"Hanging in Egypt with Breyten Breytenbach"
commentary by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Editor
The anti-apartheid, white South African poet, writer and painter, Breyten Breytenbach, was exiled after marrying a French national of Vietnamese descent while studying in Paris in the early '60's. The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 and The Immorality Act of 1950 made it a criminal offense for a white person to have sexual relations with a person of a different race. He made a trip to South Africa in 1975, was discovered in the country, (it has been reported that the ANC betrayed him to the government because they didn't trust him), arrested and sentenced to seven years of imprisonment for High Treason. Massive international intervention ultimately secured his release in 1982, he returned to Paris and obtained French citizenship.
Nigerian poet, novelist and musician, Chris Abani has a prescience that is almost uncanny. His first novel, Masters of the Board, about a neo-Nazi takeover of Nigeria earned him praise as "... (A)frica's answer to Frederick Forsyth." The government, though, believed the book to be a blueprint for an actual coup and sent the 18 year old Abani to prison in 1985. After serving six months, he was released, but he went on to perform in a guerrilla theatre group which led to his arrest and imprisonment at the notorious Kiri Kiri prison. He was released again, but after writing his play Song of a Broken Flute, was arrested a third time, sentenced to death and sent to the Kalakuta Prison where he was jailed with other political prisoners on death row.
Languishing most of the time in solitary confinement, Abani was finally and fortunately released in 1991. He lived in exile in London until 1999, when he emigrated to the United States. Formerly a professor of creative writing at UC Riverside in California, Abani is currently a Board of Trustees Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies, as well as the Director of the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University.
With the threat of Project 2025 looming in the fascist dregs of a backwater pool of slime, Chris Abani might just find himself on the purge list here in the good ol’ USA, if we let our guard down for even a moment.
Not going back.
There are stones even here
worn into a malevolence by time
gritting the teeth and tearing
the eyes with the memory.
Out in the desert, the wind
is a sculptor working the ephemera
of sand. Desperately editing steles
to write the names of thousands of slaves
who died to make Pharaoh great.
It is a fool’s game.
And we are like the blind musician
at the hotel who tells us with a smile:
I’ll see you later.
The guard at the pyramid eyes me.
Are you Egyptian? he demands,
then searches my bag for a bomb.
At the hotel they speak Arabic to me,
don’t treat me like the white guests,
and I guess, even here, with all
the hindsight of history we haven’t
learned to love ourselves.
I cannot crawl into the tombs, and cannot
explain why. How do you say: In my country
they buried me alive for six months?
And so you lie and tell yourself this is love.
I am protecting the world from my rage.
Rabab tells me: We know how to build graves
here. I nod. I know. It is the same all over Africa.
Do you have a knife? Do you have one?
the guards at the museum ask Breyten and me,
searching us. We call this on ourselves. We
are clearly political criminals.
I trace the glyphs chipped into stone.
As a writer I am drawn to this. If I could
I too would carve myself into eternity.
Breyten watching me says: Don’t tell me
you’ve found a spelling mistake in it!
A line of miniature statues is placed
into the tomb to serve the pharaoh.
One for each day of the year. Four hundred.
The overseers are a plus. I think
even death will not ease
the lot of the poor here.
Statues: it seems the more I search the world
for differences the more I find it all the same.
Perhaps the Buddha was a jaded traveler too
when he said we are all one.
Mona argues about who should pay
to see the mummies. It isn’t often I can
treat a girl to a dead body, Breyten insists.
A woman nearby tells her husband she can see
dead bodies at work. Why pay?
Do you think she works in a hospital? I ask.
That or the U.S. State Department, Breyten agrees.
From the top of Bab Zwelia, flat rooftops
spread out like a conference of coffee tables.
Broken walls, furniture, pots, litter the roofs
like family secrets sunning themselves.
Two white goats on a roof chew
their way through the debris.
On the Nile, Rabab sings in Arabic, tells me
she wants to be Celine Dion.
She is my sister calling me home to Egypt.
Perhaps one day I will be ready.
For now it is enough to know I can
be at home here.
- Chris Abani
"Hanging in Egypt with Breyten Breytenbach"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On "The Hill with April Ryan," President Joe Biden discusses a range of topics, including his Black agenda and his "confidence" in Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the country in 2025. The Grio: Biden reflects on his Black agenda and what he wished he did differently
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I wish we could have gotten more work done quicker in terms of the Black agenda,” Biden admitted. However, the 46th president of the United States listed off a number of achievements during his administration, including reducing Black poverty and unemployment.
