brown girls with guitars

Thanks to "Negroplease.com" for the link to this LA Times piece on strumming brown girls. From Memphis Minnie to Joan Armatrading to Tracy Chapman to India.Arie, sistas have a long tradition of commanding what used to be considered a "male instrument" (why you think all those male guitarists name their guitars after women?). I've been an admirer of India.Arie since her days playing in small cafes and outdoor venues in Atlanta. Eventhough my friend at starfishncoffee finds India's stuff a bit on the fluffy side at times (and she's right), I just like her (and she's hot!). She can sing about her hair all day if she wants.

I've also been checking for Corinne Bailey Rae. She's super cute but her cuteness doesn't cancel out her talent. Her debut album is quite an enjoyable listen, especially for those hot summer days with the top down (or in my case with the sunroof open). I've long been a fan of Morcheeba but haven't heard Skye Edwards's solo album yet so she's next on my queue.

the known world

I've just finished reading my latest bedtime book, Edward P. Jones's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Known World. Perhaps bedtime wasn't the best time to enter Jones's complex world of slave and free in his fictional Manchester, VA. Not only because you might not want to enter a dreamstate thinking about slavery, but also because you get sucked into the world Jones has created with what seems like almost a hundred characters, including free black slaveholding families as well as those who thought the idea of free blacks owning their enslaved "brethren" highly problematic. Jones really forces readers to confront our ideas of race, community, intimacy, humanity and what it means for someone to presume ownership over human beings. Jones doesn't hover much around the usual violences of slavery--the whippings, rapes, dismemberment--though some of it is present, but instead he probes the emotional and philosophical intricacies of "slave" and "master," including the sometimes perverse intimacies that transpire between the two.

When I first picked up Jones's novel, I thought "Do black people have to write about slavery in order to win a Pulitzer?" I'm not saying we should not write about slavery, I just wonder sometimes about how a "fascinated" readership and the publishing industry "like" to see black people represented in print. What "sells" in other words. I'm actually quite fascinated by what Ashraf Rushdy calls the "neoslave" narrative--those narratives written by black writers far removed from slavery but like all of us still entangled within those memories. Those narratives that, as Toni Morrison puts it, "rip the veil drawn over 'proceedings too terrible to relate'" ("The Site of Memory"). Writers like Morrison, Octavia Butler, Gayl Jones and Edward P. Jones try to hear behind those silences imposed on autobiographical slave narratives like Harriet Jacobs's and Frederick Douglass's. Most of those silences involve sexual matters.

Another silence involves those rare instances when free black families--who were wealthy enough and so inclined--owned slaves (these instances are distinct from black people who may have bought their own freedom and then purchased the freedom of their family members). We--as in general reading public--tend to have a myopic vision of antebellum America, one that doesn't include free and educated people of color who did or did not own slaves, whites who weren't racist and abhored slavery, same sex and/or interracial intimacy ... Contemporary writers who delve into those matters offer us a fuller vision of an institution that was vile and violent and also really peculiar. The more we excavate those buried truths around slavery, the better we can confront the challenges of sexuality, gender, race and class that trouble us today.

befuddled friday 2

It's another befuddled friday and I'm wondering--have we morphed back in time a couple of decades?

Miami Vice is back onscreen
Skinny jeans are all the rage (but not for us gals with booties, okay)
We're immersed in celebratory consumerism (see My Super Sweet 16 and Laguna Beach, for instance)
And perhaps worst of all:
There's another Bush in the White House and Israel is back in Lebanon

Damn! Can we have some peace?

befuddled fridays

In my constant (and successful) search for ways to procrastinate, I decided to do a weekly blog entry titled "befuddled friday" as a way to sound off about stuff: current events, news etc that just has me befuddled. Not confused per se but more akin to what Arsenio Hall used to term "things that make you go hm."

