PUSH reviews Pgs 1-40

We've begun reading PUSH here are our first thoughts...

"...It's crazy that she had to go through that at 7 years old in the 2nd grade. I imagine my niece at 7 years old being treated that way and the way I would react to something like that, and I'm only her aunt. I imagine my mother undergoing something like that with me and knowing that the possible outcome would definitely not just be "ok."She would do anything in her power to keep that from happening to me and I would do everything in my will to make sure noone ever hurts my niece."

"...I think that Precious went through HELL!!! She didn't deserve to be treated that way growing up. That as sick the way her father did her growing up. Her mother didn't make it no better. Where's da rest of da family?!!... It hurts me that someone in this world goes through something soooo painful. And many people probably went through worse. THis world is all F'ed up!!... Where is the peace??... Happiness??..
I really feel for Precious!!"

"... I mean about the book... of everything that had happened in the back of her mind which has her thinking that she is a failure. I feel that if anyone really wanted to love her she wouldn't let them get close to her and its sad. People believe that the hurt mostly comes from her mother I feel even though that happened with her father she really needed her mother to play part so she could at least get over the feelings, so she could go on.

"... I think the story is very depressing. It makes me really mad how Precious' real dad f'ed her! I don't even have the expression to say how I feel. And her mother is so wrong for not doing anything and especially when she knows that Precious is pregnant again by him. Precious' situation is hard to go through, and if I was able to help, I would."

"...What I think of the whole situation is that its wrong what she have to go through. I feel bad for her cause it ain't nobody to help her. But she can tell people the way how she feels."

"... Precious is a very strong girl to be her age and have gone through all that stuff and haven't already did to herself. Young girls her age that go through things like that go through depression and commit suicide, but she never did anything to hurt herself because of the lack of love she receives from her mother and father, even the students in school. She is already a strong little girl."

Letters from my six year old self

In the story PUSH Claireece talks about being tormented by her classmates and ignored by her teacher at the age of 7. We began to wonder what would happen is she and all little girls felt powerful enough to speak their truths to introduce themselves to the world. And so we introduce ourselves to you...

LETTERS FROM MY SIX YEAR OLD SELF.

Princess
My name is Princess and I'm 6 years old. I like riding my bike around the block. I smile as I feel the ool wind blowing in my face. I'm happy all the time when my cousins be playing with me. WE play in the dirt, making mud pies, jump rope, running and playing on our playground in the back yard. Thats the best thing I love to do because thats the only time I don't feel shy. I am also friendly but am scared to talk. I don't talk much until until I start playing with my babydolls. I then met a friend a couple of houses down named Stephanie. She is the best friend anyone could ever have. She has a clubhouse inside of her tree in her back yard. I love the way it looks. Inside the clubhouse was pink and it was filled with baby dolls and teapot sets. I love playing with her because she is my only friend, beause the kids at school all me mute (I just figured out what that means)! so all I do is play around with my cousins, (most of them are boys but I love playing with them), even though they don't like being around me. I don't really care beause they don't tell me but always and fussing and getting mad when I come around, but they still show me a good time, thats why I love them. I'm a very spoiled young girl. I get everything I want... I just want a brother or a sister that can look up to me.

Unique
Hello I'm Unique,
I am 6 years old and I have 2 big sisters named Kynisha and Shymeka. My sisters teach me how to ride my bike and play barbie dolls with me.My sister walks me to school and walks me home everyday. In school I cut oranges and apples and learn how to write my name. They make me sleep a lot and I really don't like that. At recess I play with my friends. running up and down the court yelling and screaming. My teachers say I'm a good girl and I love to get along with others very well.I look forward to going to shool everyday to see my friends.

Dream
Hello my name is dream. I am 6 years old. I love to play hopscotch, but I mostly draw mines. I never really liked dolls they scare me, just something about that...uuugggghhh. I also love to sing. Sing anything that rolls past me from gospel to slow songs. anything my mother loves to hear. I love to play with my friends. We all used to run just to see who is the fastest. I get sad when I don't win. but who really cares!
For me being 6 I loved lunch time, my favorite. In school I always loved to each chicken with mashed potatoes, uuuhhhmmm, but I really got along with everybody.

