For years now I’ve been saying that I think I’m going to move into film…and then last year I got a Macbook and I thought, “This is it!” A month later I made a trailer for my YA novel, and thought, “Yes! I’m on my way!” And then….nada. This morning I spent some time editing my trailer; once the new edition of Wish comes out, all the old cover images will have to be swapped out…and yesterday at the Mosaic Literary Conference I saw an awesome film made by Intercultural Alliance of Artists and Scholars members Nikita Hunter and Gabrielle David for their phati’tude Literary TV Show. Nikita had been on a Fulbright to Japan, and returned to her middle school art classroom determined to teach her students about Japanese art while also encouraging them to write. Gabrielle filmed Nikita and her students in action, and voila! A film is born. I would LOVE to film a group of teens reading and discussing A Wish After Midnight. If they made art related to the novel, even better! I’ll have a page at my new publisher’s website, and they’ve encouraged me to upload video content. Sounds like this is my chance to dive in, borrow a camera, and start filming!
Thanks to the small, but very engaged group of writers and educators who attended my workshop yesterday; I always appreciate the chance to try out a new workshop, and realize I need to budget more time for discussion…you never know what will come up when you bring a group of people together to talk about slavery, identity, hybridity, and more! Thanks also to Ron Kavanaugh for ALL his hard work; pulling a conference together takes a lot of time and effort, and I truly appreciate his determination to generate opportunities for authors and educators.
Lastly, there are some amazing films on PBS this month. I’ve just watched two: one (Standing Silent Nation) about the White Plume family’s struggle with the DEA to grow industrial hemp on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota; another (March Point) about three Swinomish teens who were ordered to make a documentary about conditions on their reservation after being arrested for drug use…give a kid a camera and you can change the world…Check the Independent Lens website for more films, like Power Paths about how transmission lines run over Native American land yet many Native families live WITHOUT electricity …
This morning, despite going to 26 Broadway instead of 26 Wall St., I took a wonderful tour of lower Manhattan led by the African Burial Ground Museum’s Ranger Doug. It can be hard to imagine New York as it used to be, hundreds of years ago…now there are mostly skyscrapers, and business types, and tourists taking photos of George Washington’s statue on the steps of Federal Hall. But THEN, back in the 1600s, the Dutch East India Company brought 11 enslaved African men to their colony and made them level the hills and widen the paths first made by the Lenape Indians (hence the name “Broadway”). All that history is still there, literally buried beneath the foundations of those massive buildings, and I was more than a little ashamed by how much I *don’t* know and how I’ve never bothered to take advantage of the historical resources available to all. My tour was free, my guide was fantastic, and I learned a lot about a part of the city (the financial district) I rarely—if ever—visit. I never knew there was a Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian in NYC; I always think of our museums being in Midtown, or along 5th Ave. And on that site once stood the original fort for the Dutch colony, and not far from there was the Company’s Negro House, where enslaved people were kept. On Maiden Lane in 1712 Indians and enslaved Africans started a fire and then ambushed the whites who rushed to put it out…they were captured and publicly executed in the Common, which is now City Hall Park! Manhattan was such a small place then–the entire colony only took up a fraction of the island. Anyway, my tour ended at the monument itself, and I took some photos to keep me thinking about this history and its relevance to young people today. If you haven’t already, please do register for Saturday’s Mosaic Literary Conference up in the Bronx. I’m putting the finishing touches on my workshop: “The Door of No Return: Finding Self & Home in Historical Fiction,” and want to explore ways we can make this history meaningful to teens who so often feel ashamed or angry when they think of slavery. Here are some of my photos:
That plaque is kind of creepy, but if you look closely, I believe the skeleton is a reproduction of an actual burial they found on site—a woman cradling her infant in her arms. Touching…if you want to be moved by some great writing, check out Veronica Henry’s latest story over at Expanded Horizons. She wrote this short story after visiting Sierra Leone; you can read more about her trip at Veronica’s wonderful blog, Exquisitely Black.
