Zetta Elliott's Blog, page 70

Save the date–Anansi is back!

I hope we’ll see you there! I will be moderating the fantasy panel on Saturday morning.

Institute of African American Affairs
New York University
presents
A Is for Anansi: Literature for Children of African Descent
“Africa, the Future, and the Urban Landscape”
November 9-10th, 2012

Location for all programs: Kimmel Center-NYU,

60 Washington Square South, E&L Auditorium, 4th Floor

“A Is for Anansi: Africa, the Future, and the Urban Landscape,” the second conference hosted by the Institute of African American Affairs, aims to deepen and diversify the cannon, conversation and scholarship of the literature as told by its most influential critics, scholars, teachers and producers. The need for more in-depth analysis and for more information, critical evaluation, and publications on this topic still remains. The conference will look at these and consider other questions and issues as well.

Keynote by Dr. Michelle H. Martin

Panels include Fantasy: The Final Frontier, Urban Landscapes, Africa Imagined

Panelists include: Nancy Tolson, William Loren Katz, Meena Khorana, Varian Johnson, Christine Taylor-Butler, Georgina Falu, Kathleen Horning, Zetta Elliott, Nnedi Okorafor,   Vicky Smith, Stacy Whitman, Ivan Velez, Jr., Tony Medina, Coe Booth, Terry Williams, K.C. Boyd,  Rashidah Ismaili, Elana Denise Anderson, Vivian Yenika-Agbaw, Anika Selhorst, Mohammed Naseehu Ali,  Katharine Capshaw Smith

Anansi Award will be presented to  Ashley Bryan, Pat Cummings, William Loren Katz, and Eloise Greenfield

Free and open to the public. Space is limited.

Please RSVP at (212) 998-IAAA (4222)

For more information please visit:

http://africanastudies.as.nyu.edu/obj...

Schedule:

Friday, November 9th, 2012 – Opening Reception

6-6:30 pm

● Opening KEYNOTE

6:30-8:00 pm

● Perceptions and Realities:  When Color Blinds and Reveals

Perceptions of how notions of whiteness/blackness, both implicit and implied, are presented and their effects. Borrowing a page from Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark, whiteness and blackness in the literary imagination.

Saturday, November 10th, 2012

Registration – 9-9:30 am

9:30 – 11:00 am

● Fantasy: The Final Frontier

The scarcity of fantasy/science-fiction books featuring children of African decent.

11:00 – 12:30 pm

● Children’s panel:   “If I Ruled the World”

As a teacher / publisher / writer / reader how they see themselves in the world and how they are depicted. If they were in control and in power/what would they teach, assign to read, defending it why and why not.

Lunch – 12:30 – 1:30 pm

1:30 – 3:00 pm

● Urban Landscapes: Stories for a Global World, Realism and Dominant Images

The lure of urban life and culture, its offerings and sacrifices. What the urban landscape does to the literature and vice versa. How the black urban experience is interpreted and reimagined. How does dwindling rural development and shifts to urban landscapes fragment and reconstruct lives and cultural retentions?

3:00 – 4:30 pm

● Africa Imagined

“What is Africa to me” remains a fundamental question in all Africana studies. How African culture is identified, constructed in the literature.

4:30 – 5:00 pm

CLOSURE/ROUND UP/SURVEY

5:00 PM

AWARD RECEPTION

● Tribute to Ashley Bryan, Pat Cummings, William Loren Katz, and Eloise Greenfield

spice girl

This past summer I had the chance to share my beloved Brooklyn with the amazing educator/blogger/author Ed Spicer. Filming in Prospect Park was a bit of a challenge (we’re in the flight path of 2 major airports) but Ed still managed to make a great short film—take a look!

To … with love

We’re five weeks into the semester and I’ve already caught my first cold. Stress weakens your immune system, so I suspect that the confrontation I had with two students last week probably contributed to my health breakdown. Or rather, not the incident itself but the fact that I dwelt on it for days afterward. Someone just posted this article on Facebook: “Why I Quit Teaching.” That struck a chord with me. This is the most challenging semester I can remember, and even though the vast majority of my students are following the rules and making progress, I still have a couple who are raising hell. And somehow that makes me want to leave the classroom, which is irrational. On Saturday night To Sir, With Love was on PBS—Sidney Poitier always reminds me of my father: the pencil tie, the fitted suit, the handsome smile. My father taught for more than 30 years, and he taught special ed students here in NYC. He fussed about his students (like I do) but loved them (like I do) and definitely saw himself as a father figure (I certainly don’t). In the film, the students give “Sir” a hard time until he cracks the code and figures out how to connect with them despite the difference in race, class, and culture. He finally gets the dream job offer he’s been waiting for, but then realizes that teaching is his true calling and so tears up the letter. Hollywood still makes those kind of films but the reality is that teachers aren’t meant to SAVE students—we’re there to SERVE students because that’s what professionals do:

A professional is a certified expert who is afforded prestige and autonomy in return for performing at a high level, which includes making complex and disinterested judgments under conditions of uncertainty. Professionals deserve to live comfortably, but they do not enter the ranks of a profession in order obtain wealth or power; they do it out of a calling to serve.

