Open Letter to Obama on Black Music

OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA(THE-RE-MIX)

“What About We People Who Are Darker Than Blue?”

By Norman (Otis) Richmond

As this is being written President Barack Hussein Obama is yet toissue a proclamation for Black Music Month which is in its 30th yearof observance. Toronto’s Mayor David Miller however, issued aproclamation for Black Music Month on May 11th, 2009.
President Obama did issue of a statement in support of what he isreferring to as African American Appreciation Month on June 2nd.President Obama has taken in one felt swoop an international music andnationalized it. African American music is international music.Recall, it was The Black Music Association created be Kenny Gamble, EdWright and others that brought together Stevie Wonder & Bob Marley inthe Wailers in concert to demonstrate this fact.
Sir Duke Ellington pointed out nearly a century ago that we as apeople must call our music “Negro’ (Black) music so others could notclaim it.
Black music is one of the many gifts that Africa and Africans havegiven to the world.
President Obama gave a brilliant speech at El – Azhar University inCairo, The 44th president has proven that he is one of the mostintelligent if not the most intelligent head of state in the historyof the USA.
The president’s speech was like a vintage Earth, Wind & Fireperformance. However, it was just that -- a performance. MumiaAbu-Jamal pointed out “But in truth Obama had them at “Salaam-Alaikum”the universal Muslim greeting meaning “Peace beyond to you. Peace it’ssad to say is hardly a reality when ones own government is at war withits own people.”
While the president was touring the Middle East he failed to recognizethe 30th anniversary of Black Music Month. More than one person hasraised the issue that, “Maybe he didn’t know?” I find thisunbelievable. He recently hosted Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire andSweet Honey in the Rock at the White House. He even invited Odetta tosing at his Inauguration; however, she joined the ancestors before thehistorical event.
How can a man who spent most of his adult life in Chicago claim to be“deaf, dumb & blind” of Black Music Month? Chicago is the home ofMahalia Jackson, Martin Luther King’s musical lieutenant, CurtisMayfield, Jerry Butler Mavis and Pop Staples, Ernest Dawkins, R.Kelly,Common & Kanye West.
The June issue of Ebony Magazine, which I brought in the middle ofMay, is dedicated to Black Music Month. This issue has Jade PinkettSmith on the cover and features a photo of President Obama, and thefirst lady Michelle Obama with Queen Elizabeth II at BuckinghamPalace.
After being called out by The Caribbean World News Network, PresidentObama did rightly proclaimed June National Caribbean American HeritageMonth. President Obama issued this statement on June 2nd.
According to the June 6th issue of the New York Times he signed aproclamation establishing the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission. Thecommission is supposed to organize activities to mark the 100thanniversary, in 20011, of President Reagan’s birth. What about wepeople who are darker than blue – President Obama?
If a Ronald Regan Centennial Commission is in order what about a BlackMusic Month Commission with people like Randy Weston, Dee DeeBridgewater, Cassandra Smith, Amiri Baraka and Queen Latifah? RaynardJackson of Philadelphia has opined, “It’s a no brainer to do a townhall meeting with singers, producers, and songwriters during BlackMusic Month.
The music of African people has been an international force since theFisk Jubilee Singers, gospel group from Nashville, Tennessee conqueredEurope in 1873. Since that period jazz, calypso, reggae r'n'b, hip-hopand African beats have come to be the most popular and influential artforms in the world. Bob Marley, Louis Armstrong and Miriam Makeba areknown all over this the small planet we call earth.
The great saxophonist Archie Shepp once said, “What Malcolm X saidJohn Coltrane played”. This was the expression of Africans in NorthAmerican. The same thing occurred in the Caribbean and in Africa.
In the Caribbean Walter Rodney (Guyana) and Bob Marley (Jamaica) werethe concrete expressions of this phenomenon in the 1970s and early1980s. On the mother continent Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso) and FelaAnikulapo Kuti (Nigeria) are examples of music and politicscomplimenting one another in the 1990s.
Despite its influence on the planet it was only 30 years ago that theBlack Music Association (BMA) persuaded the U.S. government torecognize Black Music Month. In June 1979, around the time theSugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" was being released; Kenny Gambleled a delegation to the White House to discuss with President JimmyCarter the state of Black music.
At the meeting, Carter asked trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and drummer MaxRoach if they would perform "Salt Peanuts", to which Gillespie repliedthat he'd only do so if the President (who made a fortune as a peanutfarmer) provided the vocals.
Since that great and dreadful day when Carter butchered the song, Junehas been designated Black Music Month.
It must be mentioned that in 1979 the world was witnessing arevolutionary breeze as Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel Movementseized state power in Grenada, Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas sweptthe counter revolutionary forces out of power in Nicaragua like abroom and the Shah of Iran was dethroned after being installed inpower by the CIA in 1953.
The soundtrack to all of this was (Gene) McFadden and JohnWhitehead’s, “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” which was released in 1979.Recall, “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” was played at the 2008 DemocraticNational Convention on the night Illinois Senator Barack Obamaaccepted the Democratic Party nomination for President of the UnitedStates.
Since 1984, thanks to the efforts of the BMA/TC, Toronto Mayors JuneRowlands, Barbara Hall and Mel Lastman, respectively, has recognizedJune as Black Music Month. On the 25th anniversary of Black MusicMonth, Mayor David Miller presented the proclamation at City Hall. Thelate Milton Blake, Jay Douglas, Michie Mee, Norman (Otis) Richmond(Jalali) and others participated in this event.
When broadcaster and community activist the late Milton Blake andNorman (Otis) Richmond created the Black Music Association's TorontoChapter in 1984, it was our intention to plug African-Canadian musicmakers into the international music market.
At that moment the only African Canadian that was internationallyknown was Oscar Peterson. Since that time Eric Mercury, HarrisonKennedy (as a member of the Chairmen of the Board), Deborah Cox,Devine Brown, Glenn Lewis and Kardinal Offishall have conquered theworld--musically.
By not recognizing Black Music Month in 2009 you have taken a stepbackward Mr. President. As our Comrade /Leader Maurice Bishop told us30 years ago, "Forward Ever. Backwards Never”.
One of the greatest Africans to ever grace the planet Ghana’s KwameNkrumah said the same thing 20 years before Comrade Bishop.

