He's living Black History!
He’s the new Malcolm X! Nobody’s going to talk about his book, HOW TO RECOVER FROM THE ADDICTION TO WHITE SUPREMACY, out loud, but they’ll hush hush about it.—Jerri Lange, author, Jerri, A Black Woman’s Life in the Media
He is a Master Teacher in many fields of thought—religion and psychology, sociology and anthropology, history and politics, literature and the humanities. He is a needed Counselor, for he knows himself, on the deepest of personal levels and he reveals that self to us, that we might be his beneficiaries…. If you want to reshape (clean up, raise) your consciousness, this is a book to savor, to read again and again—to pass onto a friend or lover.
—Rudolph Lewis, Editor, ChickenBones: A Journal
….Malcolm X ain’t got nothing on Marvin X. Still Marvin has been ignored and silenced like Malcolm would be ignored and silenced if he had lived on into the Now. Marvin’s one of the most extraordinary, exciting black intellectuals living today—writing, publishing, performing with Sun Ra’s Musicians (Live in Philly at Warm Daddies, available on DVD from BPP), reciting, filming, producing conferences (Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness, 2001,San Francisco Black Radical Book Fair, 2004); he’s ever engaging, challenging the respectable and the comfortable. He like Malcolm, dares to say things fearlessly, in the open (in earshot of the white man) that so many Negroes feel, think and speak on the corner, in the barbershops and urban streets of black America….
—Rudolph Lewis, Editor, ChickenBones: A Journal
…People who know Marvin X already know him as a peripatetic, outspoken, irreverent, poetic “crazy nigger,” whose pen is continually and forever out-of-control. As a professional psychologist, I hasten to invoke the disclaimer that that is in no way a diagnosis or clinical impression of mine. I have never actually subjected this brother to serious psychoanalytical scrutiny and have no wish to place him on the couch, if only because I know of no existing psycho-diagnostic instrumentality of pathology of normalcy that could properly evaluate Marvin completely.
—Dr. Nathan Hare, Black Think Tank, San Francisco
Marvin X has been a witness to history. He shows that an excellent minority writer can raise issues that the mainstream publishers and book reviewers find hard to grapple with…. He, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and others were also casualties of the chemical attack on African Americans in the form of Crack and alcohol waged by corporations and a government that placed questionable foreign policy goals above the health of its citizens…. Many of those who inspired the cultural revolution of the 1960s remain stuck there. This volume shows that Marvin X has moved on.
—Ishmael Reed, novelist, poet, essayist, publisher, Oakland
Iraq…how did we get there and how do we get back? The consciousness-altering book of poems that tells the tale, in no uncertain terms and yet always via poetry, is the astonishing Land of My Daughters: Poems 1995-2005 by Marvin X. Marvin X is the USA’s Rumi, and his nation is not “where our fathers died” but where our daughters live. The death of patriarchal war culture is his everyday reality. X’s poems vibrate, whip, love in the most meta- and physical ways imaginable and un-. He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English—the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi. It’s not unusual for him to have a sequence of shortish lines followed by a culminating line that stretches a quarter page—it is the dance of the dervishes, the rhythms of a Qasida.
—Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, New York City
Marvin X Writes Eight Books in 2010
The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/fables, Volume I
If you want to learn about inspiration and motivation, don't spend all that money going to workshops and seminars, just go stand at 14th and Broadway and watch Marvin X at work. He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland.--Ishmael Reed
Hustler’s Guide to the Game Called Life, (Wisdom of Plato Negro, Volume II)
Mythology of Pussy and Dick, toward Healthy Psychosocial Sexuality, 416 pages.
This book is the most wanted title in the Marvin X collection. Youth in the hood fight over it and steal it from each other. Girls say it empowers them, and the boys say it helps them step up their game. Mothers and fathers are demanding their sons and daughters read this. Paradise Jah Love says they fight over it as if it's black gold!
I Am Oscar Grant, essays on Oakland, $19.95. Critical essays on the travesty of American justice in the cold blooded murder of Oscar Grant by a beast in blue uniform.
Pull Yo Pants Up fada Black Prez and Yoself, essays on Obama Drama, $19.95.
Marvin X is on the mark again with his accurate observation of the Obama era. The black community was so excited with Obama being the first Black Prez that they forgot he was a politician-not a messiah. Marvin X brings the community back to the reality of what Obama stands for-at the moment! He has not given up on Da Prez, he simply wants people to see what he stands for and what he still has an opportunity to do for our communities. Make sure you put Pull Yo Pants Up Fada Black Prez & Yo Self on your to-buy list It will be the best book you will read in 2010!--Carolyn Mixon
Marvin X, Guest Editor, Poetry Issue, Journal of Pan African Studies, 480 pages
In honor of the Journal of Black Poetry, Marvin X collects poetry from throughout the Pan African world. This massive issue is a classic of radical Pan African literature in the 21st century. Amiri Baraka says, "He has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the innovators and founders of the new revolutionary school of African writing."
Notes on the Wisdom of Action or How to Jump Out of the Box. In this collection he calls upon the people to become proactive rather than reactionary, to initiate the movement out the box of oppression by any means necessary, although Marvin X believes in the power of spiritual consciousness to create infinite possibilities toward liberation.
Soulful Musings on Unity of North American Africans, 150 pages
Available from Black Bird Press, 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA 94702. jmarvinx@yahoo.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment