jazzy

i stumbled onto a jazz band rehearsing this evening in a cafe i support because it is independent and black owned and NOT the new starbucks on 118th and 8th ave. i walked in to buy a chai as i waited for some people who define the term colored people because the only time they know is cp.
i asked if i could sit because it looked like there was commotion and i was told there would be a rehearsal going on, if i didn't mind. so i sat and i pulled out my book, jazz by toni morrison (oh so appropriate, right?) and began to read while they hooked the mics and tuned the bass and adjusted the levels of sound. and then the singing began and the words on the page danced away and the book dropped to the table and my toes started tapping and my eyes closed and i started to smile and the vocalist said "cut" and tossed this line to me- "you are making my day right now you are so making my day."
for once my anal desire for punctuality from all people in my life was assuaged as i, in a new move, actually enjoyed waiting for a colored person. ;)

free jazz tomorrow night at 6 at tribal spears gallery and cafe, 117th and 8th avenue, harlem.
***

now, of course, i am reading and i am blogging and that means i am going to share an excerpt with you because this wouldn't really be me if i didn't.

I have stood in cane fields in the middle of the night when the sound of it rustling hid the slither of the snakes and I stood still waiting for him and not stirring a speck in case he was near and I would miss him, and damn the snakes my man was coming for me and who or what was going to keep me from him? Plenty times, plenty times I have carried the welts given me by a two-tone peckerwood because I was late in the field row the next morning. Plenty times, plenty, I chopped twice the wood that was needed into short logs and kindlin so as to make sure the crackers had enough and wouldn't go hollering for me when I was bound to meet my Joe Trace don't care what and do what you will or may he was my Joe Trace. Mine. I picked him out from all the others wasn't nobody like Joe he make anybody stand in cane in the middle of the night; make any woman dream about him in the daytime so hard she miss the rut and have to work hard to get the mules back on the track. Any woman, not just me. Maybe that is what she saw. Not the fifty-year-old man toting a sample case, but my Joe Trace, my Virginia Joe Trace who carried a light inside him, whose shoulders were razor sharp and who looked at me with two-color eyes and never saw anybody else...Is that why he let her scoop the melty part from around the edges of his pint of ice cream, stick her hand down in his salt-and-butter popcorn.
(p. 97, jazz)

kinda like the love song the jazz lady sang

sukh aur dukh ki kahani

the title of this post is also the title of a show i saw yesterday at the culture project as a part of women center stage. "sukh aur dukh ki kahani, a journey of love, risk and loss," brought on a sense of unknowing and/or not understanding was part of the entire process at the show yesterday. andolan, a non-profit founded by and for low-wage south asian women workers, brought five women together to tell their stories of struggle and to empower themselves through performance. the result of their own self-explorations is a powerful show that exposes the truth of the variety of immigration and u.s. living experiences of south asian descent. i think (and i know in my own experience as an imperfect and often ignorant person) that south asians often are placed in the model minority pool along with east asians. it is very rarely (if ever) that we see s. asians portrayed as financially struggling unless the movie or film is actually set in s. asia and the character is a beggar or servant, or it is wartime. in u.s.-set movies/t.v. shows/novels, south asians most often suffer from being overlooked in the professional sector, or are mocked for accents and cultural differences, but there is, as far as i know, no real portrayal of low-wage domestic workers of south asian descent. south asians are also often seen as legal immigrants, not illegal ones.
"sukh aur dukh ki kahani" explodes all of those stereotypes. there are four languages spoken in the show- english, bangla, hindi and marathi, and of those languages the director only speaks english. two teenage interns provided translation for the women across their language barriers, and the show was created by the women across their differences to speak out against violence. at the beginning of the show the director made a point to welcome the audience to fully experience the discomfort of not understanding, and to try to connect to the emotion in the women's performances without full translation. key phrases and words were displayed on a screen in english, and the program provided basic english translations for the five stories shared.
in the q-and-a, one man asked whose stories the women were sharing, and whether or not they were written collaboratively. it was explained that all of the women were sharing their own experiences, and the courage it took for them to get up in front of all of us became all that much clearer. to speak of being in the country illegally, to speak of escaping from your abusive former employers' home, to speak of losing two infant children to hunger in front of 100 strangers is, i'm sure, terrifying, and the grace and strength the women brought to their words was beautiful. andolan will be trying to take the show other places in the future, so keep your eyes open. they also take donations, so if you're looking for a place to share your resources, check out the website.
i thought of this poem by audre lorde as i left the theater yesterday, so i'll share it with y'all~