Can you believe this is the TENTH installment of Colleen Mondor’s What a Girl Wants? Stop by Colleen’s blog, Chasing Ray, to add your opinion to ours: are “mean girls” really such a menace, or do they just sell more books? Neesha Meminger has now joined our panel (hurray!); here’s some of what she had to say on this topic:
I don’t mind reading books about mean girls, as long as they are placed within the context of the larger world and the power dynamics and complexities of that larger world. Otherwise, these stories come off as flat and cliched. They become re-creations of the old “victim meets bully, victim suffers, victim learns to fight back” story–which can be a wonderful, timeless, empowering story to be sure; not implying otherwise. But when the bullies/”mean girls” are young women and the victims are young women, there needs to be a deeper exploration of hidden power dynamics at play in addition to the complex psychological layers of the characters.
Hurray! Diary of an Anxious Black Woman is blogging again! And I have to share her latest post, of course. Stop by her site to see a sweet fable written & painted by Faith Ringgold about how the world became colorblind…
I have a hard time with one month of the year being designated to one particular minority group (or, in this case, two: American Indians and Alaska Natives). It has potential benefits, but generally, I think these one-month celebrations just further marginalize people whose history, culture, and literature ought to be celebrated all year round. For instance, today on PBS I watched a fascinating documentary on the struggle of the Aleut people to win reparations from the US government for their horrific internment during WWII. Removed from the Pribilof and Aleutian Islands long after white citizens were relocated, Aleuts were crammed onto ships filled with disease, denied medical care, and then dumped at locations in southeast Alaska that hadn’t even been prepared for the arrival of hundreds of people. Forced to live in ramshackle housing (or to build their own), these sea-oriented people were thrilled to see their first trees, but suffered for years with malnutrition, lack of opportunity, and diseases like TB that decimated the elders who would have helped to sustain cultural traditions. Not far from where the Aleuts were interned, German POWs were living in comfort, with three meals a day and access to medical care as per the Geneva Convention…it’s heartbreaking, but in the end the Aleuts organized and sued the government and forty years later won reparations for survivors of internment and their heirs. Once they returned to their island homes in 1945, they found US soldiers had been billeted in their homes, which were left ransacked, even their churches were desecrated. Now, this isn’t the cheeriest start to National American Indian Heritage Month, but I would urge you to swing by Reading in Color because Ari has put together a fantastic post that includes links and a list of books, reposted below. At the very least, I’m grateful for lists like these because I can plan to read at least one new American Indian author each month for the rest of the year…
1. Rain is Not My Indian Name by Cynthia Leitich Smith
2. Code Talker: A novel about the Navajo Marines of World War II by Joseph Bruchac
3. Bone Dance by Martha Brooks
4. I Am Apache by Tanya Landman (although it sounds like Native Americans want this book to be avoided so she’s going to review it and explain why it should be avoided).
I’m happy to be paired with another African Canadian woman author, Itah Sadu, in this latest review in the Chronicle Herald. George Elliott Clarke is a prominent African Canadian author/scholar/poet who teaches at the University of Toronto, but his heart is still in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Whenever he’s asked to review black books, George kindly includes me, which I greatly appreciate since no other book reviewer has reviewed my work in a Canadian newspaper. Maybe that will change once A Wish After Midnight is re-released early next year. I’m dying to share the news with everyone, but the publisher has asked that I wait until their official press release goes out later this month. But it IS going to happen…
I dedicated most of yesterday to reading Carleen Brice’s second novel, Children of the Waters. Timing is everything, and I was glad to open this book and find a black (biracial) woman restraining herself from going off on an annoying white woman in her African dance class. I’d just had a nasty encounter with a white woman in a store, and as my cheeks flushed with rage and embarrassment (Q: “Why do they think they can act that way?” A: “Because we LET them, that’s why.”) I tried to talk myself out of making assumptions and generalizations about ALL white women. It’s so easy to slip into stereotypes, but Brice’s point in this novel (and at her fabulous blog, White Readers Meet Black Authors) is that these comforting “types” don’t always serve us in the end, and Brice boldly lets her characters “go there” in order to expose just how biased we all are. As with her first novel, Orange Mint & Honey, this second novel has an unexpected ending and two women struggling to forgive and forge ahead. Billie learns she is pregnant and decides to go ahead at all costs, then learns she was adopted at birth and actually isn’t “black-black” but biracial. When her white half-sister Trish shows up desperate for family, Billie isn’t sure she can overcome her aversion to white women and the oppressive history of bigotry that led to her adoption in the first place. Interestingly, there’s very little focus on the birth parents in this novel; I have a friend who’s a transracial adoptee, and her focus is definitely on finding out more about her biological mother and father, particularly their health history since her daughter has a genetic heart defect. Children of the Waters takes a different approach, stays rooted in the present, and ultimately gives us hope for a future where “alternative” families can connect through compassion and brutally honest communication.
