zora smiles

Books by Zora Neale Hurston

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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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zora smiles--kalamu

at zora neale hurston festival

(part 1 of 2)

i was in 8th grade. my english teacher, mrs. o. e. nelson, told our class, put your books away, i want you to hear something. that something was a recording of langston hughes reciting his poetry with a jazz pianist. at the time i was still attending church, so you could have called me paul. i was instantly converted, that evening, immediately after school was over, i journeyed to the main library, asked one of the librarians where to find langston hughes. i expected to find a book of poetry. i wanted to find that poem about a man who died in harlem, his widow going around begging for money because the family was destitute and, as langston poetically put it, a poor man ain't got no right to die.

when i turned the corner in search of the shelf to which the librarian had directed me, i got the shock of my young life. there wasn't just "a" book of poetry, there was a whole shelf full of books by langston hughes. i said, "whoa!!!" and the rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

under hughes' tutelage i set to reading the harlem renaissance, and russian writers, and japanese writers, and chinese writers, and caribbean writers, and south american writers, and, in impressive detail, african writers--bloke modisane and peter abrahams' a wreath for udomo were particularly important touchstones. hughes' two autobiographies set me to flowing, and his many anthologies (including two anthologies of african literature) were my graduate courses. by the time i finished high school in 1964, my shakespeare was shaky but my post-colonial reading of third world literature was deeper than that of the average phd in english. and most significant among that deepitude was zora neale hurston.

i, like many, many other people, was enthralled by their eyes were watching god, but for me it was her "moses" novel that had me smiling and slapping the air. zora exemplified the african aesthetic of personalizing the spiritual, of affirming the folk, the way we talked, walked, loved, fat-mouthed, trembled in fear at moments of capture or dug deep into our sack of gumption to confront the odiousness of evil, especially when manifest as some authority figure telling us what we couldn't do—we didn't come through slavery to suffer re-enslavement. officially emancipated during the civil war, came reconstruction we rushed to form ourselves into self-determined communities: black towns and such all across the black belt, wanted more than a town or city, worked hard for a state (hence pap singleton and the exodusters setting out for john brown's kansas, or some other lower mid-west state for to make us a real black home, oklahoma would do, etc.), and by then some of us were beginning to espouse that what we really needed was a nation. it was out of this late 1800's/turn of the century movement that zora was spawned.

eatonville, which is where i am as i type this report, was one of the many small black towns started by ex-enslaved black folk and their immediate descendants. eatonville where zora's father was elected and re-elected and re-elected mayor. eatonville, florida where the flora was green year round and black folk had everything they needed to be fully human: land, sunshine, each other and some self-determined space. thus zora who wasn't scared of nothing and felt that the whole world was, if not her pearl, for sure the world was her oyster--just get out the way, she'd shuck it open and snatch the pearls for herself. zora. eatonville.

eatonville is now a suburb of and surrounded by disney world and overwhelmed by folk hypnotized by mickey mouse versions of social advancement. located in a state that is the home of the right white to vote and the black struggle to keep the right from stealing and/or suppressing the black ballot. florida the sunshine state where four hurricanes hit in 2004, one after the other, some doing a circle dance. here we are in late january 2005 celebrating zora neale, wonder what she would have made of all of this?

the festival opened on wednesday night with a performance by nikki giovanni. notice i said performance rather than poetry reading. i was not there, but dr. jerry ward reports that nikki had the house rocking, rolling, chortling and guffawing.

thursday noon when i landed there were transportation snafus, so i was waiting at the airport for a shuttle that finally arrived like emancipation getting to texas, which is to say, it got there late, hence juneteenth, hence the poetry workshop session i was scheduled to do was already in progress when i got there. my esteemed colleague dr. jerry ward was filling in until i ran in, dropped my bags, and launched into an hour-and-change of poetry discussions with the handful of participants. we ended up having a wonderful exchange and folk seemed genuinely appreciative—so appreciative that they bought all of the 360-degrees of black poetry anthologies that i lugged with me to the event.

the workshop made me want to do more workshopping, wanted to stretch out and talk poetry talk with folk, extend and exchange philosophy and aesthetic arguments and discussions. after an hour i was just getting warmed up. one gentleman who was there simply to accompany his friend who was operating the p.a. system was even smiling as he was drawn into our discussion, chuckling about how i was even able to include one of his favorite singers, r. kelly, into the net of black poetics, all of which gives you an inkling of an idea of how my emphasis on the folk side of the aesthetic might intersect with zora's views (not to mention her little trouble with some folk who thought it "immoral" and that zora had no business loving a young man many years her junior—don't go there kalamu!

yeah, well, you know, kalamu is myopic and don't see no trespassing signs. some of this stuff we think is a new issue is really an ageless issue, something that been going on since some humans took joy and happiness in enjoying the happiness of the act of procreation without actually aiming to do any actual procreating.).

all in all, it was a good workshop, and some of the participants were regular zora festival attendees who made an annual pilgrimage to eatonville.