the brown menace
or poem to the
survival of
roaches

Call me
your deepest urge
toward survival
call me
and my brothers and sisters
in the sharp smell of refusal
call me
roach and presumptuous
nightmare upon your white pillow
your itch to destroy
the indestructible part of yourself.

Call me
your own determination
in the most detestable shape
you can become
friend of your own image
within me I am you
your most deeply cherished nightmare
scuttling through painted cracks
you create to admit
me into your kitchens
your fearful midnights
your values at noon
into your most secret places
hating
you learn to honor me
by imitation as I alter
through your greedy preoccupations
through your kitchen wars
through your poisonous refusal
to survive.

To survive.
To survive.

(1973)

ailey barbie. i'm feeling a little uncomfortable.

in honor of the 50th anniversary of the alvin ailey american dance theater (one of my favorite cultural offerings in this city), mattel will be producing an ailey barbie?

Ailey Barbie doll on sale

In the fall of 2008, Mattel will release an Ailey Barbie® doll that was designed by Judith Jamison. The doll represents a dancer from Alvin Ailey’s masterpiece, Revelations.


BARBIE and associated trademarks and trade dress are owned by Mattel, Inc. © 2008 Mattel, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

umm, okay. i'm more excited by the free performances and classes that will be happening in august:

Free Dance Classes and Performances Throughout NYC (8.5-8.12)

In August, 2008, Ailey will conduct a series of free performances and dance classes in all five boroughs of NYC, sponsored by Bloomberg. Venues include Celebrate Brooklyn, Hostos Center for the Arts and Culture, New York City Center, Queens Theatre in the Park, and The St. George Theatre.

and the spring season at BAM (anyone want to get tix with me?):

Spring Season at BAM

The Joyce Theater will present Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for a week-long engagement at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) from June 3-8, 2008. This will be the first time in 38 years that the Company has performed at BAM.

amazing woman

okay, first of all, i'm not sure what's going on with my template. i'm going to work on that.

also, went to this conference on black feminism yesterday. i'm feeling rejuvenated and refocused; i've relocated those goalposts and re-oriented myself. i wrote this yesterday during a presentation on lucille clifton and sonia sanchez, and just the sight of all of these amazing women's names in one place still puts a smile on my face and a lift in my heart. i am so thankful to have had the opportunity.

amazing women
nzadi keita
nicole watson
sherie randolph
rose afriyie
sala cyril
ashley lewis
toccara
robyn spencer
adrienne kennedy
lucille clifton
safiya bandele
assata
barbara omolade
nadine
sonia sanchez
women panthers

asian american/african american poetry reading on thurs

co-spo'd by cave canem and the asian american writer's workshop. details after the jump. are you as excited as i am?

Thursday, March 6, 7:30 pm
Third Annual Asian American/African American Poetry Reading
Curated by Tracy K. Smith and Tina Chang
Cosponsored by Cave Canem

The Asian American and African American communities gather for a night of brilliant poetry. Readings by Meena Alexander, Jeffery Renard Allen, Regie Cabico, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, R. Erica Doyle and Bakar Wilson.

Meena Alexander's poetry includes Illiterate Heart, winner of a 2002 PEN Open Book Award, Raw Silk (2004), and Quickly Changing River (2008) all published by TriQuarterly Books/ Northwestern University Press. She is the editor of Indian Love Poems (Everyman's Library/ Knopf, 2005) and author of the memoir Fault Lines (Feminist Press 1993/ 2003) She is Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY.