Shaccaria
Hi my name is Shaccaria and I am 6 years old. I go to Lakewood Elementary school and I'm in the first grade. I love to go to school and play with my friends on the playground at recess. Me and my friends like to jump rope, run around on the playground and play on the monkey bars.When I get out of school I like to ride my bike with my big brother. I also like to play barbie with my friends in the neighborhood. I love the weekend because I get to spend time with my daddy. I love  spending time with my daddy because he spoils me and I get everything I want, because I'm his only child. I also like to go to my grandma's house and ride my power wheel. My grandma is really nice to me and shows me a lot of attention. My favorite thing I like to do is play with my chawawa. My dad brought me my chawawa on my birthday and thats why she is so special to me. My chawawa is like a sister to me because she shows me love and attention and protects me and I do the same for her.

Christie
Hi! I'm Christie, and I'm 6-years-old. I am in the first grade and I hate it! I pee on myself just to go home with my mommy and daddy. I love my mommy so much because she always gives me cereal and yogurt, and when she gives it to me, I get sooooooo happy!!! My daddy seemed to know I would pee on myself just to come home with them but I don't care. They knew I was very afraid of the doctor so they started threatening me to take me there if I continued, so I stopped! I started liking school and having fun. Every weekend my mommy would take me to the mall to get toys out of the dollar store. Now that would really make me excited! Especially when I would already have two toys already in my hands and she would say "wow look at this one." Do you want this too? I would be so happy that she would but me a lot of toys. But hey I'm a kid!! Its easy to satisfy kids! Only if I knew how cheap they were, I would've been mad and wanted to get bigger and better things. I also spend a lot of time with my cousin, Nesha. We always have fun together, riding our bikes playing Barbies and coloring in different coloring books. My dad is known as "Jerry, the bike man." He will never be seen without his bike. If something happens to his bike or it gets stolen he has many other bike parts to put together a new one. My daddy taught me to ride my first bike, and I follow him around.
My mom takes really good care of me but my dad has started to get on drugs really bad and isn't the fun daddy I knew. He and my mommy get physically into fights around me all the time. It is very scary for me because I am scared that my dad will hurt my mom But the funny part about it is that my mommy beats the crap out of my daddy, like LITERALLY!! And my mom kicked my dad out. After they fight my mom throws all his things on the porch. As a child I run to see what she threw out and pick some cool things up and ask my mommy if I can have it! It is kinda funny, lol! My daddy stops by often to see us and things are fine!

Alyxe,
Hello,
My name is Alyxe and I am 6 years old. Some of you already know me but for those who don’t I wanna say it is very nice to meet you. Do you wanna be my friend?
I’m the fastest kid in my class. I like to climb trees, jumprope, play hopscotch, and my favorite game is steal the flag. I like to color, play stranded on a desert island with my Barbies, make collages and (here’s my first secret) sometimes I still suck my thumb when I watch T.V. I love to be barefoot and most of all I love, love, love to sing (show tunes are my favorite but I will sing anything)!
I live in the woods with lots of really tall trees, that I can hide behind (even though mama Nia says I am safe) and a bubbling warm springs that are not too deep.
My best friend’s name is Talya she comes to visit me on butterfly wings.
Mama Nia calls me her first Breath she says I was here before hurt or heart break. I am her best self, I keep her in love. She remembers much better than I when it wasn’t safe, when I wasn’t free, and she has vowed today to protect me.

2010

Wow,
I haven't been here in a while busy busy busy it is time to reconnect. As many of you know I have for many years now worked with Students at New Horizons academy of excellence in Durham NC. This year is proving to be as amazing as all the previous years. Students are expressing themselves through writing, audio, video hosting symposiums and forums and we have decided to blog.
Now, me trying to be less wasteful even with internet space, has decided rather than create another blog, to dedicate my "Better to Speak" blog (after all who could come up with a better name), to my students. I hope you will follow us cause we got a lot to say!!!
Peace

Dear Mr. DuBois

So after pouring over both readings I had to go with my gut. Though I
found Wynter's reading more than enlightening and I am sure I will
read it numerous times, it was DuBois that illicited a moving response
from me. Being that I know the Professor Gumbs personally I have taken
the liberty of responding less "academically" and more like me.


