Somethin' Proper, the Autobiography of Marvin X, from the introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare
Marvin X
photo Kamau Amen Ra
Somethin' Proper, the Autobiography of Marvin X, Black Bird Press, 1998
from the Introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare, the Black Think Tank
In
SOMETHIN' PROPER, we quickly see that we are inside the pages not only
of Marvin's private political papers, comprising a lyrical diary shaped
to be read and enjoyed like a novel by the masterful hands of an
internationally noted black poet, but we are being escorted to the
cutting edge of a fascinating postmodern black literary genre in the
making, the notes of an undying black warrior who refuses to give up,
give out or give in!
Although easy to read by almost anybody
wishing to do so, SOMETHIN' PROPER (apparently a phrase from the drug
subculture, i.e., BREAK ME OFF SOMETHIN' PROPER), presents us at once
with an opportunity for a deeper understanding of a panorama of
participants in the often poignant but sometimes hilarious inner
workings of the black male psyche, from the middle class bourgeois
pretenders such as "tenured Negroes" on the academic plantation and
their "negrocity," to "coconuts" in the corporations, and across the
spectrum to brothers in the hood, particularly the way in which utility
and haughty demeanor conceal and mask the panoramic and pervasive
depression of the black male.
Before his death at the early age
of 36, Frantz Fanon, the black psychiatrist who lived and wrote about
the relations between the oppressor and oppressed in the battle of
Algiers (Wretched of the Earth; Black Skin, White Masks, and A Dying
Colonialism), presented us with clear psychiatric paradigms for the
struggles Marvin deftly captures for us.
Marvin is able to give
us insights into himself and his affiliates (Huey Newton, Eldridge
Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Little Bobby Hutton, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez,
Angela Davis,
et.al., that are original but reminiscent of Fanon, because Marvin is bearing the covers on his life and the life of others.
Of
all the many disorders and distortions that plague the black male, each
and every day, perhaps the ones that take the heaviest tool on his
ravished brain are those that—if not contained by armed
resistance—revolve around the painful difficulty of gaining control over
his individual and collective destiny, around what is known in mental
health circles as "the locus of control," the dilemma of resistance to
the enemy from without and the enemy from within (including the self, if
we consider that there can be no master without those who, for whatever
reason, are willing to be a slave). Might makes right but not for long.
If
we honor the likes of Patrick Henry for saying "give me liberty or give
me death," it is no matter that when the Negro says give him liberty or
death the white man tries to give him death! The so-called Negro is
confronted with a choice Patrick Henry had not reckoned with, something
Fanon called "reactional disorders" or "psychosomatic pathology" that is
the direct product of oppression.
But out of a last ditch
desperation in self-medication and the management of his pulverized and
thwarted emotions, in a mindless effort to soothe his psychological and
social wounds, the black male is introduced unwarily if discreetly to
the vicious cycle of self-mutilation and induced addiction, which takes
hold and spreads like an epidemic virus as part of the
psycho-technology, historically, of the white man's oppression of the
North American African and others around the world.
In his
powerlessness and victimization, with nothing left to lean on, the black
man is likely to mount the seesaw, if not the roller coaster of racial
psycho-social dependency and messianic religiosity (becoming the mad-dog
religious fanatic, believing in a savior other than himself) on the one
hand and the individual chemical dependent on the other, i.e. the dope
fiend.
Marvin decontructs both. In the bottomless caverns of
addiction in any form, there seems no amount of religiosity, coke,
crack, alcohol or sex sufficient to sedate the social angst and
shattered cultural strivings.
The more the black man tempts to
medicate his anxiety and to mask his depression and self doubts with
pretense and hostility, the more he finds himself in trouble with the
persons he must love and be loved by than with the alien representatives
of the society that would control and castrate his manhood.
Novelist
Richard Wright, addressing these paradoxes and dilemmas in his own
autobiography BLACK BOY, explained that, "Because I had no power to make
things happen outside of me in the objective world, I made things
happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak, I endowed it
with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it for the sake of my own hungry
and cloudy yearning."
The catch is in the way these things turn out after the boy has been taken through the
meat grinder
of growing up within the machinery of white social control. In
response, the strategy or road most taken by both Marvin X and Richard
Wright, to put it simply, is FLIGHT (what Wright as a matter of fact
names the middle passage of his novel, Native Son, book 2 of 3).
As
surely as the individual who accepts oppression is constantly in flight
from his racial identity, the black man who rejects it is constantly on
the run from the agency of white supremacy that must control him and
wishes to annihilate him outright. And here is where Marvin's story is
most valuable to us , helping us to grasp the meaning of the tradition
of escape within our race, literature and history, stretching back to
the slave trade and slave ships of the middle passage, down to the
demanding requirements of escape from coercion, incarceration and
surveillance in the modern era: he takes us through a childhood of
continual efforts to avoid juvenile hall, to the flights of his father
(despite punishing ambiguities, Marvin X dedicates his book to both his
parents in memorial), calling upon pure personal honesty and the deepest
levels of understanding to appreciate the parental struggles of his own
and the resulting psycho-sexual and social conflicts.