Back to Canada for a moment: my cousin gave me an amazing book for my birthday—Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures. I’ve never been a fan of medical dramas (ok, I used to watch St. Elsewhere back in the day) but this book was strangely riveting despite its detailed descriptions of medical procedures. The real insight is into the lives and minds of medical interns who cram for exams, overcome personal trauma, and then go on to become practicing doctors who are believed to be infallible. The short stories share a common cast, and as I neared the end, my heart was positively thumping…Lam himself is a doctor, and so writes somewhat dispassionately about fluids and orifices, but he also captures the desperation not only in the ER but in the lives of overworked, lonely physicians who form lasting connections to their dying patients and one another. There’s no George Clooney in this book, but trust me—you won’t miss him.
They say timing is everything, right? So my birthday week got off to a great start, and I was really moved and inspired by what I learned at the African Burial Ground Museum. But THEN, I made the mistake of going to see Chris Rock’s film, Good Hair, the very next day. I don’t know what I was thinking, and I already knew it was going to be problematic, but I wasn’t prepared for the way I felt when I left the cinema: demoralized, disgusted, discouraged. And I know there are a lot of folks out there who don’t want to hear me talk about black hair b/c they think I have no right; I can give endless presentations, and show endless photos of my pre-teen Afro and it won’t make a bit of difference b/c when folks look at me today, they see “good hair.” That standard has changed over time, of course (as has my hair), so while “good hair” used to mean hair that was naturally straight, it now means hair that straightens easily or waves or looks “mixed.” At any rate, Good Hair the film is a “mockumentary” in two ways: it’s a faux documentary, with a comedian asking questions of “regular” folks, trying to get them to reveal just how screwed up they really are. B/c Rock’s intention isn’t to probe the origins of black hair politics—it’s to make us laugh (and cringe) at the ridiculousness of the billion-dollar industry it has become. But there are no “experts” in the film to help us theorize the actions and antics of these “regular” folks…there’s no theoretical or historical framework, and so no one really talks about the pain—not of having your scalp singed, but of being told for centuries that your very appearance confirms the “fact” that blacks are subhuman. Every other month, it seems, some idiot compares the First Lady or President Obama to an ape or chimpanzee, but no one wants to admit that this is nothing new—it’s been going on for centuries, with white supremacists claiming that blacks are not fully evolved, not truly civilized, not far removed from animals. And biological difference is used to justify that idea–”Look at their hair! It’s like wool, or mange…” Rock never mentioned former Member of Congress Cynthia McKinney being denied entrance by a security guard on Capitol Hill who didn’t recognize her once she changed her hair…or the racist remarks that followed about her hair looking like “a Brillo pad” (read a racist Washington Post article here). Rock mainly interviews actresses, male music executives (?), and a “video vixen.” Why the eff would we care about THEIR hair choices? (unless he was going to talk about how they won’t get cast for certain roles if they have natural hair). I counted all of TWO black women with natural hair in the film. Rock then goes to India and mocks their culture by riding on an ox-drawn cart as cars and motorized rickshaws whiz by. Indian women sacrifice their hair out of humility; black women, according to this film, lack humility and are driven by vanity alone. They’ll pay $1000 for a weave, rather than pay rent, feed their kids, etc. (enter the specter of the welfare queen…). The most ridiculous part of the film is the hair show in Atlanta, where stylists compete to see not who can cut hair the best, but who can create the wildest spectacle. Black and white gay men are ridiculed in this segment, while the black women stylists are made to seem stupid (and you know what? their routines WERE idiotic—one “cut” hair underwater while the other hung upside down from parallel bars). Sigh. Am I done yet? Is there anything else left to say? Teen filmmaker Kiri Davis made a MUCH better, MUCH shorter film which you can viewhere. You may also have heard that Rock is being sued by a black woman filmmaker who claims he stole her ideas after she showed him HER film on black hair a few years ago. Read more here. THIS is the film *I* wanted to see:
If you’re ever in NYC, make sure you stop by the African Burial Ground Memorial. It’s another one of those things that has been on my To Do list forever…so this morning I woke up and decided today was the day. In fact, I’m making my birthday week a week of discovery; it’s too easy to live in the city and never venture beyond your sphere of comfort. I don’t often go into Manhattan, but there’s so much history to be found there. Visiting the memorial was an interesting and informative experience; it’s situated directly across from the building that houses (or used to house) the Immigration and Naturalization Service; I went there pretty often in the ’90s while trying to obtain my green card, and my father showed me how to use the employee entrance in order to avoid the long line of would-be citizens that snaked around the other side of the building. Yet I don’t recall ever noticing the burial ground until it was a fenced field of grass, which didn’t hold much significance for me. I do recall going to a ceremony, and recoiling when a black woman dressed in white robes handed us blades of grass, instructing us to use the grass to honor the ancestors; that might have been in 2003, when the remains of 419 Africans were reinterred…I think each person has to decide how s/he will pay respect to the dead; I’d love to be there at night with a small group of loved ones; large public memorial services often feel impersonal and imposed to me. The memorial wasn’t opened until 2007, and is quite impressive. Of course, activists and politicians had to fight to protect the site from further development once the remains were discovered by developers in the early ’90s. There was another battle to get black anthropologists and archaeologists involved in the excavation process…sigh. But everything is documented in a film you can view in the museum, and then I had a thorough tour of the monument itself led by National Park Ranger Cyrus. I’m hoping to go back later this week or next for a walking tour of lower Manhattan. I did glean one particularly useful bit of information while watching the film; in some West African cultures, reflective surfaces are worn by the dead (like a string of blue beads found around the waist of a female skeleton, below) in order to serve as windows into the afterlife.* I’m still finalizing my “recipe” for opening a portal between the past and the present world, and that bit of information helps…
Came home and ate a late lunch while watching a Zora Neale Hurston special on PBS; found a letter in the mail from an editor asking to see more of my work…magical things can happen on the dreariest rainy day…
*I just spent an hour scouring the internet for information on beads; there’s an interesting article here, and on the Metropolitan Museum website, a description about mirrors in Central African art: “Reflective surfaces such as mirrored glass suggest the surface of water, a symbolic link to the ancestral realm. Kongo cosmology posits water as the median that separates the living world from the afterlife.”
Sometimes the news can get you down, but here are some uplifting stories you don’t want to miss: check out G. Neri’s impact on a middle-aged man over at Crazy Quilts, and then read this short NPR article about the power of librarians to turn one reluctant reader into a lifetime learner…(cover art by the super-talented Jesse Watson)
There was just one problem: If Neal took the book to the checkout counter, he was sure that the girls who worked on the counter would tell his friends.
“Then my reputation would be down, because I was reading books,” Neal said. “And I wanted them to know that all I could do was fight and cuss.”
Finally, Neal decided that he ought to steal the book, in order to preserve his reputation. So he did.
Did you guess? My secret birthday destination was The Conservatory Garden in Central Park, which is home to the statue commemorating Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (one of my all-time favorite books). I’ve had this on my list of things to do for *months* and finally made it up there today after going for a walk in Prospect Park this morning. There are three or four trees around the park’s perimeter that stop you in your tracks, their color is so vibrant–leaves aflame. And then I headed uptown to the garden (after stopping at Billy’s for a slice of peanut butter & chocolate cake), and there were flowers everywhere–such a contrast of colors! There was actually a wedding taking place right by the statue so I had to wait until the bride said “I do” before slipping in to take these photos. Physical therapy wasn’t exactly fun, but it contributes to better health for my back, and I still managed to reach the post office in time, AND I got some lip gloss before hopping on the train and coming home…thanks VERY much to everyone for their warm birthday wishes; as I stood by the fountain, I considered tossing a coin in but then realized most of my wishes have come true lately. Here’s to another productive, creative year filled with laughter, good health, and the company of loved ones!
Can you believe this is the TENTH installment of Colleen Mondor’s 
Hurray! Diary of an Anxious Black Woman is blogging again! And I have to share 
I have a hard time with one month of the year being designated to one particular minority group (or, in this case, two: American Indians and Alaska Natives). It has potential benefits, but generally, I think these one-month celebrations just further marginalize people whose history, culture, and literature ought to be celebrated all year round. For instance, today on PBS I watched a fascinating documentary on the struggle of 
For all those who were stolen
Sometimes the news can get you down, but here are some uplifting stories you don’t want to miss: check out G. Neri’s impact on a middle-aged man over at 
Did you guess? My secret birthday destination was 