By What Right?

By what right do we sport and play while our guns and bombs destroy the world--since America is the number one arms merchant today? By what right do we consume 25% of the world's energy while most of the world has no electricity, clean drinking water and works all day for a dollar? By what right do we enjoy ourselves sipping cafe latte while the people of Africa, Asia and the Americas live lives of sadness and grief at our expense, since we are the reason they live sad lives after centuries of exploitation, slavery and neo-colonialism?

Yesterday a former Special Ops killer told me he was guilty of doing things in countries that have every right to bomb America into the stone age, countries we now call terrorist havens, while we are the real terrorists, the world's greatest!

By what right do we live in peace, drive gas guzzling Hummers and Escalades, attend Super Bowl, music concerts, while people we destroy have no money to eat or bury their dead loved ones we call collateral damage?

By what right do we charge our children with rape while we teach them how as we go about the earth raping, robbing,plundering and exploiting the labor and national wealth of the poor. In the US military, 33% of female soldiers suffer sexual assault by their comrades in arms. We may wonder how a female soldier with a weapon can get raped? But an old rapist told me, "I wish I would see a bitch with a gun jogging through the jungle." Apparently US soldiers feel the same.
We know the patriarchal religions teach domination of women and rape is ultimate result. It doesn't matter if it occurs in the military, college campus, on a date or in the marriage bed.

By what right do we imprison two million persons for drug related offenses, who suffer mental illness as well as drug addiction at the time of their arrest, 80% would be released if they had proper legal representation. Furthermore, the US government is the number one drug supplier as we saw with the Crack epidemic and the heroin traffic in Afghanistan today.

By what right do we deny nuclear weapons to non-white nations while the only nation to use the atom bomb was white America? Why are not Zionist Israel denied their nuclear arsenal--oh, because they're God chosen people! Not my God, maybe the God of devils. Either everyone should have nukes or nobody, including America.

