Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aime Cesaire

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aime Cesaire, translated and edited by Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith, with an introduction by Andre Breton, (Wesleyan U. Press, Middletown, CT: 2001)

a book review

by Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

11/28/12

“Negritude” immediately comes to mind, when I hear the name Aime Cesaire. He invented that “Africentric” literary perspective, among Francophone blacks, along with his fellow Parisian-educated, colonial cohorts: Leopold Senghor and Leon Damas—whom I was honored and thrilled to meet my freshman year at Howard University.

Having studied French for 5 years in junior high and high school, where we read, as class assignments, Moliere's Le Bourgeoise Gentilhommme, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, and Guy de St. Exupery's Le Petite Prince, among others, I yet retained sufficient confidence, over 40 years later, to undertake Cesaire's widely acclaimed “piece de resistance,” Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natale, albeit in English!

While it did not disappoint, per se, I was less than enthralled with it awful honesty, its unabashed rawness, and the abject sense of futility about his Martinique island home.

Cesaire is a poet and a damn good one! His craft is commendable. But his images hurt. Perhaps, they hurt me, because my legacy is African-diasporic like his and millions more. A few images may suffice to illustrate my angst.

“At the end daybreak...a cursed venereal sun.” The poem opens. “...the hungry Antilles, the Antilles pitted with smallpox, the Antilles dynamited by alcohol, stranded in the mud of this bay, in the dust of this town sinisterly stranded.” It continues. “...an aged life mendaciously smiling, its lips opened by vacated agonies; an aged poverty rotting under the sun, silently; an aged silence bursting with tepid pustules, the awful futility of our raison d'etre.” One wonders why he would ever want to return to: “...this inert town, this desolate throng under the sun, not connected with anything that is expressed, asserted, released, in broad earth daylight, its own.” Fear is palpable in such an “inert town” that is “not connected with anything...its own.” Such are those “fears perched in trees...dug in the ground...adrift in the sky, of piled up fears and their fumaroles of anguish.”

I was reminded of novelist, Richard Wright's, American Hunger, a social anthology by his African American counterpart and contemporary, when Cesaire drools upon hunger's insidious effect: “And neither the teacher in his classroom, nor the priest at catechism will be able to get a word out of this sleepy little nigger, no matter how energetically they drum on his shorn skull, for starvation has quicksanded his voice into the swamp of hunger...”

He places Martinique in a neo-geographic, if not historic context, when he writes “And my non-fence island, its brave audacity standing at the stern of this polynesia, before it, Guadeloupe, split in two down its dorsal line and equal in poverty to us, Haiti where negritude rose for the first time and stated that it believed in its humanity and the funny little tail of Florida where the strangulation of a nigger is being completed, and Africa gigantically caterpillaring up to the Hispanic foot of Europe, its nakedness where death scythes widely.”

Apostate, sneering, hideous, complicitous, “rouge of dust mixed with rheum;” these biting words are bullets in his expiatory arsenal. Cesaire rages about his own “cowardice rediscovered!” Declaring “My heroism what a farce! This town fits me to a t. And my soul is lying down. Lying down like this town in its refuse and mud.”

Purging himself, finally, he sighs reverently “At the end of this daybreak of my virile prayer...the lover of this unique people... I accept, I accept it all...to you I surrender my conscience and its fleshy rhythm...my abrupt words...embrace, embrace us at dusk...”

Poignant, palpable, powerful. Only such an impassioned soul as that of Aime Cesaire, could have imprinted the soul of fellow Martiniquan and psychiatrist, the iconic Franz Fanon, his devotee and student, whose virile works—BLACK SKIN/WHITE MASK and THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH—so imprinted me and others like me!

#30

IN PRAISE OF AUNTS AND UNCLES

IN PRAISE OF AUNTS AND UNCLES
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Monday, January 31, 2011

All of us have them. Or, have had them at one time or another.

We might even be “them” right now, ourselves. But, what is their familial purpose? Aunts and uncles—our mothers’ and fathers’ siblings; or, our grandparents’ siblings? What is our familial purpose relative to our own nieces and nephews?

This question has intrigued me ever since I read the Old Testament book of ESTHER, and became acquainted with that book’s hero, Mordecai, Queen Esther’s uncle. Mordecai is the archetypical uncle. He is wise. He is loving. He is pragmatic. He is courageous, and decisive. His orientation is family-first! Due to all of these virtues, and others, he successfully maneuvered his niece, Esther, into becoming the new Queen of Persia, consort of King Ahasuerus, King of Persia and Media, (known to the Greeks as “Xerxes” or “Artaxerxes”), who ruled over 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia.

