Bay Area Black Authors to Visit Juvenile Hall

Bay Area Black Authors to Visit Juvenile Hall


At the request of Center of Hope's Rev. Brondon Reems, Bay Area Black Authors will visit Oakland's Juvenile Hall to speak with and donate books made available by the Post Newspaper Group. The PNG obtained books from 13 local authors at the recent Journal of Pan African Studies Poetry Festival and the Chauncey Bailey Book Fair held at the Joyce Gordon Gallery on February 19.

Rev. Reems is ecstatic Bay Area Black Authors will accompany him to share with the juveniles. For BABA organizer, Marvin X, the trip is reminiscent of the trip he and editors of Black Dialogue Magazine made to Soledad Prison in 1966, where they addressed the Black Culture Club chaired by Eldridge Cleaver and Alprentis Bunchy Carter. "We are happy to work with the Center of Hope to help improve literacy and appreciation of literature among the population at Juvenile Hall."

Rev. Reems also asked BABA to conduct a workshop at his church for members who are budding writers. Along with members of his church, Rev. Reems will attend the March 19, Women's History event produced by BABA, Academy of da Corner and the Post Newspaper Group. The event will be held at the Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th Street, 3-6 pm. It features the Bay Area women poets published in the Journal of Pan African Studies Poetry Issue. Poets include Ayodele Nzingha, Phavia Kujichagulia, devorah major, Toreadah Mikell, Aries Jordan and Jasmin Conner. The women have asked BABA male authors to perform Marvin X's classic poem For the Women. It will be read by Paradise, Geoffrey Grier, Eugene Allen, Ptah Allah El, Jermaine, Michael Lange and Marvin X.

The afternoon event will showcase scenes from For Colored Girls, performed by Jasmin Conner,Vagina Monologue, performed by Aries Jordan, Woman on the Cell Phone, enacted by Mechelle LaChaux, and Opal Palmer Adisa's Bathroom Graffiti Queen, performed by Ayodele Nzinga.

There will be a panel discussion of Womanhood Rites of Passage, facilitated by media living legend and author Jerri Lange. Author Timothy Reed will also read from her novel. The event is free, but the public is encouraged to purchase books from local authors and donations will be accepted.

Saturday, March 19, 3-6pm
Joyce Gordon Gallery
406 14th Street
Oakland

Male Rape in the Hood

Male Rape in the Hood

Male rape appears to be a growing concern in the hood coast to coast. Several months ago a friend in Philadelphia called saying men were being gang raped on the street in the City of Brotherly Love. Apparently the love between brothers has turned to wrath. My friend said gangs of men were assaulting men and raping them at will.

Of course this is a not too infrequent occurrence among the jail and prison population. Men are often raped by prison gangs and those men with the physical power to subdue the weaker brothers, or those not affiliated with a gang, or those in a rival gang. Apparently this ritual of violence has spilled over to the wider society.

Yesterday, a young brother in downtown Oakland told of male rape cases he was familiar with. He swore if he was raped the rapist would be a homicide victim. He said the rapists were difficult to recognize since they did not look gay but often had the demeanor of brothers on the down low or men who look straight but prefer the booty call of other men. The young man said his father called such men booty bandits!

But we are aware there is a significant degree of male rape in the workforce and in the US military, along with female rate estimated at 30% for women in the military. This matter reminds us of the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, wherein the men came to Lot's house and demanded the angels inside. Lot offered his daughters but they insisted the prophet give up "the angels." They had no desire for his daughters. Shortly thereafter the town was destroyed by earthquake apparently for its iniquities.

We know rape in pandemic these days, most especially in war torn African nations such as the Congo, but also in the newly liberated South Africa where women are raped almost at will.
In the Congo women, girls, men and boys are victims of this act of violence.

Rape has always been a facet of war, usually the victors rape the vanquished. Most often in war, the men are killed and the women seized as the spoils or booty. Of course rape is about power and domination rather than any sexual craving. The rape of men or women is thus a power play to totally humiliate and destroy the dignity and humanity of the victim.

In the hood, male rape may also be tied to gang initiation, along with homicide. Not only can strangers fall victim to the initiate but he may be ordered to rape and/or kill his best friend to prove loyalty to the gang.

Is it not possible the hip hop fad of sagging pants may be a contributing factor to male rape in the hood since men walking about with their behinds showing is inviting to those predators seeking the male booty?