By what right do we give insurgents, i.e., terrorists, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere, schooling, housing and employment if they lay down their arms, while you have no solution to violence in the hood other than police occupation and prison, meanwhile families are utterly destroyed and communities destabilized.

The only right is the arrogance of white supremacy, from which the adrenalin rush is too high to stop and white privilege has become habitual and full blown. Like getting a nut, you want more, until finally, you must be taken away for detoxification and prevented from leaving the white supremacy recovery center because you are a danger to yourselves and others. Nelson Mandela said you are the main threat to world peace, America! Your privileges must be taken away, including visits to the outside world, until you fully recover, although you may be constitutionally unable, therefore you must remain long term.
--Marvin X
2/28/10

Notes on the Elders Council

by Marvin X

These notes are based on the teachings of the Honorable John Douimbia (RIP), founder of the Black Men's Conference, Oakland, CA, 1980. I served as chief planner of the BMC. John gave me one-on-one manhood training. On the morning of the conference, over one thousand black men gathered at the Oakland Auditorium to hear from John, myself, Dr. Nathan Hare, Dr. Wade Nobles, Dr. Oba T-Shaka, Dr. Yusef Bey, et al. Women organized an event that evening for the men, organizers included Betty King (RIP) and Dezy Woods-Jones.

This draft has never been implemented, although Bay Area elders were seated at the Tupac Shakur Youth Conference at McClymonds high school, circa 2000. Those elders seated included Geronimo Pratt, Tarika Lewis, Willie Tate, Tureeda Mikell, Aishah Kokomon, Suzzette Celeste, Frank Kellum, David Johnson, Emory Douglas, myself, et al.

(1) What is the function of a Council of Elders?

The Council of Elders should be the final authority in the African community. It should be the final authority in moral, domestic, personal, criminal justice and economic matters. It should provide counseling and guidance to troubled men and women. For example, O.J. Simpson could have gone to the Elders Council for guidance on his domestic problems--Tiger Woods as well.

Brothers in the hood should be able to take their problems before the EC for conflict resolution, rather than resorting to violence and destroying entire families over a twenty-dollar dope debt.
The EC would pay the debt to prevent homicide. Incest and other child abuse cases would be matters for the EC. Political prisoners and inmates could be released to the custody of the EC.

(2) How should the EC be composed?

If no other way, it must be drafted by respectable elders in the community. They must be men and women of wisdom and honor. They need not be holy Joe's, but cannot be of outright, flagrant unholiness and negativity. They should be of revolutionary consciousness as opposed to conservative--they ought to have radical thoughts that can guide us through the millennium, not keep us in the past. The last thing we need is a group of tired, reactionary, boot-licking Negroes in authority, persons who want to deliver the EC to the black bourgeoisie running dogs for pharaoh. Elders should not be able to be bought, sell out or traded.

(3) How does the EC receive power?

The EC receives power from the people who agree to submit issues before the EC for resolution. There should be a community consensus that the EC is the point of authority to resolve issues that need not involve the so-called elected governmental agencies which have proven incapable of resolving human rights abuses, economic justice, political empowerment, disparities in health, education, mental health, drug abuse, homicide, suicide, domestic and partner violence, emotional and verbal violence, child abuse, spiritual decadence and myopia (especially with respect to men--the churches are mostly full of women).

(4) How would the EC administer its decisions?

Persons might receive a citation to appear before the EC. They might peacefully submit to arrest and detention in a community center before their case is adjudicated. The decisions of the EC would be enforced by Guardians of the Community, men and women trained to enforce the dictates of the EC.

(5) Should the EC be a religious or spiritual body?

No. Religion should not dominate the EC. The EC exists for the community as a whole, not for any religion or group of religions. Extremely religious persons should be barred from the EC.
Persons concerned with religious matters should remain in their churches, mosques, temples--yes, keep praying. Of course, the EC should have a spiritual dimension as part of its holistic approach to problem solving.

(6) What should be the relationship of the EC to the established government and its agencies?