Without
professing to do so, Marvin X speaks here most effectively of all black
men, exposing their triumphs and follies, telling all he knows about
everybody, including himself, always seeming to exact the hardest toll
of all on himself, inviting us openly and unashamedly into the
intricacies of his youthful endeavors to love too many women, including
more than one try at the practice of polygamy (at one point he had four
wives, in the Islamic tradition), until he realizes that if monogamy is
the love and marriage of one woman, polygamy is the love or marriage of
one woman too many!
I predict that SOMETHIN' PROPER (the life and
times of a North American African Poet) will readily emerge as an
underground classic as well as a classic of the black consciousness
movement and the world of the troubled inner city, a manual of value to
any brother who has lost his way and the sister who would help him to
understand or know how to find it, to find it within himself, in the
intriguing story of Marvin X, who has been there and the women and
political fellow-travelers in the black movement who were there with him
in his often daring escapades, his secret flights and open
confrontations with white supremacy.
In the end, is he bitter? Or
is he happy as a negro eating watermelon on massa's plantation? Well,
in the beginning white people are devils—but by the end, all people are
devils—in Marvin's world. After all, this is his story. Nevertheless, by
the end we are convinced Marvin has regained faith in himself, his God
and his people.
And it is gratifying in an era of the sellout,
the faint hearted and the fallen, to see that Marvin X was one black man
who met the white man in the center of the ring and walked with him to
the corners of psycho-social inequity, grappling with him through the
bowels of the earth, yet remained one black man the white man couldn't
get.
I'm glad I stopped that day on Market Street and bought a
pair of Marvin's sunglasses, but I wish I knew where to find those
sunglasses now, because I could feel so proud to wear them, or, better
yet, I could lend them to some other brother who was trying to find his
way to SOMETHIN' PROPER while moving in the direction of the sun.
--Dr. Nathan Hare
The Public Career of Marvin X
30 Years of Teaching and Writing: The Public Career of Marvin X
by
James G. Spady
Copyright James G. Spady, 1997,
Philadelphia New Observer
Marvin
X has been teaching for a long time. He has established his tenacity.
As one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement (BAM), he became a
teacher in an emerging field called Black Studies. Like Sonia Sanchez,
Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Askia Toure and others, Marvin X both
contributed to and later taught those pivotal courses that constituted a
new discipline.
For the last thirty years, this gifted poet,
journalist, dramatist, oral historian (he appears to be the only
participant in the Black Arts Movement that conducted intensive and
extensive oral interviews with the key participants, as well as
international political, cultural and educational leaders)and teacher,
has established an unusual record. Marvin X has taught at the University
of California at San Diego, Mills College, San Francisco State
University, Fresno State University,
Laney and Merritt Colleges in Oakland, University of Nevada,Reno, and the University of California at Berkeley.
His
peers were among the first to recognize his ability. The well-known
African American man of the Arts and Letters, Amiri Baraka, refers to
Marvin X as "one of the outstanding African writers and teachers in
America. He has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing.
Indeed, he is one of the founders and innovators of the new
revolutionary school of African writing."
One of the best known
playwrights in America is Ed Bullins. He refers to X as "one of the
founders of the modern day Black theatre movement. He is a Black artist
par excellence." The editor of Black Scholar magazine, Robert Chrisman,
spoke of Marvin as "an extraordinary distinguished poet who has a
powerful sense of meaningful drama"....
After high school (1962),
Marvin enrolled in Oakland City College, aka Merritt College. There he
met Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, who went on to found the Black Panther
Party. It was at OCC that Marvin began to undergo a vital change. He
listened intently as speaker after speaker addressed the ever-growing
members of the cognoscente at Oakland City College. They, like many area
colleges, benefited from the organizing and conscious-raising
activities of the Afro American Association under the leadership of a
young black lawyer, Donald Warden (now Khalid Abdullah Al Mansour).
Marvin's early writings appeared in the Merritt College literary
magazine.
Upon receiving the A.A. degree, Marvin went on to San
Francisco State University, 1964. Marvin wrote a play for one of his
English classes. The professor, legendary novelist John Gardner, was
sufficiently impressed to carry it over to the theatre department. In
the Spring of 1965, Marvin X's one-act play "Flowers for the Trashman"
was produced at San Francisco State, a novel experience for an African
American. It is even more exceptional in that it was his first play.
(Published initially in Black Dialogue, Winter, 1966 and later in Black
Fire, edited by Larry Neal and LeRoi Jones).
Marvin X soon met
Philly playwright Ed Bullins, introduced to him by Art Sheridan,
founding editor of Black Dialogue magazine. Ed and Marvin founded Black
Arts West Thetre in the Fillmore. Black Arts West was certainly
influenced by the Black Arts Movement in the East, mainly New York and
Philadelphia.
The role of Amiri Baraka in shaping national Black
consciousness can not be overemphasized. However, Marvin X, Hillary X,
Ethna X, Duncan X (as they would become in a few months after joining
the Nation of Islam, circa 1967), along with Ed Bullins and Farouk (Carl
Bossiere, rip)were part of an indigenous Black Arts Movement....
