May 01, 2005
Poem On Your Blog - Sunday
I conclude "Poem on Your Blog Weekend" with a classic from Essex Hemphill.
The Father, Son and Unholy Spirits
i
We are not always
the bravest sons
our fathers dream.
Nor do they always
dream of us.
We don't always
recognize him
if we have never
seen his face.
We are suspicious
of strangers.
Question:
is he the one?
ii
I stand waist deep
in the decadence of forgetting.
The vain act of looking the other way.
Insisting there can be peace
and fecundity without confrontation.
The nagging question of blood hounds me.
How do I honor it?
iii
I don't understand
our choice of angers,
your domestic violence,
my flaring temper.
I wanted tenderness
to belong to us
more than food or money.
The ghost of my wants
is many things:
lover, guardian angel,
key to our secrets,
the dogs we let sleep.
The rhythm of silence
we do not disturb.
iv
I circle questions of blood.
I give a fierce fire dance.
The flames call me.
It is safe. I leap
unprepared to be brave. I surrender
more frightened of being alone.
I have to do this
to stay alive.
To be acknowledged.
Fire calls. I slither
to the flames
= = = = = = = = = =
And check out perhaps Hemphill's best known (and loved) collection:
Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry by Essex Hemphill
May 03, 2005
The Zami Project
Black gay men and lesbians, 50 years of age and older, are needed for a research project to talk about their life experiences. The study is being conducted by Dr. Leo Wilton, a Black gay researcher and faculty member at Binghamton University. Participants will be asked to complete a survey and/or be interviewed about their life experiences. There is compensation for participating.
For more information, please contact Dr. Wilton at (917) 557-0950.
May 06, 2005
Book Party: The Black Woman
I know it's short notice, but I was feeling a bit under the weather and only just read it (yeah, nearly 4 am!!)
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Friday, May 6th at 7:00 p.m., FREE/SCHOMBURG LIBRARY at 135th and Lenox
Celebrate the reissue of The Black Woman at this very special book celebration and honor some of today's most lauded African-American female writers.
First published in 1970, The Black Woman: An Anthology, edited by Toni Cade Bambara, introduced readers to an astonishing new wave of voices that demanded to be heard.
A groundbreaking volume of original essays, poems, and stories, The Black Woman presented a chorus of outspoken women-novelist Alice Walker, poets Audre Lorde and Nikki Giovanni, writer Paule Marshall, activist Grace Lee Boggs, and musician Abbey Lincoln among them-who tackled issues surrounding race and sex, body image, the economy, politics, labor, and more. More than three decades later their words still resonate with truth, relevance, and insight.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde
Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni
Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall
May 07, 2005
Crew Positions Needed for New Black Gay Sitcom
Crew Positions Needed for New Sitcom
Noah's Arc is Viacom's new network's LOGO's Premiere Scripted Series
scheduled to air this October 2005.
The series is a gay, Black - Sex in the City meets Soul Food meets The Golden Girls. It is a half hour single camera comedy that will be shooting summer 2005 in Los Angeles, CA.
Positions available include:
UPM/Production Manager
Production office Coordinator.
1st AD
2nd AD
2nd 2nd
GripsGaffers
PA's
Please email your resume w/ references to jasmynecannick@hotmail.com. No attachements allowed. Resume and references must be in the body of the email. Emails without references will not be considered.
Please clearly identify what position you are applying for. Subject of email must read: RESUME - NOAH'S ARC. Candidates must live in Los Angeles. No phone calls please.
May 14, 2005
Art in Harlem: Faces
Art in Harlem: face 22 May 05 - Don't miss it!
art in harlem: faces explores the dynamic of the face – literally, figuratively...however the face feels and arrives in the eyes and hands and hearts and voices and feet of the aforementioned artists. Come and see their faces. Light and gesture, breath and harmony.
Scheduled to appear: Donald Agarrat, Samiya Bashir, Charly aka Rebel, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Wong Dowling, Damond Haynes, G. Winston James, Jerome Jordan, Larry D. Lyons, II, Niki, Mingus, Lawrence Harding, Shuji Nakamura, Betty Odabashian, Freddie Pena, Alicia Piller, Millery Polyne, James Reynolds, Cynthia Rollins, Marlon Saunders, Artis Wright, Zee.
If you are in the New York area, you don't want to miss this event.
RSVP with me. E-mail me at steven@stevengfullwood.org.