But what do you do with the ones who don’t want to be served? Or think of you as a servant to be given orders? And of course this is about gender because female students never challenge my authority the way some male students do. And perhaps this is a “hypercritical woman thing” where I expect perfection of myself and so continue to focus on the ones who aren’t really trying to grow or learn. I applied for a fellowship today that would give me one full year without teaching. That prospect used to scare me, but these days…it’s looking pretty good! If that acceptance letter comes in the mail some day, I will definitely NOT tear it up.

men behaving badly

I managed to write 2300 words on Sunday, but only 200 words yesterday. Today I’m trying to get access to my work email account; apparently the IT team migrated my account but failed to set up a new mailbox in Outlook, which means I haven’t been able to communicate with my students since last week. Their first paper is due tomorrow, and I imagine panic has already set in. I have one particular student who seems emotionally unstable, and I’m hoping the dean’s office will get him the support he clearly needs. There’s been a lot of bad news lately—the prolonged, angry, violent response to an inflammatory anti-Muslim video made in the US makes the possibility of peace seem so remote. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is *defending* remarks he made back in May that 47% of Americans (those voting for President Obama) are content to be dependent on government assistance. Even David Brooks found that idea despicable:

The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.

Romney’s comments also reveal that he has lost any sense of the social compact. In 1987, during Ronald Reagan’s second term, 62 percent of Republicans believed that the government has a responsibility to help those who can’t help themselves. Now, according to the Pew Research Center, only 40 percent of Republicans believe that.

Yesterday I turned off the TV. I’m reading a fantastic novel by Vincent Lam, The Headmaster’s Wager, but almost had to put the book down when I reached a passage that described in graphic detail the slaughter of two Cantonese girls by Japanese troops occupying Viet Nam. There are a couple of scenes of torture in the novel, which have lingered in my mind. Then I watched Season 1 & 2 of Luther, which is a British crime drama that’s more violent than any UK show I’ve seen to date. Idris Alba plays an expert detective who can’t control his own rage; after endless outbursts at home and on the job, Luther’s wife is murdered and his colleagues have no doubt believing him capable of such a crime. I ended the show wondering why we always seem to need violent men to stop violent men. I’m trying to finish Judah’s Tale and I’m always conscious of the fact that some people find my male characters “too good to be true.” Judah’s not perfect—no one is. But I *do* want him to serve as an example of a young man who actively resists the stereotypes that abound about black men. Still, I have to tell the truth. It’s hard.

I was on the train yesterday, reading, and had just reached another critical scene in The Headmaster’s Wager when I noticed someone standing in front of me. I looked up and it was my student—her smiling face instantly drew me out of the grim scene in the book, and then she held up the book *she* was reading: Angela Davis’ Women, Race & Class! We’re reading Chapter 1 in my Black Women in the Americas class. I had one student in my Black Male class admit that he looks at everything differently now. It’s a start…

shine a light

Congratulations to African Canadian author Afua Cooper whose 2009 MG novel, , has just won the 2012 Beacon of Freedom Award!

The Beacon of Freedom Award is presented annually to a book that introduces American history, from Colonial times through the Civil War, to children in a historically-accurate and engaging manner.

WRL is proud to welcome Afua Cooper, the 2012 recipient of the Beacon of Freedom Award.  Ms. Cooper will accept the award at Friday, October 12 at 7 p.m. in the Williamsburg Library Theatre.  A book sale and signing will follow.

I just taught June Jordan’s essay on Phillis Wheatley yesterday, and am proud to see an African Canadian author winning recognition for her work. Jordan’s essay considers the lasting power of white authentication, calling it a “miracle” that black authors manage to get their work published when so many literary conventions work against us…

So I booked my flat in London for Christmas but I’m once again thinking of visiting Germany. Nyla grew up on a US military base in Germany and I really need to go over there to do some research. It helps that my novels have been selling well in Germany; Ship of Souls was Amazon.de’s Daily Deal yesterday and now that the deal is over, the book is *still* in the Top 100 on the Kindle Store (peaking at #14)! Wish also got a 5-star review, which I’m hoping to translate this morning…Danke, German readers, for giving my work a chance! (ETA I *just* got a query email from an agent in Germany!)

