Read an Excerpt
A Language and Power Reader
Representations of Race in a "Post-Racist" Era
By Robert Eddy, Victor Villanueva University Press of Colorado
Copyright © 2014 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87421-925-8
CHAPTER 1
Nother Man Dead
SUHEIR HAMMAD
DOI: 10.7330/9780874219258.c001
Questions for Pre-Reading
1. How will the lack of periods or commas affect your reading of the poem? Can you read it differently when you go back, putting imaginary periods and commas in different places? How does meaning shift for you as you play around with short and long stops (which is what commas and periods are — short and long stops in reading aloud, even reading aloud inside your head).
2. The phrase "there are no words" is repeated twice, and there are variations such as "where the words" and "no words." What is the importance of the references to words in the poem, as you see it?
3. We think that in the era marked by September 11, 2001, "war criminals still celebrated" will bring up all kinds of images and ideas to students reading a poem by a Palestinian. If we are right, what are some of those images and ideas? What do you believe Suheir Hammad would be referring to?
4. Consider the image of "the rainbow arch." What might that be about in this poem?
Questions for Relating to Other Selections
1. In her books Drops of This Story and Born Palestinian, Born Black, Hammad writes about growing up in Brooklyn as a woman of color with Palestinian ancestry. Consider the way she deals with race and culture in "Nother Man Dead" and compare her richly complex identity with Jessica Hagedorn's presentation of multiracial experience and expectations in "Filipino Boogie." What experiences and commitments do they share and what important differences remain?
2. As poets and spoken word artists with a special sense of the power and possibility of language, compare the following lines of Hammad to those of jessica Care moore from "I Am a Work in Progress":
HAMMAD:
memory absorbs like soil there are no
words
and not one word
erases my earth
MOORE:
I was born writing
but will be taught to wait
I am an incomplete sentence a work in
progress
and I'm not finished yet
Suheir Hammad
In Suheir Hammad's brief memoir of ninety-three pages, Drops of This Story (1996), she writes about growing up in Brooklyn. She was born in 1973 in Amman, Jordan, and came to the United States with her parents as a five year old. Her first book of poetry, Born Palestinian, Born Black (1996), contains a series of poems about being a minority (Palestinian) among minorities (Black and Latina/o). Her other books of poetry include Zaatar Diva (2008) and Breaking Poems (2008), which won an American Book Award in 2009. She is the author of several plays and is the lead actor in Salt of This Sea (Lorber Films, 2008), about ancestral Palestinians returning to Palestine to find roots and meaning in a conflicted landscape. Hammad has received more than a dozen awards.
Nother Man Dead
where the words
to disguise what
i see make
visions palatable color
these words with
a palette more lady
like less blood
in language not mine
that houses no beauty
no comfort for
nature for me
words horrific and terrible
what this shine eye
girl sees through
bars and barbed wire
prisons prime
real estate 25 years
later no escape
2 years before me
attica was auschwitz is algeria
ripped naked and stripped
humanity forced to
crawl mud-like
and 25 years later
war criminals still celebrated
babies consecrated animals
no words there
are no words to
sugar this up
genocide passes as
eye candy for
media hungry for cash
and like cash people are
passed from hand to dirty
hand open palms
passing sand through
time not mine living
on borrowed clocks
tupac is dead and attica forgotten
in language ugly and time
up where is there space
for flowers
in hearts jailed there are
no morning glories to bid
god a good day
kids lick flames of
hot ice screams
rain stark
where the rainbow arch
to wash eyes
clean of rwanda bosnia
and iraq again
fill mouths with angels'
breath to make forget
memory absorbs like soil
there are no words
and not one word
erases my earth
Our Thoughts
We are reminded of watching younger slam poets on cable TV, the way they exploit rhythm, a conjoining of oral qualities and written qualities. This is less a poem to be analyzed than to be performed: holding a note with the last word on each line, sliding from one image or idea to the next by a word that ends one "sentence" and elides into another. If it weren't for the subject matter, this would be fun. The subject matter: a broad look at who gets hurt. Hammad makes one reference to being a poet; she wishes she could write about finer things, not the ugliness that makes up racism. Her references are all from World War II to a decade ago: the killing of Jews and gypsies in Auschwitz; the Algerian War of Independence in the 1950s; the prison riots in Attica, New York, in the 1970s; Tupac Shakur's death in 1996; and the wish to remove the memories of children who witnessed the two Iraq wars and the genocides of Rwanda and Bosnia. The range of allusions — often with ties to Islam — the slipping of language into something more Brooklyn (a "shine eye girl") — ties racism here to racism throughout the globe and throughout the second half of the twentieth century.
