Black Literature - Blog Posts

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Teaching in 2020

              Second grade was hard enough

                The seconds turn into hours

                Screens turn to staff as

                Students turn their screens on and off

                Teaching students slipping out of their chairs at home

                Teaches us what we thought we already learned

                Too raw is the view into the houses of inner-city youth

                Exposed to their reality;                my past too.

                When the day is over, we rub our burning eyes

                We say it is easy when we are pioneers

                Fighting our exhaustion and creeping mental instability

                Has us fighting our love for our career.  

Short Fiction- Untitled

In the backyard sat a camper van, spacious enough to fit a family of eight, a trampoline, and a large above-ground pool. Their house was one of those rich, suburban houses, with a white mother and father and their three children- two boys and a girl. Seven bedrooms, three bathrooms, a decked-out kitchen perfect for hosting holidays, and a special living room for hosting Bible Study on Wednesday nights. Toys piled up and the latest video games were always around. It was a house my family dreamed of living in, and we did live in it. Downstairs sat an uninhabited basement, fully finished with a small kitchen and living space, and three of the house’s bedrooms. This was where my family of seven moved. The best part about the house wasn’t the pool and it certainly wasn’t the trampoline; it was that we were not homeless for the five months that family allowed our stay.

Snow on Poetry Lane

Down University Avenue,

            Past the Cub Foods

            And the Caribou coffee

Lies Poetry Lane

The words are etched

            Onto immoveable concrete

            A community’s love bared to the world

Yet the sky tests the citizens,

            Opening a flurry of thick flakes

            Fitting to the compressed letters

            Slowly taking up space.

The prose stands out in white

            Glittering under streetlamps

            And porch lights.

Feet clad protectively shuffle along the lane

Pausing at the words

            Before stepping

                        Unreading

                                    Packing the snow in deeper.

Gobs of white yet fall

Burying Poetry Lane

            Burying the hearts of those

            Brave enough to cement the truth

Until one gloved hand

Warmly brushes aside the blanket

            Shedding light on the community, and

            Poetry Lane, at least for a moment.

Banana Skirt

Young with fruitful purpose

Blossoming into words-

“I am Woman”

Grown from the seeds of home

Born fruitfully endowed into trial

With berries of milk

Leaves of pink

Curves of bursting corn

“I, a black Woman”

My skin, a peeling

Covering the buds

Blossoming into overt

Speech against the weeds

Who pretend to be flowers

Occluding to capitalize on Sun

Too young

To understand there is enough

For me, too. 

~ quill rose

The First Day

For the past nine years, I've forgotten November first. 

Seriously, the entire day. Something in my brain has allowed me to completely skip past the day for years, shown through every November writing project. November is National Novel Writing Month. Since 2013, I have participated in NaNoWriMo, a month dedicated to the completion, however roughly, of a piece of writing. Every year, I miss the first day of writing, which always sets me behind for the remainder of the month. Occasionally, I have even forgotten to write until halfway through the month, leaving me scrambling to come up with 30 thousand words in a couple weeks. 

This year, I'm prepared. 

On the second, of course. I forgot about yesterday. 

This year my goal is 50 thousand words. As I start each day, I'd like to begin with a quick post depicting my process and process. And of course I wouldn't be an author if I didn't add: Look for the first volume in the Otherworld series, coming 2023. 

Forever Writing,

quill rose

Classic novels from POC authors

The Analects, Confucius- a collection of his quotes, documented by his pupils shortly after his death. 

Theologus Autodidactus, Ibn Al-Nafis- one of the first Arabic novels and considered an early example of sci-fi and a coming of age story

Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, Pu Songling- a collection of classical Chinese stories

The Heart of Hyacinth, Onoto Watanna- coming of age story about a Eurasian child raised by white parents

Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe

The Woman in the Dunes, Kōbō Abe- themes of myths and suspense wrapped into an existential novel

The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran- collection of poetic essays

Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northup- memoir of a black man sold into slavery in America

Contending Forces, Pauline Hopkins- focuses on African American families in American society, post Civil War

Iola Leroy, Frances Harper- one of the first novels published by an African-American woman

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez

On Love and Barley, Bashō Matsuo-

The Home and the World, Rabindranath Tagore- a love story mixed in with a political awakening

American Indian Stories, Zitkala-Sa-legends and tales from the authors life based on her childhood and the community

A Dark Night’s Passing, Naoya Shiga- a young mans trial through disturbing experiences

Cane, Jean Toomer- fiction based of black life in Harlem

Where There’s Love, There’s Hate, Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Casares

RUN MAN RUN by CHESTER HIMES (REVIEW)

quickly: a witness in a cold-blooded murder case is stalked and hunted by the gunman (1960’s new york city vice patrol / a bigot with a badge / working the night shift / automats and lunch counters / crossing 110th street / crossing the blue line / cats vs. mice / “did he use a silencer or was he silenced” asked oprah / going by way of Fat Sam / double crossing and double-talking / hot head with a hot rod / stairwell chases / parking lot shootouts / man against the world).