afterwards, while jerry and i were waiting for the shuttle, woody king and elizabeth van dyke sauntered up. woodie is the single most important figure on the production side of post-50s black theatre work. he is responsible for so many productions and ideas i am hard pressed to even begin listing his achievements, which include, appropriate to this festival, ntozake shange's colored girls. we embrace, and true to form, woody tells me about an idea he has for a baraka celebration that would involve about 40 poets, and asks me to participate. i, of course, sign up immediately. (afterwards while commuting to the hotel i express to jerry my adage about the importance of being on the scene to be seen, cause when one lives in the cultural hinterlands of the united states, outside the orbit of the cultural axis of boston-new york-philly-dc, then it is easy to be overlooked, not out of any malicious intent, but simply because: out of sight, out of mind.)

woody saw me before i saw him, saw me and called out with his ebullient hailing of good cheer on a broadly smiling face. we always laugh and enjoy each other's company, but even so, had he not seen me, all bets are off as to whether i would have gotten a call. that's just the way it is. and this is why i tell folk who want to know how to get invited to events such as this, you have to make the effort to attend, you have to reach out to folk, get to know them. share space and time with people, and festivals such as the zora neale hurston festival are precisely the opportunities to get to know folk because they are small enough to strike up a conversation and hang with a wide variety of folk, as was my brief contact with woody king.

the timing was beautiful, his master class on black theatre was the same time as my workshop, and while i was staying until sunday morning, woody was actually on his way to the airport because he had to get back to new york that night in order to get down to dc early friday morning for vantile whitfield's funeral. i had the opportunity to share some time with vantile at some conference or the other (i can't even remember where it was) and we exchanged impressions of people and places we knew in common.

vantile was an amazing avatar of black participation in the national cultural agenda and in particular was responsible for a moment in the late seventies and throughout the eighties when black folk had some significant stroke at the national endowment of the arts, a stroke which is long since diminished as the republicans have decided that the government ought not be in the business of supporting the arts. guns yes. arts no. anyway, vantile will be missed.

dr. ward and i, hung around a bit after taking care of some business at the festival office and eventually caught the shuttle, which predictably was running late, headed over to the hilton Altamonte hotel where jerry was already registered. jerry and i have a standing thursday evening dinner date. this was thursday, and though we were not in new orleans, it was dinner time, except if we ate, we wouldn't be able to make john scott's talk, which was scheduled for 7pm. damn. it was 6:30-something when we got to the hotel.

fortunately, john scott was in the lobby, so we were able to hug and exchange lengthy greetings. his eminence, dr. richard long, was also at the table. i kissed his ring. literally. i was being funny, but not sarcastic. richard long is a learned and important african american intellectual who is the resident chief consultant to st.peter for all the black folk of any import who seek admittance to the heavenly hereafter.

richard long got the 411 on everybody and has a richly entertaining command of the english language, sort of a combination of hip college professor, formerly-worldly methodist bishop, and baldwin-esce witness of post-30s black artistic life, all of which is to say, he is witty, intelligent, and familiar with a rich diversity of black lifestyles, including a familiarity with that aspect of black life characterized simply as "the life" by hip black folk who know what "the life" is (a definition of which i will not go into here because, as malcolm x wisely noted, those who know don't say, and those who say don't know). anyway, dr. long is also the chief consultant and behind the scenes force guiding the ongoing development of the zora neale hurston festival.

shortly john scott pulled my coat and suggested we head over to the hospitality room to pick up our festival credentials, at which point we were given all-access badges and gift baskets, again, literal hand-woven baskets that included programs, posters, and a zora festival t-shirt, which i am wearing while completing this report.

john had a hacking cough that caused me some alarm. i inquired, he said it was a result of 40 years of doing metal sculpture without a mask and of spending a childhood in an area that the government finally acknowledged about ten years ago had hazardous pollutants. 40% of his lung tissue was scarred. he was getting treatment. fortunately there was no cancer. i wish i could say i was relieved but john's cough was persistent. and deep. and tragic. he's a great artist. a magnificent sculptor. a man deeply dedicated not simply to his artwork, but also to our people. i don't want to lose him, but he is sixty-some years old and that rough cough does not portend good things.

a few minutes later, john and crew embarked to wherever his presentation was scheduled. jerry and i remained to a booth in the lobby restaurant. yall have heard my attitude toward food on the road—in most of the American hinterland cuisine is but one step removed from road kill, particularly in the midwest, where all-american cooking means the absolute avoidance of herbs, condiments (except for oceans of ketchup, and sprinklings of salt&pepper), flavorful combinations, etc.

i generally order soup or salad and fish with vegetables and rice or baked potato, depending on how deep in squareville i am, there might not be any fish available other than breaded fillets of something that used to swim twenty years ago before it was captured, cut up, frozen and packaged in cellophane. jerry, who is going on two years of living in new orleans, looked up, after a quick perusal of what was offered as a menu, and, with a straight face, said to me: it's hard to eat in other places after eating in new orleans. i didn't even laugh—it's not funny what some people do to food in the name of cooking, not funny at all.