Part Two: 30 Years of Teaching and Writing: The Public Career of Marvin X
by James G. Spady, Philadelphia New Observer,1997
copyright (c) 1997 by James G. Spady
...The
poetry of Marvin X is deeply rooted in the cosmological convictions of
his ancestors and his community. His individual identity is inextricably
linked to his communal identity. That is why it functions as a source
of power and inspiration. Because he is open to the magico-realist
perception or reality and has the authentic experiences of the streets,
Marvin's works strike a chord. Nowhere is this better exemplified than
in a recent collection, Love and War, 1995.
"Read Love and War for Ramadan!"--Dr. Mohja Kahf, University of Arkansas, Department of English and Islamic Literature
cover art by Emory Douglas, Black Panther Minister of Culture
He
introduces the work with these words, "Love and War is my poetic story
of rediscovering self love and the internal war (Jihad) to reconquer my
soul from the devil who whispers into the hearts of men, Al Qur'an. But I
am also mindful of socio political conditions of my people. And this
reality fills me with compassion and love, forcing me once again (now
that I am clean and sober) to put on the armor of God and return to the
battlefield. This collection is a signal of my return to the struggle of
African American liberation after an absence of nearly a decade, caused
by disillusionment and drug abuse. I return with the spirit of my
friend, Huey P. Newton, rip, shaking my bones. He and I were often in
the same drug territory and but for the grace of God, I chould have
easily suffered a fate similar to his. I came close many times. Praise
be to Allah."
"Marvin X was my teacher, many of our comrades came through his black theatre: Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Emory Douglas, George Murray and Sam Napier."
--Dr. Huey P. Newton,co-founder of the Black Panther Party
...Craft
is essential to Marvin X's poetry and drama. He knows the possibilities
and constraints of the form. And he also knows how to expand. He
credits
Sun Ra with
having helped him to realize the full possibilities of theatre. Marvin
read his poetry in San Ra's grand musical energy field and he closely
observed Sonny's skillful exploration of our Omniverse and all of its
real possibilities. Was int not Sun Ra who told Marvin X that he would
be teaching at U.C. Berkeley before it happened?
Marvin X and Sun Ra, both Gemini. Sun Ra was Marvin's mentor and artistic associate.
They performed together from coast to coast. This pic is outside
Marvin's Black Educational Theatre in San Francisco's Fillmore, 1972.
Sun Ra wrote the music
for Marvin's play Take Care of Business,
the musical version of Flowers for the Trashman.
...Nearly
30 years ago, Marvin sought to teach the relationship of Islam and
Black Art. In his published conversation with Amiri Baraka, he attempted
to reconcile and provide voices and faces for the different expressions
of Islam in the West.
As a skilled interviewer, he allows Askia
Toure and Baraka's divergent views of Islam to be placed into the
record. In the afterword he states, "I believe the Honorable Elijah
Muhammad is at least ten years ahead of any Black group working for
freedom, justice and equality in the hells of North America. The Islamic
ideology, discipline and organizational structure permits the masses of
our people to fully develop their self-identity, self defense and
self-government."
Again, X is out front. He recognized the
tremendous influence Islam had on the Black Arts Movement. He is a case
study in that type of influence....
Elijah and Malcolm, major influences on Marvin X.
He honors both men.
....Marvin
X is credited with convincing Eldridge Cleaver to use his advance
against royalties from the popular book Soul on Ice, to help set up
Black House. The building became "the mecca of political, cultural
activity in The Bay Area. Among artists featured were: Sonia
Sanchez,Vonetta McGee, Amiri and Amina Baraka, Chicago Art Ensemble,
Avoctja,
Emory Douglas, Sarah Webster Fabio, et al. Playwright Ed Bullins joined
Marvin and Eldrdige at the Black House, along with Marvin's partner,
Ethna X (Hurriyah Asar), and singer Willie Dale, Cleaver's buddy from
San Quentin.
Eldridge Cleaver, see Marvin X's memoir, Eldridge Cleaver, My friend the Devil, 2009 Upon his release from Soledad prison, Marvin X was the first person he hooked up with. Later Marvin introduced him to Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.
....Marvin
X is a teacher of primeval knowledge, a knower of both street poetry
and book poetry. In fact, he combines the two in a powerful way. Each
verse is a teach act, each stanza--a class. His use of alliteration,
rhymes, assonance, dissonance and free rhymes indicates he has absorbed
the teachings of the academy. Yet, the street consciousness lying in the
cut of its content links him directly to the poets of the new idiom
called Rap.
Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale
who attended Oakland's Merritt College along with Huey Newton and Marvin
X. Bobby performed in Marvin's second play Come Next Summer before
founding the Black
Panther Party.
His
experimental verses are wholistic, historical and yet dialogical. The
dynamic complexities of the situation creates in the reader an urgent
need to know more. Can we expect anything elswe from a good teacher?
James G. Spady is one of our greatest literary critics. We will soon
post his review of Marvin X's autobiography, Somethin Proper, entitled
"Making an Inventory and Constructing Self Prior to the year 2000." His
review is not dated by time.
l
Review: Junious Ricardo Stanton on In the Crazy House Called America, essays by Marvin X
By
Marvin X Offers A Healing Peek Into His Psyche
By Junious Ricardo Stanton
Rarely
is a brother secure and honest enough with himself to reveal his
innermost thoughts, emotions or his most hellacious life experiences.