Jimmy is a Harlem youngster working nights at a cafeteria factory when a drunken maniac detective is overcome by white psychosis and kills all of his co-workers in cold blood. By a stroke of amazing grace, he survives the attack, but his survival places him in the crosshairs of a certified psycho who is set on eliminating all witnesses.

Don’t pick this up if you aren’t ready to sprint. This one-day read is a fast-paced NYC crime thriller full of race-based angst, socioeconomic division, and catchy 50s and 60s one-liners. Reading between the lines of this action-packed thriller, you’ll find poignant observations on race and interesting opinions on gender. Add a tablespoon of sex, jazz, and liquor, and you’ve got yourself a good time.

★ ★ ★ ★ Short, fast, and loud.

reading rainbow library haul:

RUN MAN RUN by CHESTER HIMES

SUPERNATURAL SHORT STORIES by SIR WALTER SCOTT

THE BOOK OF HOURS by RILKE

SAVE OUR SOULS by MATTHEW PEARL

THE LIFE OF HEROD by ZORA NEAL HURSTON

BLACKTOP WASTELAND by S. A. COSBY

RAZORBLADE TEARS by S. A. COSBY

"Create no images of God. Accept the images that God has provided. They are everywhere, in everything. God is Change— Seed to tree, tree to forest; Rain to river, river to sea; Grubs to bees, bees to swarm. From one, many; from many, one; Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— forever Changing. The universe is Godʼs self-portrait."

Earthseed: The Books of the Living, Octavia E. Butler

PARABLE OF THE SOWER & TALENTS by OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

quickly: diary of a young woman preparing herself for the collapse of american democracy and discovering a new faith in the process (god is change! / every neighborhood has its walls / r*pe, murder, cannibalism / burn the witch! / narcotics in utero / empathy is a weakness / bad cops / landslides, drought, fire, and famine / eat the rich, then the middle class, then the poor too / fascism dressed as christianity / no one can read, but everyone has a gun / pyromania in pill form / little fires everywhere / waiting for the end to come / survival of the most prepared / slavery sponsored by capitalism (just like old times) / survive, at all costs / heaven is in the stars)

The year is 2024. The climate has finally changed liked they’ve been warning us for years. The trickle-down economy has failed everyone but the rich, like we knew it would. Society has failed everyone but the 1%. Water costs more than gasoline, and food to feed one person for two weeks may cost you thousands of dollars. The government will kick you out of your home, and then arrest you for being homeless. Slavery has been reinvented by venture capitalists, and co-signed by a neo-confederate president. Don’t think about running off to another state or another country. You’ll probably never make it past the highly militarized state borders without being, r*ped, tortured, slain, or eaten. 

This is a stark depiction of what happens when humanity collapses under the weight of capitalism… OEB is not shy about the violence of a dying world.

At the center of this story is Lauren Olamina, a young black girl who has taken a critical look at the world she is coming of age in and deduces that The End is near. The religion, philosophy, and morality of her parent’s generations have failed her. She believes our collective destiny as a species was never to be stationed here on Earth forever. We were meant to spread across the Universe. To fulfill that destiny, humanity must undergo the difficult task of maturation. Our petty wars, religious debates, and moral shortcomings are the traits of an immature species. Only a mature species can build the communities and pool the resources necessary to leave a dying Earth and spread beyond our Solar System to build something greater. All Lauren has to do is survive long enough through America’s downfall to be able to convince the rest of the world of Earthseed’s philosophy.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ An outstanding survival guide, if read as the author intended.

They're available on Kindle Unlimited. I AM SO EXCITED

“I remember an incident from my own childhood, when a very close friend of mine and I, we were walking down the street. We were discussing whether God existed. And she said he did not. And I said he did. But then she said she had proof. She said, ‘I had been praying for two years for blue eyes, and he never gave me any.’ So, I just remember turning around and looking at her. She was very, very Black. And she was very, very, very, very beautiful. How painful. Can you imagine that kind of pain? About that, about color? So, I wanted to say you know, this kind of racism hurts. This is not lynchings, and murders, and drownings. This is interior pain. So deep. For an 11 year-old girl to believe that if she only had some characteristic of the white world, she would be okay. [Black girls] surrendered completely to the master narrative. I mean the whole notion of what is ugliness, what is worthlessness. She got it from her family, she got it from school, she got it from the movies — she got it everywhere; it’s white male life. The master narrative is whatever ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else. The master fiction, history, it has a certain point of view. So, when these little girls see that the most prized gift that they can get at Christmastime is this little white doll, that’s the master narrative speaking: “This is beautiful. This is lovely, and you’re not it.”

Toni Morrison on what inspired her to write her first novel, The Bluest Eye.