Jeffery Renard Allen is the author of two collections of poetry, Stellar Places (Moyer Bell 2007) and Harbors and Spirits (Moyer Bell 1999), and a novel, Rails Under My Back (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000), which won The Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize for Fiction. Born in Chicago, he holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is currently an Associate Professor of English at The City University of New York and teaches in the graduate writing program at The New School. He is the Founding Director of the Pan African Literary Forum. Allen's book of short stories, Bread and the Land, will be published in 2008. He is presently at work on Talking Talk, a book of interviews and conversations with fiction writers of African descent from around the world, and the novel Song of the Shank, based on the life of Thomas Greene Wiggins, a nineteenth century African American piano virtuoso and composer who performed under the stage name Blind Tom.

Regie Cabico is a spoken word pioneer having won the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam & has appeared on two seasons of HBO's Def Poetry Jam. His work appears in over 30 anthologies including Spoken Word Revolution & The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. He is the recipient of three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, The Barnes & Nobles Writers for Writers Award, A Larry Neal Prize for Poetry and a 2008 DC Commission for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. He is the artistic director of Sol & Soul, an arts and activist organization & co-sponsor of Split This Rock's Poetry Festival: a celebration of Poetry of Provocation & Witness in Washington, DC March 20-23 2008.

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs was born in Won Ju Si, South Korea. Her debut collection of poetry, Paper Pavilion (White Pine Prees 2007), is the winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in 5 AM, Crazyhorse, Cimarron Review, MiPOesias, Poetry NZ, among others and have been anthologized in Echoes Upon Echoes (The Asian American Writers' Workshop, 2003) and Language For A New Century (W. W. Norton 2008). She is a fellow at the University of Southern California and founding director of the USC SummerTIME Writing Program. Currently, she lives in New York City.

R. Erica Doyle was born in Brooklyn, NY to Trinidadian parents. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Ploughshares, Ms. Magazine, Black Issues Book Review, Blithe House Quarterly, Utne Reader, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire and Sinister Wisdom and has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2001, Voices Rising, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Gumbo: Short Fiction by Black Writers, Gathering Ground, Best Black Women's Erotica 2, and Role Call is forthcoming in Bloom, Our Antilles: Queer Writing from the Caribbean and Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets. She is the recipient of various grants and awards, including a Fellowship in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award in Poetry and a Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction. She received her MFA in Poetry from The New School and works as a teacher and literacy coach at Vanguard High. Her manuscript, proxy, was selected by Claudia Rankine as a finalist for the 2007 Cave Canem Poetry Prize.

Bakar Wilson's work has appeared in the Vanderbilt Review, the Lumberyard, and three Cave Canem anthologies. He is a native of Tennessee and currently teaches at Medgar Evers College.

@ The Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)

$5 suggested donation

not sure what to write

as i have the equivalent of three different posts in my head right now, all competing for space. i'm also busy at work right now trying to figure some things out, so i think i'm just going to share some random thoughts after the jump.

one.
there's a pushcart across the street from my job. your usual halal affair, with chicken and onions sputtering on the grill. i stopped for a moment today on my walk by because it seemed the cart was unmanned. then i saw the owner of the cart praying. his own moment of devotion, on the corner of 31st street and 8th avenue. it was beautiful.

two.
i've been reading a lot about rebecca walker's post on huffpo re: feminism(s) lately, and i am attending a women's history conference on black feminism at sarah lawrence this weekend, and both of those things have me thinking about redefining my politics. i feel that as i have distanced myself from the academy i have lost sight of my goalposts, you know? those things that are absolutely necessary for my sanity, those things i'm supposed to be working towards. i hope this weekend will be a moment that will allow me to recenter and refocus on those posts, waaaay at the other end of the field.

three.
i talked and laughed so much this weekend that my throat is an eensy-weensy bit hoarse. that's not a bad thing.

until next time, or until my life slows down a bit...

lake jewelry

i received my latest etsy purchase in the mail today, and i have to say, i am pleasantly surprised.

i love buying handmade and supporting independent artists/artisans, but buying from etsy is risky...sometimes it would seem that the artist used a "magic" camera while photographing their goods, and created an image that is completely unlike the product i receive in the mail.