And the Crowd Goes Wild!

Yesterday I took a break from writing to watch Serena Williams win the US Open. What an inspiration! As I post my word count on Facebook every few hours, I’m surprised at the number of people who express admiration for my sense of discipline. I’m not sure that’s what drives me…I feel like I have (or am) a sponge, and I spend most of my time soaking up ideas; writing then is simply the act of wringing that sponge dry. It’s the easy part, in a way. Last weekend I wrote 2450 words and another 120 during the week; so far this weekend I’ve written 2300 words, which puts me at 4870–below my 900 words/day quota (7×900=6300). But the day has just begun…


I have some exciting news to share: And the Crowd Goes Wild!: A Global Gathering of Sports Poems came out on September 4th! The book’s first review, which came out on Labor Day, is posted here . The ebook version (PDF file) and the paperback version can be purchased at  www.friesenpress.com/bookstore . Folks are also welcome, of course, to order the paperback version of the book from local independent bookstores. The paperback version will become available on Amazon.com , Amazon.ca, and Amazon.co.uk later in September. Libraries/bookstores can order the collection from Ingram Book Company.

every word counts

I haven’t blogged in a while because I figured out that I have 22 non-teaching days in the month of September, and if I write 900 words on each of those days, I’ll have the 20K words I need to finish Judah’s Tale. I got off to a good start last weekend, but this weekend I’ve fallen short—instead of writing 2000 words yesterday I wrote 200! But that’s because I spent most of the day completing a grant report (500 words) and working on an application for a faculty publication program (1350 words). That’s one thing about my job—you constantly have to apply for things. Still, it’s a pretty great opportunity—you get paired with a writing mentor, you meet eight times with other writers within your field, and you get 3 hours of course release for the spring semester, which means one less class to teach. My classes are going fairly well so far, but I’m reminded—once again—of how impossible it is to turn your brain off when you teach. It’s not like a 9-5 where you clear your desk at the end of the day and go home to dwell on other things. With teaching you’re always making a mental list of the things you need to say and do and plan and fix. And then there are the endless emails asking for help; I’m not a medical doctor but I do sometimes feel like I’m on call! It’s part of the job, and I do love to teach, but maybe I’m not being realistic about finishing Judah’s Tale this month. My (pipe) dream is to finish two novels this semester, which would free me up to start The Hummingbird’s Tongue in January. A friend and I are considering London for Xmas, which means I need to budget carefully so that I can do London in December, Nevis in January, and Ghana in May. My travel allowance is $450 so that means I need to get really creative…counting words and counting pennies!

Study with the Best!

In June I was filmed at the African Burial Ground National Monument for an episode of CUNY TV’s Study with the Best. The show aired on channel 75 here in NYC last Sunday and will air again this Saturday at 7pm. You can also watch it on You Tube or below (my 5-minute segment starts at 7:30 min.):

shifting gears

Classes start tomorrow so my head is no longer in SC—but before I shift gears, here are some of the photos I took at the Middleton plantation. As soon as I stepped on the bus Saturday morning, the conversation about Gone with the Wind began…to his credit, our driver tried to separate fact from fiction: apparently Rhett Butler was a real person but the film was not shot on site in the South—it was shot in Hollywood. HOLLYWOOD, people. When we reached Middleton Place I was almost relieved to see that the “big house” was no longer standing; the Union army burned it during the war and then an 1886 earthquake reduced the ruins to rubble. And it was never one of those white-pillared houses at the end of a long lane of live oaks (this photo is of McLeod Plantation on James Island). The main house and two flanking guesthouses were made of brick; one guesthouse was left standing but I skipped that tour, opting instead to learn about African Americans’ lives on this rice plantation. My tour guide was a white man from upstate New York—very nice, very informed. But all the interpreters in the Stableyards were also white…which seemed odd. But then how many black folks do you know who’d volunteer to dress up and act the part of a slave? Doug the cooper gave me lots of great information about woodworking tools, which will help since Judah is apprenticed to a carpenter in the sequel to Wish.