For most men it would be a monumental feat just to share/bare his soul
with his closest friends but to do so to perfect strangers would be
unthinkable, unless he had gone through the fires of life and emerged
free of the dross that tarnishes his soul. Marvin X, poet, playwright,
author and essayist does just that in a self-published book entitled In the Crazy House Called America.
This
latest piece from Marvin X offers a peek into his soul and his psyche.
He lets the reader know he is hip to the rabid oppression the West heaps
upon people of color especially North American Africans while at the
same time revealing the knowledge gleaned from his days as a student
radical, black nationalist revolutionary forger of the Black Arts
Movement, husband, father lover, a dogger of women did not spare him the
degradation and agony of descending into the abyss of crack addiction,
abusive and toxic relationships and family tragedy.
Perhaps
because of the knowledge gained as a member of the Nation of Islam, and
his experiences as one of the prime movers of the cultural revolution
of the '60, the insights he shares In the Crazy House Called America are
all the keener. Marvin writes candidly of his pain, bewilderment and
depression of losing his son to suicide. He shares in a very powerful
way, his own out of body helplessness as he wallowed in the dregs of an
addiction that threatened to destroy his soul and the mess his
addictions made of his life and relationships with those he loved.
But
he is not preachy and this is not an autobiography. He has already been
there and done that. In sharing his story and the wisdom he has gleaned
from his life experiences and looking at the world through the eyes of
an artist/healer, Marvin X serves as a modern day shaman/juju man who in
order to heal himself and his people ventures into the spirit realm to
confront the soul devouring demons and mind pulverizing dragons; he is
temporarily possessed by them, heroically struggles to rebuke their
power before they destroy him; which enables him to return to this
realm, tell us what it is like, prove redemption is possible, thereby
empowering himself/ us and helping to heal us. He touches on a myriad of
topics as he raps and writes about himself and current events.
Reading
this book you know he knows what it is like to come face to face with
and do battle with the insanity and death this society has in store for
all Africans. Marvin X talks about his sexual relations/dysfunction,
drugs, media and free speech, sports, black political power or the lack
thereof, the war on drugs and the current War on Terrorism, nothing is
off limits. He includes reviews of music, theater as well as film, but
not as some smarter/ holier than thou, elitist observer.
Marvin
X writes as one actively engaged in life, including its pain and
suffering. He lets us know he was a willing and active participant in
his addiction, how it impacted his decision making, his role as a
parent, his male-female "relationships", his ability to be creative
within a movement to liberate African people and the world from the
corruption of Caucasian hegemony.
Marvin
X is in recovery and it has not been easy for him. As a writer/healer
he still has the voice of a revolutionary poet/playwright, it is a voice
we need to listen and pay attention to. He has survived his own
purgatory and emerged stronger and more committed to life and saving his
people. As North American Africans (his term to differentiate us from
our continental and Diaspora brethren) he sees the toll the insanity of
this culture takes on us. His culturally induced self-destructive
lifestyle choices and the death of his son is a testament to how life
threatening and lethal this society can be.
But
Marvin X also talks about spiritual redemption, the ability to
transcend even the most horrific experiences with resiliency and
determination so that one gets a glimpse of one's own divine
potential. This book is an easy read which makes it all the more
profound. In The Crazy House Called America is for brothers
especially. It is a book all black men should grab hold of and digest,
if for no other reason than to experience just how redemptively healing
and liberating being honest can be.
* * * * *
Eldridge Cleaver: My friend the Devil, A Memoir by Marvin X
March 21, 2009
Introduction
Marvin X‘s newest book, “Eldridge Cleaver: My Friend, The Devil” is an
important Expose!, notonly of whom his good friend really was… (I
confess I thought something like that, in less metaphysical terms,
from the day we met, at San Francisco State, 1967) But also of whom
Marvin was/is. Now, Marvin has confessed to being Yacub, whom Elijah
Muhammad taught us was the “evil big head scientist” who created the
devil. (Marvin’s head is very large for his age.)
What is good
about this book is Marvin’s telling us something about who Eldridge
became as the Black Panther years receded in the rear view mirror. I
remember during this period, when I learned that Marvin was hanging
around Cleaver even after he’d made his televised switch from
anti-capitalist revolutionary to Christian minister, denouncing the 3rd
World revolutionaries and the little Marxism he thought he knew, while
openly acknowledging beating his wife as a God given male prerogative, I
said to Marvin, “I thought you was a Muslim” . His retort, “Jesus pay
more money than Allah, Bro”, should be a classic statement of
vituperative recidivism.
But this is one of the charms of this
memoir. It makes the bizarre fathomable. Especially the tales of
fraternization with arguably the most racist & whitest of the Xtian
born agains with Marvin as agent, road manager,
co-conspirator-confessor, for the post-Panther – very shot- out Cleaver.