This King had replaced his former consort, Queen Vashti, for refusing to appear before him, as he had commanded, during a banquet at Susa with his court and military generals. http://nlt.scripturetext.com/esther/1.htm

After Esther becomes Queen, through Mordecai’s help, she, in turn, saves herself, her uncle, and their Jewish people from genocide by interceding with the King, risking her own life thereby. She famously said, ”I will go to the king even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.” http://bible.cc/esther/4-16.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Esther

Broadly speaking of course, aunts and uncles are family. In that sense, they are somewhat akin to surrogate parents, endued with the authority to instruct, reprove or discipline, and are, conversely,  implicitly obligated to protect, provide and encourage their nieces and nephews
.
Love and laughter, hugs and kisses, tall tales and short quips are what I mostly associate with my aunts and uncles. Whenever we gather, there’s generally joy, food and festivities, whether planned or not. There are also boisterous recollections, generally of the type you can’t refute, because you were too young to remember; like, “Boy, when you were little, we had to switch them little legs all the time! You remember that?” Of course not! Your dumb silence would engenders more, tearful laughter.

Aunts and uncles are also good at supplying connective tissues in family history. One of my uncles told me where and how my parents first met, something I did not know and would have never asked. One of my aunts once told me that her father, my grandfather, was so revered for his piety and moral rectitude that his white, Mississippi, farming neighbors would have him to come by and pray for them during their illnesses, although he was black. This was something else I could not have known, but now fully appreciate.

Aunts and uncles are praiseworthy. Some have had to “take in” and raise nieces and nephews following those children’s parents’ simultaneous deaths, or other calamities, as Mordecai did with Esther. In other instances, “aunt” and “uncle” was an honorific given to deserving folks who were no actual kin, but who were part of one’s extended family.

Aunts and uncles may also provide occasional gifts and presents: Christmas, graduations, weddings, birthdays, etc. Mainly, though, aunts and uncles produce cousins. Cousins are our lifetime playmates, friends, fellow travelers, family. If aunts and uncles produced no more than this, their job will have been well done!

Whether as Mordecai in the Book of Esther or as “Aunty Emily” in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, or as “Uncle Tom” in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, aunts and uncles have played, and continue to play vital and praiseworthy roles in popular culture, and in our daily lives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Em http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/StoCabi.html
#30

Hot Air Balloon

Sunday, February 13, 2011
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
HOT AIR BALLOON

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a little boy who loved his Daddy very much. He thought his Daddy could do anything.

They lived near St. Louis, Missouri, where the St. Louis Cardinals play big league baseball.

One day, they went to a baseball game. There, Daddy bought his son a big red hot air balloon, which was tied to a long plastic string. The hot air in the balloon made the balloon float up in the sky. But, the long plastic string, when held tightly, kept the balloon from flying far away.

The little boy loved his big red balloon. He played with it throughout the game. When they ate popcorn or drank soda pop, Daddy would tie the balloon to his son’s chair to keep it safe.

After the game, Daddy reminded his son to hold onto tightly to the balloon’s string. Otherwise, he said, the hot air, in the balloon, would cause it to fly far away.
All the way, in their car, the little boy held on tightly to his balloon’s long pretty plastic string.

As soon as they got home, though, a bad thing happened. A big gust of wind blew the balloon out of the little boy’s hand while his father was picking him up from out of the car. Up, up, and away it went! Higher and higher the balloon floated! It was being carried farther and farther away by the wind!

“Daddy!” cried the little boy. “Catch my balloon!”

But, Daddy could only watch, sadly, as the balloon floated away. It finally came to rest in the top of a tall oak tree, in someone’s back yard, about block away.

“Sorry, son.” He said, “There are some things, even Daddy’s cannot do, like catch a hot air balloon!”

The little boy wept bitterly at his double loss. The first loss: being the loss of his big red balloon. And his second loss: the realization that his Daddy, whom he loved very much, could not, after all, do everything as he had formerly thought, like catch a hot air balloon.

Soon, the little boy’s loud, piteous cries brought his mother outside to comfort him and to dry his tears.

“Ssh. See,” she said as she smothered him with kisses. ”You can still see your balloon, so you still have your balloon. See there it is! Listen! SsShhh! We don’t have the sun, or the moon, or the stars, either. Do we? Do we?” she asked.

“But, we can see them all – the sun, moon, and stars--so they’re still ours. So, we still have them. So, stop crying like a baby! Where’s Momma’s big boy? You still have your balloon! It’s just safe, now, in that tree! Now, tell me, who won the ball game?”

The little boy, somewhat overwhelmed by his mother’s wit, stopped crying. Mother’s wit had stumped him, and diverted him. He did not know who had won the game. He had been too caught with the balloon to notice or to remember, if he had ever known.

All he could do now was to quietly watch his big red hot air balloon float playfully in the wind in the distant oak tree top by its long, pretty plastic string. It remained there for many days, steadily diminishing in size, till one day, it was gone.

“The Cardinals won” said Dad. “Kenny Boyer hit a home run.”

INTELLIGENCE

Intelligence is a gift from God given at birth, if not sooner. It is therefore independent of education. Yet, "education" is a strong means by which the intellect's discoveries and tools are disseminated to others and built upon. Intelligence expresses itself in myriad ways. So, while the two are separate, each is weakened by the other's absence. They go together harmoniously. Intelligent people seek education in areas of interest due to their appreciation of its value.

