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Textbook
Victimization
By
Laura Ivers
I’ve been
raped, beaten, tattered and torn.
You’d think
with all of this
my spirit would
be knocked down
all broken and
forlorn.
But I’m still
standin.’
Still lovin’.
Still tryin’.
Still carin’.
The textbooks
say
I’m suppose to
have problems
X, Y, and Z.
But I say them
textbooks;
they just plain
don’t know me.
My spirit, it
just refuses to bend
to the dictates
of all their erudite whims.
My spirit
can’t be caged by
no statistical
analysis,
of the
percentage of people that
supposedly
succumb to the problems of
X, Y, and Z.
I just say: That
ain’t me.
I’d rather be
still standin.’
Still carin’.
Still lovin’.
So don’t lock
me in
to all the
dictates of those
textbook erudite whims. |
I used my poetry to handle memories
that were surfacing from my childhood. At this time I
started reading the poetry of Langston Hughes . . . and then
everything just sort of fell into place. The abuse which took
place in my family seemed to mirror our racist society at large
and so I began to play with these themes within my writing.
I wanted to unveil the hidden structures that runs throughout
the three sisters of oppression: Racism, Sexism, and
Classism.
I sought to unveil not out of a sense of
revenge, but rather as a call to action . . . to heal over this
dreadful past. While I was doing my healing work, racism
got hooked up in my mind as the perpetrator. It felt like
it was literally raping my soul. And then there was the
coming to terms with my own Whiteness . . . for what my culture
had done. Writing these poems was the only way that I knew
how to ask for forgiveness; and it was the only way that I knew
how to effectively express my sense of outrage.
Poetry became my balm of salvation, my experience of Amazing
Grace.
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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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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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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If you like this page consider making a donation
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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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