Prewriting
Using your preferred prewriting strategy (outline or freewrite or cluster or list), jot down what came to you as you read and what came to you as you read Our Thoughts. What did you see that we didn't mention? What did you see that was different from what we saw? What is the image or idea that stuck to you after your first reading? Get it down. Find your theme. Can you riff off "Nother Man Dead" to do your own rhymin? That riff or rhymin or rap (depending on how well you know hip-hop discourse) can be a predraft. Now make an assertion. It's okay if that assertion (your thesis) changes as you write or revise. What matters is that you have a jumping-off point.
Writing
Start translating whatever you've done with your prewriting into an essay. You have several ways to go with a poem: an explication, in which you try to explain what is going on in an essay; an evaluation of the poem (a critique); or a response, in which you explore your responses to the poem, to Our Thoughts, and to your classmates. Be clear about how the prewriting pushes you into one of these three genres. Then compose a draft. Remember to reference the poem in your essay. Use a slash (/) to indicate a line break in the poem (e.g., "where the words / to disguise what").
Revising
As the class discusses what you and others had written about the poem, keep in mind that Hammad is of Palestinian ancestry, but she speaks no Arabic. In other words, she is part of a common American story, since most of us have ancestries from places other than this continent. Even those who were indigenous to this part of the continent that we call North America have, for the most part, lost their original languages. So as you consider the poem, discuss the ways in which cultures continue to present themselves in ways other than heritage languages and the ways cultures continue to present themselves even in the "new" language. See if that discussion causes you to rethink parts of your essay.
CHAPTER 2
Raps
Suite Brown and Black
TYRONE AIRE JUSTIN
DOI: 10.7330/9780874219258.c002
Questions for Pre-Reading
1. What is Tyrone Aire Justin's point in presenting the second section of the rap with the title "It's What They Want"? Who is "they" and what do they "want"? Is this a new idea for you? Do you resist the idea? Is there any street plausibility to the idea?
2. How do you make sense of section 1 ending with a cross-racial Brown-Black "friend" and section 2 ending with a Brown-Black "brother"? How does the ending of section 3 influence your interpretation of the earlier two endings?
3. For now, just look at how Justin makes his case. To what degree does the writer blame Brown-on-Black and Black-on-Brown violence on the "Man"?
4. It looks like Justin is trying to affirm Black and Brown dignity and pride by producing a history of the prison system in which White dominance is repeatedly attacked. We can say that Justin's account is unbalanced and unfair. Now put yourself in Justin's shoes, having grown up as a Black man in South-Central Los Angeles. If Justin decided to write a formal position statement about how he believes White political and economic domination influences Brown-Black and Black-Brown violence, what do you think he would say? How do you think Justin would answer if he were accused of behaving exactly like the people he attacks?
Questions for Relating to Other Selections
1. This poem offers an alternative history of race relations, one not found in most American history books written by and for White folks. Think and perhaps write about the racialized history in this poem; consider whether you think mainstream American history is racialized, and pursue these ruminations by relating Justin's poem to J-Love's presentation of White privilege in "White Like Me: 10 Codes of Ethics for White People in Hip Hop."
2. Consider using "Raps: Suite Brown and Black" to write an editorial (or op-ed or blog). Think large — like racism in the United States in the the second decade of the twenty-first century. It is easy to imagine how prejudiced people, whether White, Black, or Brown, might respond to this poem. But an important issue to consider is how fair-minded people of color and fair-minded White folks, college students, who are committed to analysis and recognizing dignity in everyone, instead of insult and defensiveness, might respond to this poem? If it seems that the poem carries anger at White institutions, especially the prison system, how could members of communities you belong to respond? How should reasonable and discerning readers make constructive use of this poem? As you struggle with these questions, relate Justin's poem to Carmen Kynard and Robert Eddy's presentation of "hostage negotiation work" as routine cross-racial communication in "Toward a New Critical Framework: Color-Conscious Political Morality and Pedagogy at Historically Black and Historically White Colleges and Universities."