We increase the participation of the number of small businesses. We got $16 billion for HBCUs,” he added.
When given the opportunity and resources, the president told theGrio, “There’s not a single thing that anyone else committed that a Black person can’t do – not a single thing.”
Biden also discussed his now-delayed trip to Angola, part of a promise he made to visit the continent of Africa. The president is expected to highlight a railway from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean that will allow the African nation and others to trade.
“There are countries along that route that have all the food in the world and they have no way to get it out,” he explained. “It matters a lot just in terms of simple equity, but also matters a lot in terms of security.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The cover story highlights Vice President Kamala Harris’ commitment to not just public service but also serving looks. Vogue: Vice President Kamala Harris on Her Race to the Finish
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Then the vice president enters amid a rain-like patter of footfalls, and the energy in the room changes. “Hi! How are you? Good to see you again!” Harris says, grabbing my hand and folding down into the opposite seat.
She is dressed in an easygoing black suit with a plain white blouse, a few pearls on a double necklace, and black patent leather heels. Since becoming vice president, in 2021, Harris has sought reductions in gun violence, middle-class jobs in clean energy, drinking water for poor communities, and a strategy for Americans’ reproductive freedom. Before our meeting, I talked with more than 20 of her former colleagues and collaborators, who described Harris in these projects as a roll-up-the-sleeves leader. I ask what her first call would be on reaching the Oval Office.
“One of my first calls—outside of family—will be to the team that is working with me on our plan to lower costs for the American people,” she says. “It’s not just about publishing something in a respected journal. It’s not about a speech. It’s literally about, How does this hit the streets? How do people actually feel the work in a way that benefits them?” She says she plans to meet with “those who can help us put back in place the freedoms that have been taken away with the Dobbsdecision”—the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade—to get Congress to pass a law. “That’s going to take some work,” she says.
Work, one senses, is a happy word for Harris: What at first seem lucky breaks in her life tend on examination to reveal themselves as outcomes of strategic effort. The hurricanes that barreled into Florida in recent days and brought heavy destruction as far as inland North Carolina have required rescue and recovery from officials and ordinary Americans, and Harris has moved quickly on the ground to show them her support. But work can’t resolve every crisis. In recent weeks, the violence in the Middle East has grown, first with Israeli movement into Lebanon and more recently with a missile attack on Israel by Iran. I ask what “new element” voters can expect from a Harris administration in balancing the United States’ commitments in the region with attempts—so far unsuccessful—to de-escalate the conflict.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The first email came in early September, around the time the Haitian-American Facebook page began posting about the Trump campaign’s falsehoods about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, eating their neighbors’ pets.
Too busy to look at the email invite at first, Wanda Tima, the founder of the social media page with a half-million followers, finally decided to give it a read. It was an invite to a Zoom call to set up a podcast interview series on Haitian-American entrepreneurs.
Tima, who is also the founder of L’union Suite, the South Florida-based social media platform and entertainment company that promotes positive news about Haiti and Haitians, got on the phone and the caller on the other end began walking her and her assistant through a series of screens and links. Unbeknownst to them, however, it was a phishing expedition. After a series of clicks, the two had given hackers access to 470,000 Facebook followers and an estimated reach of 7 million through Tima’s business portfolio on the site.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The real story of John Lewis’ work in Nashville goes deeper than you’ve been led to believe. Politico: John Lewis’ Forgotten Fight Over Desegregation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The images are legendary: white men, their faces blurry with motion and rage, attempting to tear a young John Lewis off his seat in a whites-only diner in Nashville.
You may know the story from history class. Dressed in their Sunday best, Lewis and many other courageous college students staged sit-ins at segregated establishments, asking only to be served like everyone else. Withstanding threats, bullying and beatings, they exposed the inhumanity of segregation and won public sympathy for their cause. The culmination of their campaign — a famous showdown at city hall in April 1960 that ended with the mayor forcing Woolworth’s, McLellan’s and other department stores to permit integrated seating at their dinettes — went down in history.
But there’s another story you won’t find in those well-known photos, a longer, more challenging campaign Lewis fought that history books have largely overlooked.
Desegregating the five-and-dimes was a triumph. But when the dust settled, the vast majority of Nashville’s restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, swimming pools and public accommodations remained under the regime of Jim Crow. The city hall showdown was not the end — it was the beginning of a yearslong fight to desegregate the rest of Nashville.