Rape seems a sign of the times, these days the world is not a pretty place but rather a war zone. Ray Charles called it the Danger Zone and said it was everywhere. I've said before, we must practice eternal vigilance, stay ever on the alert and aware of ones surroundings.
--Marvin X
4/10/11

For the Women

For the women
Who bear children and nurture them with truth
Who cook and clean behind thankless men
For the women
Who love so hard so true so pure
For the women
With faith in God and men
For the women
Alone with beer and rum
Searching for a man
At the club college church party
For the women
Independent of men
Searching their souls
Who smoke crack and freak
Who love only women
Who play and run and never show
Who rise in revolt in hand with men
Who say never never, never again
For the women who suffer abuse and cry for justice
For the women happy and free of maternal madness
For the women who study and write
For the women who sell their love to starving men
For the women who love to make love and be loved by men
For the women of Afrika who work so hard
For the women of American who suffer the master
For the women who turn to God in prayer and patience
For the women who are mothers of children and mothers of men
For the women who suffer inflation recession abortion recession
For the women who understand the rituals of men and women
For the women who share
For the women who are greedy
For the women with power
For the women with nothing
For the women locked down
For the women down town
For the women who break horses
For the women in the fields
For the women who rob banks
For the women who kill
For the women of history
For the women of now
I salute you. A MAN.
--Marvin X
Circa 1981

In honor of Women's History Month, Bay Area Black Authors present

a Celebration of Healing with the Journal of Pan African Studies Women Poets, plus dramatic performances from Colored Girls, Vagina Monologues, Bathroom Graffiti Queen and Parable of Woman on the Cell Phone. There will be a panel on Womanhood Rites of Passage, facilitated by author, media living legend Jerri Lange. Poets, actors, authors, singers include Ayodele Nzinga, Toreadah Mikell, Jasmin Conner, Aries Jordan, Phavia Kujichagulia and devorah major. Saturday, March 19, 3-6pm at the Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., downtown Oakland. jmarvinx@yahoo.com. www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com.

Reply to Marvin X from Rudolph Lewis on the American White Revolution

Rudy:

Dream on dreamer. If you wake up, you're hear the voice of the ancestors, "The worse is yet to come . . . we ain't nowhere near daylight."

Toppling a dictator and replacing it with an exceedingly wealthy military elite does not a revolution make.

Loving you madly, Rudy

Marvin X:

Rudy, you must look into the deep structure of things, far beyond the surface. When the husband beats a pregnant wife, this doesn't mean the baby won't be born. There may be some damage to the fetus but that baby is coming out for we know how much violence the woman is able to withstand, including the act of delivery itself. So we only know we are seeing things people predicted around 2012, a universal phenomenon that is beyond the imagination, and yes, we ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until the boys and girls rise up in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere on the oil lands and lanes. Wait til gas is ten dollars a gallon and a lemon five dollars. Just wait til the midnight hour.

Rudy:

Marvin, you're right: I do not know about the "deep structure of things." I do have my failings. But I suppose if I am expert at anything it is the nature of white people in America. I do wonder whether the same God who made my people made them. And if he did, what was he thinking: they have been a pestilence on the face of the earth. We need to have serious talk with His divine ways.

Let me be a prophet for a moment. As soon as the working class whites settle this matter with the Wisconsin governor, however it ends, they will be back talking about the intrusion of "niggers" in Milwaukee and Madison. Tell me, how do you think Walker got into office. I'll tell you: on a racist tip. These whites falling back into the pack of the poor thought the governor was going to take the war only to the Negroes. And what did they discover belatedly, it's gonna be class warfare and the poor whites and the marginal middle class whites, they too will be a sacrifice to the Koch brothers and other such wealthy bullies.

But this lesson will be short-lived as I suggested. As soo as these working class whites can they will betray the blacks for a farthing. That's a centuries old pattern. let us learn our history.

Hold out no hope for the struggle of black and white together, at least not in this decade.

Loving you madly, Rudy

Marvin X:

We can see from the Middle East that Arab zenophobia of Black Africans has tainted their freedom struggle. Yet this has been a long simmering problem in the Arab world just as it has been intractable and pervasive in the White Supremacy world of the West, especially in America. Thus, it must be clearly understood that liberation without recovery from the addiction to white supremacy, including Arab racism and American racism, will be short lived. As DuBois said, the problem in America is the color line, but we can expand this globally. Farakhan once said wherever he went on the planet earth the black man was on the bottom. When Cynthia McKinney was jailed in Israel she found Africans filled the jail, and we know the racial demographics of American gulags.