Dear Mr. DuBois,
As I read through your writings a second time I am struck by physical awakenings. My eyes raise to Assata’s words hanging on my [wall] is just a wall...” Gentle croons from The sounds of Blackness, “Black Butterfly...Freedom comes with understanding who you are” kiss my ears, and a faint scent of coco mango reminds me of me.
This morning I wake, aware that the world you exist in pushes me to analyze, de and re-construct your words to argue for or against views written long ago, yet clenched firmly too today, and my body says not again. For I am, we are all enough.
How can my very breath be a problem, this space I occupy, be some mysterious cavern men need to explore, after donning precautionary gear, lest the rituals of my life threaten to supercede their own. I do not exist under a “veil” to be raised, function daily in some secret hide away. My existence is not a mystery. I am neither trying nor desiring to be the occupier of any space but that, which has been gifted to me.
I do not know your desires completely brother, but I know your love for the very people of whom you are “bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh.” For that reason I can’t help but wonder why you seek to expose me/us to forces choosing to render we, [if only to themselves] invisible. Why has denial taken command of your soul? You, my brother, know that we have always been, and will continue to be visible in a universe equipped to embrace us all. You know our lives to be real. Yet you place our spirits and songs on tables to be evaluated by those who have their own songs to sing. Consumption for a system, that drinks our blood to ensure its survival. You seem to feed us up willingly, by searching for home foreign territory. This cannot be your intent. We have a home.
I will admit that you are correct to point out the reality of a “double consciousness, a two-ness of american and negro,” but I can’t help but wonder why this stage was set, and why we feel compelled to enter it. Are we obliged to seek “freedom in [this] promise land” from those with whom we co-exist? This space cannot be rightfully possessed by any of us for we are, all of us, mere tenants of an order greater than even we. We each, make a choice to enter into contacted ownership of a humanity that must negate and invalidate to survive. I cannot sign up today. Rather I choose to mark, reject and discard this phenomenon, like an old sweater that has served no purpose at all, for we come from fertile ground and we are not cold.
I wonder Mr. DuBois, what this text would look like if you too had discarded this trend, if you had written as who you are, about you. Could you have written without thought to audience, spoken with your facts about what is, maybe written the Blues? How would you tell your story as the “tired climber searching for Canaan?” Would you still be “handicapped and racing with the world” if you were not measuring “men” against the “souls of Black folks?” In this place this measurement I am most intrigued by this men to non-men balance. Who I wonder, names the things that make up the basis of this comparison? Who possesses the right to decide against melanin? When exactly did we blindly accept the standard and, in turn, surrender our humanity?
As I near the conclusion of this dialog I must note that my assessment here is as much about me as you. I find myself wading in a pool of multiculturalism that seeks to uphold an us /them mentality. What I know is that we are all culture for we have each of us adapted to this existence in ways that make sense for us. Each manifestation looks different, sometimes mystical, but it is, in fact, an adaptation nothing more nothing less. Our lives, our cultures are not to be explained, or conceptualized in any other context than the ones we exist in. I search daily for that comfortable place beyond a covetous path, that honors each of our journeys. I have yet to find it, maybe together we will.
In solidarity,
MaMa Nia

To be a problem

Hey, haven't been here in a while!!!

So... I am taking this online course from the brilliant Professor Alexis Gumbs over at Duke University. The course is called "To be a Problem- Outcast Subjectivity in Black Literary Production." I will be using this blog to post my responses to our weekly readings. And who knows, I may be inspired to write something else.

Enjoy

A note of Thanks

Thank you all for participating in this incredible three day release of healing energy. The outpouring of love and support is evidence of the extrordinary beauty WE possess. I (Mama Nan a.ka. Nia) am hoping that you will continue releasing this powerful energy every morning with a moment of Asha, to the universal call for love and and healing and with intentional smiles, greetings and real listening... to yourselves and one another. It is our time, if we grasp it!!! As a continued promotion of this healing spirit, I am choosing to fruit, vegetable and herbal tea detox every Tuesdays (the least valued day in the capitalistic world), knowing that to win this battle we must become whole. Knowing that WE are neither silence nor sacrifice. WE are celebration. Asha
Please Join Me.

Reclaiming our spirits- Join us in a three day fast

This is a call to reclaim our spirit. To fight the way we know how. And to following the paths our ancestors set before us.
Join Black Women in Durham as we expel and heal from the hatred spewed upon our bodies. Collectively we can cleanse ourselves and our community of this venom.
We are calling for a 3 day fast (Tuesday, January 16th - Thursday January, 18th), along with meditation and prayer as we ignite a collective power of healing.
This is not meant to be a hardship so please fast in a way that feels right to you. Many of us will be eating only raw fruits and vegetables and drinking lots of water and detoxifying teas. Please do what feels right to you. We ill break this fast on Friday morning and continue to fast one day a week until...
Please distribute this email widely and post a comment to our blog
iambecauseweare.wordpress.com.
WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT

Silent Protest and Insallation

Because direct and immediate action is love, and revolution, and beauty, and resistance, and ....

Because art is action all over this globe

Because we are we are we are we are we are agentsloversalliessurvivorsstriversresisterssistersfightersradicalsfamily

Because nifong is not the glue that holds this case or this community together

Because we will not be silenced or confused in the face of white racist patriarchy and sexual violence...

beacause we need....
Movement now...

If you want to sit and meditate silently in front of the Court House Sunday meet us there!
Bring a flower, a poem, a candle, a stick of incense, a piece of art work and... let's collectively focus positive energy on healing our ourselves and our community.

This is not an overly choreographed event, just show up at the court house around 12 noon Sunday 1/14.

Before you condemn her

The first time I heard the "N" word used by a white person was in my
high school lunchroom. A classmate whispered stupid "N" as a young
Black man walked by him. The whole table erupted in laughter as I, the
only Black person at the table, sat fearing that I would be next. One
of my girls at the table noticed my discomfort and said " Don't worry…
you're not a "N," you're one of us." Having somehow acquired some
higher value in their eyes, and safe from their contempt I sat in
silence.
As a Black Woman and a survivor in Durham, I am now reliving the fear and
confusion of that experience constantly. I feel a heaviness in my
chest as I breathe air thick with racism, classism and misogyny, and
dodge careless verbal assaults and contemptuous glares as I choose
along with other survivors, to step away from the "safety of silence,"
because, as the poet Audre Lorde once said "Your silence will not
protect you."
So before you condemn her think for a moment about the things not
being said in the media, things irrelevant to the D.A and defense team
that are urgent to Black woman survival.
Consider for a moment the violence placed upon our bodies long before
either dancer entered that house. Consider the violence of a group of
drunken White men specifically and deceitfully requesting us as
dancers. And consider the assaults on us as these men spewed threats
and racial slurs at them. Consider the violence of entire communities
venomously condemning, one woman as she seeks a justice entitled to
her under the laws of this country, and lastly consider what it must
feel like to be a Black survivor in Durham. No our silence will not
protect us, "So it is better to speak"(also Audre Lorde).

I'mma Heal ME

And you think you know ME… cause you saw a girl like ME… in a book by an anti-ME, who sniffed MY shit when he was in school.
Don’t get it twisted…
Anthropology don’t mean you know ME
My badd to the anthropology degree

And you think you can heal ME… cause you know the man who killed ME, riddled MY life with “what if “ hypothesis.
His DNA charging you with scrutiny, you performed your duties well…
Serving up invisibility… you smother ME in flowery blankets of muli-cultural
Selling pre-fabricated images in Ninth Street shops
Sowing hollow seed to deplete mal-nourished souls
You spread mad cow diseased shit over ME and kill fertile soil… tip-toeing between ME and MY self

You don’t know nuthin bout ME
And My SIRvival names your destiny

And when dawn breaks I am Sun kissed Sankofa
Snug hugged, sista loved
Head nestled in a napped neck bathed in hints of Peacefire oil.
I’m plotting revolution with six forks in a five dollar piece of sweet cream pie,
and meeting Audre through Lex
as Zach pumps Sweet Honey through my veins
I am strong now
I am fed
Nourished through poets writers and song
Booty windin Hips grindin to Lauryn cause
Hell yeah “ You just lost one”
And Aiden and ME…
We pick steel door dead bolt locks for Patty Sue
Cause we know
Freedom Looks like squirrels mating on rooftops,
and mama birds nesting in second story dryer ducts
Creating home despite your destruction.
Outside the big box, where Ubuntu grows.
I got ME
So if you think you know ME cause you saw a girl like ME in a book
Think again