tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50064422810984405262024-03-08T11:19:09.625-08:00Hypothetical Theological Illogical Scholastica<a href="http://www.myfreecopyright.com/registered_mcn/BLMRB-8PLAH-N24PN" title="MyFreeCopyright.com Registered & Protected"><img src="http://storage.myfreecopyright.com/mfc_protected.png" alt="MyFreeCopyright.com Registered & Protected" title="Copyright Protected" width="145px" height="38px" border="0"></a>48lawsNdreamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13627772395231029438noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006442281098440526.post-70373185305640321702014-05-19T09:23:00.002-07:002014-05-19T09:23:17.957-07:00“Children of LGBTQ Parents: Normalization and Assimilation”Written for a client April 2014<br />
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<b><u><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">“Children of LGBTQ Parents:
Normalization and Assimilation”<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">In these more modern and, some
say, more “tolerant” times, The Gay Agenda has quickly normalized and sanitized
perceptions of Same-Sex relationships in general and same-sex parenthood in
particular. What some would call a glorification of postmodern alternatives to
the pre-WWII era “nuclear family,” some would call a perversion of traditional
family unit structure and values (Becker, p8). Michael E Lamb, editor of <i>Parenting
and Child Development in “Nontraditional” Families </i>notes in his
introduction that it would indeed benefit society as a whole “</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 8.5pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">to discuss in depth the ways in which various
"deviations" from traditional family styles affect childrearing
practices and child development (Lamb, xiii)”</span><i><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
</span></i><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">The fact that recently gay
marriage is more widely accepted and gay rights more explicitly defended, has
perhaps made it “easier” for children of same sex parents to feel “normal”—or
does it give them a certain sense of still being deprived of stable gendered
role models, or still being “Other-ed” or stigmatized by children of
heterosexuals? Proper child
socialization and identity formation/establishment is often shaped by the
parents—are children of same sex parents disadvantaged in a way by circumvented
or inverted gender presentations; are children of same sex parents confused by
lack of standard masculine-feminine identification and is that “confusion” in
fact liberating as a condemnation of making oneself a stereotype, a
condemnation of “labeling” or “gender policing”? Perhaps it can be proven that
a child’s development of his/her own sexuality and self-identification in the
face of disapproving, bullying, or simply unsympathetic peers is not
necessarily affected by parent’s sexual orientation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">In these cosmopolitan,
gay-friendly times, the Western world seeks in many ways to re-define and
outline concepts of family and gender. In the post-Clinton-Lewinski-Scandal era
of American sexual politics, in the post-<i>Scandal </i>era wherein America’s
sordid history of slavery and miscegenation is remixed and upgraded to place
Sally Hemmings as Olivia Pope in a designer suit and “white hat”, in the era in
which the nation confronted, horrified, its behind-curtains Catholic Pedophilia
glorification, new ideas about relationship dynamics and taboos arise just as
dramatically as the recent spikes in divorce and adoption rates. In this
exciting and unsettling New Age, many discover families are dramatically
reconfigured. Through gradual standardization of homosexual portrayals in the
media, many American citizens, liberal and conservative, question Ideals among
hetero- and homosexual families of what’s considered “proper” or “traditional”
in the family unit organization and/or presentation of gender roles, including
masculine and feminine presentations of caretaking and employment
responsibilities, as applicable (<i>Opposing Viewpoints,</i> p1). In the face
of the question of whether gay parents appropriately raise well-adjusted,
properly socialized, healthy, intelligent, and confident children, there are
several opposing arguments presented. Among potential oppositional perspectives
are: how children may feel isolated or ostracized for parents’ orientation (<i>National
Review</i>); how witnessing homosexual displays of affection and/or sexual
activity may be believed to cause children to experiences warping of gender
identification; and whether or not a child’s proclivity towards homosexual
desires/presentation can absolutely be attributed to direct imitation or
emulation of a homosexual parent. These questions can perhaps be placed in a
clearer context by exploring how the traditional family structure in America
has changed, as well as how drastically and quickly changed has been the
perspectives on Gay Marriage and Gay Parenting in the American collective.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">The 20<sup>th</sup> and 21<sup>st</sup>
centuries have been the most rapidly evolving in human history, with trends in
arts, religion, fashion, and even human thought changing ever more fleetingly
with each six months. The dawning of the 21<sup>st</sup> century especially has
illuminated severe deviations from the traditional “nuclear family” structure,
starting with (and blame attributed to) not only the institution of gay
marriage, but even heterosexual families’ households changed drastically with the
country’s post WWII high morale expansion and suburbanization-modernization, as
well as post-1960s Women’s Liberation and the so-called Sexual Revolution. An
article appearing in <i>The American Family </i>illustrates thus:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">The
economic prosperity following World War II enabled many American families to
pursue what was perceived to be a better life in the wide-open spaces of the
outlying, newly developing suburbs. The ties that bound the nuclear family, the
extended family, and the ethnic neighborhood—all of which existed before the
war—were loosened. (Becker, p1)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">The thoroughly researched report went on including
explanations for the formation of new dynamics including: increased occurrences
of divorce leading to split and mixed families, the advent of the acceptable
“stepchildren” as a normal reflection of broken vows, incidences of struggling
retiree grandparents raising grandchildren, adoptions, and interracial
marriages. All this in mind, it would seem evident the American Family Ideal
was already becoming more inclusive, more fluid—or, some would say, the
Standard was more corrupted—well before the political debates about laws
governing same sex relations began. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">With the definitions of family
more elusive, and the definitions of “love” more broad, one may begin to wonder
in extremes whether or not in the near future there will be advocates this
zealous arguing for the acceptance and normalization of Pedophilic marriages. Edward
Alexander, writing for <i>The Weekly Standard</i> surmised:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">The
triumphant campaign for gay marriage (and gay adoption) had swept all before
it, once Vice President Biden forced President Obama to accelerate his
"evolution" from the traditional (for most of human history)
understanding of marriage as a heterosexual institution to endorsement of
same-sex unions. The campaign had been conducted on the lowest possible
intellectual level, i.e., that of "equal rights" for all people who
love each other. But do any two heterosexual people in love have a
"right" to marry? Suppose one of them is already married? Suppose one
of them is the child of the other? (Alexander, p1)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">In light of the question of whether same sex offspring are
really living a life that’s best for them, the full article from “Gay
Parenting” in <i>Opposing Viewpoints in
Context </i>quotes extensively:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Those
who oppose the idea of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people having
and raising children argue that the traditional family structure serves as the
basis for society, and without it, society as a whole will deteriorate and
suffer. Collette Caprara in a Heritage Foundation blog entry, entitled
“Reinventing the Family: Good Intentions Are Not Enough,” on October 24, 2011,
writes, “Youths growing up with both a mother and father in the home are also
less likely to engage in high-risk behaviors such as becoming sexually active
or engaging in substance abuse and less likely to exhibit antisocial behavior.
In addition, teens in intact families tend to fare better on a range of
emotional and psychological outcomes and to have higher levels of academic
achievement and educational attainment. With an apparent disregard for the
social and economic consequences to children, the rise of experimental family
forms and the ‘commissioning’ of babies may be the ultimate expression of the
commodification of children—when offspring are conceived for the gratification
of adults who have yet to grow up.”</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> (<i>Opposing Viewpoints</i>,
p2)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Harsh as some of Caprara’s
assessments may have presumably been, it is imperative that, politics aside,
more scrutiny be given as to whether such alternate family, marriage, and relationship
paradigms are truly best for children instead of just abstract concepts,
untried, used as cannon fodder for vain political rhetoric and philosophical
fascination with the taboo. Frustrated by the lack of truly thorough research
on the effects of gay parenting on children, Mark Regnerus of University of
Texas took it upon himself to conduct a larger, wider, more inclusive and
representative study (<i>The Wilson
Quarterly</i>) with samples of adults who had grown up with gay or lesbian
parents and had come of age before gay marriage was even legal. His findings
showed that children who had reached of adult age after being raised by gay or
lesbian parents were more likely to need public assistance as an adult, more
likely to face unemployment, more likely to experience depression and, thus,
more likely with such symptoms to engage in drug use. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">"If
same-sex parents are able to raise children with no differences" from
children raised by their married biological parents, Regnerus writes, "it
would mean that same-sex couples are able to do something that heterosexual
couples in step parenting, adoptive and cohabitating contexts have themselves
not been able to do--replicate the optimal child-rearing environment of
married, biological-parent homes." (<i>The
Wilson Quarterly</i>, p1)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Contrary to Regnerus’ findings,
however, in a case of what could be skewed data and biased agenda pushing, a
report published in <i>Gay Parenting </i>and
<i>Daily Hampshire Gazette </i>on a study
conducted by Abbie Gouldberg concludes there are no higher rates of depression
or maladjustment among children of gay parents. The Clark University Professor
Gouldberg asserts cheerfully that children are much better off because they were
taught by their “more tolerant” gay parents to be “more open to same-sex
relationships” and are “not as gender stereotyped “ as their heterosexual, more
conformist peers (Wilson, p4). She also makes the connection that because of
this open-mindedness and their parents’ tolerance, children of same sex parents
feel more supported and thus more confident in life, translating to
seemingly more successful children,
especially “girls (of lesbian parents) are more likely to have higher career
aspirations (4).” Whatever the presumed benefits of higher career aspirations,
Gouldberg’s happy assumption does not explain the results of Regnerus’ study implicating
gay parenting as a key commonality among depressed, drug addicted, and
unemployed adults of a far more inclusive and representative sample, including
Blacks and Hispanics, than Amy Gouldberg’s own sample. Indeed, whose perception
is more “open-minded?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> It is not only wisely conscientious, it is
indeed perceptively healthy to question the long term potential negative <i>emotional and psychological</i> effects—rather
than the applauding of financial upward mobility in skewed studies of the gay
demographic in the corporate workforce (Fetto, <i>Experian Marketing Services</i>) found in society’s sheep-like,
fanatical, gay marriage bandwagon. Jay Roache’, a student of Rutgers
University, himself a gay father of adopted children, acknowledges the
subversive ulterior motives about the mainstream Gay Agenda and its potential
damages, saying </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“I fear the same that
the perversion of genuine love will be met with illusion and we will see way
more mess coming (<i>Roache Interview April
26, 2014</i>)</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> It is imperative to question the future
potential of other taboos (incest, pedophilia, polygamy, etc) being made
legally acceptable by the Law of Man instead of the moral Law of God or Nature.
These concepts in mind, it is worth a thorough read of Edward Alexander’s enlightening
summation:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[In 1869, Matthew Arnold] </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Arnold singled out for relentless
mockery liberalism's obsessive campaign to change England's marriage laws so as
"to give a man leave to marry his deceased wife's sister," that is,
to eliminate the longstanding English taboo on in-law marriage. Defenders of
the taboo claimed that Leviticus forbade such marriages. Liberals said
Leviticus did no such thing and therefore "man's law, the law of liberty,
... makes us free to marry our deceased wife's sister." But Arnold's
objection to the liberal position had nothing to do with Leviticus--"the
voice of an Oriental and polygamous nation." Rather, it expressed his
sense of the sacredness of marriage and the customs that regulate it as the
delicately woven fabric of civilization, a barrier against the promiscuity of
primitive life, against "anarchy." Such barriers are laborious to
create, easy to unravel. England's 65-year battle over this taboo, viewed from
the perspective of our own recent reversal of the laws (to say nothing of
ancient custom) regarding marriage, reverses Marx's famous saying about history
repeating itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. But there is
an eerie resemblance to the present that is worth noting. Arnold mocked
Victorian liberalism's obsession with the "right" to marry one's
deceased wife's sister as the perfect example of its Philistine "double
craving" because it combined "the craving for forbidden fruit and the
craving for legality." (Joe Biden, whatever his shortcomings, grasped this
combination instinctively; and it is thanks in large part to him that a future
book of presidential history may well be entitled Legalizing Forbidden Fruit:
The Age of Obama.) (Alexander, p2)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> Speaking of “Forbidden Fruit” it is perhaps
apropos to recall the age-old anti-gay slogan: “Adam and Eve, not Adam and
Steve” and, from there, to consider the issue of gender presentation in same
sex households and the effects of such on a child’s own social-sexual
development. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> In traditional heterosexual
households, it is often accepted that Mommy, the feminine principle, presents
as soft, often accommodating, sensitive, affectionate, and fulfilling role of
cook, cleaner, and [patient] child provider; alternatively, Daddy, the
masculine principle, presents often as stern disciplinarian yet wise advisor,
brash and direct in speech, and hard working. In hetero- and homo-sexual homes, how are these masculine and feminine
roles or stereotypes maintained or disassembled? In same sex families, how, if at all, does the
child identify “mommy” and “daddy” or which mommy/daddy is regarded as the
worker/provider and which is regarded as the caretaker/nurturer? “[S]exuality
is an important aspect of gay relationships,” Virginia Casper writes in <i>Gay
Parents/Straight Schools, </i>“But for many straight Americans, it is the
defining one. Asked to imagine a gay-headed family on a Saturday morning, many
Americans would not be likely to conjure up images of laundry and chores (Casper,
22).” Abbie Gouldberg seems to like the idea of the gay household model
creating more open-minded individuals (Wilson, p.4) who perhaps can be said to
be “beyond gender” (such as the incredulous pretention that today’s Americans
live in a “post-racist” society) because “gay parents…encourage a girl to play
with both dolls and trucks” or introducing gender neutral toys and games
(Caldera, et al.), and, like Angelina Jolie’s gender-bending Shiloh, these
ungendered children are supposedly more“Independent (Wilson, p.4).” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> Another
issue of note inevitably to surface in any growing family household is the
issue of Sexual Curiosity. Children are often influenced initially in sexual
development by the sexual portrayals in their own household (Bering)—which is
of course not to say children are witnessing explicit sexual activity—and even
displays of affection between parents; mild expressions of desire and/or
flirtations still shape how children feel they are as adults to approach and
conduct themselves with the opposite sex. In modern times, some may argue
children no longer base their interaction on opposite sex by heterosexual
parents’ interaction: now, it seems to be a free for all as children now more
likely have to discern organically, spontaneously, how they will interact with
a person of same or opposite sex, with no set example of etiquette. Studies
(Pick) have shown sexual proclivities, kinks, and/or fetishes are undeniably
shaped by childhood memories and parental impressions (Darling)—does this prove
that children of gay parents are more inclined to fetishize or otherwise find
desirable, elements of homosexual eroticism, including but not limited to
aspects of homosexual foreplay including sex toys? One must wonder if this is
an unintended and imperceptible side effect (that perhaps Ms. Gouldberg did not
anticipate in her “cars and dolls” encouragement) of this Aeon’s debauched
permission of a “right” granted without consideration of its potential damage. Again,
if in another 50 years Presidents are granting rights to pedophiles to legally
seduce and/or marry children, without seriously contemplating the gruesome
possibilities and mental instability from which could be wrought, it is worth
considering if that too would be considered a positive progression of America’s
“heroic tolerance”, ironic in its polarity to the arguably (to today’s
standards) “close-minded” and “oppressive” Puritan values this nation was first
purportedly founded upon. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> Often children of hetero or homosexual parents, for whatever reasons
including bullying and/or peer pressure, do <i>not</i> want to identify with
their parents and, as a personal revolution or liberation, present themselves
in ways as different from their parents as possible. Could this include
children of homosexual parents who deliberately and resentfully present
themselves as heterosexual (even to some extremes of denying their own latent
homosexual desires) out of shame for homosexual parents’ stigmatism in society
at large? Children also obviously mimic their parents, finding the parental
example set before them, regardless of society at large, as the Ideal they
should aspire to. Could
children of homosexual parents feel, especially in early stages of development,
that homosexual relationships are indeed the “norm,” the “majority” or even the
<i>only </i>way relationships are supposed to be, just as undoubtedly
heterosexual parents’ children have felt it is the “only way?” Again, Ms.
Gouldberg feels the opposite:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-language: HE;">Q: Does any of the research show the opposite—that some
kids of same-sex parents want to be anything but gay, not because they don't
love their parents, but because they've been dealing with
"difference" all their lives?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">A:
That is exactly what I found. These kids are tired of defending their families
and they're very aware that their parents feel this pressure to produce straight
kids. They're so aware, growing up in the lens of media scrutiny, they feel
they need to say, if I feel like screaming at my mom, it has nothing to do with
the fact that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 200%;">she's gay! (Wilson, p 4)<span style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Conclusively, children may be
faced with peer dissatisfaction or bullying for homosexual parents, however, it
has been demonstrated through evidence presented in the paper, that although
same sex relations are becoming more widely accepted, children of gays and
lesbians do not necessarily identify as homosexual in any larger rates than
children of heterosexuals. Furthermore, it seems time can only tell as in the
next generation or two will the long term psychological effects be fully
realized, the consequences of the “open” perceptions of this modern, “post-racist,”
post-gender”, “post-homophobia” society. Like Pandora’s Box<a href="file:///C:/Users/user/Desktop/DO%20RIGHT%20NOW/LGBTQ%20parents.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>,
like the “broad…way to Hell”<a href="file:///C:/Users/user/Desktop/DO%20RIGHT%20NOW/LGBTQ%20parents.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>,
maybe there is such a thing as “too open.” Perhaps it is truly best to conclude
with a return to the words of Jay Roache’, who candidly and emotionally reveals
his own misgivings as a gay man and conflicts within himself concerning the
image and gender presentation(s) he wants his child[ren] to be influenced by:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">Now in my personal relationship I would feel completely
awkward expressing affection in from of my child, male or female. And I desire
a male child. My issue is male bonding and that brotherly connection I feel
that my dyssexualism<a href="file:///C:/Users/user/Desktop/DO%20RIGHT%20NOW/LGBTQ%20parents.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
has interrupted…<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>At any rate...I
would never take away a mother from my child and yes there are such things as
adoptive mothers etc but I was born with my birth mother. I would enjoy what
I've experienced to be delivered to my son. That mother and father dynamic I
just know that I would be more of a present father figure for my son…I would
provide my child with his birth mother and birth father. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Although my love for Brandon is
ridiculous and never to cease, I believe that things could work in our favor,
and I would have a present mother figure at all times for this child. So yes
I'm saying that I would PREFER having my son while Brandon and I are together
but having a woman I between us. And I feel that is selfish. But that's what I
would prefer.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Perhaps that's me
not willing to leave my present sex style/love for my child and is what's
preventing me from receiving that gift. [Regarding his strict, abusive,
heterosexual Christian parents who often demonized him and discouraged
homosexual proclivities, Roache continues] </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And regardless of their acceptance or not, I
would have probably [lived up to the Christian example] and been single all of
my life or just fell into a heterosexual relationship. It wasn't really me
deviating [by engaging in homosexual affairs] it was me more so no longer
denying my [innate] shadow. Single or heterosexually conforming, I would've
lived a secret online gay life. </span><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">If I
was raised by gay parents hmmm...it depends on how they raised me. If they
never showed me to a heterosexual style I don't know how I would be. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> If they did
present healthy comparative heterosexual friends or acquaintances as
examples/role models then I still don't know. I think I would be open. More
experimentative. I would end up in a heterosexual marriage because I still feel
a Mother and Father, male and female role is important for my child to grow up
seeing. But I would probably dibble and dabble [in homosexual encounters]
still.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h1>
<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Works
Cited<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Alexander, Edward. "Liberal
Dogmatism; How a far-out idea becomes orthodox." </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: HE;">The<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: HE;">Weekly Standard </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">12
Aug. 2013. </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: HE;">Opposing Viewpoints in Context</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">. Web. 25 Apr.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">2014.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Becker, Cynthia S., Ed.,
"Changing Family Patterns." </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: HE;">The American Family</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">: </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: HE;">Reflecting a Changing Nation</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">. 2005 ed. Detroit: Gale, 2005.
Information Plus Reference Series. </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: HE;">Opposing Viewpoints
in Context</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">.
Web. 25 Apr. 2014.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Caldera, Yvonne M.; Huston,
Aletha C.; O’Brien, Marion; “Social Interactions and Play Patterns of Parents
and Toddlers with Feminine, Masculine, and Neutral Toys”. <i>Child Development</i>, Vol. 60, No.1 (Feb 1989), pp 70-76, Published by
Wiley Online on behalf of <b><i>Society
For Research in Child Development </i></b>Web reprint </span><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1131072"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">http://www.jstor.org/stable/1131072</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Casper,
Virginia, and Steven B. Schultz.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Gay
parents/straight schools: Building communication and trust</i>. Teachers
College Press, 1999.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Darling,
Carol A., and Mary W. Hicks. "Parental influence on adolescent sexuality:
Implications for parents as educators."<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Journal
of Youth and Adolescence</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>11.3
(1982): 231-245.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">John Fetto, for Experian Marketing Services reports
“A look at household income and discretionary spending of lesbian, gay, and
heterosexual Americans” http://www.experian.com/blogs/marketing-forward/2012/07/20/sim-a-look-at-household-income-and-discretionary-spend-of-lesbian-gay-and-heterosexual-americans/</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">"Gay Parenting." </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: HE;">Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">. Detroit: Gale, 2013.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-language: HE;">Opposing
Viewpoints in Context</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%;">. Web. 25 Apr. 2014.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Goldberg,
Abbie E.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Lesbian and gay
parents and their children: Research on the family life cycle</i>. American
Psychological Association, 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Lamb,
Michael E.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Parenting and child
development in" nontraditional" families</i>. Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates Publishers, 1999.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">"Looking at the research on
gay parenting, Mark Regnerus noticed that the samples<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">of most studies were small and
unrepresentative, so he collected a sample that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">was random and large." </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: HE;">National Review </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">16
Dec. 2013: 12. </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: HE;">Opposing Viewpoints<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-language: HE;">in
Context</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%;">. Web. 25 Apr. 2014.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Pick,
Susan, and Patricia Andrade Palos. "Impact of the family on the sex lives
of adolescents."<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Adolescence</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>30.119 (1995): 667-675.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Roache’,
Jay. Personal Interview/Conversation, consent to cite granted April 26, 2014</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">"The gay parent report card." </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-language: HE;">The Wilson
Quarterly </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">36.4
(2012). </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-language: HE;">Opposing<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-language: HE;">Viewpoints in Context</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">. Web. 25 Apr. 2014.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Wilson, Suzanne. "Children of Lesbian and Gay
Parents Are Not More Likely to Have<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Problems." </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-language: HE;">Gay Parenting</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">. Ed. Beth Rosenthal. Detroit:
Greenhaven Press, 2013.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "A Conversation
with Psychologist Abbie<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Goldberg: What Studies Show About Gay/Lesbian
Parenting." </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-language: HE;">Daily Hampshire<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-language: HE;">Gazette </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">22
July 2009. </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-language: HE;">Opposing Viewpoints in Context</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">. Web. 25 Apr. 2014.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br clear="all" style="mso-special-character: line-break; page-break-before: always;" />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<h1>
<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Works
Consulted<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></i><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Bos, Henny, Loes van Gelderen, and Nanette Gartrell.
"Lesbian and Heterosexual Two-Parent Families: Adolescent–Parent
Relationship Quality and Adolescent Well-Being."</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span><i><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Journal
of Child and Family Studies</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">(2014): 1-16. Web reprint. <
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10826-014-9913-8#page-1 >Web
Search 4 Apr 2014<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Brown, Sarah S. "Popular
Opinion on Homosexuality: The Shared Moral Language of Opposing Views."<i>Sociological
Inquiry</i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">. </span></i></span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">70.4 (2000): 446-61. Web Reprint. < http://www.dallasvoice.com/gay-and-lesbian-parents-teaching-kids-its-ok-to-be-different-1013572.html
> Web Search. 4 Apr. 2014.<em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></em></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<em><span style="background: white; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Cahill, Sean, Mitra Ellen, and Sarah Tobias. “Family Policy:
Issues Affecting Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Families.” New York:
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute, 2002. ngltf.org. Web.
4 Apr. 2014.</span></em><em><span style="background: white; font-size: 10.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Family Equality Council and Center
for American Progress. United States. National Association of Social Workers. <i>Strengthening
Economic Security for Children Living in LGBTQ Families</i>. Denver, CO:
Movement Advancement Project, 2012. Web.
<http: file="" strengthening-economic-security.pdf="" www.lgbtmap.org="">. Web
Search 4 Apr 2014<o:p></o:p></http:></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Fitzgerald, Bridget. "Children
of lesbian and gay parents: A review of the literature."</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span><i><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Marriage
& Family Review</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">29.1 (1999): 57-75.Web Reprint.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> < </span><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J002v29n01_05#.U0JwyahdXZU"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J002v29n01_05#.U0JwyahdXZU</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> > Web Search. 4 Apr. 2014<em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></em></span></div>
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<i><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
<em>Gantz, Joe. Whose Child Cries: Children of Gay Parents Talk about their
Lives. Rolling Hills Estates, CA: Jalmar Press, 1983. Print. The American
College of Pediatricians. “Homosexual Parenting: Is It Time for Change?”
acpeds.org. Mar 26 2009. Web. 4 Apr 2014 <http: acpeds.org="">.</http:></em></span></i><em><span style="background: white; font-size: 10.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Gates, Gary J. “LGBT Parenting in
the United States” The Williams Institute. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA School of Law,
2013. Web. < </span><a href="http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/LGBT-Parenting.pdf"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/LGBT-Parenting.pdf</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> > Web Search. 4
Apr. 2014 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Golombok, Susan, and
Fiona Tasker. "Do parents influence the sexual orientation of their
children? Findings from a longitudinal study of lesbian families."<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Developmental psychology</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>32.1 (1996): 3.</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Kosciw, Joseph G., and Elizabeth M.
Diaz.</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span><i><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Involved,
Invisible, Ignored: The Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
Parents and Their Children in Our Nation's K-12 Schools</span></i><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). 121
West 27th Street Suite 804, New York, NY 10001, 2008. Web. <</span><a href="http://www.familyequality.org/_asset/5n43xf/familiesandschools.pdf"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://www.familyequality.org/_asset/5n43xf/familiesandschools.pdf</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> > Web Search. 4 Apr. 2014<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Lewin, Ellen . "Embracing
Consumption: Making Sense of Gay Fathers’ Strategies for Becoming
Parents." The Austin Summit on LGBT Families . University of Texas.
Austin, Texas. 26 Apr 2013. Reading. Departments of Gender, Women’s &
Sexuality Studies, and Anthropology. Iowa: University of Iowa, 2013. Web. < </span><a href="http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/sociology/_files/pdfs/lewin.pdf"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/sociology/_files/pdfs/lewin.pdf</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> > Web Search. 4 Apr. 2014<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Marks, Loren. "Same-sex
parenting and children’s outcomes: A closer examination of the American
psychological association’s brief on lesbian and gay parenting."</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span><i><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Social
Science Research</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">41 (2012): 735-751. Web Reprint. < </span><a href="http://www.baylorisr.org/wp-content/uploads/Marks.pdf"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://www.baylorisr.org/wp-content/uploads/Marks.pdf</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> >Web Search. 4 Apr. 2014 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Pluhar*, Erika I.,
and Peter Kuriloff. "What really matters in family communication about
sexuality? A qualitative analysis of affect and style among African American
mothers and adolescent daughters."<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Sex
Education</i>4.3 (2004): 303-321.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Pick, Susan, and
Patricia Andrade Palos. "Impact of the family on the sex lives of
adolescents."<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Adolescence</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>30.119 (1995): 667-675.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Walker*, Joy.
"Parents and sex education—looking beyond ‘the birds and the bees’."<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Sex Education</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>4.3 (2004): 239-254.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/user/Desktop/DO%20RIGHT%20NOW/LGBTQ%20parents.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> The
Greek myth of Pandora’s Box explained at length here http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/grecoromanmyth1/a/050410Pandora_and_her_box_or_pithos.htm</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/user/Desktop/DO%20RIGHT%20NOW/LGBTQ%20parents.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Matthew
7:13</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/user/Desktop/DO%20RIGHT%20NOW/LGBTQ%20parents.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A
concept referring to “dysfunctional sexuality” or a luminal, undefinable and
fluid sexuality or asexuality. Indication to its meaning here http://www.asexuality.org/en/topic/28522-introduction-and-question-on-asexuality/</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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48lawsNdreamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13627772395231029438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006442281098440526.post-38468761648213282402014-05-19T09:22:00.000-07:002014-05-19T09:22:05.568-07:00Mojuba: the African Autobiography as Ancestral ReverenceWritten for a client April 2014<br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">“Mojuba</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">: the African Autobiography as
Ancestral Reverence”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Africans place paramount importance upon children
and ancestors. It is a common belief in many African communities, regardless of
language or cultural nuances, that ancestors are reincarnated through our
children. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In African mentality, the idea of living honorably
and living a dignified legacy is just as much to make one’s ancestors proud as
to also leave a Proud example for one’s own children to follow. When ancestors
are proud of their descendents, they may reincarnate as a child in the same
family bloodline, sometimes reincarnating again and again as young children,
such as <i>abiku</i>, heavily mentioned in
by Soyinka in <i>Ake</i> (Soyinka, p 16-17).
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Many African spiritual groups have
elaborate ceremonies or small devotional rituals giving respect and remembrance
to the Dearly Departed, as evidenced in Soyinka's stories, in which he mentions
<i>egungun </i>again and again, literally
translated as “bones of my bones”</span>. <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">It is in acts of ancestral reverence that Africans and other indigenous
cultures (such as Japanese Shinto and Norse Asatru traditions) feel perhaps more
palpably a sense of humanity: humbled while reciting the names and pouring
libation for those that came before, and feeling a part of a long thread of
Collective [Un/Sub]Conscious, one who actively remembers and invokes the
ancestors realizes a single human being is never actually alone. Likewise, it
is in having and raising children that one’s Divinity and Immortality is ultimately
realized and, perhaps fleetingly, however abstractly or figuratively, attained.
A child is a reflection of the parent’s story, a testament and affirmation of
one’s own survival, which brings reassurance that, by looking into the faces of
children, a man or woman can see and know the evidence of the long line of ancestors
who begat them. The very act of birth and its dependency on and interrelation
with the act of death confirms the parents’ story will live on because science
has even proven memory is passed down through DNA. African American Civil
Rights leader and revolutionary Stokley Carmichael wrote about the Afrocentric
community concept and the importance of celebrating children as ancestors
returned, in order to celebrate the identity not only of the child, but the
entire community, ethnic group, nation, the African continent, and the African
Diaspora in the Americas and Caribbean:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 10pt;">Among many West African
peoples from among whom our ancestors were seized, whenever a child is born, a
birth poem or praise song is composed in its honor. Among the Yoruba [the
Nigerian ethnic group which Wole Soyinka himself is apart of] this birth poem
is called <i>oriki.</i> Some days later at
the naming ceremony by which the infant is ushered formally into its place in
human society, the child’s oriki is recited publicly, first into the ear of the
child and then to the assembled community of family and neighbors. The first
language a child will be required to commit to memory, the oriki imprints the
child with its complex historical, spiritual, and social identities….[Oriki] is
at once prayer, thanksgiving, celebration, and prophecy. It is a meditation on
the meaning and significance of the new human’s name. It is an evocation of the
strong deeds, character, and praise names of the infant’s ancestors, and,
perhaps most important, it is an optimistic attempt to project (and define) in
desirable ways the child’s future personality and life prospects. By evoking
lineage, the oriki is ultimately about spiritual inheritance: that eternal life
force that has many names (Ase among the Yoruba), which we receive from our
ancestors. A vital force of which we, in each generation, are only the
contemporary incarnations. And which in turn we pass on to our children and
they do theirs, so that the lineage never dies….Oriki, while memory and
history, is also character, at once both individual and collective. Individual
because each human being has his or her own particular and unique oriki.
Collective because being anchored in lineage, it is fundamentally about group
identity. We Africans know that each individual one of us is ultimately the sum
of that long line of ancestors—spiritual forces and moral arbiters—who have gone
before to produce us. The psychic forces out of which we all come. In this
sense oriki is a salute to family. It is also an inheritance one acquires at
birth. (Carmichael, pp 11-12)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In J. Nozipo Maraire’s <i>Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter</i>, the narrator Amai Zenzele
reveals her inverted reflection in her daughter, and her duty and desire to
pass down as an inheritance the secrets of her life (which, in themselves,
contain the secrets of her ancestors, her community, her African continent, the
continent itself a Mother):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 10pt;">We have the same eyes,
you and I. But yours are still vulnerable. They are candid and honest; like a
scrupulous documentary, they take note of all of the details of life. And all
of the world is reflected there—the beautiful and the wretched alike. My eyes
are resigned to observe, detached, from some distance. They want no part; they
do not take in. They keep out. In your company, I often feel blind, groping for
firm objects, hesitant lest I collide with some obstacle I cannot characterize,
let alone surmount. Ah, but your fingers are truly mine, long, dark, and graceful.
And those clumsy lips, they are mine, too. They fall and tense and bend into
every shape. They are never still, never without expression….I have learned
something in my awkward journey through womanhood. The lessons are few, but
enduring. So I hope that you will pardon this curious distillation of
traditional African teaching, social commentary, and maternal concern. These
are the stories that have made me what I am today. It is just that you are my
very own, and it is an old woman’s privilege to impart her wisdom. It is all I
have to give to you, Zenzele. (Maraire, pp 4-5)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Africans place emphasis on respectability in the
sense of setting good examples for children and leading an honorable life that
does not shame one's family name or heritage. So it is indeed especially
shameful to the parents for the new generation children to eschew such rich
traditions in favor of disobedience characteristic of the "rebellious
American [or otherwise Western] spirit". <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">"I don't know what to do, Amai Zenzele.
Somewhere we did something wrong....when independence came, we celebrated with
tears in our eyes! The country was ours! We would continue the struggle to
ensure that our children received every opportunity of Western privilege. The
whites had hoarded the pleasures and advantages of our nation for too long. My
God, there were horse-riding and French lessons, video games, and trips to
London and New York. There was nothing that our children asked for that we
denied them. We who had grown up knowing only deprivation, austerity, and hard
labor. We wanted only the best for them. We even sent them to the best private
schools with plenty of whites." ....She waved her arms around the sitting
room, helplessly. The room was like a museum of African assimilation. On the
far wall were shelves of video games, movies, and a computer.....the room, with
its rich golden carpeting and matching velvet sofas, was the Zimbabwean's
version of Western sophistication...."But it was all in vain. They have
neither respect nor gratitude"…When I left…I understood [Amai Stephen]’s
predicament as well. All of the peri-independent generation shared a common
vision of a better life. Unfortunately, too many of us had translated this into
a material definition of success. We developed all the symptoms of the
postcolonial syndrome, endemic to Africa: acquisition, imitation, and a paucity
of imagination. We simply rushed to secure what the colonialists had…we denied
our own culture, relieved to leave our primitive origins far away, in some
forgotten village…we created an invisible white line or ultimate aspiration: to
achieve what the Europeans had…we ceased to dream, to have our own vision of
happiness and success. We were able to carry on this face with aplomb, but our
children were getting caught in some gray zone that was neither black culture
nor truly white either. (Maraire, pp 12-13, 17-18)<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In the face of this schism, this cultural
rebellion and betrayal, African parents, no longer able to solidify their
traditions in their children simply by passing them through their loins, resort
now to picking up the pen to solidify the once oral and mystical traditional
wisdom into the European’s Written Word. “If you want to hide something from a
Black man, put it in a book,” the old saying goes, yet the African parents writing
autobiographies to pass to their children, often in the form of letters such as
Maraire’s and Magona’s works, are doing the opposite: putting it in books they
immortalize their culture and assert autonomy over their stories (rewriting,
literally, blindly accepted Eurocentric HIS-story), revealing to a wider world
what was once whispered around campfires and sung in cryptic lullabies. In a
review of Sindiwe Magona’s <i>To My
Children’s Children </i>and <i>Mother to
Mother</i>, Meg Samuelson writes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 1.0in; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
<span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-size: 10pt;">Sindiwe Magona's autobiography,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>To
My Children's Children</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(1990),
and her fictionalized account of the Amy Biehl killing,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Mother to Mother</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(1998), provide a rich comparative
framework in which to consider the construction of the narrating voice and the
addressee…..</span><i><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 10.0pt;"> To My
Children's Children</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 10.0pt;">opens by locating the speaking act
(recourse is made to the oral, not written, tradition) in the culturally
specific role of a Xhosa grandmother. Although there are (repressed) schisms
within this voice, it sets itself up as one that emerges from a stable identity.
The proclaimed aim of this autobiographical act (telling "my" story)
is to conserve, record, and transmit the culture and traditions of "my
people"--the amaXhosa -- to her grandchildren (1). Here we see Magona
justifying the "private" act of autobiography (writing the self) by
turning it into a communal act, locating it within a culturally ordained,
"authentic" sphere: orally transmitted cultural values. Thus the
constructed voice and its placing of the addressee deflect the individualism
implied in the act of writing. That the narrator's voice slips out of its
ostensible function as a communal voice (and reveals this to be a rhetorical
strategy) becomes apparent when Magona drops the address to the "child of
the child of my child" after the fourth chapter, only to hastily recover
it in the closing sentence. The maternal identity, I will therefore argue,
should not be taken purely at face value but should be read far more
ambivalently as a voice torn by competing pressures. On the one hand, Magona is
invoking textual strategies in order to write her story within the conventional
politics of the time. On the other, we cannot but help see this device of
constituting herself as a mother in/of the community as being, at times, a
screen behind which Magona attempts the more private act of recuperating a
stable individual self. What the voice she constructs claims to conserve is the
locus of community. (Samuelson, pp 1-2)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The
African voice of the community is often attributed to the elders, such as those
keepers of wisdom Amai Zenzele in Maraire’s work refers to: “even the
‘ancients’ as you call them, with their interminable, glorious epic tales of
battles waged and won and village life before the white man came—they are our
living history…our library (Maraire, p 7).” The elders are perceived as the
keepers of the village’s moral standards and spiritual convictions, they are
also the shapers of socialization: the foundation upon which the example is
based for how the citizens of the village should carry themselves with respect.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 1in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Looking back now, I can clearly see how <i>iintsomi </i>are an essential and integral
part of the socialization of the child among the amaXhosa. The lazy youngster
who would not bother to learn from his or her elders was punished; usually he or
she ended up without a spouse because no one would marry such a sluggard.
Always, good behavior was rewarded and bad punished. (Magona, p5) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Wole
Soyinka’s luminal masterpiece <i>Ake</i>
shapes Soyinka himself as a sort of trickster god, almost unreliable narrator,
the child speaking through the adult’s mouth, writing through the adult’s pen
precisely as the adult self sees his child self. Like the Esu-Elegbara
crossroads deity the Yoruba tribe worship—the social-spiritual culture that
Soyinka himself was born into—Soyinka straddles the fence between innocence and
age, ignorance and perception, a child’s place and an elder’s authority, a
child’s hope and an old man’s careful certainty and mortgaged regret. Soyinka’s
middle existence between youth and adulthood signifies modernity or
Eurocentrism as a sort of “growing up,” as if the magic of the traditional
spiritual practices are acceptable as a child, but as an adult he engages in
the more existential, philosophical intellectual activities of analyzing
Christian doctrine rather than engaging ritually in the lively and living
ceremonies of his people. Sindiwe Magona expresses a similar sentiment in <i>To My Children’s Children </i>revealing:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 1in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">This straddling of two worlds, the world of school
and of “civilization” and the world of ancestor worship, witchdoctors, and
traditional rites, often created disagreements in our home. “What do the teachers know?” [My mother’s]
stock phrase meant “case closed!” Even when resourceful Jongi would resort to:
“But we are safe. We have been fortified remember? Remember the witchdoctor?”
it was to no avail. “He didn’t fortify you against suicide,” mother would
retort, adding, “and I didn’t send you to school to find out you have a mouth!”
Who could argue with such wisdom? …After
the weekend celebrations I would go to school as usual. I had to come to accept
the existence of two far from compatible worlds, the one my world of
traditions, rites, and ancestor worship, and the other, the world of
“civilization” that included school. (Magona, p54, 65)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Between Yoruba
traditional religion (Ifa) and Christnianity, Soyinka grows to seamlessly
syncretise the two with as much adeptness as Yoruba descendents of the Slave
Trade did when creating new Creole-Caribbean versions of the Ifa faith naming
them “Santeria” in Cuba, “Voodoo” in Haiti and New Orleans, and “Geechee” in
South Carolina and Savannah, GA. This syncretism is evident in his
identification with and possessiveness over a rock outside of Sunday School
meeting. </span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 200%;">The possessiveness over
the rock, although seemingly absurd to the western interpreters, is indicative
of a connection to Eshu Elegbara, or Eleggua as He is known in Cuba, Exu as he
is known in Brazil. This Yoruba deity is the African equivalent of the Norse
Odin/Wotan, The Greco-Roman Hermes/Mercury, and the Hindu Genesha. This deity
is often personified, consecrated, and/or embodied in idols or icons made out
of rocks, particularly the sacred Laterite stone.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Another
example of such syncretism is hinted at in an early chapter of <i>Ake</i> in which, the young Wole asks if St.
Peter is an <i>egungun. </i>An <i>egungun </i>in Yoruba language and belief
means literally “bones of my bones”—in other words, <i>egungun </i>are the ancestors or our Collective Dearly Departed. <i>Egungun </i>ceremonies such as the ones
Soyinka describes with such vivid detail and obvious joy are powerful and awe-inspiring,
allowing for an ancestral spirit to “mount” or temporarily reside within an
entranced performer’s body while in the sacred colorful multi-layered <i>egungun</i> cloth robes. However, the
elaborate ceremonies and costumes aside, <i>egungun</i>
are still, for all intents and understood purposes, literally regarded as the
Holy Dead, a collective of ancestral spirits from one’s immediate bloodline and
ancient lineages, sometimes even including past lives. Therefore, although
belittled and casually dismissed by the uninformed reader literally lost in
translation, the child Soyinka who so adamantly regards St. Peter as an <i>egungun </i>is in fact correct, as St. Peter
too is an Elevated or Deified Ancestor, or <i>once
living human being</i>, just as all the other human beings. Of note as well is
the documented fact that many slaves—and to this very day, their descendents--
syncretised and identified St. Peter as Eshu-Elegbara or Haitian Papa Legba or
Cuban Eleggua (Akinkunle B: 2-3). This Eshu-like liminality the Wise Child Wole
Soyinka displays is alluded to in an intriguing article comparing the
exploration of <i>abiku</i> in <i>Ake </i>as follows</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">:
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 1in 10pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 10pt;">In Wole Soyinka's
autobiography Ake, the middle-aged Soyinka resurrects the child Wole. This
exceptional child breaks down the boundaries between Yoruba and English, the
wild and the Christian, the town and the parsonage, Yoruba and Western-style
schooling, Ake quarters and the rest of Yorubaland. Gender and generational
barriers crumble when he becomes pivotal, as errand boy, in the women's rebellion
against taxation in Ake. These daughters, including his mother, Wild Christian,
break patriarchal law and unseat the Alake from his throne for his<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/intransigence"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">intransigence</span></a><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 10pt;"> and his apparent support for colonialism. Wole never
forgets this history-in-the-making.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <span style="background: white;">However, the autobiography is a safari of the self, as Soyinka conjures
the ghost of a past self and, as abiku, thrives in many spheres. In keeping
with the genre, he cannot help but sell his self. He tacitly acknowledges that
he inherits his rebellious spirit from his courageous, revolutionary,
"wild" mothers. Shifting from the matrifocal, he also recognizes the gift
of courage and acuity from his grandfather, and he mentions his debt to his
intellectual father. Nonetheless, his mother, named Wild Christian, (16)<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/presumably"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">presumably</span></a><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 10pt;"> by Wole at the ripe, old age of three, embodies the
unbridled and puritan spirits that are part of Soyinka, the writer. Wole names
his father Essay by fusing the father's fragmented initials-S.A.--into a word
to conjure the cerebral, writing world. Wole and Soyinka reverse the parent-child
power base when Wole renames his mother and father and Sayinka reproduces them
textually. If his parents named him in Yoruba, Wole--'step in (and stay),' to
borrow Clark's abiku phrasing--names them in English. Through word power,
Soyinka transplants them from a Yoruba milieu into an Anglicized domain by
writing in English. Wole's parents are not really Soyinka's parents but traces
of them in a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/mimetic"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">mimetic</span></a><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 10pt;"> space (Uncredited/Free Library, p 1-3)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">In <i>Country of My Skull</i>, what we have essentially is a strange hybrid
of confessional, transcription, and autobiography. We have an amalgam of
pseudo-fiction, embellished facts that become “truer than true” and even
instances where the accounts of several real persons are combined into one
invented character’s slightly questionable, yet cohesive and moving, narrative.
Controversy rides this formidable volume offered by the white Afrikaner Antjie
Krog on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s native black witnesses and
their recounts of truly gruesome racial violence inflicted upon them at the
hands of whites during the recent—and still stinging—oppressive hegemony of
1990s apartheid…. Krog acts as a witness of the witnessing: reporting and
transcribing the events, she is not only court recorder and is not covering the
Commission hearings with velvet gloved journalistic objectivity, but instead
finds herself engaged in and engaging with the channeling of these vivid
memories, an unsettling, though some say cathartic, experience…. Indeed, Krog
has made a lasting <i>testament</i> out of a
guided <i>testimony</i> (Akinkunle, 1-2). <i>Country of My Skull </i>is a strange
inclusion to the collection of African autobiography summarized here; It is not
strictly the biography of the testifiers or of Antjie Krog herself—instead, it
is more of an autobiography informing how <i>she</i>
reacted to and felt about the confessions she has transcribed from the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission. The autobiography becomes more like a communal
biography, wherein Krog realizes through her own intertwined testimony that <i>their </i>story/ies are in fact <i>hers</i>. As a white Afrikaner, Krog is in a
strange place of exclusive inclusivity: white, she is a foreign entity in
cultural mentality and appearance, even if she were born on African soil; yet,
she is also undeniably and inextricably part of the community and the history
because without the European invasion the victims’ testimonies she herself
recounts from the Commission would never have been told, never heard, because
it never would have happened. Although she is not personally to blame, her dual
citizenship implies her culpability. Again, just as with the other biographies,
ancestry is a large part: Krog’s white ancestors are the spectres haunting the
history of the Black Africans’ ancestors and futures of the Black Africans’
children or descendents. Krog’s work, although not passed from parent to child
(such as <i>Zenzele </i>or <i>To My Children’s Children</i>), nor
presented as reflections from man to his boyhood self (such as <i>Ake’</i>), but it is in a sense an offering
to the ancestors. Krog’s re-telling of the Commission transcripts is in a sense
her own reparation to the Black victims’ ancestors; it is somewhat an
un-silencing on her part of the Black victims silenced and left powerless by
her own ancestors. Essentially, by allowing them expression channeled and
legitimized through her literary exposure and influence, she on behalf of her white ancestors offers a sort of apology in a
way, through her sympathy for and internalization of the Black apartheid
victims’ agonizing accounts of racial prejudice on their own continent at the
hands of European oppressors. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In
conclusion, the African autobiographies featured in this unit can be viewed as
in and of themselves an offering, a
ritual canonization of one’s own experiences, where the “white man’s”
Deified concept of Written Word (more external, its potential reach and influence
due to its method of portability) meets the African gnosis of intuitive,
unwritten nonlinear storytelling (a more enclosed, cryptic, secret, informal
method of communication, and usually limited to family/tribe). In the different
authors’ autobiographical writings, African forms of oral and mythological
storytelling are inherently present, borne from a systematic Eurocentric,
hegemonic oppression of a People who traditionally have been unaware of, or
deliberately forbidden or limited access to, the “white man’s” literary
history. The true triumph, then, is in a sense “beating the white man at his
own game” by taking his assumed literary authority and cleverly circumventing such
by writing distinctively “African” without apology or annotation.<b> </b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> <br clear="all" style="mso-special-character: line-break; page-break-before: always;" />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">References<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Akinkunle,
Olukayode. <i>Unpublished Article A (Writing
Assignment 3, LIT-331-OL009)</i>. 2014. Thomas Edison State College<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Akinkunle,
Olukayode. <i>Unpublished Article B (Writing
Assignment 5, LIT-33-OL009).</i> 2014. Thomas Edison State College<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Carmichael,
Stokley (author); Thelwell, Ekwueme Michael (Contributor-compiler), <i>Ready For Revolution: The Life and Struggles
of Stokley Carmichael (Kwame Ture)</i>, Copyright Scribner 1998, New York<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Krog,
Antjie.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Country of my skull:
Guilt, sorrow, and the limits of forgiveness in the new South Africa</i>. Random
House LLC, 2007, New York<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Magona,
Sindiwe.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>To My Children's Children</i>.
Interlink Books, 2006, Massachusetts <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Maraire,
J. Nozipo. <i>Zenzele: A Letter For My
Daughter. </i>Dell Publishing, 1996, New York<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Moss,
Laura FE. "" Nice audible crying": Editions, testimonies, and
Country of My Skull."<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Research
in African Literatures</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>37.4
(2006): 85-104.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Samuelson,
Meg. "Reading the Maternal Voice in Sindiwe Magona's To My Children's
Children and Mother to Mother."<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>MFS
Modern Fiction Studies</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>46.1
(2000): 227-245.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Soyinka,
Wole.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Ake: The years of
childhood</i>. Random House, 1981, New York<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Uncredited.
"An abiku-ogbanje Atlas: a pre-text for rereading Soyinka's Ake and
Morrison's Beloved"<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>The
Free Library</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>22 December
2002. 21 April 2014 <</span><a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/An%20abiku-ogbanje%20Atlas:%20a%20pre-text%20for%20rereading%20Soyinka's%20Ake%20and...-a097515893"><span style="background: white; color: #666666; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">http://www.thefreelibrary.com/An abiku-ogbanje Atlas: a
pre-text for rereading Soyinka's Ake and...-a097515893</span></a><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">>.</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
48lawsNdreamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13627772395231029438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006442281098440526.post-44898567448661392342014-05-19T09:21:00.001-07:002014-05-19T09:21:08.687-07:00Toy Soldiers: Ron Kovic’s Vietnam and the Emasculation of America’s Good Ol’ BoysWritten for a client April 2014<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Paralyzed
veteran Ron Kovic’s Vietnam is a man’s nightmare of disillusionment, mocked and
betrayed by his own beloved government. <i>Born
on the Fourth of July </i>is about a man who was denied that heroism that he
was promised by the Nation he loved. The government chose when and how he is a
hero, but he feels inside unheroic, even criminal, because of the atrocities of
war and struggles to redeem himself as a true hero after the war. It’s the
story of a boy trying to be a man, a man wanting to be a hero, and discovering
he’s just a selfish, oppressive murderer like the rest of his Great Country
that even deceives/ed him and the rest of its own citizens again and again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Manifesting
several failed/unconsummated interactions and relationships with women,
stemming from Catholic upbringing, Ron Kovic early on in life found himself
stuck permanently in a pubescent’s fumbling anxiety. The incompetence, the
loneliness and anticlimax found in youthful masturbatory obsessions, is
cyclically and perpetually reflected in his literal fumbling with his
limp/nonexistent manhood, even in his catheter alterations, the “peak”
literally and figuratively unreached, the success of manhood unachieved just as
the successful coupling with a woman is never realized. The motif of men crying
like the babies they killed and pissing themselves like children visually
brings the point home: the sons debilitated and disenfranchised in Vietnam were
boys who never grew up; Loyal, brave, unwaveringly and foolishly Idealistic, “America’s
sons” and “the good ol’ boys”<a href="file:///C:/Users/user/Desktop/DO%20RIGHT%20NOW/Toy%20Soldiers.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
like Kovic aspired to the heights of military machismo programming, yet never
truly reached manhood. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It
meant the world to Kovic to be a good Catholic, a good son, a good American
citizen doing everything he can for his country and his God—the ultimate
martyrdom complex. Bordering on fanaticism and megalomania, Kovic fancies
himself the ultimate Patriot, staunchly defending his government, and aspires
to his mother’s fearful Holiness to the extreme of deliberately avoiding “heavy
petting” and, to compensate, thrilling, instead, at an obsessive daily
masturbation ritual. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 1in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Kissing was all right, the priest said in a serious
voice, but petting or heavy petting almost always led to sex, and sex, he said,
was a mortal sin. I remember listening to him that day and promising myself and
God I’d try never to get too close to a girl. I wanted to do all the things the
guys in the study hall whispered about, but I didn’t want to offend God. I
never even went to the senior or junior prom. I just wanted to be a great
athlete and a good Catholic and maybe even a priest someday or a major leaguer.
(Kovic, p 77)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Despite
his youthful eschewing of female companionship, focusing instead on his Good
American Son image, when he returns robbed of his organ of sexual expression—in
the Marines, their sexually loaded marching chant is revelatory of our
increasing rape culture: “this is my rifle this is my gun/ this is for fighting
this is for fun (p 96)”—his unattainable desire warps into an ugly and mournful
obsession to find<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 1in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">a woman who would love him and make his broken body
come alive again, who would lie down next to the disfigurement and love it like
there was not anything the matter with him at all. He cried inside for a woman,
any woman, to lie close to him. In the hospital there were so many times when
he had looked at the nurses and all the visitors and it would seem so crazy
that the same government that provided a big check for the wounded men couldn’t
provide someone warm, someone who cared for him.(127)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">His experiences with
the prostitutes in Mexico reveal much about his spiritual and emotional
castration, as much as about his desire to <i>feel
</i>through his paralysis, his literal numbness and incontinence as physical a
castration as a sword to a eunuch. He witnesses a fellow wounded veteran abuse
one of the sex workers and, although awed, can’t help but sympathise:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 1in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">He punched her in the face because she laughed at
him when he pulled down his pants and told her he couldn’t feel his penis or
move it anymore. He was crazy drunk and he kept yelling and screaming, swinging
his arms and his fists at the crowd who had gathered around him. “That goddamn fucking
slut! I’m gonna kill that whore for ever laughing at me. That bitch thinks it’s
funny I can’t move my dick. Fuck you! Fuck all of you goddamn motherfuckers!
They made me kill babies! They made me kill babies!” Charlie screamed again and
again. (128-129)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Kovic isn’t the only
one who describes the inhumanity and lustful insanity bred in boys trained in
war. As violence begets violence, soldiers look for something to control as a
consequence of feeling confused, helpless, and a part of something large, violent,
and out of one’s own control, a puppet at the command of Superior Officers and
a vigilante government. Seeking something to make them feel powerful like men
again, often, the answer is senseless killing, and routine rape as a release of
their resentment towards fact that they are denied for months on end comfort
from women and mothers at home while suffering unspeakable atrocities and
witnessing total transformations from good clean boys to wild, uncivilized
animals. In “One Morning in the War” Richard Hammer articulates such abasement
and unwittingly confirms Kovic’s downward spiral:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 1in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">More and more as these daily patrols went on without
end, the men in Task Force Barker grew to hate the dirty war they were part of,
a war where everything and nothing was the enemy and fair game, where trouble
could come from anyone or anything. And they began to take casualties now and
again, here and there….Another hamlet. Some of the men see a young Vietnamese
girl. They grab her and pull her inside the nearest hootch. There are screams
and cries from inside then silence. Soon the men come walking out, satisfied.
(Hammer, p 323)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ron Kovic was crippled
as an old man before his time, crazed as a lustful adult in a child’s body, and
grieves incessantly his inability to reconcile his instincts and urges with his
body—and his likewise inability to reconcile the unintelligible and
unconscionable loss he experienced in the war with his patriotic Ideals and the
dogmatic propaganda he was duped by. Going into training for the Marines, he
was accustomed to hearing the degrading sergeants yelling: “I want all you
swinging dicks standing straight at attention (Kovic, 132)” yet with the
severity of his wound he is left to merely lament:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 1in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">I have given my dead swinging dick for America. I
have given my numb young dick for democracy. It is gone and numb, lost
somewhere out there by the river where the artillery is screaming in. Oh God oh
God I want it back! I gave it for the whole country, I gave it for every one of
them. Yes, I gave my dead dick for John Wayne and Howdy Doody, for Castiglia
and Sparky the barber. Nobody ever told me I was going to come back from this
war without a penis. (p 84)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Just
as his manhood is lost, so is his ability to speak and be heard, such as the
respect a man of integrity receives. He constantly seeks in the hospital to be
treated humanely and he wants to be respected, not pitied; he wants to be
loved, not made a poster boy for why the war should continue so America could
win at all costs—literally over his dead, dickless body. When officers and
other military representatives push Kovic against his will to speak at a
veteren’s parade and rally, Kovic is frustrated that he didn’t want to speak of
the war the same distanced way the others did who never experienced the losses
he did and he wasn’t asked nor did he agree to being a hero on their terms and
in their language: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 1in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">They sat together watching the big crowd and
listening to one speaker after the other, including the mayor and all the
town’s dignitaries; each one spoke very beautiful words about sacrifice and
patriotism and God, crying out to the crowd to support the boys in the war so
that their brave sacrifices would not have to be in vain. And then it was the
tall commander’s turn to speak…</span><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Almost crying
now, he shouted to the crowd that they couldn’t give up in Vietnam. “We have to
win …” he said, his voice still shaking; then pausing, he pointed his finger at
him and Eddie Dugan, “… because of them!”…He was beginning to feel very lonely.
He kept looking over at Eddie. Why hadn’t they waved, he thought. Eddie had
lost both of his legs and he had come home with almost no body left, and no one
seemed to care…He was confused, then proud, then all of a sudden confused
again. He wanted to listen and believe everything they were saying, but he kept
thinking of all the things that had happened that day and now he wondered why
he and Eddie hadn’t even been given the chance to speak. They had just sat
there all day long, like he had been sitting in his chair for weeks and months
in the hospital and at home in his room alone, and he wondered now why he had
allowed them to make him a hero and the grand marshal of the parade with Eddie
, why he had let them take him all over town in that Cadillac when they hadn’t
even asked him to speak. (109-111)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Even at the rally for
Nixon, he is silenced, blacked out, arrested, literally blocked by secret
service agents from sight of the cameras, and discredited—which is the same as
silencing—by shouts and accusations of communist affiliation. Unheard, he
violently wants others to truly understand and not just mock, pity, or even
falsely glorify his sacrifice:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 1in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Other people always seemed able to laugh and joke
about the whole thing, but they weren’t the one who was living in this angry
numb corpse, they didn’t have to wake up each morning and feel the dead weight
of these legs and strain the yellow urine into the ugly rubber bag, they didn’t
have to put on the rubber gloves each morning over the bathroom bowl and dig
into his rear end to clean the brown chunks of shit out. They lived very easy
lives, why their lives were disgustingly easy compared to his and they acted
sometimes like everything was equal and he was the same as them, but he knew
they were lying and especially the women, when they lay with him and told him
how much they loved his body, how it wasn’t any different than any other man’s,
that they didn’t care if his dick was numb and dead and he couldn’t feel warm
and good inside a woman ever again . He was a half-dead corpse and no one could
tell him any different. (p 164)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A sacrificial lamb, a
“little Christ<a href="file:///C:/Users/user/Desktop/DO%20RIGHT%20NOW/Toy%20Soldiers.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>”
himself, Kovic bears his cross, spat upon and crippled, maimed and emasculated
by those he died for. Kovic died three times: physically, his body died to him
and spiritually, his faith died; Idealistically, Kovic experienced too the
death of all the paradigms he clung to and comforting programs he secured
himself and his world with about the goodness of his country and the
righteousness of the war against terrorism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 1in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">He remembered how difficult it had been when he had
first come to the war to tell the villagers from the enemy and sometimes it had
seemed easier to hate all of them, but he had always tried very hard not to. He
wished he could be sure they understood that he and the men were there because
they were trying to help all of them save their country from the Communists. (p
190)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Kovic wonders if
someone had only shown him the truth of what the war does to boys and men, and
the unfathomable depths of what is robbed from them on those front lines,
perhaps he himself would never have fallen for the Dream and perhaps through
him other young Americans can decide for themselves if that crippling is worth
it:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 1in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">It is like the day the marine recruiters came. I
remember it like it was yesterday— their shiny shoes and their uniforms, their
firm handshakes, all the dreams, the medals, the hills taken with Castiglia by
my side his army-navy store canteen rattling, the movies the books the plastic
guns, everything in 3-D and the explosive spiraling colors of a rainbow. Except
this time, this time it is Bobby and me. What if I had seen someone like me that
day, a guy in a wheelchair, just sitting there in front of the senior class not
saying a word? Maybe things would have been different. Maybe that’s all it
would have taken. Bobby is telling his story and I will tell mine. I am glad he
has brought me here and that all of them are looking at us, seeing the war
firsthand— the dead while still living, the living reminders, the two young men
who had the shit shot out of them…We were men who had gone to war. Each of us
had his story to tell, his own nightmare. Each of us had been made cold by this
thing. We wore ribbons and uniforms. We talked of death and atrocity to each
other with unaccustomed gentleness. (p 142-144,148)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In
conclusion, <i>Born on the Fourth of July </i>is
a memoir, autobiography, war speech, battle cry, prayer, and Shakespearean-like
tragedy recounting (and, no pun intended, literally re-member-ing) his loss of
all he thought would make him the man he so wanted to be: his penis, his
heroism, his self-discipline. Finding out it was all in vain, to be left a
mangled pawn in a game, Kovic must forge a new Self out of the ashes, the
debris, the raw essence of himself in all his rage in all the words he was
never given license to say, the self accountability he so late attained. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 1in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">I think I honestly believed that if only I could
speak out to enough people I could stop the war myself. I honestly believed
people would listen to me because of who I was, a wounded American veteran.
They would have to listen. Every chance I had to get my broken body on the tube
or in front of an audience I went hog wild. Yes, let them get a look at me. Let
them be reminded of what they’d done when they’d sent my generation off to war.
One look would be enough— worth more than a thousand speeches. But if they
wanted speeches I could give them speeches too. There was no end to what I had
to tell them. “I’m the example of the war ,” I would say. “Look at me. Do you
want your sons to look like this? Do you want to put on the uniform and come
home like me?” (p 150)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">His tragedy is his loss
of Ideals, his realization that all he fought to defend was unreal,
meaningless, an utter and callous deception by all he held the dearest: his God
he felt betrayed him, leaving him in the purgatory of his paralyzed condition;
his country he was betrayed by for giving him the Dream of fighting a noble war
for a beautiful Christian country that turned out to be a nightmare of
senseless murder for a country of hateful consumers who found him invisible
even moreso because he fought for him. Betrayed to find out that the war did
not make him a “good guy” but a cold, desensitized, and dogmatic, brainwashed
killing machine, Kovic must finally atone by showing through his body and
describing through his speech the true consequences of America’s lust for war and
meddling in foreign affairs:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 1in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">And now it is we who are marching, the boys of the
fifties. We are going to the Republican National Convention to reclaim America
and a bit of ourselves. It is war and we are soldiers again, as tight as we
have ever been, a whole lost generation of dope-smoking kids in worn jungle
boots coming from all over the country to tell Nixon a thing or two. We know we
are fighting the real enemies this time— the ones who have made profit off our
very lives. We have lain all night in the rain in ambush together. We have
burned anthills with kerosene and stalked through Sally’s Woods with plastic
machine guns, shooting people out of trees. We have been a generation of
violence and madness, of dead Indians and drunken cowboys, of iron pipes full
of matchheads…He’d never figured it would ever happen this way. It never did in
the movies. There were always the good guys and the bad guys, the cowboys and
the Indians. There was always the enemy and the good guys and each of them
killed the other… The good guys weren’t supposed to kill the good guys. (p 169-70)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br clear="all" style="mso-special-character: line-break; page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h1>
Works Cited</h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hammer, Richard. “One Morning in the War” Copyright 1970.
Putnam Publishing Group. Reprinted with permission for <i>A History of Our Time. </i>Oxford University Press. 1995. 321-335</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kovic, Ron. <i>Born on
the Fourth of July</i>. Amazon Kindle Edition. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div>
<!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/user/Desktop/DO%20RIGHT%20NOW/Toy%20Soldiers.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Kovic
remembers: “A song was playing called “Bye-Bye Miss American Pie” and I
remember listening to it and feeling real sad inside, real low like I wanted to
cry or kill someone (p 160).”</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/user/Desktop/DO%20RIGHT%20NOW/Toy%20Soldiers.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> In
a passage describing a flashback from the grueling, torturous boot camp
training, Kovic admires his comrades “..on their knees with their sea bags
still over their shoulders like Christs, an they were crawling, he saw them
crawling! (p 94)</div>
</div>
</div>
48lawsNdreamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13627772395231029438noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006442281098440526.post-5453506204837697282012-03-17T03:59:00.001-07:002012-03-17T04:01:45.608-07:00Awakening Sinsuality in Kate Chopin & Elizabethan England<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">Gloria Steele<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">3/13/06<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">AP Lit/Comp<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">The Awakening Analysis<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">Gloria Steele<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">3/13/06<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">AP Lit/Comp<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">The Awakening Analysis<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><b><span style="font-size:16.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height: 200%">Edna Pontellier as another Virgin Queen</span></b><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"> In Kate Chopin's <i>The Awakening, </i>protagonist Edna Pontellier is the endearing portrait of a woman refusing to conform. She invokes the archetypical Unclaimed Woman, sensual and uncompromising-- she <i>is </i>Mary Magdalene, she <i>is</i> Marilyn Monroe, she <i>is </i>Queen Elizabeth I. She frees herself, like the bird in the gilded cage (Chopin, 1), from the confines of soceital conventions. Once awakened, she submits only to her own passions and desires, she finds herself stripped of all stifling illusions and mindsets forced upon her from birth-- by religion, by family, by community. Like Queen Elizabeth I, Edna Pontellier is a woman who will submit to no man, who will not lay down and, although she is highly sensual, will <i>not </i>be degraded and demonized.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"> <i>Edna Pontellier's </i>journey in the novella begins with heavy symbolism and foreshadowing. The bird in the cage representing Edna, locked in the torment of inner division. In her <i>Piece by Piece, </i>the often brutally honest feminist singer-songwriter Tori Amos often uses the Mary Magdalene archetype to delienate the state most women-- particularly Christian-- are in, objectified and torn apart by the hands of the patriarchy. She explains how Christian women are taught to repress natural sexual passions and cut out their own voices to follow the example of the pious Virgin Mary, while the Magdalene is horribly distorted, turned into a whore, as many "strong women" are. How can we be divided? Tori asks, using her own signature colorful metaphors. How can we suffer "the ultimate pain-- division within the self, the soul from the body, the mind from the heart...the two Marys divided?" (Amos, 71) She uses the term "marrying the two Marys" to illustrate how women can bcome whole, how they can be both honorable and sensual without giving up their souls:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%">Traditional Christianity...gave us two characters: the Virgin Mary and the Magdalene. Of course, within the psyche they must be joined, not polarized for a Christian woman to feel whole. The Virgin Mary has been stripped of her sexuality but has retained her spirituality; the Magdalene has been stripped of her spirituality but has retained her sexuality. Each must have her wholeness...(64)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%">Edna is constantly surrounded by these polarized, divided beings who remind her of either one Mary or the other-- The Farival Twins, two young girls, "always clad in blue and white, the Virgin's colors, having been dedicated to the Blessed Virgin at their baptism"(Chopin, 23); the mournful lady in black, counting her beads, an impending shadow reminding or foretelling Edna of her sad future as a woman, alone, her husband dead, now free of being his possession though left without the youthful passions that burned before; the Spanish girl, Marqueita represents a form of sensuality, but it is a farce: she is fiery, tempestuous, a coquette thing passing from man to man, still objectified by them. Edna knows she does not aspire to end up like any of these women, she aspires that wholeness, that fulfillment of self-discovery. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"> Queen Elizabeth I, too, was a woman struggling for autonomy and sexual freedom in a man's world. She resolved from the beginning of her life, after discovering the truth about her mother, Anne Boelyn, having been murdered by her father. It is said that she promised herself and her childhood friends that she would never marry and, though they did not believe her at that time, she held that resolve her whole life. Although she later went on to become the Virgin Queen, this was in no way a circumcision of her full womahood-- this was not an acquiescence; she was not giving up her freedom or accepting the convention that being sexual was being less than a woman, nor was she saying her decision to set herself aside was making her more of a woman. Instead, her decision never to take a man, never to marry-- except to England itself-- and never to produce a child was the decision to make it universally understood that she was no one's object. She was still whole, she was still a sexual woman, a devestatingly powerful woman, however, she had an enormous strength of will to resist the temptation to even <i>appear </i>to, in sex or love, become a man's possession. She wanted no misunderstandings.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"> The parallels of Edna Pontellier and Queen Elizabeth go beyond the attitude or the rebellion. It is evident in the social circle they are both placed in. Edna Pontellier married, quite by accident, into high Creole soceity-- the world of unwavering, rigid morals and unquestionable female chastity. Pontellier has no illusions about someday becoming like the Creole women, she knows her passions are not theirs and she can never be content as a "mother-woman" (8) like Adele Ratignolle or the others. Creole soceity is a highly religious, highly Catholic world in which Edna readily admits, at least to herself, that she does not belong. She hides her feelings well; she "apprehended instinctively the dual life-- that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions" (13). This Catholic soceity mirrors the Catholic state Elizabeth grew up in, the Catholics-- including her half-sister Mary-- who sought her life to keep her, a Protestant, from taking the throne. It is arguable that Catholicism is the most rigid of Christian systems, which makes sense that the limitations implemented on its women would cause those like Edna and Queen Elizabeth to rebel as forcibly as they have. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"> Another interesting parallel between the two women is in the men they love-- Edna's Robert Lebrun and Elizabeth's beloved Lord Robert Dudley of Leicester. Besides the names, the two men are extremely devoted, though still conscious of the women's unattainablility. Robert, torn apart by his longing for Edna and his duty to the Creole code of honor never to covet a married man's wife, leaves Louisiana, leaves Edna, for Mexico in hopes that the distance will cure him and, in her absense, the love will somehow subside. Lord Robert, Elizabeth's close friend and fiery lover, held a decorative position in her court as Master of the Horse, only as a ploy to keep him by her side without suspicion, though many knew of the affair. Although he shared her bed many a night, and Elizabeth loved him immensely, she knew she could never marry him. She would not share her power, would not become <i>his wife</i>. It is reputed that she famously told him in court, "I will have one mistress here, and NO master!" which is echoed somewhat by Edna Pontellier to her Robert when they reunite in Madame Reisz's house:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%">You have been...wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, "Here, Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours," I should laugh at you both. (108)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%">It is here that, although the love of her life is there in her arms, professing his love for her, she asserts her power and the fact that she will not pass from being her husband's possession to being his. Her affair with Alcee Arobin is another indication of this-- she is comfortable with him, knowing that he has no expectations or obligations to her and neither she of him. She knows that what they have is a simple understanding that, whatever transpires, it is not of love; there are no strings attatched. For a moment, after her first indiscretion, after their first kiss, Edna regrets that it is not love becuase, perhaps, it would be more justifiable. If she had the affair, had essentially left her husband for the <i>love </i>of another man, not just lust, it would be more honorable, nobler in a sense. She regrets that it "was not the kiss of love that brought this cup of life to her lips" (84) because some part of her would be more forgiving-- the conscience, the nobility in her, as defined by previous Creole Christian standards; the Virgin Mary part-- and perhaps soceity would too be more forgiving if this act had been out of love. But it wasn't. And in the end she knows it is better this way, for to love a man would be a sacrifice, would be handing herself over, would be laying down under his feet. So she is satisfied that she doesn't have to be anything to Alcee, that she is nothing of his and keeps her own identity. Just as Elizabeth, could never bring herself to marry her Robert of Leicester because she would not have him make a whore of her, or a wife because either title would reduce her to a Thing, a single Ideal, a being seperated like the two Marys.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"> During her Christ-like Last Supper, Edna Pontellier pulls out all the stops, turning her humble "pigeon house" into a grand dining hall, decked with all her husband's money could offer. She herself appears, like a goddess, like a queen, in all her glory, ascending to an almost divine state, her most regal before her death:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%">The golden shimmer of Edna's satin gown spread in rich folds on either side of her...There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone. (89)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%">To compare this heightened moment with either Elizabeth's coronation or her transformation, after the executions of those that threatened her throne and after her symbolic purification to Virgin status, would be equally appropriate.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"> Queen Elizabeth's coronation was indubitably a joyous event-- after all, she had narrowly escaped her own beheading at the hands of her sister for supposed treason against the Catholic church and allegated attempts to seixe the throne. She herself knew it was not mere luck or a sudden compassionate chage of heart in her sister, as she famously cried, "this is the Lord's doing; and it is marvelous in Our eyes." Edna's lover, Alcee Arobin calls the dinner a "<i>coup d'etat</i>" (85), which is fitting since, in a way, Edna's has overthrown a system-- the system of female subjegation; she has freed herself of the chains, the guilt and shame that too often accompanies women of confidence and sensuality.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"> Elizabeth thwarted her many enemies once again a few years later in successfully executing conspirators against her crown with her loyal advisor Walsingham. "I have rid England of her enemies," she tells him. "What do I do now?" It is here that she makes her transformation, giving her people something close to divinity, standing alone at her throne, set apart, as Edna stood at the head of her immaculate dinner table. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"> Edna's joining with the sea at the end is not a shameful condescension, it is not the act of her lying down to accept what the world tells her she is. It is neither a selfish act, leaving her children to suffer in her absence under her now tainted name. She gives her body to the sea, her only true home, just as Elizabeth gives her body to England and her people. Just as Elizabeth set her body aside, essentially letting it die to prove her ultimate feminine sovereignty, Edna Pontellier sacrifices her body to prove that she will be glorious and magnificent in herself, not allowing the world and it's constrained, limited views make her to be a base, corrupt thing. She is proving her merit-- by giving up her body she is letting the world know that she, too, is sovereign and only belongs to herself, and the waters, the Great Mother, honoring the Source. She is reborn in those waters, returning to the Womb, becoming a Virgin again.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p><p></p>48lawsNdreamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13627772395231029438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006442281098440526.post-13383896297845132422012-03-17T03:57:00.001-07:002012-03-17T03:59:05.256-07:00Signifying and Placing Significance<p class="MsoNormal">Gloria Steele<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">12/01/06<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The Making of Americans<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Final Conference Paper<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:200%"><i><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span></i><i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">That we may know our names:”<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:200%"><i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">A study of history in the American Experimental novel</span></i><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span lang="ZH-CN">“</span></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The nursery rhyme and the book of science fiction might be more revolutionary than any number of tracts, pamphlets, manifestoes of the political realm.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> So says Ishmael Reed in his novel <i>Mumbo Jumbo</i> which Alan Friedman describes in his <i>New York Times Book Review</i>, </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">a satire on the unfinished race between the races in America and throughout history…an unholy cross between the craft of fiction and witchcraft.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/rodney/Downloads/FINALLY%20FINISHED!!.doc#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><sup><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:SimSun; mso-font-kerning:14.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:ZH-CN; mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">[1]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></sup></a><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">But what is the nursery rhyme, the science fiction? Things of fantasy-- that fantasy not necessarily </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">flights of fancy,” mystical and bright as unicorns, but that fantasy as something formerly inconceivable, out of the ordinary, transcendent; above or beneath conventional imaginations or communications. It is the odd. The thing that is not </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">normal” when normality is assumed to be something common or </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">mainstream.” And the revolution of the nursery rhyme or the science fiction lies in its revelation; its revelation lies in its negation and/or refutation of the normal. This negation is silence. Nonsense, fantasy, things that are outside normality-- silence. Gibberish? Mumbo Jumbo? All silence. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Ihab Hassan, in his study of postmodern literature, <i>The Dismemberment of Orpheus,</i> explains the role of “silence” in revealing the problems of the limitations of traditional languages, accepted languages, and historical master narratives, accepted history:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The negative, then, informs silence; and silence is my metaphor of a language that expresses, with harsh and subtle cadences, the stress in art, culture, and consciousness…the language of silence conjoins the need both of autodestruction and self-transcendence. (Hassan, 12)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Ishamael Reed in <i>Mumbo Jumbo </i>and Mark Z. Danielewski in <i>Only Revolutions </i>consciously use this nonsense language, this silence to defy conventional relationships of literary form and historical narrative. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Why is this nonsense of the negative considered silence? Because the so-called nonsensical syntax and form these authors employ as their method of communication is unlike accepted languages; their language is a language uncommon and seemingly sacrilegious and incomprehensible. These </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">anti-languages…that accuse common speech”<a href="file:///C:/Users/rodney/Downloads/FINALLY%20FINISHED!!.doc#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><sup><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:SimSun; mso-font-kerning:14.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:ZH-CN; mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">[2]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></sup></a> used by Reed and Danielewski illustrate their own means of challenging inherited tradition, historical perspectives given and accepted by the masses blindly-- Reed by giving history back to the Black Man, satirizing and belittling the white man’s history that, twisted and corrupt, has been accepted by the world; Danielewski by forcing readers to question how much importance they give the personal, individual history as opposed to a collective history and vice versa. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Let’s imagine for a moment. Scenario: the African or Asian, speaking to an Englishman who will soon exploit him is not heard; he is “silent” in that his foreign language is not understood. Thus, not being understood is to some extent the same as not being heard. The Englishman will proceed, in this silence, to take advantage, to use his lack of comprehending their language as an excuse to force his own upon them-- the laws of the African or the Asian will not be heeded; the rules of their religions and societal constructs are not compatible with the Englishman’s but he will assume so. The Englishman, not hearing, imperceptive, will continue in his irreverence. Taking his victims, he will force his language upon them and his history. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">This is what has been done. And this is what Ishmael Reed and his <i>Mumbo Jumbo</i> set out to correct. His aim is to return history to the black race, giving an alternative to the commonly implemented perspective that places the white man, the black and Asian man’s captor and plunderer, on top-- hailed as the originator, the supreme-- while anyone else is thought of as primitive and inferior, indeed, even the men who came before, who knew time and space and light before, the African, the Asian. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> The group of </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">art-nappers” Reed names the <i>Mu’tafikah</i> consider it their duty to return stolen treasures of Africa, Asia, and Original America (before the Europeans landed) to their former homes, in the hands of their people and not in the white man’s art exhibits. The Mu’tafikah make it their duty to steal back what was stolen before, to restore what had been razed: Robin Hooding the original history of the nations before the Europeans’ plundering. As Berbelang puts it, “we would send their loot back to where it was stolen from and await the rise of Shango, Shiva, and Quetzacoatl, no longer a label on a cheap bottle of wine but strutting across the sacred cities…like a proud cock” (Reed, 89). These <i>Mu’tafikah</i> are in opposition to</span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">The Wallflower Order,” the </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size: 12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">army devoted to guarding the booty…because if these treasures got into the </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">‘</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">wrong hands’ (the countries from which they were stolen) there would be renewed enthusiasm for the Ikons of the aesthetically victimized civilizations” (15). The <i>Mu’tafikah</i> seek to restore and liberate: to restore the culture stolen by whites (and contorted—as convenient-- to suit the unhearing, the irreverent, the blind who, without understanding the spirituality, distort and strip that culture through attempting to appropriate the mysteries of it within Western/Christian thought: impossible because Western/Christian thought is incompatible with what they’ve stolen and have tried to adopt in kitschy fads, having lost all meaning) and liberate the people who themselves, having been forced to accept the Christian thought have forgotten the old ways and lost the soul, the joy, the ecstasy and spontaneity that </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">plagues” 1920s America as the </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Jes Grew” so-called epidemic. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> Jes Grew is the spirit of the Diaspora, unable to be contained, to be restricted, to be killed or even described or explained, mass-produced and adopted and worn by the uncomprehending like today’s Che Guevera t-shirts, having lost significance by irreverent reproduction and dilution, filtering through Western ideology that is its direct opposition. Poet Nathan Brown embodies this lost soul, this repression of heritage, the attempt at the duality or coexistence of Christianity with the older Diasporic faiths that fails, the compromise that is a denial. Brown </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height: 200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">was serious about his Black Christ, however absurd that may sound, for Christ is so unlike African loas and Orishas, in so many essential ways, that this alien becomes a dangerous intruder to the Afro-American mind, an unwelcome gatecrasher into Ife, home of spirits” (97) When this Nathan Brown asks a Hoodoo priest, Benoit Battraville, how to catch Jes Grew, he is faced with the impossibility of trying to restrict-- and disrespect-- the power of it by turning it into something able to spring forth on demand, when convenient, for show or fun:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The Americans do not know the names of the long and tedious list of dieties and rites as we know them. Shorthand is what they know so well. They know this process for they have synthesized the HooDoo of VooDoo. Its bleeblop essence; they’ve isolated the unknown factor which gives the loas their rise. Ragtime. Jazz. Blues. The new thang. That talk you drum from your lips. Your style. What you have here is an experimental art for that all of us believe bears watching. So don’t ask me how to catch Jes Grew. Ask Louis Armstrong. Bessie Smith, your poets, your painters, your musicians, ask them how to catch it. Ask those people who be shaking their tambourines impervious of the ridicule they receive from Black and White Atonists, Europe the ghost rattling its chains down the deserted halls of their brains. Ask those little colored urchins who </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">make up” those new dance steps and the loa of the Black cook who wrote the last lines of the </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Ballad of Jesse James.” Ask the man who, deprived of an electronic guitar, picked up a washboard and started to play it. The Rhyming Fool who…talks </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">crazy” for hours…(152)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Critic Lorenzo Thomas echoes this in his review for <i>The Village Voice</i> though speaking of Ishmael Reed’s experimental approach to literature instead of Jes Grew:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Mumbo Jumbo…</span></i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">goes beyond assault to re-definition…really about the crisis of a culture that refuses to acknowledge itself. Narcissus fleeing from the riverside…[it is] in the African and Afro-American tradition without compromise to Europeanism. [Reed] practices sound science… If the Black (ie, African anywhere) literary tradition is really an </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family: SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height: 200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">oral tradition,” what we mean by that phrase is the Thought is simultaneous with Sound. Just like Jazz… Did you ever hear Booker Little?…Did you ever sit in a cell down Catwalk Alley and shout stories to brothers on down the line. It’s magic. The opposite thing is the European mode of plotting, </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height: 200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">characterization,” </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">exposition.” A system of exploitative development. In other words, the synchronization of several untruths which they call Fiction and teach in their schools. (Dick, 40)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">For the <i>Mu’tafikah</i>, Jew Grew is about liberation through restoration of culture through art (the music, the dances, and their spontaneity being part of art); for Papa Lebas, VooDoo priest, it is about the return to the Black Man’s original spirituality, unadulterated by Christianity:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The African race has quite a sense of humor. In North America, under Christianity, many of them has been reduced to glumness, depression, surliness, cynicism, malice without artfulness…They’d really fallen in love with tragedy…For Labas, anyone who couldn’t titter a bit was not Afro but most likely a Christian connoting blood, death, and impaled emaciated Jew in excruciation. Nowhere is there an account of portrait of Christ laughing. (Reed, 97)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">By no accident, Reed has given this character-- this old man, walking along with his cane and cape, the secrets of Osiris and the origination of Jes Grew locked in his head, lamenting the loss of the old ways, the loss of magic through the modern man‘s skepticism and scrutiny-- the name of an Orisha</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/rodney/Downloads/FINALLY%20FINISHED!!.doc#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:Symbol;mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language: EN-US;mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Symbol">*</span></span></a><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">. Papa Lebas is also known as Legba in Haitian voodoo, Eleggua/Elegba in Spanish-speaking Central and South America, Eshu in Yoruba, Exu in Brazil…Despite the many names, he is known as the </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Opener of the Ways,” standing between the divine and the corporeal, the deity always invoked first and last in ritual to gain access to the spiritual world-- as is Yinepu-Wepawet (Greek name Anubis), the jackal-headed god of the Kemetic (Ancient Egyptian) pantheon who leads the souls into the Underworld to be judged. Lebas/Legbas, standing between the two words, is also the god of prophecy, however, as Papa Lebas expected Jes Grew’s rise, it is Muslim Abul who challenges Labas and predicts its end, its failure to survive lying in its lack of tangibility and structure which makes it easy to forget:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Are [the people] going to eat incense, candles? Maybe what you say is true about the nature of religions which occurred 1000s of years ago, but how are we going to survive if they have no discipline?…this country is eclectic. The architecture the people the music the writing. The thing that works here will have a little bit of jive talk and a little bit of North Africa, a fez-wearing mulatto in a pinstriped suit. A man who can say give me some skin and Asalamikalkum…authorities are already talking about outlawing VooDoo in Harlem…A new generation is on the scene. They will use terms like </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">nitty gritty,” “for real,” </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family: SimSun;mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">where it</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">’</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">s at,” and use words like </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun;mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">basic</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family: SimSun;mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">”</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">and </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">really</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">”</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">with telling emphasis. They will extend the letter and the meaning of the word </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">bad.” They won</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun;mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">’</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">t use your knowledge and they will call you </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">sick</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">”</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">and </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">way out</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family: SimSun;mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">”</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">and that will be a sad day, but we must prepare for it. For on that day they will have abandoned the other world they came here with and will have become mundanists and pragmatists and concretizes. They will shout loudly about soul because they will have lost it…you will be a[n]…eccentric character obsolete…Me and my Griffin politics will survive, my chimeral art…Someone is coming…He might even have the red hair of a conjure man but he won</span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">‘</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">t be 1. No, he will get it across. And he will be known as the man who </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">got it across</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">”</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">and people like you will live in seclusion and your circle will be limited and the people who read you will pride themselves on their culture and their selectiveness and their identification with the avant-garde. (37-39) <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Reed, too, in writing this novel spoke on the disillusionment and loss of faith of the Black people, frustrated with lack of history and identity in America, mourning the loss of original language and religion, mourning the loss of laughter and dissension amongst each other. He, too, also </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height: 200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun;mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">gets it across,” challenging conventional (white standard) language and literary form, using nonsense, silence, mumbo jumbo to </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">get it across,” to attempt to return the (hi)story back to the people, to free the people from the limits of Western confinement of language, spirituality, and emotion. Robert Elliot Fox writes in his article </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun;mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height: 200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Blacking the Zero: Toward a Semiotics of Neo-Hoodoo,” about the mysterious circles that are placed between passages and chapters of <i>Mumbo Jumbo</i>, the blackened circle next to the white one, resembling the symbols on modern calendars for Full and New moons. Fox gives these symbols alphabetical correspondences and geometric figures used in voodoo ritual to invoke, not surprisingly, Atibon-Legba, </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">lord of the crossroads, the initiator…he who leads the way before-- the perfect deity for guiding us into the text. The Dual symbolism of black and white (the rooster sacrificed to Papa Legba must be a speckled black-and-white one) is apt, for Legba is an intermediary between two different realities, just as a text is, among other things, an interface between imagination and action, creativity and (re)interpretation” (Dick, 41) Fox continues brilliantly:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">[French philosopher] Derrida’s project to shake the totality of philosophic totalinarianism which he views structuralism as constituting provide parallels to Reed’s effort to deconstruct the cultural totalitarianism of Western civilization, which has not only equated itself with </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun;mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height: 200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">universality,” but also within its own context, drastically defined the parameters of what it takes to be its authentic tradition by structures of exclusion that have historically kept out much that is valuable, the very </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun;mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">despise” elements Reed wishes to reinstate. Reed wants to reassert the </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">questions” which the text of history has sidestepped. He is dealing not only with the <i>phenomenon of</i> possession (consciousness ridden by forces or concepts) and the <i>act</i> of possession (appropriation of ideas or artifacts) but also with re-possession-- the reclamation of lost, scattered, or denied areas of experience and tradition(s). Reed, through a deliberate energy of anachronism, multi-media devices, footnotes, bibliographies, and the like, opens up his texts, allowing disposed history to enter…You cannot discuss American history and culture without these signifiers: <i>black</i>, which substitutes the other shades (brown, red, yellow) of minority spectrum, and <i>white</i>…in textual terms, the signifiers…serve to remind us of the necessary interplay between black ink and white space…Because there is always another side to the coin, there is always an alternative, a different story-- e.g., <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.5in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:8.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Nonsense=MUMBO JUMBO=Neo-Hoodoo (positive magic)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">…</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">from the black point of view, the transition from </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun;mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height: 200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">nonsense” to a positive interpretation is one in which the slave becomes the master. Although the English language has basically equated the expression </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun;mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">mumbo jumbo” with </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun;mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">gibberish,” the etymology Reed provides…relat[es] to a process which calms the troubled spirits of the ancestors. Ironically, at the same time that the words lost their original meaning, they took on a meaning which troubled the spirits of whites, invoking the fearful, atavistic vision of the </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ascii-font-family:SimSun; mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">dark continent.” (48-51)</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; font-family:SimSun;mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> Danielewski, too, takes a deliberate stab at what has been given as truth in the totalizing of history, the perspective the nation</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">’s been told to inherit as a common cultural acceptance of a certain knowledge. Reed, as illustrated above, undermines traditional meta-narrative in order to upset, as a Black author, the white Euro-American monopoly on accepted history and changing the perspective that for ages has been twisted and slanted, with bias, to glorify only the white man. Danielewski on the other hand, in <i>Only Revolutions</i>, purposefully plays with history by re-ordering or “mistaking” dates of crucial events, omitting events, including more personal, microcosmic events to give them as much importance. By muddling and obscuring facts or otherwise not mentioning them at all, he forces the audience to see just how out of touch they/we are with the history and things around us, just as Sam and Hailey are and illuminating exactly how much we don’t know that we thought we did. In faulting Sam and Hailey for disregarding the events around them, we fault ourselves. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> Take, for instance, Danielewski’s misdating of the death of Jimi Hendrix on H88. He dates Hendrix’s death as August 24, 1970. Hendrix, in fact, died September 18, 1970. One would think that for a historical figure as well-known, admired, or at the very least so mass-marketed, readers would immediately stop and say “wait, that’s not the day he died.” Or, perhaps the opposite—perhaps readers are so aware of Hendrix, or think they are, that they’ll simply assume that is the right date because, a reader could presume, no one could possibly mistake the day he died, right? Either way, Danielewski is proving his point. What has been shoved down our throats so much and so long we take it for granted? We’ve all heard Martin Luther King’s name hundreds of times by even the end of elementary school but how many of us can actually tell the exact date he was assassinated? What knowledge do we just “brush off,” having assumed its constant availability? How many of us, especially now, don’t bother to commit to memory a certain date or event in history because we assume we can always Google or Wikipedia it? Or, just the opposite, how many of us remember exactly what we were doing when the planes hit the World Trade Center buildings (an event Danielewski deliberately misdated, which will be explained later) or what we were doing when JFK died but don’t know the exact time we were born or the day of our first kiss? Why are we accepting someone else’s experience, someone else’s history before our own? Why do we hold onto a history a certain group (the “Powers That Be,” if you will) has a monopoly on and disregard small but vital parts of our own? Why do we trust that history given to us and give it so much power and reverence? This is what Danielewski does, what he forces us to ask ourselves, in <i>Only Revolutions</i>, within Sam and Hailey and the text itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> Another question Danielewski makes us ask ourselves is why is one day-- September 11, 2001, for example-- considered more significant than the days leading up to it, or the days in its own aftermath; why is that a day considered to <i>have happened </i>rather than a day that was always happening, is still happening? This is why, in the historical sidebar on H277, there is no listing for September 11<sup>th</sup>, though the falling of the World Trade Center is listed on August 2, 2001: placing it here, the author makes us understand that this is not and never could have been a single event, a single day-- it was happening as much on August 2<sup>nd</sup> as it was September 11<sup>th</sup>. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> The structure of Sam and Hailey’s narratives reflects the various points where personal life and grand history collide-- and how each is as vital to the existence of the other, how humans synthesize the collective and individual, how we </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; font-family:SimSun;mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">“</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">feel” some external event in relation to an intimate experience in our own lives and, likewise, how such major external events are only extensions of, or continuations of, consequence: consequence of the infinite smaller events. Hand in hand with this, he also illuminates the way humans can also put themselves above history and the greater scope of the rest of the world: ego-centric, narcissistic, one can, like Sam and Hailey at the beginning of their tales, claim to be able to “destroy” or “devastate” (respectively) the world themselves, “killing Dreams” and making Mountain Tops shout their names. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">I leap free this spring./ On fire. How my curls./ I’ll destroy the world./ That’s all. Big ruin all/ around. With a wiggle./ With a waggle. A spin./ Allmighty sixteen and freeeeee./ Rebounding on bare feet. (Danielewski, H1)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Here Sam and Hailey, before having met each other, are glorifying themselves and, placed ever in the outside without regarding the events outside themselves, they’ve made themselves the beginning and end of history. Sam’s narrative starts on the eve of the third Battle of Chattanooga, the turning point of the Civil War, and the birth of a new nation, though through what is considered a loss of some kind of innocence, the loss of the nation’s unity and the revelation to many about the hidden hypocrisy and evil that polarized the people. It was the start of hope for the freed slaves, the end of hope for the decimated South, never to be restored to its former pre-war glory. Hailey’s narrative starts November 22, 1963, at the Texas School Depository where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. This, too, a loss of innocence in America, also simultaneously the beginning and the end of New Hope. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> Here they are, Sam and Hailey, two eternal teenagers, teetering on the edge of innocence, and not caring which way they fell-- towards the loss of it, the destruction of the idealization, the romaticization of Hope and Youth; or the birth of that New Hope only they could try to bring forth in letting go of everything. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><i><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> Only Revolutions</span></i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%; mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> is essentially about letting go-- letting go of relationships, a need for “home” and interior self and identity; letting go of ties and confines, limits of identification with a particular common history or heritage; letting go of ego as they do once they meet and love each other, now glorifying each other, making each other their whole world, changing the whole world as with Hailey’s “snorts spilling cyclones. Smiles bringing harvests” (S316)…They also, by never stopping, rushing through time and history at top speeds, let go of history. By speeding through, reckless and hopeful as they are, they can afford to just let things happen around them, disregarding them though external events still seep their way in subconsciously. They are always going going going, never stopping, never slowing in their fast cars with their fast, rough love and arrogance. They even let go of language. Their language changes with every page, years of dialect and slang changing in a matter of a few pages, a few paragraphs, sometimes mid-sentence. Danielewski speaks of the “materialism” of writers, holding onto words, language. But Sam and Hailey write their own story, their own histories subjectively, not caring to slow down enough to adopt the words, the history, the <i>feel</i> of the times changing around them. They just pass through, everything a blur as it always is from any car window.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">But Sam and Hailey also let go of each other. As Danielewski revealed at a public bookstore reading<a href="file:///C:/Users/rodney/Downloads/FINALLY%20FINISHED!!.doc#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><sup><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;mso-font-kerning:14.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">[3]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></sup></a>, love is not freedom because it is essentially about binding oneself to another. Letting go of each other, Sam and Hailey’s’ narratives stop mirroring each other so closely and they begin to incorporate external forces more, as on H280, Hailey claims she and Sam are “every exception. Exceptionally stoked/ how we ricochet away by Iraqi forces, UN forces/ and rainbow ravers floating civilly below,” in the middle of the war the sidebar tells us is in January 26, 2003. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> Alas, Sam and Hailey never really let each other go, as they both go to their deaths for the other, whispering in their last breaths “I could never walk away from you” (H380, S380) and find freedom only in death, truly releasing (and being released from) the limitations of the world and the rules of man and gravity. </span><o:p></o:p></p> <div><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br clear="all"> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%"> <!--[endif]--> <div id="ftn1"> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="file:///C:/Users/rodney/Downloads/FINALLY%20FINISHED!!.doc#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><sup><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-font-kerning:0pt;mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:ZH-CN;mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">[1]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a> Included in the collection of reviews and analyses in Bruce Allen Dick’s <i>The Critical Response to Ishmael Reed</i>…from here on out, all secondary criticism on Ishmael Reed will have been taken from this collection and cited, attributed to Bruce Allen Dick, the editor.<span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-font-kerning:0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p> </div> <div id="ftn2"> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="file:///C:/Users/rodney/Downloads/FINALLY%20FINISHED!!.doc#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><sup><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-font-kerning:0pt;mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:ZH-CN;mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">[2]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a> attributed to Ihab Hassan in <i>The Dismemberment of Orpheus</i>, page 13<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;mso-font-kerning:0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p> </div> <div id="ftn3"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/rodney/Downloads/FINALLY%20FINISHED!!.doc#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family:Symbol;mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Symbol">*</span></span></a><span lang="ZH-CN"> </span>Orishas are considered the multiple aspects of one God. <o:p></o:p></p> </div> <div id="ftn4"> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="file:///C:/Users/rodney/Downloads/FINALLY%20FINISHED!!.doc#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><sup><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-font-kerning:0pt;mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><sup><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:ZH-CN;mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">[3]</span></sup><!--[endif]--></span></sup></a> Strand Bookstore, October 22, 2006<span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-font-kerning:0pt;mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p> </div> </div><p></p>48lawsNdreamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13627772395231029438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006442281098440526.post-56777560272128424362012-03-17T03:54:00.001-07:002012-03-17T03:57:12.059-07:00Nancy Morejon paper<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"></p><p class="MsoHeader">Gloria “Dani” Steele<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoHeader">Hispanic Lit<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoHeader">Nancy Morejon Conference Project<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoHeader">May 2007<o:p></o:p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Still I smell the foam of the sea which they made me cross.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>The night, I cannot remember it.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Not even the ocean itself could remember it.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>But I do not forget the first gannet I made out.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>High, the clouds, like innocent eyewitnesses.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Perhaps I have not forgotten either my lost coast, or <o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>my ancestral tongue.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>They left me here and here I have lived. <o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>And because I worked like a beast,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Here I was born again.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>To many Mandinga epopeias did I try to have recourse.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>I rebelled.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>………………<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"> Initially, Nancy Morejon’s celebrated poem “Mujer Negra/Black Woman” seems to be a general statement on all/any woman of the African Diaspora and the horrifying consequences of the European rape of Africa embodied in that woman. The poem being called “Black Woman”, not “The Black Woman” or “A Black Woman” (or “A Black Cuban Woman”, even) seems to suggest this Black Woman, as writer or speaker could be any Black woman. And, indeed, until the final stanza, the poem is a powerful illustration of a woman’s journey from Africa to enslavement in Europe and the Americas, suffering the horrible and total loss of identity and culture in hegemonic oppression, through rebellion and so-called emancipation. But the issue of absolute commonality in the African Diaspora is a tricky one. One often hears “Oh, s/he’s Black, they understand.” Which is true to a point. Certainly there are common traits particular to Africans and their descendents, as in any culture. And there are certain traits and a collective memory that binds Black people together, the Black Holocaust and all that means forever burned in each of us. But it is a mistake to assume that a Black person in Cuba will claim to understand everything that has made a person from the American South the way they are and vice versa. Also, for the most part, identifying as “Black” seems to be particular to African-American descendents of slaves. North American Blacks are peculiarly displaced, feeling no allegiance to the country that has enslaved them, yet wanting to take part in all the freedom the country’s founding fathers hypocritically claimed was for all. Africans in other nations (including countries in Central and Southern America), however, seem to always identify first with their country, then with their race. It is not uncommon to hear one say, “I’m Cuban [or any other country] first, Black second.” While it is tempting to lump all Black people together and, in the case of writers like Morejon, to frustratingly wish them to be “more Black” and write more about a more universal Black experience, one must not make these mistakes.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%">Morejon has often been criticized for her “silence” and self-censorship regarding her feelings as a woman in general and a Black woman specifically. Many readers and critics alike wish her to speak more openly about oppression or, to put it simply, what it means to be <i>Afro-</i>Cuban more and less what it means to be Cuban. Then one is confronted with the changes the Revolution brought about, which Jean Andrews summarizes in the introduction to her anthology of Morejon’s poetry, <i>Mujer Negra y otras poemas/ Black Woman and Other Poems:</i> “When the Cuban Revolution took place in 1959, Cuba was the ‘most racist if the Hispanic Caribbean Territories’. It set out as one of its chief aims the elimination of the discrimination on the grounds of race and, with some caveats, has been successful in transforming Cuba into, arguably, the most racially integrated of the Caribbean nations.” <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%">On the one hand the frustrated reader can assume that, though disillusioned by the Revolution’s subtle contradictions and failures, many Afro-Cubans, Morejon included, have continued to “blindly” support it, in a way of saying “well, it’s not <i>great</i>, but it’s all we have.” Much in the way many North American Blacks seemed to acquiesce to the notion of “Separate but Equal.” But this assumption, too, would be the mistake of placing an outside context on the issue; of thinking of a distinctly Cuban matter through a North American filter. There is another way to see the issue, however…<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%">In an essay entitled “Cuban National Identity in Morejon, Rolando, and Ayon”, from the book <i>Guarding Cultural Memory: Afro-Cuban Women in Literature and the Arts</i>, Flora Gonzales Mandri explores this:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%">Castro’s much quoted words are “Within the Revolution everything, against the Revolution nothing”... Because in the new socialist revolution racism could not exist, discussion of race could not be tolerated…overall, Afro-Cubans who remained in Cuba, like Morejon, are critical of times, from the 1960s to the 1990s, when the institutional government supported black independence movements yet did not allow its black intellectuals to speak openly about their Afro-Cuban identity…I agree with Howe that Morejon’s ambivalent intellectual attitude may be seen as a personal survival mechanism given the fact that she has chosen to continue living in Cuba…it shows her to be an excellent mediator between her culture and her national identity. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">The question then to confront is whether Morejon consciously censors herself, recognizing the irony of a society born of a revolution that purports to have unified the races and classes in a single, all-inclusive identity when, in fact, that only brings a loss of identity in further denying a people the right to claim their dual heritage and unique culture. Or is she blindly buying into the ultimately unfulfilled promises of Communism where all people are equal along lines of gender, race, and class which essentially leaves one without a unique identity, as one has presumably become a tiny part of one huge homogenous group. By the end of “Black Woman”, one gets the jarring feeling that Morejon, before this point, has been digging deep, exploring what it means to be Black and inherit the legacy of slavery and the African holocaust and suddenly, to appease the powers that be, throws in a random laudatory stanza in which she thanks Communism for freeing her from that oppression by doing away with discrimination in that country:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Only a century later, <o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>together with my descendants,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>from a blue mountain,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>I came down from the Sierra<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>to put an end to capitalists and usurers,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>to generals and bourgeois.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Now I am: Only today do we have and create.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Nothing is outside our reach.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Ours the land.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Ours the sea and sky.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Ours magic and the chimera.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>My equals, here I watch them dance<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>around the tree we planted for communism.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Its prodigious wood already resounds.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i><o:p> </o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">This final stanza feels foreign to the rest of the poem, feels hastily added, as an afterthought or even a half-hearted inclusion of propoganda—a false happy ending, seemingly over-idealistic, to an epic tragedy. Why does Morejon add this? Does she truly believe this, is she that hopeful, that faithful to the ideals of the Revolution? Or is she simply finding a means to speak of her feelings as a Black Woman, skillfully and knowingly veiling it with this tongue in cheek supplement serving as what Mandri calls a “survival mechanism”? The trouble with Morejon is that one can never be quite sure. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"> In her poem “Rebirth”, it seems much clearer that Morejon belives in her Cuba and certainly does “live and think” in and on the Revolution. Grateful for the struggle, indebted to her nation, she writes beautifully:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Daughter of the sea waters<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>asleep in their entrails,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>I am reborn from the gunpowder<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>which a guerilla rifle<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>spread on the mountain<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>so that the world would be reborn in its turn,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>that the whole sea would be reborn,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>all the dust,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>all the dust of Cuba.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i><o:p> </o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">She alludes to her ancestors’ journey through the Middle Passage and the strength of the descendants, inheriting their (hi)stories—those that survived, including herself and her generation, and those that didn’t. She doesn’t allow herself or the reader to mistake her as a daughter of anything else but Mother Africa first and, yes, the ocean where rests innumerable Africans’ bones. However, she quickly asserts herself as a reborn daughter of the Revolution, of Cuba, thankful for being part of the effort to liberate her people through Communist unity. She is, as Richard Jackson says in his article “Remembering the ‘dismembered’: modern black writers and slavery in Latin America”, “remember[ing] a <i>double</i> Middle Passage, the original Atlantic slave trade and the ‘new’ Middle Passage…from the Caribbean to Central America.” She even seems to suggest that the Cuban Revolution and its supposed success is only the beginning of a successful rebirth of the entire world, following the Communist example, in which Blacks that died in the cycle of injustice would be avenged. The dust that was their bones littering the floor of the Atlantic, the dust that was their bones making up the very American soil we walk upon, Morejon seems to suggest, converges to make up “all the dust of Cuba”, the country that, through the Revolution, avenges them. Morejon fares better, however, returning to make a more generalized statement on the state of men in the Diaspora in her poem “Negro/Black Man”, in which she confronts a more universally understood, and troubling, racist eroticization of the Black male. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"> From the beginning, there has been a constant envy and inherent fear of the African mind and body. Europeans knew the strength of the Africans, knew their knowledge and wealth. What the Europeans didn’t have, they stole from the so-called Dark Continent—the inventions of the people from electricity to embalming and brain surgery; gold, diamonds, land and other resources; even the people themselves, profiting from their physical strength, using them to build the New World they’d stolen, too, from the so-called Indians they nearly exterminated in gracious return. The primary goal to ensure maintenance of the people’s enslavement was to break them spiritually, to strip them of their history and culture and convince them they were inferior—to convince the world and the enslaved that they were animals. The Black man (and to some degree the Black woman) has been painted through history as a beast, a sexually ravenous predator, insatiable, ready at any moment to corrupt the white body—the prized white female body being the most sacred and, it was assumed, most threatened. As far back as the 16<sup>th</sup> century, we already had seemingly infinite proof that the myth of the Black male predator was widely accepted—Shakespeare’s <i>Othello</i>, for example is the tragic story of the moor, betrayed by the very whites who exalted him for his military prowess and, in the same instant, accused him of rape and unholy enchantment of his white wife, Desdemona. In the American South, thousands of Blacks were lynched (especially during and after Reconstruction), murdered horribly for crimes they never committed—nearly all of them having been accused of rape or the attempted rape of the supposed ‘Pure White Woman”. One must wonder, though, if this terrible trend was as commonly practiced among whites in Latin America and, more importantly, if this myth of Black sexuality was as persistent.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"> Afro-Cuban photographer Rene Pena confirms and confronts this in his series “Ritos II/Rituals II”. Several of his photographs are uncomfortably close shots of a Black body—a nipple, teeth, even palm lines. These tight shots are disturbing, as if the photographer is the white observer, casting a cool, cruel eye over the Black body, examining it not as a human, but as an animal, a specimen, as some grotesque phenomenon, as an object. The photographs, as close as they are, make this Black body no longer a body and the images scarcely look human. We see skin cells, pores, wrinkles, turning into a sort of design, distanced from the body and, ultimately, the soul of the human they belong to. As if that wasn’t troubling enough, however, Pena includes two other prints that make the issue unmistakably clear, leaving no ambiguities—one, “Revolver en la boca/Gun in mouth”, showing a Black male with a pistol in his mouth, presumably to commit suicide; the other, “Cuchillo/Knife” is a fascinating shot of a Black man fingering the tip of a gleaming, sharp knife that substitutes as his penis. We have Black men, poised for their own deaths by their own sexuality. We do not have to explain the obvious phallic nature of the gun, nor do we have to explain the well-known myth that endures today concerning the power of the Black penis, and the Black man with the gun in his mouth reinforces the tragic reality of the African, attacked and feared and often murdered for the very sexual prowess he is glorified for. The subject of “Cuchillo” is in a similar predicament. The viewer watches his finger on the tip of the knife—is he stroking this deadly weapon of a penis, taking pride in it even as it inevitably destroys him, even as he is cut by it, killed by it? One continues to wonder….<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"> Morejon tackles the issue of the simultaneous, if contradictory, exoticism and demonism of the Black man, also a victim of lynching, in “Negro”:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Your hair,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>for some,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>was devilry from the Inferno;<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>but the hummingbird built his nest <o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>there, with no misgivings,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>when you were hanging high on the gallows post,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>in from of the palace of the captains.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>…………<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i><o:p> </o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">She begins very directly illuminating the trouble of European standards of beauty inherited by non-whites that leaves them insecure, unhappy with what their natural, unique beauty, longing to “better” themselves by looking white, damaging themselves with skin bleaching, harmful hair straightening products, and surgery. This Black man of Morejon’s poem, called ugly, called nigger, called animal, called monster, called unacceptable by white society, he is beautiful in nature. The bird nesting in his hair, calling him home, is at one with this Black body. This bird loves this Black body, just as the sky, sea, and earth love this Black body—all waiting to claim him, to welcome him. The sea that already holds the remains of the Black bodies that came before him, thrown away, unappreciated—that sea loves that Black body. The earth he will be buried in (if he’s lucky), the earth his body will soon decay and replace—that earth loves that Black body. The sky his soul will take flight in, leaving that unwanted skin—that sky loves that Black body. It is only the enemy, the enslaver, that hates and fears his body, his skin, his hair… Morejon continues, a few lines later:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Then dying<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>they suspected your smile was salty<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>and your moss impalpable for the encounter of love.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>Others affirmed that your swamp sticks<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>brought us that somber damage<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>which does not allow us to shine before Europe<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>and which hurls us, in the ritual maelstrom,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>into that impossible rhythm <o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>of unnameable drums.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i><o:p> </o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">Here she acknowledges the arrogance, the insolence the Black man is accused of—but since when is claiming a bit of human dignity arrogance? The “salty” dying smile not one of lost hope, not one of submission, but one of knowing—refusing to concede and, although knowing he will die for his perceived threat, still trusting the struggle will continue and, one day, justice <i>must</i> come to his people. Morejon acknowledges that this skin the white man does not love has somehow been a curse that keeps them forever at the lowest levels of humanity, that “does not allow” them to “shine before Europe”, to be accepted as something worthy, something with a soul. That “impossible rhythm of unnameable drums” is the one they’ve forgotten, their native African tongues and songs, dances and gods, lost, stolen, forgotten. But this man and his memory will continue to live and be loved by Morejon and the rest of the Black women, mothers and lovers, who were denied this man’s presence in their lives as husband, father, son—the white man having divided him from his people, wreaked havoc and dissension amongst them, and, ultimately, killed him:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>We will always love <o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>your tracks and your bronze spirit<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>because you have brought that living light of the flowing past,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>that pain of having entered clean into the battle,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>that simple affection for bells and rivers, <o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>that rumor of breath free in the Spring<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>which runs to the sea in order to return<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i>and leave all over again.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i><o:p> </o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">This effort to love the unloved, to call beautiful what the oppressor says is ugly, is approached in a similar way by African-American writer and Pulitzer prize-winner Toni Morrison, in her novel <i>Beloved, </i>where the protagonist’s mother-in-law and community minister (of sorts), Baby Suggs, holy, calls out to the community of runaway slaves:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%">“Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands…stroke them on your face ‘cause they don’t love that either. <i>You</i> got to love it, <i>you!</i> And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth...they will see it broken and break it again… What you scream from it, they will not hear…they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them…and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">It is here, in “Negro” that Morejon returns to a feeling common to all members of the diaspora—the need to unite, as Black people, and love what has been cursed, the common search for identity and purpose where history has literally been erased and re-written, the common ability to forge a new culture, a new spirit, a victory over the very repression that tried to annihilate the old spirit. Despite her Cuban peculiarity, Morejon still finds a comfortable place among other Black writers and continues a legacy African descendents all over the world can still hold claim to.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><i><o:p> </o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:1.0in;line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:1.0in;line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%"><o:p> </o:p></p>48lawsNdreamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13627772395231029438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006442281098440526.post-58570284409997877232012-03-17T03:50:00.002-07:002012-03-17T03:54:48.162-07:00Pilar and Two Marys<p class="MsoNormal">Gloria “Dani” Steele<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Hispanic Lit<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Why Can’t It be Beautiful: Pilar’s Seduction and the marriage of the Marys<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Spring 2007</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;tab-stops:0in 47.95pt 95.9pt 143.85pt 191.8pt 239.75pt 287.7pt 335.6pt 383.6pt 431.5pt"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "> In <i>The Second Sex, </i>Simone de Beauvois writes, “First we must ask: what is woman? ‘tota mulier in utero,’ says one, ‘woman is a womb.’ But in speaking of certain women, connoisseurs declare that they are not women, although they are equipped with a uterus like the rest…and yet femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity. Is this attribute something secreted by the ovaries? Or is it a platonic essence, a product of philosophic imagination?” She continues, quoting Aristotle:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;tab-stops:0in 47.95pt 95.9pt 143.85pt 191.8pt 239.75pt 287.7pt 335.6pt 383.6pt 431.5pt"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%;tab-stops:0in 47.95pt 95.9pt 143.85pt 191.8pt 239.75pt 287.7pt 335.6pt 383.6pt 431.5pt"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; ">“The female is a female by virtue of a certain <i>lack</i> of qualities, said Aristotle; “we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.”…Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being…Benda is most positive in his <i>Rapport d’ Uriel</i>: “The body of man makes sense in itself quite apart from that of woman, whereas the latter seems wanting in significance by itself…Man can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man.” And she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called “the sex,” by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex-- absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her…He is the Subject, he is the Absolute-- she is the Other.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; ">And, indeed, in a patriarchal society as we are placed, women are given separate roles to follow-- that of a man’s mother, his conquest (as a virgin expected to succumb to him), and the whore (a mysterious being, unattainable, whom he never marries, but who awakens him sexually and whom he can never claim). Simone de Beauvois’ acquiescent claims echo Octavio Paz’s Freudian analysis of the Mexican identity in <i>The Labyrinth of Solitude</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; ">In a world made in man’s image, woman is only a reflection of masculine will and desire. When passive, she becomes a goddess, a beloved one, a being who embodies the ancient, stable elements of the universe: the earth, motherhood, a receptacle and a channel. When active, she is always function and means, a receptacle and a channel. Womanhood, unlike manhood, is never an end in itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; ">But, instinctively rejecting these theories that maintain woman can only be defined relative to men, the question must be put forth: what makes a woman? What is a woman? Simply a series of (different) physical attributes-- ovaries holding unborn seed, uterus to protect growing fetus, something between two thighs from which life, a being, is expelled, and breasts tools for feeding and nurturing? Yes, but one also knows that womb in which that child grows, had to have first been filled, in an act of love[-making], by a man. That vagina from which the child is pulled had to have been first penetrated by a man-- that same mother was once a virgin, was also once <i>someone’s woman</i>, someone’s love, something warm and inviting, something a man fever-dreamed about, shivering. The problem is most people never see the wife or mother as capable of sexuality, or in possession of sexuality. People seem to forget that the same woman at the alter in white, or rocking a cradle, was once sexual. Where, in the western patriarchy, can we find a whole woman? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "> Singer/songwriter Tori Amos, herself a minister’s daughter, extensively explores the division of Christian women and the consequences in her raw, honest, and cathertic music. As quoted in <i>Dazed and Confused </i>magazine, she makes her frustration with this system plain-- “There’s this denial that the Magdalene was as divine as the Virgin Mary.” Likewise, in an interview in <i>Aquarian Weekly </i>magazine, she confronts the limits of the Biblical archetypes western women, in one way or another, seem doomed to follow: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; ">I looked inward for answers - and to find the female. I was looking for the blueprint of women that wasn’t in Christianity. You see, the Magdalene’s blueprint wasn’t passed down. The blueprint of the Virgin Mary-- and the Mother Mary-- was passed down, but not woman as independent prophet/priestess on her own. Strike the word prophet-- woman/priestess, passion, compassion-- that’s how I view the Magdalene, not the whore who wiped Jesus’ feet. ...Naturally, I think there’s a fragmentation in the Christian myth-- there is no myth of the woman without being associated through the man-- or through the sex-- whether she’s a virgin or a mother. She’s a virgin before the son of God is born and then she’s a mother after he’s born. Whether Mary Magdalene was the wife of the son - to me, Mary was truly the female representation of God.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;tab-stops:0in 47.95pt 95.9pt 143.85pt 191.8pt 239.75pt 287.7pt 335.6pt 383.6pt 431.5pt"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "> In our western Christian partiarchial society, we've been given sexless archetypes to follow-- a supposedly sexless Jesus, and a Virgin Mary who becomes his mother, the story goes, without physical union with a man. We have the eternal son, Jesus, (we assume never reaching manhood or fatherhood as he is portrayed as having never touched a woman), it seems, and the eternal suffering mother. like <i>la llorona</i>, Mary the mother has watched her son die....but what about the weeping Magdalene at her side? This woman, demonized for her sexuality and passion-- who is she and why is she perceived as less legitimate than the <i>mother</i> Mary, the <i>virgin</i> Mary? why can she not have claim to Jesus's love? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;tab-stops:0in 47.95pt 95.9pt 143.85pt 191.8pt 239.75pt 287.7pt 335.6pt 383.6pt 431.5pt"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; "> In his <i>One Hundred years of Solitude</i>, Gabriel Garcia Marquez seems to accomplish the unification of the two Mary archetypes in the character of fortune teller Pilar Ternera. Prostitute, priestess, prophetess, witch…these terms, applied in different circles to the Magdalene certainly apply to Marquez’s Pilar Ternera. But Pilar and the Magdalene, uncompromisingly sensual and shamelessly sexual, why can’t they be teachers, nurturers, mothers, claiming their shadow side without the shame? Why is the Magdalene representative of the dark, evil, base, corrupt side of love and why is the virgin and mother confined to a love without passion? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:200%">...and then he lost his memory, as during times of forgetfulness, and he recovered it on a strange dawn and in a room that was completely foreign, where Pilar Ternera stood in her slip, barefoot, her hair down, holding a lamp over him, startled with disbelief.<br />"Aureliano!"<br />Aureliano checked his feet and raised his head. he did not know how he had come there, but he knew what his aim was, because he had carried it hidden since infancy in an inviolable backwater of his heart.<br />"I've come to sleep with you," he said.<br />His clothes were covered with mud and vomit. Pilar...did not ask any questions. She took him to the bed. She cleaned his face with a damp cloth, took off his clothes, and then got completely undressed and lowered the mosquito netting so that her children would not see them if they woke up. She had become tired of waiting for the man who would stay, of the men who had left, of the countless men who missed the road to her house, confused by the uncertainty of the card. During the wait her skin had become wrinkled, her breasts had withered, the coals of her heart had gone out. She felt for Aureliano in the darkness, put her hand on his stomach and kissed him on the neck with maternal tenderness. "My poor child," she murmured. Aureliano shuddered. With a calm skill, without the slightest misstep, he left his accumulated grief behind and found Remedios changed into a swamp without horizons, smelling of a raw animal and recently ironed clothes.<br /><!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br /><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:200%"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:200%">Enchanted by Pilar, young Jose Arcadio Buedia certainly sees a nurturing part of her that exists as an inseperable part of and, perhaps, strengthens the sexual attreaction between them. Indeed, he wantes her to be his mother and, even while making love, he confuses her face with that of Ursula. The passages describing Pilar’s seduction of Jose Arcadio and his brother Aureliano are undeniably beautiful. Most importantly, however, they reveal the natural coexistence of the motherly, nurturing qualities of women and those of the so-called “sacred prostitute”, her sexual guidance an invaluable service. Pilar is her own woman, undivided, uncircumcised of either her sexuality of her divinity. That she exists, even as a fictional character, proves that it is possible for a woman to embody all female roles but the question then remains: how can one function safely as bother mother and lover without any conflict of interest, as Pilar does? But that, if it ever can be concretely answered, will not be answered here.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p></p>48lawsNdreamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13627772395231029438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006442281098440526.post-51041819766252175552010-04-20T19:48:00.000-07:002010-04-20T19:50:35.887-07:00Oggun and Osun<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre; "><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/C-VsLgKX0-E&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/C-VsLgKX0-E&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">(from my journal)</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">.....Two brothas—{OMITTED} and [OMITTED]; both revolutionaries in heart, both omo ogun and omo orunmila; both seeking to build nations, community, unify the Black Nation; build our own schools and communities and businesses…just one is coming from the muslim [Nation of Islam] perspective, the other from ifa [Traditional Yoruban]….Ogun just spoke through the divinationat the bembe about this very unity in WORK, networking and standing together as a people, getting free with self-sufficiency. Ogun the hunter, the man alone in the bush who learns how to build fires, salt and preserve meat, sew clothes from skins and leaves, cook the meat of his hunt…he IS progress and that is what we need right now…transitioning from the new moon of Ogun which is work and progress to the new moon of Oshun which is the reaping of the REWARD (pleasure) of our work, the GIFTS of our labor. When we think of oshun, we think of pleasure, sensuality, bliss, enjoyment, lavish gifts….how to we enjoy anything? Only by having worked for it and overcome negativity and adversity do we truly enjoy our pleasure. It is only when we’ve labored for days and strained our backs and necks do we appreciate that good deep SENSUAL massage. That, to me, is an example of the transition from Ogun’s work to Oshun’s pleasure….6:40 pm 4/7/10</p> <!--EndFragment--> </span></span></div>48lawsNdreamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13627772395231029438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006442281098440526.post-34489998006642287832010-04-20T19:32:00.000-07:002010-04-20T19:44:24.488-07:00Doin' the Legba STOMP**[CREDIT TO: much admired Brother Awo Dino Soto, formerly of Destee.com forums and fellow atendee of Egbe Orisha Aiye]<div><br /></div><div>**phrase originally coined by beloved Brother Baba DarksideMagick, also of the Destee.com forums<br /><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif, verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande'; font-size: 13px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; ">I would respectfully disagree ... regarding there being many Esus. Although in the Diaspora, for instance in Lucumi, there are different roads or "caminos" for different Orisa, most people understand that really there is only one Esu. So there is only one Esu “Spirit,” but hundreds of possible manifestations or aspects of this spirit or energy. (perhaps we are only dealing with semantics). Whether you call him Elegua, Elegba, Esu, etc., Orisa have many attributes and many praise names, which can cause confusion. Elegba, (this is what the Fon call him) for instance, refers to him as "the owner of power." When we call him Esu (Yoruba), we are saying "divine messenger." Esu Odara, a praise name, means "divine messenger of transformation," (some awo say Odara means “Spirit that brings division is the source of fertility in the universe”)<br /><br />Oriki Esu<br /><br />Esu, Esu Odara, Esu lanlu ogirioko. Okunrin ori ita, a jo langa langa lalu<br />Divine Messenger, Divine Messenger of Transformation, Divine Messenger speak with power. Man of the crossroads, dance to the drum.<br />A rin lanja lanja lalu. Ode ibi ija de mole. Ija ni otaru ba d’ele ife.<br />Tickle the toe of the drum. Move beyond strife. Strife is contrary to the Spirits of the Invisible Realm.<br />To fi de omo won. Oro Esu, to to to akoni. Ao fi ida re lale.<br />Unite the unsteady feet of weaning children. The word of the Divine Messenger is always respected. We shall use your sword to touch the earth.<br />Esu ma se mi o. Esu ma se mi o. Esu ma se mi o.<br />Divine Messenger, do not confuse me. Divine Messenger, do not confuse me. Divine Messenger, do not confuse me.<br />Omo elomiran ni ko lo se. Pa ado asubi da. No ado asure si wa.<br />Let someone else be confused. Turn my suffering around. Give me the blessing of the calabash.<br />Mo dupe Esu, mo dupe. Babami, ase o.<br /><br />In the Diaspora, many believe Esu and Elegba are two different Orisa. They are wrong. Some say Elegba comes from elegbara, which is actually Alagbara (the strong one, or owner of strength – a praise name) others say elegbara comes form ela egbe ara, meaning, “the body of those who possess the light.” Either way, it is a praise name or manifestation of Esu that invokes strength and courage.<br />Esu, as everyone knows, is "the trickster" in that he represents chance. But I would question whether this is really Esu's most important role, or if it’s even appropriate. He is the karmic enforcer who simply provides the effect of your actions, good or bad. He is the principle of chaos, change and transformation. But more importantly, he is also the imparter of Ase; the holder of Ase. Esu is "born" in Odu Ose Otura. All awo, etc, should chant from this Odu daily for the acquisition of ase.<br /><br />Ose Otura<br />(from Chief Fama 2004).<br /><br />Bi mo duro, bi mo wure<br />Ire ti emi, ko ni se aigba<br />Bi mo bere, bi mo wure<br />Ire ti emi, ko ni se aigba<br />Bi mo joko, bi mo wure<br />Ire ti emi, ko ni se aigba.<br /><br />If I pray while standing<br />My prayers will manifest<br />If I stoop or kneel while praying<br />My prayers will manifest<br />If I sit while praying<br />My prayers will manifest<br />ase<br />This chant, while incomplete, is still powerful.<br /><br />Esu Odara is considered the “father” of all Esus and represents fertility as well as transformation. Esu Odara is born in Odu Ose Otura. This Odu is actually 17th in order of seniority. It is the first Odu after the mejis. In Tefa (ifa initiation), Ose Otura is invoked on the head of the iyawo after the mejis. This invocation causes the meji odu to copulate in the head of the iyawo, at which time the initiate becomes awo (hence Esu as the source of fertility). The process unlocks all 256 Odu in the Ori of the iyawo giving awo the ofo ase (power of the word) to invoke and make all the Orisa, unlocking the ability for an awo to become “possessed” by all the Orisa. This is where Esu as “divine messenger of transformation” comes from. So to reduce Esu to the status of mischief-maker or trickster is to be completely ignorant of what Esu is.<br />Much of the confusion comes from the fact that every Odu and every Orisa have their own Esu. The Esus for the different Orisa are born in Odu Owonrin plus the Odu of the Orisa. For example, the Odu for making the Esu for Sango (esu ananaki) is Owonrin Iwori; for Obatala (esu oke) it’s Owonrin Ogbe. Esu IS confusion. He is contradiction.<br /><br />Esu-Elegbara, Asoju (the observer)<br /><br />The short and tall one<br />Whose head is barely visible when he walks through a peanut farm<br />Thanks to the fact that he is very tall<br />But Esu must climb the hearthstone in order to put salt<br />in the soup pot…<br />Labolarinde, if you reach the frontier<br />And do not encounter him at the citygate working in the field<br />You will find him in the vicinity and he is always accessible<br />To everyone, including the infirm<br />A le kuru a le ga<br />O nlo ninu epa Atari re nhan firifiri<br />Opelope giga ti o ga<br />Esu ni o gun ori aro ni o fi bu iyo si obe…<br />Labolarinde ti o ba de bode ti o ko ba ba ni enu odi ni nro oko<br />On na ni da oko nibiti arugbo le de<br />ASE<br /><br />Another important part of understanding Esu is his relationship with Orunmila. Divination cannot take place without Esu's participation. There is a story about how Orunmila and Esu became such good buddies (remember, itan – stories – are used to explain metaphysical principals as well as teach morals and illuminate culture). Orunmila one day wanted to see how his friends would react to the news of his death, so he instructed his wife (Apetebi) to spread the news of his death, and then hid in the attic. Several Orisa came by the house to pay their respects, but all of them told his wife that Orunmila had owed them money, etc., which she paid them (these were lies). But when Esu came by, he was crying profusely, and told her if there was anything she needed to just call him, etc. In addition, he told her that he owed Orunmila some money and promptly paid. Orunmila then came down from the attic and told Esu that he was a true friend. From then on, the brothas were tight.<br />Esu is the messenger of Ifa, the oracle. He also watches over the divination session, to make sure it’s done right (all divination trays have an Esu carved on the edge). Olodumare made him the most powerful Orisa and he exists on heaven and earth simultaneously. Like Hermes, he has the power to bind and release. He can limit the actions of the negative forces (knowledge he shared with Orunmila) as well as bring the blessings of the white (positive) deities to humans.<br />The energy of Esu is instinctual, masculine, and autonomous. Like all Orisa, and energy itself, Esu is both positive and negative. Many focus on the negative aspects of Esu. Those of a higher consciousness will focus on the positive. Esu Odara, the divine messenger of transformation, will transform you. He has a special relationship with the Creator. He is the messenger of Olodumare. He has knowledge of good and evil as well as the wisdom and power to cope with these forces.<br /><br />Osa Meji<br />(Abimbola 1970)<br /><br />…exchange, exchange,<br />the Ifa priest of the house of Elepe<br />He was told to exchange an animal<br />For his life on account of Iku (death)<br /><br />As a partner with Orunmila in divination, Esu is the enforcer and the “effector” of an action. Offerings, dictated by Orunmila as the communicator of the oracle (Ifa), are usually offered to Esu’s shrine. All ritual begin and end with Esu. He has the power to translate human language to the language of Spirit, and vice versa. Esu brings order from chaos. He might decide to no longer restrain the ajoogun (evil spirits) from affecting the arrogant person in order to teach them a lesson. He informs (as messenger again) Olodumare or Orisa or Aje when an offering has been made. He sees to the proper use of ritual sacrifice.<br /><br />“Though the offering is difficult, it is not worse than death.”<br /><br />Ire is life – health, money, children and long life. The conversion of death into life, or ibi into ire, is Esu’s special power. When we finish ritual or prayer, we say,<br />“Ose Otura (a-wu-ire-la) agbe wa, ala wa, ase.”<br />“Ose Otura (the Odu that makes prayers manifest) will support and bless us, ase.”<br />(But let us not forget, that no Orisa, not even Esu, can bless one without the consent of one’s Ori. What does this mean? Your head and your heart must be in alignment for blessings to flow from above)<br /><br />So Orunmila provides the knowledge needed by the person who came for the reading, which includes time tested solutions to problems as well as the ritual offering or sacrifice to bring things back in order, or to bring the blessings to the client ( to turn ibi into ire). Order is brought by ritual sacrifice, which is overseen by Esu. The role of the diviner is to turn ibi (negative energy, or chaos, or resistance) into ire (positive energy, or order, or openness to change).<br /><br />Ose Meji<br />(from Abimbola 1970)<br /><br />The world is broken into pieces<br />The world is split wide open<br />The world is broken without anyone to mend it<br />The world is split open without anybody to sew it<br />Cast Ifa for the six elders<br />Who were coming down from Ile Ife<br />They were asked to take care of Mole<br />They were told that they would do well<br />If they made sacrifice<br />If the sacrifice to Esu is not made, it will not be acceptable in Orun<br />ase<br /><br />Esu is different than the other Orisa. For one, he is never referred to as the patron of a lineage. He is closely associated with the marketplace, where fortunes can change in an instant. He also punishes those who don't do ebo when recommended (again, karmic justice). There is a story (itan) about Esu (all itan come from the oral history of the Yoruba, called Odu) that illustrates not only his connection to the market, but also how he will make you pay for your transgressions. There was a woman at the market, who didn't do her prescribed ebo. While at the market, Esu started a fire at her house. She arrives too late; her house is burned down. While she ran home to put out the fire, a thief (Esu) stole all her goods.<br /><br />“Esu favors only those who have made the prescribed ebo.”<br /><br />And will punish those who don’t.<br />Esu occupies these marginal worlds like the marketplace, crossroads and compound entrances. Esu provokes us to do stupid things. This is why Christians translate him to "devil." This is an indefensible corruption. Esu can and will bless you. Most people propitiate Esu a lot, and part of one of his most popular oriki ask, "Esu do not confuse me." However, the elevated soul, the wise person, has no need to propitiate Esu, because they aren't going to do anything stupid. The awo who has achieved iwa pele (good character), who always maintains ori tutu (a cool head) does not need to worry about Esu teaching him or her a lesson. Elders, who have lived the life of iwa pele, ori tutu, and ritual obligation, and so have prospered, are revered in Yorubaland. They do not know Esu as the trickster, but as “the gift giver.” They no longer have to make offerings to Esu.<br /><br />Esu pele, Opin, Ajibike, Okaramaho, Oyinsese, Olofin- Apeka’lu, Amonisegun-mapo<br />(Divine Messenger, I call you by your names of praise)<br />Esu, I honor you because of your power<br />Esu, you are the road maker<br />Come with kindness to me and to my family,<br />Who serve you with gifts<br />Esu, you are the present giver<br />Make me rich and the “mother” of good children<br />Never allow your children misfortune<br />Come with your gorgeous appearance,<br />You, son of cowries<br />Ase</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif, verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif, verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; white-space: pre; "><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tdQ3aXO4gys&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tdQ3aXO4gys&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7DMDscGOUpg&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7DMDscGOUpg&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></span></div></div>48lawsNdreamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13627772395231029438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5006442281098440526.post-27475864360411374042010-04-20T19:13:00.000-07:002010-04-20T19:16:33.701-07:00The Signifying Monkey<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">[This was an assignment submitted for this semester's internet technology class; I myself consider it a work in progress, as due to page limits I did not explore the issue as much as I would have liked. I plan to expand greatly on this in the future]</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">As a Black artist who must transverse a euro-centric world, defined inaccurately by a people whose tastes and ideals completely oppose his own heritage, Jean-Michel Basquiat faces the difficult task of being accepted for his art's portrayal of life as the unaccepted. Thus, his Body/Image and art becomes a paradox. Thus, he becomes the fence-straddler, the man at the crossroads, the man between worlds-- Papa Legba, or the Yoruban trickster diety Eshu-Elegbara. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">In 1975 blaxploitation film Dolemite, Rudy Ray Moore famously delivered the signifying monkey monologue, the humorous tale of a clever monkey who avoids attack of his enemy the lion by accusing the elephant of secret slander. Henry Luis Gates 1983 wrote exploring the paradox of Black writers' acceptance or non-acceptance in the white literary world; the issues of the fate of Black writers' critical reception is one faced also by Black visual artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%">As Gates reveals: “the monkey is able to signify upon the lion only because the lion does not understand the monkey's discourse.... the monkey speaks figuratively, in a symbolic code; the lion interprets or reads literally and suffers the consequence of his folly, which is a reversal of his status as king of the jungle" (Gates, 1983, 691).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Thus, because the white critic interprets Basquiat through the white man's lens, the white world does not understand the obsessive paintings of heads (the Yoruban concept of consciousness as ori) and crowns (in Yoruban spirituality, one’s spirit guides or orisha are “crowned”, or embedded into the consciousness) are not a case of Basquiat's lamenting the inability to attain the crown of acclaim in the white world or of Basquiat's "loss of identity" (head/ori). Instead, it is the affirmation that his head/ori brought him the blessing of his art, and, though his art may often express the Negro's plight and suffering in the oppositional white world. His art, as it reflects his inner soul and understanding of ancestral royalty, makes him king which he already was and always is....indeed, most young kings do get their heads cut off [a reference—signifying—to Basquiat’s painting], but Basquiat never does.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">Bell Hooks wrote of Basquiat: “...Fame, symbolized by the crown, is offered as the only possible path to subjectivity for the black male artist. To be un-famous is to be rendered invisible. Therefore, one is without choice. You either enter the phallocentric battlefield of representation and play the game or you are doomed to exist outside history. Basquiat wanted a place in history, and he played the game. In trying to make a place for himself--for blackness--in the established art world, he assumed the role of explorer/colonizer. Wanting to make an intervention with his life and work, he inverted the image of the white colonizer….Basquiat journeyed into the heart of whiteness. White territory he named as a savage and brutal place. The journey is embarked upon with no certainty of return. Nor is there any way to know what you will find or who you will be at journey's end. … Recognizing art-world fame to be a male game, one that he could play, working the stereotypical darky image, playing the trickster, Basquiat understood that he was risking his life--that this journey was <span style="font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT"><a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n6_v81/ai_13917784/"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";color:windowtext;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none">all about sacrifice</span></a></span>.” (Hooks, 1993, p.5)<o:p></o:p></p> <span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><br /> </span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">References<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">Awo Fa'lokun Fatunmbi, “Esu-Elegba: Ifa and the Spirit of the Divine Messenger”, retrieved from <u><a href="http://www.awostudycenter.com/Articles/art_esu.htm">http://www.awostudycenter.com/Articles/art_esu.htm</a><o:p></o:p></u></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">Henry Louis Gates, Jr. , <i>The "Blackness of Blackness": A Critique of the Sign and the Signifying Monkey</i><span style="font-style:normal">, <u>Critical Inquiry</u>, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Jun, 1983), pp. 685-723<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">Phoebe Haban, <i><u>Basquiat: A Quick Killing In Art</u></i><span style="font-style:normal">, 1998, Penguin Books, Penguin Putnam Inc., New York, New York<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">Bell Hooks, “Alters of sacrifice: re-membering Basquiat”, <u>Art in America</u>, June, 1993<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"> <o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->48lawsNdreamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13627772395231029438noreply@blogger.com0