Tyrone Aire Justin
Tyrone Aire Justin was born in 1989 in Los Angeles, California. He played football as a cornerback at Washington State University. He writes rap poetry that resists systemic racism, affirms ancestral connections, affirms Black identities, and asserts African ways of knowing and being. Tyrone — or Aire, as he would rather be called — writes from the experiences he has overcome while growing up in the inner-city community of South-Central Los Angeles. His cross-racial interest was birthed through his diverse but very separated environment, which is why his poems strive to unite the people as one.
Raps: Suite Brown and Black
1
Open Your Eyez
What's your purpose?
Running around these city streets like it's a
circus.
Nobody perfect,
But we got the tools if you want it,
You should learn it.
Don't be afraid of change,
Sometimes it's a good thing,
Especially in your position
Make the transition
To get the facts you been missin',
You don't wanna go to prison.
Let's be real,
The penitentiary is full of steel,
Folks getting killed
Before they reach the front of the meal line.
This stuff is dumb.
What are you here for?
You don't even know.
Man then why don't you ask more.
All of this because of a misunderstandin',
Shootin kids on the block
Cuz the color of his damn skin.
What he do to you?
Probably nothing at all,
It's just your way of life,
You was taught to just murder 'em all.
You ever stop to think you have a grudge for no
reason?
Well when you do you'll find that there is no
meanin'
to what you been leanin' towards
and what you been fightin' for,
you just a pawn on a life-sized chess board.
Now if you lookin' for help
I think we got what you need.
Peace and understandin'
Is what we tryna achieve.
Talk it out,
Figure out
Why you doin' these deeds then,
And hopefully you'll walk out
Side-by-side with a new friend!
2
It's What They Want
Look at this madness
Thas turning into sadness,
Innocent bodies
Laid down into the grass pit.
I wonder why,
Seein' all these people die
Just makes my soul cry,
But that's what they want
No more limits to the sky.
Manipulating young minds
That might as well be blind, but in time
They'll live and learn
And maybe have a chance to shine.
The MAN don't care how it gets done,
Long as we gone the fight's won,
Put us in prison we can't run.
It's a never ending story,
As they watch us fall they get the glory
And thas the truth.
"Yeah we racked up pretty good,
And uh yeah we did it but uh,
What cha gonna do about it?"
This is what they in their homes sayin'
And prayin' that we don't catch on
And keep killin' our own, and its shown
That they want us to kill each other
But we know thas not the right thing to do my
brother.
3
Recognize real
The MAN is watchin',
Clocks you in clocks you out
Of the prison but don't see
The buck fifty cross your mouth
Till its too late,
Telling his family that this was his fate,
There's a war goin on inside these gates.
And guess what, ain't nobody doin' nothin,
Warden kickin' back eatin' chicken
Lickin' his finger tips, talking 'bout,
Let 'em fight and see what happens,
And if they start a riot
Let your rifle start clappin',
But don't try and kill 'em,
That'll lose me money deep.
Oh well, I'm sure they'll be
A new flock next week.
Just keep 'em comin'.
Hell yeah we getting paid.
While they dyin' on the streets
We in the clouds getting shade.
Stupid niggers and wetbacks,
These dummies will never know how to act,
All we gotta do is keep providing the guns and the
drugs,
then just sit back and we will watch what it does,
They'll never catch on.
We've been doin' this for years,
Look how much it's grown.
Our Thoughts
There was a time when Black political activists argued that there was a process in place that would amount to the genocide of Black America. Activists pointed to the adoption of Black babies by White families as attempts to do away with the cultural and linguistic ways of Black folks, the disparity in economic opportunities and its tie to poorer health care, and, perhaps most important, the disparity, compared to White folk, in the prison populations. The response to these assertions was more often than not dismissal, that, at best, here was a post hoc argument. A post hoc argument says that just because something happened after a fact, that doesn't mean that the prior fact was the cause. It's a false cause argument. It might be true, in other words, that Black and Brown people are the greater populations of the prison, but that doesn't mean that the cause of the imprisonments is some conspiracy to eliminate the Black and Brown populations of the United States.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Language and Power Reader by Robert Eddy, Victor Villanueva. Copyright © 2014 University Press of Colorado. Excerpted by permission of University Press of Colorado.
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