Without a global detox and recovery from the addiction to white supremacy in all its forms, and it is cunning and vile, surfacing its head in all religions and economic systems, there shall be no real peace in the world. Racism must be attacked in the Masjed, Church, temple, and all social institutions before the New Man and Woman can stand tall in the sun, racism and gender discrimination are pervasive in the global village. The new consciousness shall not function with any residue of racism and sexism.

We must note the Type II White Supremacy Dr. Nathan Hare speaks about that is the Black addiction to white supremacy mythology. Thus all forms of white supremacy must be eradicated before the modern world will be truly and thoroughly liberated.

America's White Revolution

America's White Revolution
Is America in the birth pains of revolution, of joining the struggle of people around the world for social and economic justice? What is the end game of the Tea Party goers and the unions struggling for their definition of social economic democracy? Will there inevitably be a clash between the unionists and workers on the Left and the Tea Party Constitutionalists on the Right? Or will they merge into the American White Revolution? Events are moving fast, from the Middle East to Wisconsin, Ohio, California and elsewhere.

We know dissatisfaction brings change, real change. The unemployed, the wage slave workers and other marginalized people will inevitably reach the breaking point. As the ruling class strengthen their stranglehold on the necks and backs of the middle and lower class, the more possibility for revolution with the great possibility that other ethnic minorities will join the liberation struggle.

As in the Middle East and North Africa, things will hit the fan in America when youth take to the streets, suffering marginalization, high unemployment, homelessness and mental depression. The feeling of nothingness and dread shall propel them into forward motion of the radical kind.

The workers, unemployed, students, artists, intellectuals, and religious communities shall see the need for unity and will merge their agendas for the greater good. When the people refuse to accept wage slavery and the concomitant world of make believe perpetuated by the media magicians and the Center Right Democratic and Republican parties in league with the military/corporate complex, the American White Revolution will begin.

We should expect the reactionaries to mount the counter attack with state police power that may approach events in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere, outright mass murder under the color of law, mass incarcerations utilizing the terrorist laws under Homeland Security.

The Right will attempt to defeat the masses to continue the regime of the American neo-slave system. But a people united cannot be defeated. Fanon taught that all de-colonization is successful. The reactionaries will be forced to put down their butcher knives in the face of people power. They will be forced to share the wealth, to open the coffers of the rich, the financial and corporate bandits and distribute the wealth stolen from the labor of the poor and middle class who have long suffered from the greedy blood suckers of the poor and working class.

With a united people practicing eternal vigilance, the corporate and Wall Street bandits shall be forced to end their hoarding of the wealth they hoodwinked and bamboozled from the workers and poor; the wage slavery, the pyramid scheme loans of the housing industry, the wretched outdated white supremacy curriculum in the schools, the poor devitalized food of the petro-chemical industry and the pharmaceutical directed health care system, dominated by the insurance companies, even under President Obama's health plan that was a capitulation to the bandits.

We smell a fresh breath of air blowing in the winds, yes, the east wind is blowing west. We think white people will be forced to stand from their stunted position, backs broken by the bloodsuckers of the poor, the working poor and middle class. The North American Africans have long suffered a stunted life, full of poverty, ignorance and disease, even the middle class live in the world of make believe, traumatized by the hostile environment and addicted to conspicuous consumption.

So we see the great possibility White America and North American Africans may see their way to Liberation Square, and if necessary, in the manner of the Egyptians, lay their blankets in front of tanks and take a nap, daring the tank driver to run them over, for their best poet told them not long ago: even a tank driver must serve somebody, must answer to somebody.
--Marvin X
4/5/11

For the Women, an Afternoon of Poetry, Drama and Dialogue

For the Women
an Afternoon of Poetry, Drama and Dialogue
at the Joyce Gordon Gallery
Saturday, March 19, 3-6pm
406 14th Street, Oakland

MC Hunia Bradley

On Saturday afternoon, March 19, 3-6pm, the Bay Area will experience a collection of powerful women authors, poets and actors. Bay Area Black Authors present the women poets featured in the Journal of Pan African Studies Poetry Issue, guest edited by Marvin X, the godfather of the West Coast Black Arts Movement.