It should be a cooperative but independent relationship. If there are problems the EC cannot handle, then we should turn matters over to the criminal justice system, or mental health agencies. What we want is the first option to control our community, rather than have outside forces intervene. We feel the EC can eradicate the sale of drugs in our community without involving the criminal justice system. We will do this by simply uniting the males and making their presence known. We will also do this by presenting alternative economic opportunities to youth, such as entrepreneurship and micro credit. We know that if youth can sell drugs, they can sell anything. Why not books, watches, shoes, clothing, arts, DVDs, CDs, food, etc. Rather than pay the criminal justice system fifty thousand dollars per man per year for incarceration, why not give the brothers and sisters a voucher for the same amount to purchase legal goods to sell?

The goods would be housed in a secured community warehouse and issued as per need. If youth persist in criminal activity such as selling drugs and pimping, they would be banished from the community, if necessary, for life.

(7) Should there be a Council of Women Affairs?

Women should be an equal part of the EC, but also have a department of Women's Affairs to handle issues only women should settle, the same for men and youth. As per women, we know cases of elderly abuse by daughters--sons as well. Why should elders live 70 and 80 years to be terrified by their children, especially when the elders are caring for the grandchildren due to the drug addiction of parents?

(8) Should there be a youth council?

Yes. It would deal with youth matters. We had the case of a youth who was prevented from entering a certain department at San Francisco State University--she couldn't get assistance from the Black Student Union, Black Studies Department or any other help. A Council of Youth would represent the student in a matter of this nature, which the student believe was racial discrimination. You might have simple adolescent or sexual identity problems that peer counseling or ultimately manhood training could resolve, or problems with parents who might be drug or sexual abusers--such issues might be immediately taken to the EC.

These are my views, all points open for discussion. I welcome all comments.
Sincerely,
Marvin X
revised
2/27/10
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Give Africa back

to its traditional rulers!

Give Africa back to its traditional rulers.!The post colonial leaders in Africa have been a disgusting assortment of military coconut-heads, Swiss bank socialists, quack revolutionaries, crocodile liberators, briefcase bandits, kamikaze looters, vampire elites, and crackpot democrats. They only know how to do 3 things very well:

1. Loot the treasury.

2. Brutalize and squelch all dissent and opposition to their misrule,

3. Perpetuate themselves in office.

Ask them to develop their countries and they will develop their pockets. Ask them to seek "foreign investment" and they will invest their loot in a foreign country.Name me just 10 African leaders who do not fit this bill.Give Africa back to its traditional rulers. In traditional Africa, chiefs and kings are chosen; they do not choose and impose themselves or stupid alien ideologies on their people. Further, chiefs and kings are held accountable at all times for their actions and are removed if they do not govern according to will of the people.

Go back and re-read the history of the Oyo Empire, (Benin Empire), which was governed with an elaborate system of checks and balances in the 17th Century -- well before the U.S. became a nation. The modern leadership is a despicable disgrace to black Africa. They are a far cry from the traditional leadership Africa has known for centuries.And get this, Lil Joe. Africa has not just a traditional political culture and heritage based upon consensus but also an economic heritage of free village markets, free enterprise and free trade. Challenge this.

Marxism was never part of indigenous African economic heritage. Get that straight.I am fed up with quack revolutionaries and crackpot intellectuals who seek to impose alien ideologies and systems on the African people. There is nothing wrong with Africa's own indigenous institutions; nor does Africa have to reject them in order to develop.

The Japanese, Koreans and other Asians did not have to reject their culture in order to develop. Only educated zombies think Africa has to. The continent is littered with the putrid carcasses of failed imported systems. Now we are being told to go Chinese! Such stupidity.Africa's salvation lies in returning to and building upon its own indigenous institutions. Africa's salvation does NOT lie in the corridors of the World Bank, the inner sanctum of the Chinese politburo. Nor does Africa's salvation lie in the steamy sex antics of cockroaches on Jupiter!

George Ayittey,Washington, DC

The People of No

No, no, no! That is all you say. Everything about you is no. Your lips say no, your eyes, your heart, your mind, your arms, your legs, your feet. You are a no person. I run from you. You say no to God. I am afraid of your no touch. I cannot expand my mind around no people. You will kill my spiritual development. No no no no!