It also partially explains some of Cleaver’s moves to get back in this
country, he had onetime denounced, and what he did after the big cop
out. Plus, some of the time, these goings on seem straight out
hilarious. Though frequently, that mirth is laced with a sting of
regret. Likewise, I want everyone to know that I am writing this against
my will, as a favor to Yacub.—Amiri Baraka. Newark, 5/13/09
Chapter 1
It
all began at Soledad Prison, sometime during 1966. Black Dialogue
magazine was approached by attorney Beverly Axelrod about making a visit
to the Soledad Prison Black Culture Club. The editors agreed to make
the visit, including myself as fiction editor. The other editors
included Art Sheridan, Gerald, Aubrey and Peter LaBrie, Sadaat Ahmed,
Joe Goncalves, Duke Williams, et al. We made our way down the coast to
Soledad. I was both excited and sad because my brother Ollie was
probably an inmate at the time, though I can't remember.
Our
staff was taken to the hosting officer's apartment and briefed on what
to do and not to do. No contact with inmates, no passing or taking of
literature. We agreed but it didn't mean a thing. Soon as we got inside
the meeting room we knew what we were going to do. At first we got
inside and saw the brothers seated, with the meeting in progress.
Eldridge was chair and his lieutenant was Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter.
Bunchy was a very handsome black man, so handsome it belied his
leadership qualities as head of the Los Angeles Slauson gang.
But
chairman Cleaver was a giant of a man, tell, light skinned and
articulate. But more than the words said, I was immediately impressed
with the organizational structure with brothers on post with military
style discipline. It was probably the first time I'd seen black men so
organized. We know now according to brother Kumasi that this was the
beginning of the prison movement in California and the nation, this
black culture club of mostly young black men confined to the dungeon as
so many are today, causing havoc in black family and community life.
In
this Soledad dungeon would come a prison movement on par with the black
student movement, black arts, and black studies. As I listened to
Chairman Eldridge speak, I said to myself this is a dangerous Negro if
allowed to depart these walls. Clearly, he was well read after a total
of eighteen years of confinement in the California Gulags. I would learn
later he was soaked in Marxist Leninism and literature in general. And
when Black Dialogue obtained his writings for publication, especially
“My, Queen, I Greet You,” we suspected this was a man with the passion
and writing skills of Baldwin. And of course he must have sensed this
comparison and thus his need to denounce Baldwin to take a shot at the
black literary crown, although he did it by a homophobic denunciation
which led one to suspect his own sexual improprieties, especially after
so long in prison.
But at that first meeting, we were humbled to
be with the brothers, to share with them by reading our writings from
Black Dialogue. At the end of the meeting we all embraced and exchanged
materials in violation of the officer's request. We gave them copies of
Dialogue and they gave us manuscripts of their writings which were later
published in Dialogue and Journal of Black Poetry. As I said, we
published “My Queen, I Greet You,” in Dialogue and Joe Goncalves
published the poetry of Bunchy and others in JBP. We left Soledad and
headed back up the coast to San Francisco. Thus was established a
connection between the prison movement and black students, the black
arts movement and eventually the Black Panther Party when I introduced
Elbridge to Bobby Seale soon after his release from prison.
Chapter II
Several
months passed before I met Eldridge again. Somebody called me to come
over Sister Mary Anna's house. Maryanna Waddy was the daughter of
painter Ruth Waddy, but more importantly, she was the student, though
somewhat older at the time, who aggressively pushed for the name change
from Negro Students Association to the Black Students Union. Maryanna
was a strong black woman who took no jive, maybe the result of black
consciousness taught by her mother. But when I entered her house,
Eldridge was there trying to introduce his plans to the community.
There
seemed to be some tension between him and Maryanna, a black man/black
woman power battle. Maybe Maryanna knew about Eldridge's white woman
lawyer, Beverley Axelrod, who had smuggled his manuscript Soul on Ice
out of Soledad. We would learn that Eldridge had promised to marry her,
so his blackness was suspect from the beginning—but we would handle that
matter a few months down the road. Maryanna and most of those present,
maybe members of the BSU, including those of us from Black Dialogue. If I
recall correctly, Eldridge gave me a ride home and we agreed to meet
again soon.
Things were going bad for us at Black Arts West
Theatre on Fillmore Street, across the street from Tree's pool hall and
around the corner from the Sun Reporter newspaper, published by the
millionaire Communist Dr. Carlton Goodlett. BAW was breaking up because
of egos and other psychopathic behavior in our crew which included Ed
Bullins, Duncan Barber, Hillary Broadous, Carl Bossiere, and Ethna
Wyatt. All of us wanted to make BAW happen but our egos got in the way,
along with deeper mental problems. In spite of these problems, we did my
plays and the plays of Ed Bullins. We had jazz concerts with the Bay
Area's best, including Raphael Garrett, Monte Waters, Dewey Redman,
Oliver Jackson, B.J., and others.
Only thing with the musicians,
many had white women which we would not allow in the theatre, since we
were black nationalists on the road to becoming members of the Nation of
Islam. A long time criminal Muslim came to our theatre to recruit us,
Alonzo Harris Batin, who became the guru and mentor of BAW. Batin was a
criminal with a heart of gold. He wanted us to join the Nation even
though most of the time he was not in good standing and considered a
hypocrite. Soon we were indoctrinated by Batin and eventually most of us
joined the Nation except Ed Bullins. Bullins was into his art and
living or at least staying in the Beatnik area of North Beach.
