Notes on Slave Narratives from Marvin X's Academy of da Corner

 Young brothers at Marvin X's Academy of da Corner, reading the Oakland Post Newspaper

photo by Gene Hazzard

 Marvin X and son of Chicago's BPP Chairman, Fred Hampton, murdered in a police shootout.
Black Panther Cub will host a reception for Black Liberation/Black Arts Movement Elder Marvin X in Chicago while he attends the University of Chicago celebration of Black Arts Movement Master Sun Ra. Marvin X had a long artistic association with Sun Ra and his Myth-Science Arkestra and will perform with surviving Arkestra members Marshall Allen and Danny Thompson, along with David Boykin and other Chicago musicians and poets.

Black Arts Movement's poets/mythologists/philosophers Marvin X and Sun Ra

 Rev. Blandon Reemes, Academy of da Corner students/authors Aries Jordan, Latoya Carter and Master Teacher Marvin X, on a visit to Alameda County Juvenile Hall to give out books from North American African authors, donated by the Post Newsgroup, published by Paul Cobb.

 Linda Johnson, dancer, choreographer, dancer Raynetta Rayzetta, Val Serrant, Tumani, drummers

at the 75th birthday celebration of Amiri Baraka at the Lush Live Gallery, San Francisco, produced by Marvin X.

Aries Jordan, one of the students at Academy of Da Corner that Marvin X has mentored.
She survived the Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience to publish two books and have a male child, Legend Muhammad.

 Marvin X and Academy of da Corner students Toya Prosperity and Aries Jordan, reading poetry at the Memorial for Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Los Angeles Black Panther Party Leader, at Oakland's Bobby Hutton Park, aka Defermery Park.

Bay Area Black Authors, Artists, Activists celebrate the life of slain journalist Chauncey Bailey at the Joyce Gordon Gallery, 14th and Franklin, Oakland.
photo Gene Hazzard and Adam Turner

 Comrade George Jackson, Messiah of the American Prison Movement

 

Dr. Mohja Khaf, Syrian Poet/Professor at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteeville

 Marvin X as bandleader with the Black Arts Movement Poet's Choir and Arkestra

performing at the Malcolm X Jazz/Art Festival, Oakland, May, 2014

Cornel West's first cousin Kwame Satterfield is Marvin X's stepson. Ase!

I am so horrified at the tales people tell me at Academy of da Corner, whether at Oakland's 14th and Broadway, the upscale Lakeshore Academy or in Berkeley at the ASHBY BART STATION. We are at all locations when we feel like it (prerogative of the Senior Citizen).

The unresolved grief and traumatic stress narratives presented to me in the various locations of Academy of da Corner, are overwhelming to say the least. Yes, some of the tales and stores are beyond tragedy, yet Cheikh Anta Diop taught us there is no African tragedy, only tragi-comedy, for the Southern Cradle believes in tragi-comedy. Tragedy is a concept from the Northern Cradle, Europe, thus it has no place in African mythology.

Perhaps, one day I can present testimonies in the first person, especially since I am pushing the suffering oppressed to write their narratives of how I survived, the essential theme in North Amrican literature, beginning with the socalled Slave Narratives, we say the Narratives of North American Africans caught in the American Slave System (Ed Howard term). I tell them to write one page a day. They said, how can I do this? I say turn off the phone, get the lover off your shoulder, put them out the room for an hour or two, do not show them what you are writing, write, write, write. Got blockage? Get some Henny, weed or Blizo! No writer's block up in here!