lake, though is a different story. the blossom vines earrings i ordered arrived, and are just as beautiful as i hoped.

yay!

check out etsy for more cool finds...

may i be happy

was the mantra for yoga practice tonight. i am so glad that my beautiful friend tati decided to make yoga class part of her birthday party tonight! there is nothing like yoga to settle the mind and the body. as i have gotten out of practice with yoga i've forgotten the transformative nature of the practice-- i walked in exhausted tonight, and full of nerves, and walked out rejuvenated and stretched but tired and sore, all at the same time.

the incredible change that comes over the body during a yoga session is unbelievable-- your last downward dog is nothing like the first, your last chattaranga is a 180 from the first, the three closing oms feel like you're speaking a different language than when you opened the session. for $18, you can change your life!


yoga tonight even embodied my challenge to myself this week. i, historically a fearer of inversions, did a shoulder stand tonight. SO proud of myself, and when i released my legs i felt a million times stronger. shoulder stands aren't that hard. they aren't. but i am a coward in a lot of really nonsensical ways (hence the need to face my fears!). my stand wasn't the straightest or the most intricate, but i tried and i felt liberated of the fear that i'd somehow be hurt for good by trying. letting go of fear, that's what it's all about.

so i bought another class, to be used sometime within a month. i'm thinking friday yoga might become a practice of my own.

i think i'm going to have to do this better justice tomorrow

but tonight i'm going to share with you some of these unformed thoughts that i've scribbled in the margins of this week's new york magazine article on hillary and barack. i saw chimamanda adichie again tonight, and spoke to her (somewhat gushing- and embarrassingly), and i thought i'd be able to focus on something else on the way home but i just couldn't. tomorrow i swear i am going to make this better (and actually coherent), but for now, a few key points...

an open letter to cnadichie:

dear chimamanda,

• the way you graciously ignored my insanity tonight was truly touching. i know i kinda-sorta had tears in my eyes when i tapped you on the shoulder and babbled incomprehensible nonsense about your writing, and that those tear-filled eyes widened perceptibly when you asked my name and complimented my hair, and that all of those things combined must have struck fear into your heart. but this gift you have, this gift of words, is amazing to me. i envy it. and i'm so glad that it is yours, because i think you use it with a wisdom that eludes many in this world to whom is given much power.
• "my american jon," like half of a yellow sun and purple hibiscus before it, scares me because your sentences are my thoughts, my feelings, my heart on paper, expressed more eloquently that i ever could. between you and zadie smith i feel like my deepest feelings, the good, the bad and the ugly, have finally been expressed and restored to me and all of the beautiful women out there like me the power that has been stripped from us by the myriad negative forces out there in our world. you speak back! and your speech is all that i need it to be, and more.
• finally i have to say that i will be back tomorrow to try and make this sound less crazy and more casually admiring. you know, just in case you happen to google yourself tonight and find this. because i know if i were you i'd be googling myself constantly.
  

favorite new feel-good show

how to look good naked, on lifetime!

when the guest today said, "i am going to try to love all of myself, as i am," i realized that there is nothing i like more than carson's new idea for a fashion show that guides women to a new sense of self-perception. it's not your usual makeover show- the women are not put through major workout regimen or given tips for hiding their rolls, nor are their senses of style dismissed. he helps them see themselves differently by looking at themselves from a different perspective. then he buys them a sexy outfit or two and challenges them to do a tastefully nude photoshoot. as usual, joy finds herself crying more often than not. :)

this is SO much better than queer eye!

oh, p.s.: yaya's got a job! go yaya, lifetime needs you. and raven symone. and queen latifah. and tamera mowry?

anyone going to be in san jose in march?

info on the exhibition that will include my LTLYM photo:

The show is called This Show Needs You. All of the art exhibited relies on some kind of collaboration in making the work. The LTLYM project is a wonderful example of such a collaboration and I am very pleased that your work will be included. Other artists in the exhibition include: Linda Montano, Lori Gordon, Michael Smit, the Love Art Lab (Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens), and Sara Thacher. The exhibition dates are March 28-May 17, 2008. We will have an opening reception on March 28 from 6 - 8 pm.
***

if you'll be in nor cal near the end of march, i'd love it if you went to see! i might even love you if you were to take a picture of my picture, hanging on a museum wall!