the hilton altamonte springs is an expensive, second-class hotel masquerading as a quality establishment. when registering, i inquired about wireless, they only had wireless in the lobby, and not even throughout the lobby, only at the far end near the room that they deluded themselves into calling a business center. their rates were obscene—a dollar a page for printing. fifty-three cents a minute to use a computer. faxing was . . . i asked about ethernet/high speed connections, i was told the rooms had dial-up. was this a hilton or a shill-ton? the first day i was in a room on the first floor about five feet too far away to get wireless. on the second day i moved to a room on the fifth floor that had a high speed connection. it's shameful. you've got motel with wireless and here was a big ass hilton, up next to disneyworld where the advertised rates were (and i kid you not) $189 a night (thankfully, the festival rates were less than 40% of the laughable listing on the bathroom door). oh well, that's life on the road. friday morning i heard a sister complaining because she couldn't get a bagel in the restaurant. no bagels. a hampton inn in texas serves complimentary bagels and juice, and an upscale hilton up next to disneyworld . . . nevermind.

on friday morning i was sitting in the lobby content to work on the internet for two or three hours when valerie boyd strides through and hollas. i put the computer aside. she reaches out to shake hands. i told her i had to get up and give her a hug. she smiles and gives me that beautiful big-eyed smile of hers. i admire this sister to the highest. valerie says she is heading over to the civic center for her presentation, she's catching a cab, would i like to join her or was i planning to do something else. i saved the file i was working on and prepared to join her.

on the way over we talked about life, caught up since we last spoke, which, if i remember correctly, was at the national black arts festival in 2003. valerie is teaching at a university in athens, georgia, an hour and a half outside of atlanta, she has spent most of her professional life as a working journalist and editor in atlanta. she was in her second year of teaching journalism. we shared classroom stories. i told her i wasn't sure if i could deal with the structure and strictures of teaching college, especially compared to the freedom i had in teaching creative writing and digital video as an elective to high school students.

i explained our use of the story circle concept and she told me about her classes at a school that was severely lacking in diversity—one black student out of sixteen. valerie said last year she had a class that not only had one black student but on top of that all of the other students were white and from georgia. i ain't particular about white bread, so you know i wouldn't last a week in such a monoculture. but everybody got their own cross to tote.

turns out the panel that valerie was doing was the major panel of the day. she was to be joined by cheryl wall, whom i had met years ago and whose re-acquaintance i made yesterday on the shuttle when going to the hotel. dr. wall is also working with linda holmes on an anthology about toni cade bambara, another great sister writer whom i deeply admire. a combination interview/essay i did with and on toni is included in the manuscript that cheryl and linda are piloting. the third person on the panel is dr. lois hurston gaston ("my grandfather was zora's brother").

what was scheduled as a zora neale hurston biography panel was turned into a television program with a talk show format hosted by a veteran, black reporter who was retired from nbc and was now hosting three different cable television shows. his professional resume was far deeper than his knowledge of zora neale hurston so we had to endure some ridiculously uninformed questions, but each of the panelists handled it with the graciousness that black women have developed over centuries of dealing with the self-inflated egos of negro men whose illusionary importance was just that, illusionary, but rather than deflate our little balloons, our sisters have developed the charming craft of gently deflecting us like playfully bouncing beach balls from person to person at a pool party.

as the cameras rolled, the trio of knowledgeable panelists gave nary an indication of just how doofus many of the questions were. they simply parried with anecdotes and insightful commentary. indeed, partially because my man didn't know much, the session offered some insights that we might not have received if the program had proceeded as most literary panels do. so there was a modicum of value in what he did because of the hip way the panelists responded.

at one point there was a relatively long exchange about zora's age. i say relatively long because every 15 minutes or so there was a break in the proceedings ("we'll be right back" blah-blah-blah / "welcome back, we're..." blah-blah-blah). anyway valerie and dr. walls spoke about discovering that zora had shaved ten years off her age and, as to be expected, once those ten years were elided, zora never added them back on.

dr. walls was the first to definitively pin down the discrepancy and did the sleuthing to establish zora's true birthdate, and valerie was the one who figured out when it first happened and offered a plausible explanation for why zora had reduced her age. the short of it was that zora was in her twenties, then living in baltimore and had not finished high school, which she desperately wanted to do, however the baltimore public high schools had a cut off age for students of 18, so valuing education more than biographical accuracy, zora reduced her age in order to gain admittance to high school.

the tv moderator tried to start some shoo-shoo mess and said he wanted to talk about zora's "dark side" except he didn't know what to ask, so he just asked zora's relative if the family ever talked about any of the family secrets or . . . dr. gaston told him the family was secretive and didn't talk much about those kinds of things. he was going for a jerry springer moment, but the sisters weren't having it, no one was descending to the level of lurid entertainment, although i am sure, had my man been more hip, there could have been some frank and forthright discussion about some of what is sometimes termed the problematic aspects of zora's life.

posted 1 February 2005