grew up watching my father pushed
into the corners of rooms at family gatherings in
Brooklyn. No one ever looked to him for an opinion. I
never heard him having any major political agreement or
disagreement with someone. My father was invisible until
someone died. That was when he became a man of comfort
for relatives that he always considered distant.
When I think about my father, I am
reminded about the loneliness that comes with
fatherhood. I am reminded of the intimacy that never
raised its hand. Stoic is a word I can’t use to describe
him. Sadness seems like the proper sweater he could have
worn.
My father, Egberto Miller coming
home late from work, night after night. My mother always
up and ready to fix him something to eat. Yet how often
did she join him at the table? Where was the intimacy?
Was it the darkness outside the kitchen window? Did my
parents just simply speak a common language?
The shadow of my father continues
to fall over my fatherhood, as the period of my life
moves toward fall. My children are grown. They are
perhaps a few years from becoming parents. I picked up
the newspaper today and read where President Obama wants
to begin a national conversation on fatherhood. A
conversation, maybe that’s what was missing during all
my days of fatherhood. A conversation, not a lecture or
an explanation. A conversation where one talks and
listens, and where one is listened to. How many of us
live quiet lives of desperation? We live without
partners, within and outside marriage.
We talk about fathers and
fatherhood but we often lip sync. We say those things we
want others to hear. My father never really said much to
me. My conversation was always with my mother, as I find
my own children are with theirs.
What we never seem to talk about is
how the men who stayed with their families suffered from
the absence of intimacy in their lives. We never talk
about the quiet death of their hearts. We fail to record
these stories because we prefer myths and fairytales. We
want to believe in happy endings, especially on Father’s
day. I remember my father this June because he was a
good man. Was he happy? No. I overheard my father’s
praying one day to God. I was little at the time. I was
surprised to see my father on his knees in the bedroom.
I was even more surprised when God didn’t answer.
E. Ethelbert
Miller
June
20, 2009
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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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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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posted 20
June 2009
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