So here's the first:

Does anyone find it interesting that in the same week President Bush vetoed a bill to expand stem cell research because of his purported moral stance in favor of human life (as if the human lives that could be preserved by doing stem cell research don't matter), at least 250 more people have died in Iraq and at least that many have been killed and are continuing to be killed in Lebanon by Israeli soldiers but our government won't call for a cease-fire (eventhough the UN has)? Is anyone other than me a little befuddled? Or do only some lives count?

pirates

I like Johnny Depp.
I mean, I really really like Johnny Depp.

That was my main impetus for wasting away several hours yesterday to do a double viewing of Pirates of the Caribbean I and II (as was hanging out with my pals and imbibing appropriate substances that are the natural accoutrements to a Disney film). Though I have always appreciated JD's quirkiness and his decision to choose off-center roles rather than the heart-throb or action adventure crap that actors like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise stay mired in, I haven't seen all of JD's films, particularly not the Hollywood blockbuster Pirates.

So my peeps and I rented the first Pirates and ventured off to see the sequel on the big screen. Though Pirates I began slowly (at least for my taste), it was relatively funny. There was also a fair amount of gender-bending and historically appropriate puns for the educated film viewer. Then we were off to the mall multiplex to see what further adventures and mishaps Disney would dream up for Jack Sparrow and crew.

(spoiler warning for those who intend to see Pirates II)

The first oddity I noticed in Pirates II was that there were an inordinate amount of people of color in the new crew: South Asians, Black folks, etc. I was suspicious immediately as Disney productions tend toward racial stereotyping (and that's putting it lightly). Even in the first Pirates, as my friend at Negroshire pointed out to me before I saw the film, we get an entire film set in the Caribbean in the 1700s and we don't see one slave, no mention of slavery, nothing. Of course a historically accurate depiction of British slavery and imperialism and their exploitation of West Indians and South Asians is outside the purview of "the wonderful world of Disney."

Right in line with imperialist discourse, however, in Pirates II Jack Sparrow's crew gets captured by "savages". These indigenous people of Dominica are portrayed as cannibals who are dumb enough to mistake Jack for a god and even dumber still, they resolve to go after (and presumably cook and eat) the crew's dog after Jack and his white crewmates escape (yeh, remember what I said about the colored crew? they get killed). Prior to seeing the film, I had no idea about the cannibal subplot (but thanks to my spoiler, now you do). I also didn't realize that Indian organizations were calling for a boycott of the film or I wouldn't have seen it.

As if cannibals weren't enough, the film brings in Tia Dalma, a sexualized "voodoo woman," to help the white people ("tia" means aunt in Spanish; I'll let you figure this one out). While I'm not terribly surprised about the perpetuation of these sorts of racist stereotypes in 2006, this just seemed over the top for me ... and really unnecessary (for more on Pirates' racism, see debunking white and official shrub) . The storyline about the flying Dutchman could have stood alone as an adventure plot, which should make people wonder why the filmmaker made the decisions he made: to off the colored crew, to include racist humor at the expense of degrading indigenous people, to bring in a hypersexualized "magical" black woman. Are these images so ingrained in our culture that they just go unquestioned? Are they naturalized at this point? I'm sure lighthearted filmgoers will say I'm making much ado about a silly film. But isn't the fact that Hollywood keeps perpetuating these images reason enough to make a big deal about it?

I have arrived but ...

my stuff has not. Remember how I waxed poetic about the wonder of having a moving company pack, load and deliver all your stuff as you sit and sip mint juleps and refuse to lift a finger (okay I'm exaggerating a bit)? Well, sometimes there's a catch. You may arrive at your destination and your stuff may linger a few states behind. Apparently I am the first case of a late delivery with my moving company here in midwest city. Yay for me. Luckily I brought plenty of clothes and carted my tv in my car. However I've been dividing my nights sleeping on an air mattress I borrowed and a daybed I bought from World Market. Both are relatively comfortable for a short time, but I've been about two weeks without my very therapeutic (and expensive) mattress that I bought during a bout of sciatica. You know that saying that one shouldn't go grocery shopping hungry? Well apply that to mattress shopping while having sciatica pain. The bed was worth it though as I'm realizing during my time without it.