i feel like dancing

and hopefully the beautiful women of the square rootz collective will dance with me.


back in the BK this weekend (third weekend in a row?!), living my life like it's golden.

work it!

the hair journey

come august 2008, i will have marked the 7th anniversary of my embracing my hair. it was almost seven years ago that i took out the first braids i'd ever had and, upon trying unsuccessfully to get them fully out, decided to cut my hair short without giving it the touch-up my mother so badly wanted for it.

i still remember the night i decided to go for it. my mom literally got my aunts on the phone, and each of the pleaded with me--
"you don't really want to do this, girl!"
"don't you want someone to marry you?"
"but you have such beautiful hair! why would you want to do that to it?"

funnily, the perm i had to beg my mother to give me in 7th grade was the same process that i was begging her to support my leaving behind. the process was slow, and definitely not sure. my father has spent 3-5 of the last 7 years asking me when i was going to "get over" this phase, and even now, in his acceptance, he has his setbacks.

i find myself reflecting on hair this morning because i think i may have finally found some products that i love (!). curl junkie was, until recently, my answer. but lately my scalp has been feeling a little raw, so i thought i'd look for something that's a little less harsh. my oyin handmade order just showed up at my doorstep, and not a moment too soon!

the honey wash- my hair has never been happier. soft even before the conditioner comes to visit! and my scalp doesn't feel stripped and raw, either.
shine and define- adds shine and definition without making my curls hard, and is so light that i thought i'd opened the wrong container.

i know this probably feels like a bad ad, but i can't help but share the wondrousness that is oyin. my head is soooo happy!

familia

okay, blocking the crazy now :).

the sisses are in town, and my legs are feeling the burn. we have been up, down, and around this borough, and it's tiring me out! back to work tomorrow, and the minis are on their own. we will see if drama manages to find them.

being a host is tiring, but i love that family brings no pressure. they are okay with sitting on the couch watching t.v. for 5 hours. also, interacting with my sisters outside of the family home makes for more authentic interaction. it's been a long time since it's really been just the three of us. it's growing on me. :)

as for this coming week, i'm feeling the burn before it even starts. i have to have a difficult conversation with my boss tomorrow, and i'm not looking forward to it at all. keep your fingers crossed, and will me the strength to stand up for myself for once. the "standing up for myself" thing is one that i really need to get to work on this year. no matter what happens, though, i will enjoy the 92nd street Y reading tomorrow night, and enjoy my last day with the sisses on tuesday.

bring it on.

yellowface. and black hair politics. and my first french braid.

saw yellowface by david henry hwang tonight with jac. good shit. (the review i linked to there is not particularly reflective of my thoughts, it was just easy.)
dhh took us for a ride down "who am i, and what the fuck does who i am mean?" lane. as a person who tends to rock uneasily between identity politics and...um, non-identity politics(?), i felt that hwang's questions sat particularly heavily with me. in a treatise on the questions about what identity means for politics, what doing "good" work constitutes, how identity interfaces with personal relationships, and the meaning of family and legacy, dhh threw me for a loop. at the end i think everyone watching, including the playwright, is left wondering what it is they think and why it is they think whatever it is they think. confusing, right? i think so too. in sum, a good night at the public.

