news from kintespace.com ::: Saturday, March 29, 2008

I am not certain that we are honoring and respecting June Jordan by presenting her seven part poem “From Sea to Shining Sea” as the second installment from the famous 1983 anthology, Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, edited by Barbara Smith and published by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press—a project instigated by none other than Audre Lorde. Sometimes a great poem from a person of color is not on the Internet because they were (often deliberately) overlooked. Other times the poet, the artist, wants levels of control over their work that are strict and aggressively conservative.

Posthumously, I can see that the June Jordan official website has a “permissions” page, clearly under the auspices of the June M. Jordan Literary Estate Trust. Of course this is ignorant and embarrassingly amateurish of me, but based on past treatment from organizations established to represent an artist (which are often politically different from the artist herself) my instincts are screaming to do the “offensive” thing and not contact the June M. Jordan Literary Estate Trust and present this incredible poem within the context of reviving/reinforcing interest in Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.

“From Sea to Shining Sea” should be made into a film. Its length—its scope—has an epic documentarian view of Ronald Reagan’s 1980s—that time when I was just a teenager. It is an engaging blend of sweeping portraiture across the entire American landscape while temporally existing in a fraction of moment—inside a woman’s mouth (with pomegranate seeds). This poem appears strongly to me as one designed to be read decades later—like opening a time capsule—as it appears (apparently and perhaps temporarily) for the first time on the Internet.

::: Dr. Gerald Horne: Reparations and the International Community

::: ::: http://kintespace.com/kp_gerald_horne0.html

According to certain polls, something like 75% of those in the U.S. are opposed to reparations to African-Americans. This should not be deemed surprising in a nation with a Euro-American majority that has been birthed and suckled on the notion that Blacks receive “preferential treatment” via affirmative action programs that—in truth—mostly benefit Euro-American women.

Yet stating this bald fact both presents a dilemma and a historical perspective for examining this all-important question of reparations. The dilemma is simple: how does one obtain an objective that an overwhelming majority does not support? But the historical perspective provides an answer to this otherwise nettlesome dilemma: consider that if a plebiscite had been held in the Deep South on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, most likely the Euro-American majority would have voted against that too.

::: Michael A. Gonzales: 7 Questions from Invisible Woman

::: ::: http://kintespace.com/kp_blackadelic.html

This ‘7 Questions’ is a bit different. I came across a blog called Blackadelic Pop….don’t remember how I found it. But the words and imagery were so wonderful, that it inspired me to come out of my cave and write again. I received some comments and emails that stated how wonderful the blog was too. I thought to myself “dang, that brother should try to write for a living”.

Little did I know that he not only writes, he writes his ass off! haha…Michael A. Gonzales has written books essays, and articles for the likes of MTV, BET, Spin, The Village Voice, Essence, Entertainment Weekly, the New York Press, Post, Daily News and Metro, and more. Check out what this talented brother had to say on several Black Cinema subjects.

—Invisible Woman, invisible-cinema.blogspot.com

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