Jazzy Ray
Jazzy Ray — Originally uploaded by ronntaylor.
Dad in front of his record collection: I know some of you have no idea what a record is. *sigh*
May 21, 2005
Fabulous at 25
Still Striking a Pose By Guy Trebay
SELVIN KOOL-AID GIVENCHY was stalking the runway, letting fly his hands and his wild invective. "Work it, girls! Serve it like a legend!" said Mr. Givenchy, who is something of an underground legend himself, what with his Moms Mabley mug, his colossally oversize sweatshirt and a mouth that would make that raunchy comedian's seem snowflake pure. "Remember," Mr. Givenchy commanded the ladies, although ladies was not the word he employed. "I am in charge of the girls!"
The girls were not girls, of course, and the boys not boys. The runway was a makeshift theater on which, over the course of a long evening, the girls and the boys would stomp and pose and parade and dance attired in zoot suits or chiffon dresses or else very little at all. The gathering was a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the New York-based House of Ultra-Omni, one of the last of the original drag queen houses whose balls proliferated in the 1980's, then faded from memory and, seemingly, disappeared.
Whatever vague awareness most Americans may have of this bygone scene probably comes from Madonna's "Vogue," the influential 1990 hit that was either an act of homage to the underground that inspired it or one of creative larceny. A fuller introduction was provided by "Paris Is Burning," Jennie Livingston's 1991 documentary, a remarkably clear-eyed appraisal of the epoch and the quirky "legends" who gave it birth.
No one can say for sure when or how voguing seemed to vanish, and with it the houses that brought it into the world. Those houses constituted groups of gay men organized and run by "mothers" and "fathers," populated by "children" and named for fashion designers no one involved had ever met. Then and now, even people who were in on the scene might have been forgiven for assuming that its practitioners had moved on in the decade after "Vogue" and "Paris Is Burning," or, as likely, were now dead.
Get an even greater account of the Ball scene from Frank Leon Robert's blog Brooklyn Boy Blues where he has a preview of Paris is Still Burning, an article for FlavaMen magazine.
Note to self: get the damn mag...now!!
May 25, 2005
Keeping His Name Alive
Gay men unite through blogs to keep alive the story of a city teen’s brutal slayingBy Andrew Lavallee
Andrew Lavallee is a freelance writer.Rashawn Brazell would have turned 20 in April. Instead of a celebration, his birthday was marked with candlelight vigils and town hall meetings.
By then, his February murder had faded from headlines. But a growing number of New York-area bloggers, many of them African-American and gay, like Brazell, are keeping his memory, and the search for his killer, alive.
"I couldn't do anything else until I'd blogged about it," said Larry D. Lyons, II, 24, one of the first to write about the crime in an online diary.
Lyons compiled links to news reports and posthumous letters he had written to Brazell in early March. Dozens of readers posted their comments, and more comments came with each entry.
Brazell's murder struck a chord with Lyons and many in the black gay community who believed his murder had been given short shrift by the New York mainstream media.
Brazell, of Brooklyn, disappeared Feb. 14. Several days later, parts of his body were found in a Brooklyn subway tunnel and later a recycling plant. Early news reports said he was going to rendezvous with another man.
"He was just a bag of trash," said Mervyn Marcano, a publicist, after he read that a bag with Brazell's legs and one arm was found in a subway tunnel. "It repulsed me that people couldn't find the space in their reports to even say his name."
"I've seen several days of stories about a bird nesting on ledge," said Brazell's mother, Desire. "But my child only got a few headlines."
Within several weeks of Brazell's killing, people began blogging about the incident. Today, there are at least 10 sites, including rashawnbrazell.com, that have discussed his murder.
Some bloggers are trying to keep the story alive, while others are trying to organize.
Terrance Heath, 36, who lives in Washington, blogged about Brazell to raise awareness outside of New York. His site, republicoft.com, receives about 1,000 hits a day. "If even that many people can hear about this case," he said, "then maybe it will make a difference. So that the next young African-American gay man doesn't find himself in the situation that Rashawn did."
With the help of organizations like People of Color in Crisis and Gay Men of African Descent, bloggers planned a vigil, then a town hall meeting in which City Councilwoman Letitia James, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care and the Unity Fellowship Church of Brooklyn volunteered funds to increase the reward. It has grown from $2,000 to $12,000.
The New York State Black Gay Network and The New York Panthers Leather Club*, two organizations also involved, began a series of safe-sex workshops focusing on safely "hooking up" online.