Since this was originally posted, a study debunking the validity of so-called IQ tests has been published, affirming all that was said above! Praise God for confirmation and affirmation!

Here's the link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121219133334.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

THE INVENTIVE SPIRIT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS: PATENTED INGENUITY by Patricia Carter Sluby (Praeger Publishers, Westport CT: 2004)


A book review

11/25/12
...

by Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman


This engrossing book,THE INVENTIVE SPIRIT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS: PATENTED INGENUITY, is the definitive reference on black inventors in America.

Its author, Patricia Carter Sluby, is a Registered Patent Agent and a former U.S. Primary patent examiner, whose prior book on this subject is entitled Creativity and Inventions: The Genius of Afro-Americans and Women in the United States and Their Patents (1987). So, her current book arises out of a lifetime of labor in this arcane and vital field of endeavor. Her love for her work infuses each page.

With machine-like efficiency, the book commences with a quote from Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, “Congress shall have power...[t]o promote progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Her “Preface” commences with a 1925 quote from Maggie Lena Walker, the legendary Richmond, Virginia, banker and philanthropist of color, that “...in this twentieth century, the woman or man who has brains and uses them will succeed.” The book follows with “Acknowledgments,” “Introduction,” 7 substantive, profusely illustrated/photo-laden, chapters; a “Conclusion,” “Appendix I: Minorities in the Practice of Intellectual Property,” “Appendix II: Roster of African American Patentees: Utility grants from 1821;” notes, bibliography, and index—altogether some 313 pages.


Beginning with an 1833 quotation from Edward H. Everett's address to the Massachusetts Colonization Society, Patricia Carter Sluby's “Preface” establishes right away that blackness is anciently synonymous with invention. An 1886 edition of the A.M.E. Church Review contains an article by Professor R. R. Wright, which cites Everett:

“Go back to an earlier period in the history of the black race. See what they were and what they did three thousand years ago, in the period of their glory, when they occupied the forefront in the march of civilization; when they occupied, in fact, the whole civilized world of their time...We received it from our European ancestors; they had it from the Greeks and Romans and Jews. But,” said he, “where did the Greeks and Romans and Jews get it? They derived it from Ethiopia and Egypt—in a word, from Africa.”

African slaves, being non-citizens—as all blacks were, prior to the U.S. Constitution being later amended-- could not hold patents, a form of intellectual property, until after the Civil War. Such inventions were registered in their masters' names, or in the names of other whites. Paradoxically, Jefferson Davis, later President of the Confederacy, had earlier attempted to procure a patent for a propeller riverboat invented by Benjamin T. Montgomery, a slave of his brother, Joseph, in Mississippi. This device was used by the Confederate Navy in the Civil War. Montgomery, who had been encouraged to read and write by his benevolent master, died in 1878, being born in 1819 in Virginia.
Sluby's marvelous book is full of many such anecdotes and raconteurs, as that of Benny Montgomery —far too many to mention here! It shall suffice to say that this book lists and describes every invention by blacks in America, including some inventions which are traditionally attributed to whites, like the cotton gin. Short autobiographical sketches are also given of such prolific mavens as Garrett Morgan, Granville T. Woods, Lewis Latimer, Dr. Percy Julian; along side these are those, like Henrietta Bradbury, a Chicago housewife who developed and patented a torpedo firing mechanism in 1945!

It covers modern day inventors like Dannette Connor-Ward, who invented the herbicide “Round-Up” in her employ at Monsanto, Lonnie Johnson who invented the “Super-Soaker squirt gun” and others in such disparate fields as nuclear physics, ophthalmology, and sublimated civil rights veteran, Bob Moses' “Algebra Project” to bring math literacy to school age children.

Reward yourself! Buy and read this book!

#30

See More

We are gods

Suppose that we are the only humans in the universe, Reader. That would make us "gods," not humans @ Psalm 82:6...In fact, we must be "gods," assuming that we ARE at all! Right now! One light year--not to mention a billion such years-- is a long way for anyone, or for anything, to travel at light-speed, just to see us--whatever we are, if we ARE, bypassing all others along the way!

Bill Sharpe ft. Dave Koz-- "Get Your Groove On"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqIdkxyVTXg&feature=player_embedded#t=84s

Dummm-dum dum-dum-de dumb! Dummm-dum dum-dum-de dumb!

Non-stomp funk fulminates with a bumpty bump-bumpty bump!

As a driving, thriving bass summons old souls from the deep.

An impetuous drummer tippy-tips, tippy-tips, captive to his own percussions.

"Come and join us!" Calls the unctious interlocutor "Get your grove on!"

An intrepid sax probes private places, furtively. Darting daringly in and out.

The chorus and rhythmic background spawns comic background radiation.

While George Clinton's spirit irradiates in the aurora borealis with a bumpty bump-bumpty bump!

"Funk not only moves, it also removes!" Hey! Dummm-dum dum-dum-de dumb