Reflection Eternal

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Wallace Thurman, the 'Mediocre Journalist'

I'm still smitten with the Harlem Reniassaince. Dug Wallace Thurman's "The Blacker the Berry" from my moms library and have been surprisingly engrained in it for the past two days.

Thurman's writing doesn't grab me. Not like Langston's, or Bruce's. His prose is too formal -- the kind of writing that makes you more aware that the writer is trying hard to sound smart instead of letting the characters come to them. It's the kind of writing that's unashamed of its agenda. But for some reason, I can't put this book down.

For me, Wallace Thurman has always been an intriguing character of the Harlem Renaissance for me. For one, he doesn't stand out too much. He as the book agent who attracted some of the New Negro Movement's most iconic figures to Harlem: Langston Hughes, Jessie Fauset, to name a couple. Whereas Langston Hughes may have been the soul, Wallace Thurman was a sort of master orchestrator, the main editorial impetus behind the publication of Fire! and engrossed in a predictably complicated relationship with white money man Carl Van Vecten.

After all that, he ultimately ended up alienated from most of his friends, cut off from Harlem's literary pulse, and dead of alcohol poising by age 34.

There's a scene in the film Brother to Brother that I think captures perfectly Thurman's tortured identity as a writer. In the film, Langston Hughes is irate, pointing out to Richard Bruce Nugent where Wallace had allegedly ripped off chapters of an unpublished manuscript. In Thurman's defense, Nugent basically says, "So What?" Then points to a place in the prose where he suspects Wallace subconsciously let out his insecurities, saying he feared he'd never be more than a "medicore journalist."

For me, it brings up intriguring questions. For lots of writers these days, who usually have to do without fancy arts endowments and, if they're lucky, actually do get jobs as journalists, what price does art play? For instance, I'm great at meeting deadlines. But when it comes to the actual mental and creative energy it takes to come up with a work of fiction, or poetry, I'm often stumped. It's easy to fool yourself into thinking that writing as a job can suffice for the writing you really wanna do.

How much did that figure into Thurman's demise? Into his work?

Aside from the obvious comparisons, Thurman still catches my eye. For one, he was raised in the West, went to USC, and undoubtedly draws on that complicated racial experience in his work. In the book I'm reading now, Thurman uses the Black communities in Boise, Idaho and Los Angeles as the backdrop for the main characters ultimate escape to Harlem. To me, that's fascinating. He veers away from the predictable Negro-from-the-South narrative and comments almost exclusively on how racism has shaped Black Amerca's relationship with itself.

I can feel that. In fact, I think it's a much more apt representation of race for today's racial landscape than the majority of the up-from-slavery narratives of lots of Harlem Renaissance literature.

Juve on New Orleans

Does anyone remember Juvenile?

Well, he's back in the news with two new singles, and some words on the gentrification of his hometown, New Orleans:

If you g go through the ghettos of New Orleans and you ride around, you'll see stuff being rebuilt. You'll see houses but the problem is who's moving in them. The people who actually lived in those areas are not getting the opportunity to move back in them. So that's why I say it's still messed up in a sense. Not by the naked eye it probably won't look like that but it is still messed up.

Read more here.

Gentleman's Kool-Aid: New iLL-Literacy

Check out the first track off iLL-Literacy's iB4the1! Download here.

2pac: Academic Research Subject

Last week I had a talk with a longtime Bay Area high school teacher who incorporates hip-hop pedagogy into this lesson plans. After 18 years in classrooms throughout California and having toured schools in several different countries, he was adamant about one thing: 2pac is the most influential musical icon to young people, hands down.

As a teacher, Pac's influence became especially important for him when it came to translating the lived experiences many young people of color face to ideas in the classroom. According to this teacher, it doesn't matter the classroom or continent, wherever there's a community in struggle, 2pac is the most enduring musical icon for young folks because his music speaks, in a very real way, about struggle.

And it looks like the same can also by said for the ivory tower.

Recently Pac's work was back in the news when his mother, Afeni Shakur, donated over 150 of the slain rapper's writings to Robert W. Woodruff Library at Atlanta University Center. The collection includes rough drafts of raps, poems and a photocopy of the the rapper's original contract with Death Row records.

The library is home to Atlanta's historically Black colleges, including Spelman, Morehouse, Clark Atlanta, and the Morehouse School of Medicine.