In any case, I'm exploring my surroundings while trying to furnish an apartment twice as big as the one I had in the BK. And believe me, I'll have no trouble making use of my two sizable bedrooms and large living space. My new complex is also surrounded by lots of trees. I've spotted rather cute bunnies running through the yard and lots of black squirrels skittering about. I have no idea why they're all black. Maybe it has something to do with this part of the area. Who knows? Unfortunately, other than the landscapers, the squirrels and I are the only black inhabitants of this complex that I've seen.

This midwest college town that I've made my new home is visibly divided by color. The side of the "city" where the college is has a more expensive property value and consequently more white people. Most of the students live on this side and quite a few faculty do as well. I decided to live near campus in order to make my first year as junior faculty as easy as possible. I know from my other sistadoctafriends that the first year of meetings and committees and gatherings can be demanding so I've cut out the added difficulty of commuting.

On the Other side of the tracks, a good deal of black people and a queer community dwells. A couple of my friends have purchased or are renting houses over there as it doesn't have many apartment rentals, not nice ones anyway. I explored that area when I came out to apartment hunt and thought I'd rent a loft. Leave it to me to try to fashion urban living out of straw. Apparently there is some revitalization going on in the downtown area and when I buy something, I'll definitely be looking for funkier and more diverse digs. Until then, me and the Jacksons (my name for the black squirrel family) are chilling in the lovely historic district, waiting for Others like us to appear.

independence day

It's the 4th and as always I remain ambivalent about America's flourishes of patriotism or celebrations of our imagined glorious past. We all know what black folk were up to in 1776. If not, let Frederick Douglass remind you.

Not to mention, I'm not much of a nationalist at heart. Like the Dalai Lama, I think we are all citizens of the world and should govern ourselves accordingly (and not preemptorily invade countries or torture folks or keep them in detention centers) but I digress ...

For this 4th-o-july I've devised an alternative Independence Day to celebrate Lil Kim's release from prison. Yes folks, the Queen Bee was released early from a Philly detention center yesterday for good behavior, and with her street cred intact. So while you're lighting your fireworks tonight or getting drunk off your asses, make a little toast for Kimmy. She's a free woman now.

she has arrived

I have finally arrived in midwest city usa, which will be my new home, place of employment and site of fresh adventures for some years. I will also have officially lived in each quadrant of the US since I grew up on the west coast (San Francisco 4-eva!) and have lived in the South (GA and TX) and on the east coast (in DC and NY).

After the movers moved all my stuff, I drove the rest of my random things out in my Golf. I had never driven across Pennsylvania before so that was interesting and quite beautiful. Aside from a two minute downpour, the weather was perfect (thankfully I avoided all the areas in the northeast that were flooding). A wide range of music mixes and my new favorite CD, Roy Davis's "Chicago Forever," provided the soundtrack to my journey into unexplored landscape.

When I first entered the midwest, the site of strip mall after strip mall after strip mall almost sent me into a panic. Where's the skyline? The ornate architecture? The bridges? But the Great Lakes region has a lot to offer aesthetically I'm told. I love to hike and be near water so I'm looking forward to some expeditions before the dead of winter sets in.

Most importantly, I'm committed to the choice I made: job over place. I don't blog a great deal about academia because for the most part this blog is my space to write away from work. To sound off about stuff like Star Jones leaving The View or even more serious matters that I'm thinking about, like hurricane Katrina, that have little to do with my day to day worklife. But I have been preoccupied with my academic life recently so I'll say this: choosing was difficult. I had the opportunity to work at a lesser university in my city of choice (NY) or a much better (research 1) in a place I thought I'd never live (the midwest). So I chose job over place and I'm committed to that choice and all that it will mean in terms of my career advancement. But leaving NY was hard. REALLY hard. I'm still mourning and will be for some time, but I'm also 100% -- jumping in with both feet -- invested in my job and this new turn in my life. So here I go. I can guarantee if there's excitement to be had here, I'll find it (and write about it of course) so stay tuned.