ChickenBones: A Journal

for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes

   

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Baring one's soul in public is not an easy task, but greater self-assurance

 rewards those who venture boldly into such philosophic dialogue.

 

 

Books by Kalamu ya Salaam

 

The Magic of JuJu: An Appreciation of the Black Arts Movement  /   360: A Revolution of Black Poets

Everywhere Is Someplace Else: A Literary Anthology  /  From A Bend in the River: 100 New Orleans Poets

Our Music Is No Accident   /  What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self

My Story My Song (CD)

 

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What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self

By Kalamu ya Salaam  

In What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self, Kalamu ya Salaam -- poet, activist, cultural worker and contributor to the best-selling Black Erotica -- takes us on an introspective journey in search of the answers that African Americans struggle to obtain. His reflections capture our movement and complacency, involvement and noninvolvement from the mid-sixties to the present. Salaam insists, "The central issue of What Is Life? is to focus on the difficult and contradictory, to grapple with the hard issues."

What happened to Civil Rights? Did the Black Power Revolution fail? Who benefited from integration? What happened to the Black revolutionaries? Where are tha measses of Black people headed as we engage the nineties? Encased in piercing poetic insight, What Is Life/ offers hope and direction and moves us closer to constructing a "realistic and effective ideology to serve our continuing development"

Third World Press (1994)

Kalamu ya salaam's words are pensive, painful. Informative. They say we were. We are. We shall be if we continue to walk and talk this newly found freedom. And above all, his words say resist. Resist. Resist.

Sonia Sanchez, poet and professor, Temple University

 

Baring one's soul in public is not an easy task, but greater self-assurance rewards those who venture boldly into such philosophic dialogue. . . . Kalamu ya Salaam uncovers a host of unresolved personal crises of accountability to our life's mission. Are we Africans in America? African-Americans? Or more American than African depite our rhetorical symbolism . . . For many of us, it will be painful to admit that we failed both at systematic change through revolution as well as maintaining alternative institutions in the face of irreconcilable differences.

Hannibal Afrik, Council of Independent Black Institute

 

 

Kalamu ya Salaam (the Pen of Peace)), the poet laureate of New Orleans, is to Black poetry what Louis Armstrong and Wynton Marsalis are to jazz. In What Is Life? he intones a powerful tune that tells children of the African diaspora how we speak our ancestral African name and find oneness in the expression. Essentially, What Is Life? is that vital ray of rhythmic darkness that encircles all of the librations of life (even the evil ones) and transforms them into an organic spiritual light that reveals and heals as it multiplies itself in grace and glory. read it and be healed.

Morris F.X. Jeff, Jr.

This is clearly an important and engaging work. It offers a brilliant balance between poetry and prose, the aesthetic and the instructive, experiences had and lessons learned, daily hassle and continuing hope, being and doing Black anyhow. It will remain throughout the years a testament of possibility for those of us who still embrace the whirlwind and wonder of love and struggle.

Maluana Karenga, Professor and Chair, Department of Black Studies, Cailfornia State University, Long Beach

 

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updated 9 April 2008

 

 

Home  Kalamu ya Salaam Table What Is Life? Interview

Related files: 360° A Revolution of Black Poets  Queen Nzinga's Army    If the Hat Don't Fit   Murder of Amilcar Cabral   Poetic Journey  Amilcar  Cabral Bio 

Murder of Amilca Cabral  Island