"It was really the bloggers who brought community-based organizations to the table to address what happened," said Kenyon Farrow of the Black Gay Network.
Bloggers launched the Rashawn Brazell Collective in March and, along with it, a collaborative Web site. It includes contact information for the detectives working on the case and details on upcoming events.
Others used their blogs to share information drawn from their skills and experience. "Brotha to Brotha," written by a former television network producer, included tips on contacting ABC and CBS. Donald Agarrat, 35, a Web designer, built rashawnbrazell.com.
While their initial meetings were spurred by tragedy, several bloggers are heartened to see a community forming.
"We use the term 'blogfam,'" Agarrat said. "I've seen other collectives and other people who blog together, but I feel really lucky to be part of this tight network."
The bloggers have also created the Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund, a scholarship co-sponsored by the North Star Fund, which supports social justice projects. Though they are eager to see the crime solved and justice served, they are just as passionate about the projects created in Brazell's memory.
Brazell's mother is grateful for the efforts.
"I am sure the [blogging] will help," she said. "I hope they keep it up so that the person who did this doesn't get away with it."
* My edit correcting the organization's name
May 26, 2005
The Chicago Defender Launches A Podcast
The Chicago Defender announced today that it is launching the Chicago Defender Inside Black America Podcast on Thursday, May 26. The Defender, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, becomes the first Black newspaper in the nation to take advantage of this new technology.
Every week, Chicago Defender staff writers and editors will interview newsmakers, book authors and other subjects, taking the content that used to be limited to the newspaper and putting it in audio form. The Chicago Defender will also develop podcasts in conjunction with its 100th anniversary, interviewing longtime staffers, former writers and editors, as well as others in Chicago and abroad who have been influenced by the nation's most historic Black newspaper.
Appropriate Word of the Day
artifice \AR-tuh-fis\, noun:
1. Cleverness or skill; ingenuity; inventiveness.
2. An ingenious or artful device or expedient.
3. An artful trick or stratagem.
4. Trickery; craftiness; insincere or deceptive behavior.
May 28, 2005
FYI: Essence Seeks Young Entrepreneurs
For a story about entrepreneurs, we are looking for Black women who run their own businesses to interview. We'd like women who have businesses in the areas below. We're especially interested in young women (under 40) and outside of NYC only, please. Please send a short description and email and phone number. Thank you!
--Contractor
--Boutique owner
--Catering
--Hair Care
--Child Care
--Cleaning
--A government worker turned consultant
--A woman who went from a large corporation to running a business of any
kind
--Artist
Zulaika Jumaralli
Essence Magazine
1500 Broadway, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10036
zjumaralli@essence.com
(212) 642-0774 (t)
(212) 997-6811 (f)
Damn, Damn, Damn!!
This blog's title was inspired by Audre Lorde and I would soooo love to see some of these writers in person, some of them for the first time. But I have at least two prior commitments. Gonna try to at least attend and leave early if necessary.
Via Frank Leon Robert's Brooklyn Boy Blues:
Saturday, June 25th. Nuyorican Poets Cafe. 2PM.
Dont miss the hottest literary event of the summer.
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"A BURST OF LIGHT: NEW DIRECTIONS IN BLACK GAY AND LESBIAN LITERATURE"
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Ok, anyone who is not at this event can no longer speak to me! And I'm serious dammit! So mark those calendars NOW. RIGHT NOW.
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Join me on Saturday, June 25th at the world famous Nuyorican Poets Cafe for the first big event of BLACK PRIDE NYC 2005, where I will be hosting an exciting discussion with JAMES EARL HARDY (author of the insanely popular 'B Boy Blues' series), STACEYANN CHIN (STAR of BROADWAY'S "DEF POETRY JAM") HANIFAH WALIDAH (Playwright, MC, and Musician) and ALPHONSO MORGAN (Cultural critic and author of the stellar new novel "Sons"). I will also be reading from my forthcoming book (that I co-edited with Pomo-Afro Homo's former member Marvin K. White).
Follow the above link for links to individual writers.
May 29, 2005
Larry Chang's WISDOM
From Larry Chang:
I've been working on an anthology of quotations for the past four years. I've selected and sorted some of them into collections printed on small cards which are handy and portable for quick reference. They're now available in gift presentation packs and can be ordered online.
Great art can only be created out of love. — James Baldwin