I can't think of any other artist of our generation who's had such a profound impact, both culturally and academically. Off the top of my head, there's maybe Thelonious Monk and, later, Billie Holiday. But even then, it took decades for Black music to gain legitamacy as a topic worthy of scholarly research.

So why's 2pac so relevant? Check out this video, which I first peeped over at Colin's blog. It's as relevant today as it was back in '92. At least, I think so.

Cutest Lakers Fan Ever

Reaching Out to Raider Nation

I'm a niners fan by blood. Born and raised in the city, remember the pride of walking to the bus stop before school the day after they won the '94 Super bowl. I love me some 49er football.

But there's something about those Raiders.

Maybe it's because I'm living in Oakland these days. Maybe it's also the anti-displacement work I've been immersed in lately and how much more aware I am of the 49ers complicated place in Bayview's history. But I know I always like to root for the underdog, and let's face it, the 49ers have never really been known as the "people's team."

That claim goes to Oakland, and its football team. No, JaMarcus ain't exactly killing them, Darren McFadden seems to have gotten lost in the Black hole, and Al Davis manages his team about as well as I manage my personal finances. But even with all that drama, the Raiders have got hella fight in them.

How else can you explain their fans' ride-or-die attitude? I'm not saying that I'm on the bandwagon, and I don't think my niner allegiance will ever fully allow me to embrace Raider Nation.

But after this post, it takes me one tiny step closer.

Reading For Colored Girls

One of the few candid pictures I have of my sister as a teenager is probably from 1989. I like it because it's goofy. She's wearing an oversized yellow t-shirt with her arms crossed, her head tilted to the side and she's sticking out her tongue at whoever's taking the picture. Behind her on the wall is a poster for Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls.

When I was really little, I was drawn to the bright colors that contrasted with the sad look on the mysterious Black woman's face. As I got older, the title's invocation of death drew me in more, made me realize that in a haunting kind of way, all of us are carrying around the baggage of losing someone too soon.

I always thought it was fitting. Long before I knew of the play's significance for Black girls across the country, I knew it would always make me think of my sister.

For some reason, I appreciated the tragic irony of it all: Black girls naive (or strong) enough to smile before they died, and Black girls like me, ten years later, searching their faces for clues about our own futures. I liked the nuance of it, the thought that my sister wasn't just a statistic or a sad story or even a martyr, but a girl who, at 14 or 15, already knew she had to be her own hero.

Despite the everyday evidence I saw around me, the picture showed me that there as something tremendously powerful about being Black and female and that even if it had tragic endings, it was never tragic in and of itself; hell, people wanted to make art out of it.

More than anything, it made me realize that my family's greatest tragedy was also our greatest strength, and that we weren't alone.

Maybe it's that visceral connection that's kept me away from the actual book for so long. To date, I've never actually read Ntozake Shange's work. I've seen and held copies and at times borrowed versions have collected dust on my bookshelf. I've had friends perform it on stage and, like everyone else, rolled my eyes when I heard Tyler Perry was trying to bring it to the big screen.

To be real, I'm afraid to read it. Afraid to be disappointed, maybe. Afraid that I won't see what my sister saw. Afraid that in the hoopla over it being required reading for Black girls many moons over, I won't be in the mental or emotional space to take it in. Afraid that I won't "get it." And, in a lot of ways, afraid because I know it'll never bring me any closer, physically, to my sister.

So, here I go. I'm headed to the library this evening to pick up a copy. My first time actually reading it. Have others read it? What's been your experience?

On Writing

I hate to admit that I'm lazy when it comes to my creative writing, but I am. I've heard countless times that the only way to improve your writing is to keep writing, and when it comes to journalism, I'm on board.

But when it comes to my creative work, I get blocked. Author Steven Barnes told me this summer that if you spend 10,000 hours doing anything, you'll master it. Me and my VONA peers bought into it, but still struggle.

Here's an interview with John Edgar Wideman. Dude's written like a gazillion books and despite the fact that his fiction is generally regarded by some readers as being hella -- sometimes unyieldingly -- dense, he keeps writing. (Try to ignore the "Fanon" mispronunciation; bet she'd know how to pronounce "Faulkner" though!)

Two REAAAALLY Dope Queer Movies

Here's the typical queer people of color story line: girl (or boy) falls in love with girl (or boy). First girl (or boy) goes on some long hero's journey toward accepting their "identity" before coming out to their family and being promptly put out on the street. Being queer is like the their biggest, most pressing life issue so when the originally girl (or boy) they fell in love with plays straight and breaks their heart, they either a) kill themselves, b) renounce their queerness and join a gang, or c) make their traditional mother happy by getting pregnant.