When you say yes to life you open the world of infinite possibilities. I understand no part of no, only infinite possibilities. No does not exist in my world, only yes. Yes to love. Yes to success, yes to hope, yes to truth, yes to prosperity, yet to divinity, yes to resurrection, yes to ascension, yes to eternity. I am the language of yes. If you cannot say yes, get away from me. I run from you, want nothing to do with you. There is no hope for you until you open your mouth to yes.

Cast away the yes fear. Let it go, let God. Yes. No matter what, yes. No matter how long, yes.

No matter how hard, yes. Let there be peace in the house, yes. Let there be love between you and me, yes. Let there be revolution in the land, over the world, yes. We will try harder, yes, we won't give up, yes. We shall triumph, yes. Yes is the language of God. Yes is the language of Divinity, Spirituality.

All the prophets ssaid yes. Adam said yes, Abraham said yes. Moses said yes. Solomon said yes.

Job said yes. Jeremiah, Isaiah said yes. The lover in Song of Solomon said yes. David said yes.

John and Jesus sasid yes. Muhammad said yes. Elijah and Malcolm, Martin and Garvey, Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth said yes. Fannie Lou and Rosa Parks, Betty Shabazz and Coretta Scott ssaid yes.

Mama and daddy said yes. Grandma and grandpa said yes. All the ancestors said yes. Forevermore, let go of no and say yes. Dance to yes. Shout to yes!

--Marvin X

from Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2007

www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

Beyond Religion, Toward Spirituality
Essays on Consciousness
By Marvin X

Review by Rudolph Lewis, editor, chickenbones, a journal
www.nathanielturner.com

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. His moods are both reverent and irreverent: at times he consoles, other times cajoles with biting mockery. At times amusing but always deadly serious.

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. It's a dangerous book, for it reveals the inner workings of capitalist and imperialist governments around the world. It's a book that stands with and on behalf of the poor, the dispossessed, the despised, and downtrodden.

Marvin X has found a way out of our spiritual morass, our material quagmire. We are blessed to still have him among us. 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
Contents
Preface, Joy and Happiness, Work
Reconciliation, Health, Elders
Women, Men, Youth
Children, Sex, Solitude
Blessings, Music, Writing
Africa, Love, Partner Violence
Prison, Street Violence, Pimpin
Rap, Jerusalem, Teacher, Myth
Militant, Language, Nature,
Global Violence, Sectarianism
Technology, Ancestors, Death
History, Future, Polygamy
Polyandry, Prostitution, Nukes
Religion, Sufi, Prayer, Radical God
Ritual, Drugs, Family, Marriage
Education, Gay/Lesbian, HIV/AIDS
Art, Traumatic Stress, Poverty
Black Bourgeoisie, Media, Panther
Peace, Politics, Immigration, Land
Holy Joes, Sovereignty, Democracy
Fascism, Amnesty, Capitalism, Americas
Berkeley, Condi, Chinaman's Chance
Paris Burning, Sudan, London Bridges
Welcome to Mexi-Cali, Pan Africa
Evil, Tookie Williams, Fathers and Daughters
Why I Talk With Cows, Jesus, Pharaoh's Egypt
Death Angel, When Jazz Ain't Jazz, BAM at Howard U.
Lucy Is Coming, One Mind, Afterword

Teaching Diaspora Literature:

Muslim American Literature as an Emerging Field

Marvin X is too extreme for many, but I like strong voices even if I don’t agree with everything they say.--Mohja Kahf

by Mohja Kahf

Mohja Kahf (Comparative Literature, University of Arkansas) is the author of Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque (1999), E-mails fromScheherazad (poetry, 2003), and The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (novel, 2006).

Is there such a thing as Muslim American literature (MAL)? I argue that there is: It begins with
the Muslims of the Black Arts Movement (1965–75). The Autobiography of Malcolm X is one of
its iconic texts; it includes American Sufi writing, secular ethnic novels, writing by immigrant and
second-generation Muslims, and religious American Muslim literature.

Many of the works I would put into this category can and do also get read in other categories, such as African American, Arab American, and South Asian literature, “Third World” women’s writing, diasporicMuslim literature in English, and so forth.