Visiting plantations is always challenging because I go in expecting to be misled, which means I’m skeptical of the script that most docents are trained to follow. My guide, Alan, had done a lot of extra research on his own and Doug clearly knew a lot about making barrels. But both insisted that the task system on the rice plantation was preferable to the gang labor system used on cotton plantations. Instead of being forced to labor in the fields from sun up to sun down, 6 days a week, on a rice plantation you were “done” once you finished your assigned task. So a cooper had to make 3 barrels a day, which generally took at least 12 hours. I’m not sure I see that as “better” or “easier” than picking cotton all day. And if you’re planting rice, you have to stand in the muck and snake-filled water until you finish half an acre. When you finish your task, you still have to tend your garden and hunt or fish to make sure you and your family don’t starve. There was no mention of runaways or rebellions…Eliza’s House, a refurbished slave cabin, had a very good exhibit on slave life, but the cabin was decorated to reflect how a freedman might live—and it was quite cozy. I always leave a plantation feeling that the suffering of enslaved people was diminished. Middleton Place hosts a lot of weddings because of its extensive gardens, which were built by 100 slaves over a ten-year period—an extra “task” on top of their regular workload…

My afternoon tour was completely different—my guide was a black man from SC and Al tried to teach us Gullah while explaining how gentrification is changing the racial demographics in Charleston. He also regaled us with songs from Porgy & Bess; we were driven past Catfish Row and saw Porgy’s tomb in a cemetery on James Island. The Massachusetts 54th regiment camped on the grounds of the McLeod Plantation, which is currently being renovated; its slave cabins were occupied into the 1990s by migrant workers. We saw modern housing projects next to massive antebellum mansions where wealthy planters summered to avoid malaria and yellow fever; the Middletons actually went up to Rhode Island from May to September, and I may work that into my novel as well. Charleston was first settled by English planters from Barbados, so the architecture reflects that influence—lots of sorbet-colored houses with long porches that run the length of the house. In the black communities, houses were built one behind the other on a single plot of land, which indicated the residents were all related. The best part of my day was when I met Mrs. Louise Jefferson who was weaving sweetgrass baskets and selling her wares at the Charleston visitor center. I bought a beautiful basket (similar to one Camille Cosby purchased from Mrs. Jefferson) and encouraged this kind elder to record her life story. For just a few moments I felt like I was back in my grandmother’s kitchen, listening to her stories and laughing at her jokes…

deep/south

After spending a little over an hour at the Slave Mart Museum here in Charleston, I was ready to come home. It wasn’t so much a case of information overload as it was a readiness to write…what did I say about timing? It’s everything, so having PMS and listening to the voices of formerly enslaved people can lead to more than a few tears and some rather dramatic ideas for the novel. I highly recommend the Slave Mart Museum; the young women working there are extremely helpful—within minutes of asking for help I was given a list of African American tour guides and walking directions to the Avery Research Center, where I spent the afternoon. As soon as I walked in, I met two interpreters from the Middleton Plantation, which I’ll be touring tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, the shuttle service taking me out there is called “Gone With the Wind, More Than Just a Memory”…but I’m hoping that the black interpreters will balance whatever romanticized (a)historical nonsense I may have to endure. Charleston reminds me of Louisiana—same architecture, same aesthetic, same strange segregation. I walked around this afternoon and felt like I was in the Garden District of New Orleans…kept wondering when I was going to see some black folks. The Avery Research Center shed light on the determination of African Americans to uplift the race through education. On the top floor there was an impressive exhibit of sculpture, quilts, and textile art by Bernice Mitchell Tate. The second floor displayed sweetgrass baskets woven in the Gullah community, and there was a recreation of a 19th-century classroom that tugged at my school marm heartstrings. The Avery Normal Institute was founded in 1865 by the American Missionary Association, and I recalled writing a play back in 2006 about a free black woman from New England who moved to the Sea Islands before the Civil War ended to teach in an AMA school for emancipated slaves. Don’t think I ever finished that play, but I’ve already got the AMA in Judah’s Tale. In a way, I could easily write about South Carolina without being here—after touring the Slave Mart I had to come home because my bag was bulging with all the books I’d purchased. I could just hide away in this hotel room, with the windows that face an opposing brick wall, and slip into the past by plowing through those books. But being here gives me the chance to add certain details that might not appear in a book. Just standing in that slave market conjured scenes and introduced me to characters I’d never have “met” in Brooklyn. Tomorrow morning I tour the rice plantation and then in the afternoon I’m doing the Sea Island/African American history tour. I hope my head doesn’t explode before I get a chance to write some of this into the book. Part of me wanted to pull out my laptop and set myself up in the recreated classroom at Avery…sometimes I think I was born in the wrong century!