For
awhile, Ethna was the glue that held BAW together. She fed us when we
were low on money to buy food. She would cook something that would be
enough for the crew and she would try to stop us from killing each other
as we ego-tripped. Ethna had come from Chicago, maybe during or around
the time of that Summer of Love. It seemed many beautiful women fled
Chicago to the West coast. Ethna's friend had come, Sandra Williams,
helping out at BAW. Danny Glover acted in BAW, performing in Dorothy
Ahmed's play Papa's Daughter, about incest. Actress and SFSU student
Vonetta McGee performed in Bullins' play It Has No Choice and another
play by Bullins that I can't remember the name.
And then one
day the crew called me to the lobby of the theatre to meet a man they
said spoke seven languages. After they called me several times to come
to the lobby, I came from the theatre to meet a tall, jet black brother
with straight hair, Ali Sharif Bey, who indeed did speak several
languages, including English, Persian, Spanish, French, Arabic and Urdu.
He became our on-site Islamic scholar and teacher, teaching us Arabic
and his vast knowledge of Islam based on the Ahmediah sect, the great
evangelists of Islam to the West. Ali Sharif Bey would surface later as
the runner for the SLA when they kidnapped Patty Hearst. He is the
source for my master thesis docudrama How I Met Isa.
But in
spite of all this community support—none from the Black bourgeoisie
until later at the Black House which Eldridge convinced me to help
organize since I told him I was tired of the bs at BAW and was ready to
do something different. We discussed setting up what eventually became
Black House, a political/cultural center on Broderick Street off
Divisadero in the Fillmore. Ed Bullins soon joined Eldridge, Ethna and
myself. For a few months Black House became the cultural center of the
Bay with thousands of conscious hungry black flocking there for culture.
Black House participants included Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia
Toure, Chicago Art Ensemble, Sarah Webster Fabio, Reginald Lockett,
Emory Douglas, Samuel Napier and Little Bobby Hutton. On the political
side, Eldridge brought in a Communist party leader, Rosco Proctor.
Eldridge
had no time for the culture, even though he couldn't help but be
influenced by it since it was at the house he financed with his advance
from Soul On Ice. He and Baraka had little to say to each other even
though Baraka's Communication Project at San Francisco State College/now
University, had its off campus base at Black House. Years later these
two men would switch ideologies with Baraka turning Communist and
Eldridge finding religion. Eldridge would eventually go from Communist
to Christian, to Mormon to Moonie to Religious Science.
But at
Black House he was strictly Communist and he pushed hard to get us to
follow his path, though we resisted until Black House fell apart from
ideological differences. Before it fell we had gone to Beverly Axelrod's
house to literally remove Cleaver since we found it a contradiction for
the chairman of Black House to be sleeping at the White House. One
afternoon brother Batin and I made Eldridge move his things from the
White House while Miss Ann cried. Among his belongings was that wicker
chair, spear and rug made famous in that photo of Huey Newton.
Marvin X, also known as Marvin Jackmon and El Muhajir
was born May
29, 1944 in Fowler, California, near Fresno. Marvin X is well known for his work
as a poet, playwright and essayist of the
BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT or BAM. He
attended Merritt College along with Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. He received
his BA and MA in English from San Francisco State University.
Marvin X is most well known for his work with Ed Bullins in the founding of
Black House and The Black Arts/West Theatre in San Francisco. Black House served
briefly as the headquarters for the Black Panther Party and as a center for
performance, theatre, poetry and music.
Marvin X is a playwright in the true spirit of the BAM. His most well-known
BAM play, entitled Flowers for the Trashman, deals with generational
difficulties and the crisis of the Black intellectual as he deals with education
in a white-controlled culture. Marvin X's other works include, The Black Bird,
The Trial, Resurrection of the Dead and In the Name of Love.
He currently has the longest running African American drama in the San
Francisco Bay area and Northern California, ONE DAY IN THE LIFE, a tragi-comedy
of addiction and recovery. He is the founder and director of RECOVERY THEATRE.
Marvin X has continued to work as a lecturer, teacher and producer. He has
taught at Fresno State University; San Francisco State University; University of
California - Berkeley and San Diego; University of Nevada, Reno; Mills College,
Laney and Merritt Colleges in Oakland. He has received writing fellowships from
Columbia University and the National Endowment for the Arts and planning grants
from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Read: Marvin X Unplugged
An Interview by Lee Hubbard
Marvin X is available for lectures/readings/performance.
Contact him at
xblackxmanx@aol.com.
The
Wisdom of Plato Negro: Parables/Fables
In “Wisdom of Plato Negro,” Marvin teaches by stories, ancient devices of
instruction that appeal to a non-literate as well as a semi-literate people.
(Fables differ from parables only by their use of animal characters.) The
oldest existing genre of storytelling used long before the parables of Jesus
or the fables of Aesop, they are excellent tools, in the hands of a skilled
artist like Marvin X, in that he modifies the genre for a rebellious hip hop
generation who drops out or are pushed out of repressive state sponsored
public schools at a 50% clip. Marvin X is a master of these short short
stories. Bibliographies, extended footnotes, indexes, formal argumentation,
he knows, are of no use to the audience he seeks, that 95 percent that lives
from paycheck to paycheck.