Bay Area poets in the JPAS include Phavia Kujichagulia, Ayodele Nzingha, Tureadah Mikell, Aries Jordan, devorah major.


Tureadah Mikell



Phavia Kujichagulia



devorah major








Ayodele Nzingha

The afternoon includes drama, including Opal Palmer Adisa's Bathroom Graffiti Queen, produced, directed and performed by Ayodele Nzinga of West Oakland's Lower Bottom Playaz.
Aside from her own plays, Ayo recently produced August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean. A long time associate and former student of Marvin X, she's directed his In the Name of Love, 1981, One Day in the Life, 1997-2002, and a production of his 60s classic Flowers for the Trashman. Ayodele is considered the Bay Area's consummate black actress.

There will be a scene from Vagina Monologues performed by Aries Jordan, actress and poet, For Colored Girls by Jasmin Conner, poet, actress, novelist, and Parable of the Woman on the Cell Phone, enacted by singer, actress Mechelle LaChaux.


Mechelle LaChaux

The event concludes with a dialogue on Womanhood Rites of Passage, facilitated by media living legend and author Jerri Lange. Panelists include Ayodele Nzingha, Aries Jordan, Jasmin Conner, and Phavia Kujichuglia.



Jerri Lange

Sponsors include Bay Area Black Authors, Academy of da Corner Reader's Theatre, Post Newspaper Group, San Francisco Recovery Theatre, Lower Bottom Playaz, Black Bird Press.

This event is part of the Post Newspaper Group and Black Chauncey Bailey Project to donate books from local authors to persons incarcerated at juvenile hall, county jail and prisons.
The public is encouraged to attend and purchase books for donation to the incarcerated.
For more information: www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com, jmarvinx@yahoo.com.


An Afternoon of Poetry, Drama and Dialogue

Program

Welcome
Libations
Journal of Pan African Studies Women Poets
Aries Jordan
Phavia Kujichagulia
Tureada MIkell
Ayodele Nzingha
devorah major
Jasmin Conner

Drama
Parable of Woman on Cell Phone, Mechelle LaChaux
Vagina Monologue, Aries Jordan
For Colored Girls, Jasmin Conner
Bathroom Graffiti Queen, Ayodele Nzingha

Panel Discussion on Womanhood Rites of Passage:
Jerri Lange, Phavia Kujichagulia, Ayodele Nzingha,
Aries Jordan, Jasmin Conner

Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th Street, downtown Oakland.
jmarvinx@yahoo.com

For the Women

For the women

Who bear children and nurture them with truth

Who cook and clean behind thankless men

For the women

Who love so hard so true so pure

For the women

With faith in God and men

For the women

Alone with beer and rum

Searching for a man

At the club college church party

For the women

Independent of men

Searching their souls

Who smoke crack and freak

Who love only women

Who play and run and never show

Who rise in revolt in hand with men

Who say never never, never again

For the women who suffer abuse and cry for justice

For the women happy and free of maternal madness

For the women who study and write

For the women who sell their love to starving men

For the women who love to make love and be loved by men

For the women of Afrika who work so hard

For the women of American who suffer the master

For the women who turn to God in prayer and patience

For the women who are mothers of children and mothers of men

For the women who suffer inflation recession abortion recession

For the women who understand the rituals of men and women

For the women who share

For the women who are greedy

For the women with power

For the women with nothing

For the women locked down

For the women down town

For the women who break horses

For the women in the fields

For the women who rob banks

For the women who kill

For the women of history

For the women of now

I salute you. A MAN.

--Marvin X

Circa 1981

Creativity and Sexuality

Part Eight: Creativity and Sexuality

Let me begin by saying I do not think this subject is gender specific: sexual energy does not discriminate. Cutting to the chase, there are male whores and female whores, or simply persons who are highly sexed. Even religious or spiritual persons can fit this mode, i.e., church ho's or mosque ho's. Their spirituality may enhance their sexuality, for ultimately sex is recognized as a spiritual experience, a way to merge with the Divine force, how else is that feeling of oneness derived, that moment when the lover and beloved transcend gender to become a force of spiritual energy, united in the oneness of bliss, in harmony with the Divine?