***
so. my hair. my mom straightened it over the weekend when i was home, like she always does. my mother is my mother, so i let her "tame" the afro when i go home, and i answer the always tantalizing question that lingers in the back of my still-white supremacist mind, "how long is it?" because the length means something. validates me as a beautiful woman. validates my attractiveness and desirability. even when i wash it back into my "halo"tomorrow i will have tucked away the truth of its length and told myself, for another year, that who i am is okay. it's long. and today and yesterday, i spent way too much of my precious time at work explaining the process to my white colleagues who just can't believe how long and pretty it is. oh the fucked-upness of my life. and why were my father's last words to me as i entered the airport in vegas on wednesday the following? "i know you don't like us to help you too much, but we would be happy to pay for you to get your hair done every week. i know you don't like it so straight, but it really looks nice..." why didn't he offer to pay my student loans? straighten my hair? i guess i know his priorities.
as long as my hair is straight, i figure i might as well practice my hair skills. i don't have many, so i have to practice when i can. my first self-french braiding attempt:

a funky picture of my jogging outfit= art?

my learning to love you more assignment, #55 "photograph a significant outfit," is apparently quite engaging to some. they originally asked me if it could be included in the LTLYM book, but i didn't get my shit together in time to actually take care of that.
i got an email yesterday about it potentially being included in an art show in california in the coming year-- swanky! i'm thinking i want to do another assignment sometime soon. any ideas?

langston hughes made my father laugh out loud tonight

and my father doesn't laugh out loud very often. the black nativity caught him by surprise, i think. we all enjoyed it. the black church is the black church, through and through. whenever i wonder why black people in america can't let go of jesus, i remember that jesus' story is the ultimate "rags to riches" tale. he succeeded (in a way that doesn't jibe with capitalist culture's definition of success) in spite of the incredible odds of being born in a manger, no crib for a bed. all too familiar of a story for the descendants of slaves, living in a country whose dominant group too often proclaimed that there was "no room at the inn" for blacks. jesus, therefore, is very appealing.
for those of you that don't know, my father was given a promotion recently that means that he and my mother will be moving back to miami in summer 2008. there are lots of feelings around the move, for all of us, but i think i have a particular relationship to the move because miami is the last place that i truly called home. i think it will be interesting to go back because i'm pretty sure that upon my arrival i will realize that miami isn't really home anymore, and it may be almost as foreign to me as las vegas still is after almost 8 years.
one major part of my preparation for this move is that i have to "clean out" my room here in the vegas house. my mother claims i have a lot of stuff here. i couldn't disagree more, as i'm not even allowed to stay in "my" room most of the time, and am pushed around like little more than a visiting mutt. but that is another story. i started to look around tonight, and found a few precious gems of my adolescence in the process.
pictures: homecoming, junior prom, senior prom, my first ballet recital, me in my "i spent the night in bimini" nightgown, church camp.
jewelry: all those shitty little bracelets and plastic earrings you collect while you're in high school, and actually spend time at the mall.
more pictures: the march on washington for affirmative action, back in...02? sonja's bday party, same year. more shitty jewelry.
notebooks: a cuban "vidal" notebook, complete with notes from one of my classes at la universidad de la habana. and this, a weird poem that i'm not sure i wrote:

like most men who wear monstrous helmets,
the pressure it exerts is enough to convince him of its practical infinity.

her mind is a pink meshbag
filled with baby toes.

-unknown, or me.
if you've read those four lines of weirdness before, somewhere else, please share. if not, and if you happen to be an agent who thinks they're genius, drop me a line. :)

buenas noches.

alvin ailey and my commitment to nyc's beauty

went to see that alvin ailey american dance theater tonight. for those of you that may not know, alvin ailey is a premiere dance company that was founded by an african american man in 1958, focused on the promotion of the african american through modern dance.
i saw alvin ailey last year and was blown away by the beauty and uniqueness of the performance. as a casual modern dance/ballet fan, i wasn't sure how much of the performance i would truly understand, but i found that the african american perspective reflected in much of the company's work spoke to me in a way that other performances have not. many of the dancers are of color, and the themes of the pieces, as well as the musical scores, were relevant to my life, specifically. that being said, i was TRES EXCITED for my attendance this year. i took my almost-bday twin, jac, and we spent two wondrous hours enjoying choreography by the likes of camille a. brown, robert battle, alvin ailey, and shonach robles. increible. the end of firebird almost brought me to tears--one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen.
i've been craving beautiful things as of late. i think my focus for my 25th year is on developing my beautiful things collection- jewelry especially- because i am surrounded by some of the most creative people on the earth in this city, and i don't take advantage of that enough.