These moral oral forms (parables and fables), developed before the
invention of writing, taught by indirection how to think and behave
respecting the integrity of others. Marvin explained to his College of Arts
audience, “This form [the parable] seems perfect for people with short
attention span, the video generation… The parable fits my moral or
ethical prerogative, allowing my didacticism to run full range” (“Parable of
a Day in the Life of Plato Negro,” 147). But we live in a more “hostile
environment” than ancient people. Our non-urban ancestors were more in
harmony with Nature than our global racialized, exploitive, militarized
northern elite societies.
—Rudolph Lewis is the Founding Editor of Chickenbones.com, A Journal.
(
Click
here to read the full review).
BEYOND RELIGION, TOWARD
SPIRITUALITY, ESSAYS ON CONSCIOUSNESS
Click to order via Amazon
Paperback: 281 pages
Publisher: Black Bird Press (2007)
Language: English
Marvin X has done extraordinary mind and soul work in bringing our attention
to the importance of spirituality, as opposed to religion, in our daily living.
Someone'maybe Kierkegaard or maybe it was George Fox who'said that there was no
such thing as "Christianity." There can only be Christians. It is not
institutions but rather individuals who make the meaningful differences in our
world. It is not Islam but Muslims. Not Buddhism but Buddhists. Marvin X has
made a courageous difference. In this book he shares the wondrous vision of his
spiritual explorations. His eloquent language and rhetoric are
varied'sophisticated but also earthy, sometimes both at once.
Highly informed he speaks to many societal levels and to both genders'to the
intellectual as well as to the man/woman on the street or the unfortunate in
prison'to the mind as well as the heart. His topics range from global politics
and economics to those between men and women in their household. Common sense
dominates his thought. He shuns political correctness for the truth of life. 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.
All of which are represented in his Radical Spirituality'a balm for those who
anguish in these troubling times of disinformation. As a shaman himself, he
calls too for a Radical Mythology to override the traditional mythologies of
racial supremacy that foster war and injustice. 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
L
Islam and the Black Arts Movement: Marvin X's Love and War poems, 1995
Marvin
X was a prime shaper of the Black Arts Movement (1964-1970s) which is,
among other things, the birthplace of modern Muslim American literature,
and it begins with him. Well, Malik Shabazz and him....
Declaring
Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because
recontextualizing it will add another layer of attention to his
incredibly rich body of work.He deserves to be WAY better known than he
is among Muslim Americans and generally, in the world of writing and the
world at large. By we who are younger Muslim American poets, in
particular, Marvin should be honored as our elder, one who is still
kickin, still true to the word!--Dr. Mohja Kahf
Cover art by Emory Douglas, Black Panther Party Minister of Culture
Fly to Allah, 1969, is the beginning of Muslim American literature, according to Dr. Mohja Kahf.
Marvin
X, 1972. His Black Educational Theatre performed Resurrection of the
Dead, a myth-ritual dance drama, 1972. His actors were students from his
drama class at University of California, Berkeley.
Syrian poet-professor-activist, Dr. Mohja Kahf
Dr.
Mohja Kahf and Marvin X. She invited Marvin X to read at the University
of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where she teaches English and Islamic
literature.
Love and War
poems
by Marvin X
review by Mohja Kahf
Have spent the last few days (when not mourning with friends and family
the passing of my family friend and mentor in Muslim feminism and
Islamic work, Sharifa AlKhateeb, (may she dwell in Rahma), immersed in
the work of Marvin X and amazed at his brilliance. This poet has been
prolific since his first book of poems, Fly to Allah, (1969), right up
to his most recent Love and War Poems (1995) and Land of My Daughters,
2005, not to mention his plays, which were produced (without royalties)
in Black community theatres from the 1960s to the present, and essay
collections such as In the Crazy House Called America, 2002, and Wish I
Could Tell You The Truth, 2005.
Marvin
X was a prime shaper of the Black Arts Movement (1964-1970s) which is,
among other things, the birthplace of modern Muslim American literature,
and it begins with him. Well, Malik Shabazz and him. But while the
Autobiography of Malcolm X is a touchstone of Muslim American culture,
Marvin X and other Muslims in BAM were the emergence of a cultural
expression of Black Power and Muslim thought inspired by Malcolm, who
was, of course, ignited by the teachings and writings of the Honorable
Elijah Muhammad. And that, taken all together, is what I see as the
starting point of Muslim American literature. Then there are others,
immigrant Muslims and white American Muslims and so forth, that follow.
There are also antecedents, such as the letters of Africans enslaved in
America. Maybe there is writing by Muslims in the Spanish and Portuguese
era or earlier, but that requires archival research of a sort I am not
going to be able to do. My interest is contemporary literature, and by
literature I am more interested in poetry and fiction than memoir and
non-fiction, although that is a flexible thing. I argue that it is time
to call Muslim American literature a field, even though many of these
writings can be and have been classified in other ways--studied under
African American literature or to take the writings of immigrant
Muslims, studied under South Asian ethnic literature or Arab American
literature.