Should we be so presumptuous to think the artistic person is therefore more sexually driven than the average, normal Joe Blow? In spite of my artistic personality, I think Joe Blow is just as sexually driven as I was as a young man. All humans have this sexual urge, although some have a greater urge than others, and they can be artists, Joe Blows, workers, preachers, dancers, intellectuals, or anyone, depending on their bio-chemistry.

For the artist, the problem is distinguishing the sexual urge from the creative impulse. And there are those workaholics who rather work than fuck--they actually get a nut working, sex is simply not a major force in their lives, just as the artist would often rather create than have sex. Duke said music was his mistress, and this is probably so for every true artist.

Now there are artists who drown in sex and everything else but creativity, even after a lifetime of artistic training. Of course they are ultimately punished by the Creator for dissing Him/Her. Sex, drugs, gambling, employment (for fear of poverty) and other diversions only delay their day of judgment when the Creator shall ask them why they did not serve Him/Her with all their being, since they were blessed with certain talent yet were in denial, fear and refused to exercise the discipline to be their creative best. With their God given talent, they remained stuck on stupid, only now and then giving expression to their creative genius.

And yet we might be forced to examine which comes first, the chicken or the egg? For a long time I imagined I had a sexual addiction as part of my general addictive personality--no matter what endeavor, I would take things to the extreme, whether sexual, political, religious, economic, etc. Eldridge Cleaver was a similar personality. No matter what he engaged in, he gave his all, whether criminality, study or self education, right or left wing politics, religious endeavors and especially his sexual fantasies.

But as per myself, upon closer examination, I concluded my sexual energy was in reality creative energy that I was wasting in carnality. And yet the sexual energy was the catalyst for my creativity. In short, after sex, I was full of energy and ready to get out of bed to write late into the night. In despair, my lover would cry, "Where are you going?" Sadly and tragi-comically, all the time we were making love I was thinking about a poem!

Well, we learn in recovery that the chemicals that make us high are already in the brain cells, certain activity releases them and we feel "high." Drugs, dancing, sex, walking, cigaretts, all release the chemicals that get us "loaded." Sex was thus the drug that ignited my creative impluse.

My friends could not understand why I didn't want or need cocaine back in the day when sniffing was en vogue. But I was naturally speeding, so what could cocaine do for me? The coke needed to catch up with me! I preferred weed to calm me down. But only when I became older and my sexual urge declined somewhat that my creative energy soared, to the degree that I preferred being creative rather than making love, although I still like pussy, but I'm full of "sex guilt" for wasting so much of my life pursuing sex when I should have been more creative and productive, not to mention the twelve years as a dope fiend on Crack.

Rather than twenty books, I should have written fifty or a hundred by now. I got stuck in the pussy and in relationships, including marriages, trying to be somebody's lover, partner and husband. I do not think I was ever a lover, partner or husband. I pretended to be and did a pitiful and miserable job of it. Ask my ex-lovers! I was no huband or father, didn't give a damn about any of that, only on the surface, but in the deep structure of my mind was the creative impulse, overriding everything else to the degree that I should have never married, although I do appreciate the women and children in my life. How they tolerated me, I don't know.

Mama said I was not the type of man she would have around her. And she said I definitely did not need a wife, maybe a secretary, maid and mistress, but not a wife. Maybe she recognized my creative essence and could see I was good for nothing else.

I have come to agree with her. We know Mom's always right. Of course I ignored her and got married numerous times, and all my marriages failed, simply because my mind wasn't there. It was up in the sky or somewhere. And so the failures were all my fault, the women were almost perfect in their love, loyalty and royal treatment of me. I am probably one of the most spoiled men in the world. Women should not spoil a man, only if they get reciprocity or get spoiled in return. How ironic that my favorite song is Nature Boy with the line, "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love and be loved in return." What a wonderful lesson, and yet what relevance does it have for the creative personality?

I am willing to love, yet the creative urge dominates. At this point, does it matter if I love or not. In the end, does it matter if am remembered as a loving partner or husband, or will not the ultimate question be, "Did he get his life's work accomplished?" Does the world--not that we should be overly concerned with the world--give a damn about my personal life or my creative life? There are those who can't stand me as a person but love my creativity. Do we give a damn about how Miles Davis treated his women, or do we love and cherish the music of Miles Davis?

-- From The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Marvin X, BBP, 2010.