After that initial victory, Lewis’ once-hardy band of comrades — the dozens who staged the sit-ins, the hundreds and even thousands who joined the marches and mass meetings — dwindled to a rump group. Friends graduated, left town, took up projects elsewhere or burned out. The news media stopped paying attention.
But Lewis didn’t stop. Together with a small corps of fellow activists, he kept Nashville’s civil rights movement alive — and led it to an even greater triumph.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The film-maker, playwright and novelist finished his last book, Yorùbá Boy Running, the day before he died in 2022. Now, loved ones and collaborators, including his daughter Temi and longtime friend Kwame Kwei-Armah, celebrate the passionate man behind the work. The Guardian: ‘He knew this was going to be the last story he wrote’: the epic legacy of literary maverick Biyi Bándélé
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In early August 2022, Biyi Bándélé had a conversation with his editor, Hannah Chukwu, about the novel he was working on, Yorùbá Boy Running, after which he sent her a revised version of the manuscript. On the following day, the 54-year-old film-maker, playwright and novelist took his own life, leaving behind an impressive and strikingly varied body of work: the film adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, which took seven years to make; stage versions of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and Lorca’s Yerma; poetry, screenplays and several novels including 2007’s Burma Boy, which told the story of his father’s harrowing and brutal experiences as a British army soldier in the second world war. His was a talent unrestrained by genre, medium, geography or period.
Yorùbá Boy Running tells the story of Samuel Àjàyí Crowther, whose life spanned the 19th century and took him from abduction and enslavement, via abandonment in Sierra Leone, back to Nigeria and a life in the clergy that ended with him becoming the first black bishop to be ordained by the Anglican church. In his foreword to the book, the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, whose play Death and the King’s Horseman was Bándélé’s final film adaptation, points to the intensely imaginative and vivid approach the novelist took to his subject. His “mix of the anecdotal, archival and inquisitional” style parts company, says Soyinka, with “the slave narratives to which we are more accustomed. It disorientates, yet inducts one, at a most primary level of intimacy, and even self-identification, into the realities of capture, enslavement and displacement; eases one deftly into a milieu of the slaving occupation as an existential norm, and one that was near inextricably intertwined with the trajectory of colonialism in west Africa.”
The actor and novelist Paterson Joseph first encountered Bándélé when he was cast as the lead character, Busi, in Bándélé’s 1993 television play Not Even God Is Wise Enough, which was directed by Danny Boyle. Busi is “a sort of Billy Liar figure”, explains Joseph, in and out of trouble and taking refuge in a fantasy life. “Those stories that we went through, and the world that he inhabits, is a world of the absurd, which was very surprising when you think about 1993, how few black protagonists we had on British television that weren’t cliched in some way. This character had a real sadness about him and yet he was very, very funny because of his bewilderment about the world. He’s a man in search of his father, in basic terms, and he’s also a boy, really, in search of himself.” Joseph recalls a scene in which Busi is in a subterranean public lavatory and, apparently, encounters Dr Livingstone; another in a courtroom, where he wanders across the lawyers’ benches. “There’s something about his writing,” says Joseph. “It’s sort of maverick: it knows the rules, but it wants to disobey the rules to see what happens.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Michigan Republican listed the wrong election date in an ad aimed at Black voters, according to a legal complaint filed on Sunday.
Tom Barrett, who is running for Congress in Michigan’s 7th congressional district, placed an ad in the October 2 issue of the Michigan Bulletin, a Black-owned weekly publication based in Lansing. The ad boldly stated: “On November 6 VOTE FOR TOM BARRETT.” The problem is that the election is on November 5.
In response, the Michigan Legislative Black Caucus filed a legal complaint with the state attorney general, accusing Barrett’s campaign of trying to hurt Black voter turnout with the ad. The group says that such efforts are illegal in Michigan, where purposefully spreading misinformation about the election process to stop people from voting is a crime.
“At best, Tom Barrett and his Campaign have committed a shocking oversight which will undoubtedly lead to confusion by Black voters in Lansing,” the legal filing states. “And, at worst, this ad could be part of an intentional strategy to ‘deter’ Black voters by deceiving them into showing up to vote on the day after the 2024 election.”
The caucus’s complaint calls for investigations not only from Michigan’s attorney general but also from a local county prosecutor. In response, Barrett’s campaign claims that the wrong date was just a “proofing error” and didn’t have any negative intent, according to spokesperson Jason Roe.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH
IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.