With respect to Marvin X, I wonder why I am just now hearing about him-I
read Malcolm when I was 12, I read Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez and
others from the BAM in college and graduate school-why is attention not
given to his work in the same places I encountered these other authors?
Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is
valuable because recontextualizing it will add another layer of
attention to his incredibly rich body of work.He deserves to be WAY
better known than he is among Muslim Americans and generally, in the
world of writing and the world at large. By we who are younger Muslim
American poets, in particular, Marvin should be honored as our elder,
one who is still kickin, still true to the word!
Love
and War Poems is wrenching and powerful, combining a powerful critique
of America ("America downsizes like a cripple whore/won't retire/too
greedy to sleep/too fat to rest") but also a critique of deadbeat dads
and drug addicts (not sparing himself) and men who hate. "For the Men"
is so Quranic poem it gave me chills with verses such as:
for the men who honor wives and the men who abuse them
for the men who win and the men who sin
for the men who love God and the men who hate
for the men who are brothers and the men who are beasts....
"O Men, listen to the wise," the poet pleads: there is no escape for the men of this world or the men of the next.
He is sexist as all get out, in the way that is common for men of his
generation and his radicalism, but he is refreshingly aware of that and
working on it. It's just that the work isn't done and if that offends
you to see a man in process and still using the 'b' word, look out.
Speaking of the easily offended, he warns in his introduction that "life
is often profane and obscene, such as the present condition of African
American people." If you want pure and holy, he says, read the Quran and
the Bible, because Marvin is talking about "the low down dirty truth."
For all that, the poetry of Marvin X is like prayer, beauty-full of
reverence and honor for Truth. "It is. it is. it is."
A
poem to his daughter Muhammida is a sweet mix of parental love and
pride and fatherly freak-out at her sexuality and independence, ending
humbly with: peace Mu it's on you yo world sister-girl.
Other
people don't get off so easy, including a certain "black joint chief of
staff ass nigguh (kill 200,000 Muslims in Iraq)" in the sharply aimed
poem "Free Me from My Freedom." (Mmm hmm, the 'n' word is all over the
place in Marvin too.) Nature poem, wedding poem, depression poem,
wake-up call poems, it's all here. Haiti, Rwanda, the Million Man March,
Betsy Ross's maid, OJ, Rabin, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and other topics make it
into this prophetically voiced collection of dissent poetry, so Islamic
and so African American in its language and its themes, a book that
will stand in its beauty long after the people mentioned in it pass.
READ MARVIN X for RAMADAN!
Mohja Kahf
Associate Professor
Dept. of English & Middle East & Islamic Studies
Love and War: Poems
Click to order via Amazon
by Marvin X. Preface by Lorenzo Thomas
Format: Paperback, 140pp.
ISBN: 0964967200
Publisher: Black Bird Press
Book of poetry by Black Arts activist, preface by Lorenzo Thomas. "When
you listen to Tupac Shakur, E-40, Too Short, Master P or any other rappers out
of the Bay Area of Cali, think of Marvin X. He laid the foundation and gave us
the language to express Black male urban experience in a lyrical way."
James G. Spady, Philadelphia New Observer.
Wish
I Could Tell You the Truth, Essays
Click to order via Amazon
Paperback: 215 pages
Publisher: Black Bird Press (2005)
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
Somethin'
Proper: The Life and Times of a North American African Poet
Click to order via Amazon
Paperback: 278 pages
Publisher: Black Bird Pr (June 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0964967219
ISBN-13: 978-0964967212
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
Land
of My Daughters: Poem's 1995-2005
Paperback: 116 pages
Publisher: BlackBird Press (2005)
Language: English
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
Pull Yo Pants Up Fada Black Prez and Yo Self!: Essays on Obama Drama
Click to order via Amazon
Paperback
Publisher: Black Bird Press (2010)
ELDRIDGE CLEAVER - MY FRIEND THE DEVIL: A Memoir
Click to order via Amazon
Paperback
Publisher: Black Bird Press (2009)
Related Links
Black Bird
Press News & Review
A journal dedicated to truth, freedom of speech and radical
spiritual consciousness. Our mission is the liberation of men and women from
oppression, violence and abuse of any kind, interpersonal, political,
religious,economic,psychosexual. We believe as Fidel Castro said, "The
weapon of today is not guns but consciousness."
Read: Marvin X Unplugged An Interview by Lee Hubbard
Marvin X Articles on AALBC.com Include
Nigguh Please! by
Marvin X
The black culture police are at it again, lead running dog is Rev. Jesse
Jackson, perhaps the most hypocritical culture policeman on the
scene--especially after leading president Clinton in prayer over Monica
while himself engaged in extramarital shenanigans. I can't take Jesse
Jackson with his twisted mouth ( from lying) pontificating on moral issues
while he is the most immoral of men, even pimping the blood of MLK, Jr.
Movie Reviews by Marvin X on AALBC.com include:
Ali: http://www.aalbc.com/reviews/ali.htm
Baby Boy:
http://www.aalbc.com/reviews/baby_boy.htm
Ray:
http://www.aalbc.com/reviews/ray.htm
Traffic:
http://www.aalbc.com/reviews/traffic.htm
Black Bird Press
1222 Dwight Way
Berkeley CA 94702
Marvin X