While the place of these works in other categories cannot be denied, something is gained in reading them together as part of an American Muslim cultural landscape. Like Jewish American literature by the 1930s, Muslim American literature is in a formative stage. It will be interesting to see how it develops (and who will be its Philip Roth!)

I suggest the following typology of MAL only as a foothold, a means of bringing a tentative order
to the many texts, one that should be challenged, and maybe ultimately dropped altogether.

My first grouping, the “Prophets of Dissent,” suggests that Muslim works in the Black Arts
Movement (BAM) are the first set of writings in American literature to voice a cultural position
identifiable as Muslim. Contemporary Muslim writing that takes the achievements of the BAM as an important literary influence also belongs here, and is characterized similarly by its “outsider”status, moral critique of mainstream American values, and often prophetic, visionary tone.

In contrast, the writers of what I call “the Multi-Ethnic Multitudes” tend to enjoy “insider” status in American letters, often entering through MFA programs and the literary establishment, getting published through trade and university book industries, garnering reviews in the mainstream press. They do not share an overall aesthetic but are individual writers of various ethnicities and a wide range of secularisms and spiritualities, and indeed I question my placing them all in one group, and do so temporarily only for the sake of convenience.

On the other hand, my third group, the “New American Transcendentalists,” appears to cohere,
in aesthetic terms, as writers who share a broad Sufi cultural foundation undergirding their
literary work. Their writings often show familiarity with the Sufi poets of several classical Muslim literatures (e.g., in Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Urdu), as well as with American Transcendentalists of the nineteenth century, and that which tends toward the spiritual and the ecstatic in modern American poetry.

Finally, the “New Pilgrims” is my term for a loose grouping of writers for whom Islam is not merely a mode of dissent, cultural background, or spiritual foundation for their writing, but its aim and explicit topic. Of the four groups, the New Pilgrims are the ones who write in an overtly religious mode and motivation, like Ann Bradstreet, Cotton Mather, and the Puritans of early American history. This does not prevent them from being capable of producing great literature, any more than it prevented the great Puritan writers.

Here is an example of just a few writers in each category, by no means a comprehensive list:

Prophets of Dissent

From the Black Arts Movement:

• Marvin X, whose Fly to Allah (1969) is possibly the first book of poems published in English
by a Muslim American author.

• Sonia Sanchez, whose A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1974) is the work of
her Muslim period.

• Amiri Baraka, whose A Black Mass (2002) renders the Nation of Islam’s Yacoub genesis
theology into drama. As with Sanchez, the author was Muslim only briefly but the influence
of the Islamic period stretches over a significant part of his overall production.

Later Prophets of Dissent include:

• Calligraphy of Thought, the Bay area poetry venue for young “Generation M” Muslim
American spoken word artists who today continue in the visionary and dissenting mode of
the BAM.

• Suheir Hammad, Palestinian New Yorker, diva of Def Poetry Jam (on Broadway and HBO),
whose tribute to June Jordan in her first book of poetry, Born Palestinian, Born Black
(1996), establishes her line of descent from the BAM, at least as one (major) influence on
her work.

• El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) is an iconic figure for this mode of Muslim American
writing and, indeed, for many writers in all four categories.

Multi-Ethnic Multitudes

• Kashmiri American poet Agha Shahid Ali, an influential figure in the mainstream American
poetry scene, with a literary prize named after him at the University of Utah, brought the
ghazal into fashion in English so that it is now taught among other forms in MFA programs.

• Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian American, likewise a “crossover” poet whose work enjoys
prominence in American letters, takes on Muslim content in a significant amount of her
work.

• Sam Hamod, an Arab midwesterner who was publishing poetry in journals at the same time
as Marvin X.

• Nahid Rachlin’s fiction has been published since well before the recent wave of literature by
others who, like her, are Iranian immigrants.

• Mustafa Mutabaruka, an African American Muslim, debut novel Seed (2002).

• Samina Ali, midwesterner of Indian parentage, debut novel Madras on Rainy Days (2004),
was featured on the June 2004 cover of Poets & Writers.