The end.

Obviously, the movies I like are a little bit more nuanced than that.

Here are two of my fav's:

Saving Face:
(Try to ignore the croaky white lady lesbian voice in the background)

Despite the fact that I've been on a Lynn Chen kick lately, I really dig this movie. Why? Because it's cute and awkward, which pretty much sums up every queer relationship I've ever seen or heard about. The two Asian American leads play their roles spectacularly. Neither goes through an overt "coming out" phase, and coming out is never positioned as something they have to do outside of their community.

Some of my friends have critique's, though. One said that it has a sadly typical representation of gender and too easily falls into the butch/femme narrative. I think it's more complicated to them. I mean, yes, the two main characters are a ballet dancer and surgeon, BUT I think there's important complexity in each representation. The so-called "butch" character isn't particularly emotionally powerful or sure of herself. The dancer (Chen), on the other hand, is kinda badass and advocates dramatic public displays of affection.

For both characters, family is important. And of course, there's the character of the mom, who turns queerness and acceptance on its head. Love. It.

Quinceañera (2006):


Not only does this film have a nuanced take on queerness, but it's probably one of the most honest and skillful critique's of gentrification I've ever seen. So. Fucking. Dope.

And it was made for only $40,000 in the filmmakers' neighborhood (not sure if they're the ones gentrifying East LA...)

Back to Middle School

I spent the earlier part of today doing my first in-depth reporting at a middle school in Oakland. I observed a sixth grade math class, and on top of feeling dumb as shit for not remembering a damn thing about algebra (except for PEMDAS: Please Excuse My Dumb Ass Sister).

Lots to observe, of course, but what I couldn't get over was how tiny the kids were. I've been racked by a serious case of nostalgia recently. Maybe it's the fact that hella people from my middle school days have somehow found me on Facebook. But with all the adult pressures of jobs, bills and housing, I've been yearning to get back to when shit was relatively simple: make the basketball team, do my homework, worry about what to wear to school the next day. I know retrospect is a biatch, 'cause in reality I know middle school was filled with bubbling insecurities and the helplessness of seeing friends and fam struggle while feeling powerless to help out.

But what struck me today is looking at the boys (I hope that doesn't read as pervishly as it does in my head). The class was filled with kids of color, and it looked a lot like I remember mine looking, back then I wasn't worried about what white kids might think or how state standards defined me. When I saw the boys in this class, they looked engaged, even excited. Even when you could tell the math was pushing their nerves, they didn't necessarily buck authority.

I remember how much changed for me in middle school, especially in terms of how I viewed race and gender. In sixth grade, two of my best friends were guys. One was Black and Japanese, the other was Chinese, and all we'd talk about was football, Southpark, and Mrs. Vorsanger's science experiments. By the time we hit 8th grade, they weren't friends; the former seemed to understand what it meant to be Black at a San Francisco public school, and the latter only kicked it with the kids in the local Asian Gang. Meanwhile, my awkward ass was giving up on basketball and trying to figure out how to walk comfortably in skin-tight flare jeans. They went to the same high school and, as far as I know, never spoke again.

I know it sounds hella cliche, but when exactly does innocence fade? To my recollection, none of us experienced any dramatic, life-changing encounter that made us look at how we related to one another differently. It was gradual. As far as we knew when were entered middle school, we all had the same dreams.

It seemed like the most profound transformations happened in the boys I knew. Sure, the girls changed too; some played stupid, some got pregnant, some fell off, and some I still kick it with to this day. But it seems like the boys understood intuitively somewhere between sixth and seventh grade that you don't usually earn cred by being smart or kicking it with girls you're not trying to get with.

"... So now I pout like a grown jerk, wishing all I had to do now, was finish homework."

Aaanyway, in typically cheeseball fashion, I'll leave with you with a classic:

Lynn Chen's Pissed

Lynn Chen, star of the super cute queer film Saving Face, is awesome.

Here she is, promoting her new comedy, White on Rice:



Oh, and she's pretty smart, too.

On Going to Grad School

Just read the good homie Colin's amazing post and was inspired to write about my education, or lack thereof.