• Khaled Hosseini, debut novel The Kite Runner (2003).

• Michael Muhammad Knight, a Muslim of New York Irish Catholic background, whose punk
rock novel The Taqwacores (2004) delves deeply into Muslim identity issues.

• There are a number of journals where Muslim American literature of various ethnicities can
be found today, among them Chowrangi, a Pakistani American magazine out of New
Jersey, and Mizna, an Arab American poetry magazine out of Minneapolis.
New American Transcendentalists

• Daniel (Abd al-Hayy) Moore is an excellent example of this mode of Muslim American
writing. California-born, he published as a Beat poet in the early sixties, became a Sufi
Muslim, renounced poetry for a decade, then renounced his renouncement and began
publishing again, prolifically and with a rare talent. His Ramadan Sonnets (City Lights,
1986) is a marriage of content and form that exemplifies the “Muslim/American” simultaneity
of Muslim American art.

• The Rumi phenomenon: apparently the most read poet in America is a Muslim. He merits
mention for that, although technically I am not including literature in translation. Then again,
why not? As with so many other of my limits, this is arbitrary and only awaits someone to
make a case against it.
• Journals publishing poetry in this mode include The American Muslim, Sufi, Qalbi, and
others.

New American Pilgrims

• Pamela Taylor writes Muslim American science fiction. Iman Yusuf writes “Islamic
romance.” This group of writers is not limited to genre writers, however. Dasham Brookins
writes and performs poetry and maintains a website, MuslimPoet.com, where poets such as
Samantha Sanchez post. Umm Zakiyya (pseud.) has written a novel, If I Should Speak
(2001), about a young Muslim American and her roommates in college.

Writers in this group also come from many ethnicities but, unlike those in my second category, come together around a more or less coherent, more or less conservative Muslim identity.
Websites tend to ban erotica and blasphemy, for example. The Islamic Writers Alliance, a
group formed by Muslim American women, has just put out its first anthology. Major
published authors have yet to emerge in this grouping, but there is no reason to think they
will not eventually do so.

My criteria for Muslim American literature are a flexible combination of three factors:
Muslim authorship. Including this factor, however vague or tenuous, prevents widening the
scope to the point of meaninglessness, rather than simply including any work about Muslims by
an author with no biographical connection to the slightest sliver of Muslim identity (such as
Robert Ferrigno with his recent dystopian novel about a fanatical Muslim takeover of America).
It is a cultural, not religious, notion of Muslim that is relevant. A “lapsed Muslim” author, as one
poet on my roster called himself, is still a Muslim author for my purposes. I am not interested in
levels of commitment or practice, but in literary Muslimness.

Language and aesthetic of the writing.

In a few cases, there is a deliberate espousal of an aesthetic that has Islamic roots, such as the Afrocentric Islamic aesthetic of the Muslim authors in the Black Arts Movement.

Relevance of themes or content.

If the Muslim identity of the author is vague or not explicitly professed, which is often the case with authors in the “Multi-Ethnic Multitudes,” but the content itself is relevant to Muslim American experience, I take that as a signal that the text is choosing to enter the conversation of Muslim American literature and ought to be included.

In defining boundaries for research that could become impossibly diffuse, I choose to look
mainly at fiction and poetry, with autobiography and memoir writings selectively included. I have not included writings in languages other than English, although there are Muslims in America who write in Arabic, Urdu, and other languages. I have looked at the twentieth century onward, and there is archival digging to be done in earlier periods: the Spanish colonial era may yield Muslim writing, and we already know that some enslaved Muslims in the nineteenth century have left narratives. More research is needed. If one expands the field from “literature” to“Muslim American culture,” one can also include Motown, rap, and hip-hop lyrics by Muslim
artists, screenplays such as the Muslim American classic The Message by the late Syrian
American producer Mustapha Aqqad, books written for children, sermons, essays, and other
genres.

There are pleasures and patterns that emerge from reading this profusion of disparate texts
under the rubric of Muslim American cultural narrative. It is time! I hope, as this field emerges,
that others will do work in areas I have left aside in this brief initial exploration.