Basically, I'm terrified of school. Terrified of not being in school. Terrified of confronting how I've been institutionalized to expect to be in a classroom every September. And mostly terrified that after all of that socialization -- 17 years, not including summers -- I still don't know shit.

I've been thinking a lot about applying to grad schools recently. Part of it is due to the fact that it's my "fall back plan." But I'd be kidding myself if I didn't admit that I've felt this overwhelming need to theoretically understand the parts of myself I've been running from all these years. For me, school has always been a liberating experience, even in its most demoralizing times. I was always that introverted kid with a book (or documentary) stuck beneath my arm. I absolutely love the process of learning, of being challenged, of feeling like I'm growing.

The problem recently is that I've realized how much of my schooling was bullshit. Most times it didn't challenge me. It royally fucked me up in terms of thinking about race and class and privilege, just in its structure. So there's the practical part of me that looks at school as the most "productive" next step, one that I hope, if approached in the right way, will be liberating and fulfilling and challenging as fuck.

Then there's the other part of me that knows that schools will invariably reinforce all the shit I've always hated anyway: who can speak the loudest, who's the sassiest, who takes up the most space, who uses the most obscure words or can pull some random theorist out of their ass.

But maybe that's just my experience?

And then there's the cynic in me. I hate how competitive school is. I hate how, no matter the program or its intention, it's inevitably set up to make you feel like shit. I have a hard time thinking of myself "studying" the life and death circumstances of me and my communities, especially when it's caught up in my own and other people's insecure bullshit. I have a hard time chatting it up about what conferences I want to attend or papers I want to present. Yes, I know education is a business. It's like a job. And for me, that's exactly the problem.

So the obvious answer is that going to school doesn't mean shit about getting an education. But right now, it's the only reasonable alternative I can think of that would allow me to sit around and read books all day.

...To Be Continued (I'm sure...)

Why Sports Are Always Gender Queer

Let's face it: sports is perhaps the most prominent arena for challenging conventional gender norms. Unfortunately, in the high profile case of South African runner Caster Semenya, she had no choice in the matter.

The record-setting 18-year-old South African runner became the target of international controversey after the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) forced her to take a gender test. Well, the results were leaked to the press: she "failed", whatever that means. According to them, she's intersex. Read more about the details here.

The details aren't really important. What makes this so intriguing -- and sad -- is that the controversy generally glosses over how sports have always been a site of both intentional and unintentional reisistance to gender norms.

First, there's the blatant homoeroticism of most major male-dominated sports, like wrestling and American football. Although both sports are brutal physical expressions of masculinity, they're also aesthetic and social examples of male bonding. Whether it's the tight uniforms, constant physical contact or on-and-off field comraderie, they all fall somewhere along the line of gender non conformity.

With self-identified women, this is especially true. I'm a life-long basketball nerd who was drawn to the sport at least partially because it allowed me to express an aesthetic queerness that I wasn't quite comfortable doing in other social situations. On top of loving the game, I was also drawn to the baggy clothes that also served as an excuse to get out of rigid gender norms at school. I could comfortably wear sweatpants and hoodies to school without people constantly asking me why I was trying to dress "like a boy." Most times, they'd just shrug their shoulders and say, "Oh, she's on the basketball team, that's cool."

Granted, there's still an huge underlying assumption that most atheltic self-identified women are queer, to some degree. But for the most part, it's socially acceptable. Sports have always provided relatively safe spaces for queer women to bond, interact and take on leadership roles. It's a huge deal to be a confused queer kid and finally feel like you're worth something on the playing field.

Obviously, Semenya's case is different. She self-identifies as a woman. She's being shamelessly humiliated by the international media. She's being forced to confront her gender identity when perhaps, it was never a question for her before.

In a similar case, Indian runner Santhi Soundarajan also failed a gender test back in 2006 and was stripped of her silver medal at the Asian Games. She reportedly attempted suicide because of the controversy back in 2007.

I can't help but feel an overwhelming sadness for what she's going through. Recently, she withdrew from an upcoming race because, according to her coach, "she wasn't feeling well." For someone so young to go through something so humiliating in such a public way, I hope she has the support around her that she needs.

ikeepmoving: Steven Lopez

steven lopez is another reason to love LA:

On Sade:

Lovers Redux from Steven Lopez on Vimeo.

With Erykah Badu:

Erykah Badu and Artist Steven Lopez collaborate for social change from Steven Lopez on Vimeo.