Mind Warp 1982

This timeline is organized around the contrast between hot and cold. Hot and cold language, hot and cold writing style, the idea of hot and cold conflict and authors' hot and/or cold confrontation of anger and injustice. In some cases, the author explicitly references hot/cold, "there are cold holes and warm holes. Mine is a warm hole" (Invisible Man). Other authors evoke a mood of hot or cold stylistically, for example, with the use of repetition (for emotional emphasis (hot) or to stress a kind of complacency (cold)), and the use of shocking language (hot). Some writers use the contrast of hot and cold to talk about outward conflict versus inner conflict. Overall, cold tends to be characterized as negative, while hot or warm is represented as positive. However, there are a some exceptions (when pieces seem to disdain rushing to a particular judgement. Ex: The narrator of Black Boy thinks the Negro Communists are too hot, too quick to pass judgement and move to action. So much so that they have actually been "frozen"). Understanding the dichotomy between hot and cold found during this period can help give readers a framework to talk about the ways two very stylistically different authors can both be radical. It can also give readers a broader understanding of how the canon of African-American literature (during this time period, but ostensibly as a whole) treated the subjects of conflict, anger and injustice. *It is interesting to note that during this time period (1940-1980), America was always involved in at least one war, whether cold or hot. From World War II (1941-1945), the Korean War (1950-1953), and the Vietnam War (1965-1973), to the Cold War (1945-1989). 1940 - Langston Hughes: The Big Sea, Harlem Literati "During the summer of 1926, Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas, John P. Davis, Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett, and I decided to publish 'a Negro quarterly of the arts' to be called Fire—the idea being that it would burn up a lot of the old, dead conventional Negro-white ideas of the past, épater le bourgeois into a realization of the existence of the younger Negro writers and artists.... None of the older Negro intellectuals would have anything to do with Fire. Dr. DuBois in the Crisis roasted it. The Negro press called it all sorts of bad names....Rean Graves, the critic for the Baltimore Afro-American, began his reviews by saying: 'I have just tossed the first issue of Fire into the fire.' Commenting upon various of our contributors, he said: 'Aaron Douglas who, in spite of himself and the meaningless grotesqueness of his creations, has gained a reputation as an artist, is permitted to spoil three perfectly good pages and a cover with his pen and ink hudge pudge....Langston Hughes displays his usually ability to say nothing in many words.' So Fire had plenty of cold water thrown on it by the colored critics." 1942 - Margaret Walker: For My People For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power; For my people lending their strength to the years, to the gone years and the now years and the maybe years, washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching dragging along never gaining never reaping never knowing and never understanding; For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking and playhouse and concert and store and hair and Miss Choomby and company; For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn to know the reasons why and the answers to and the people who and the places where and the days when, in memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we were black and poor and small and different and nobody cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood; For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and play and drink their wine and religion and success, to marry their playmates and bear children and then die of consumption and anemia and lynching; For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy people filling the cabarets and taverns and other people’s pockets and needing bread and shoes and milk and land and money and something—something all our own; For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures who tower over us omnisciently and laugh; For my people blundering and groping and floundering in the dark of churches and schools and clubs and societies, associations and councils and committees and conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches, preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by false prophet and holy believer; For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people, all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations; Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control. -------Melvin B. Tolson: Dark Symphony "They tell us to forget The Golgotha we tread. . . We show are scourged with hate, A price upon our head. They who have shackled us Require of us a song, They who have wasted us Bid us condone the wrong. They tell us to forget Democracy is spurned. They tell is to forget The Bill of Rights is burned. Three hundred years we slaved, We slave and suffer yet: Though flesh and bone rebel, They tell us to forget! Oh, how can we forget Our human rights denied? Oh, how can we forget Our manhood crucified? When Justice is profaned And plea with curse is met, When Freedom's gates are barred, Oh, how can we forget?.... The New Negro Breaks the icons of his detractors, Wipes out the conspiracy of silence, Speaks to his America.... The New Negro, Hard-muscled, Fascist-hating, Democracy ensouled, Strides in seen-league boots Along the Highway of Today Toward the Promised Land of Tomorrow!... VI. Tempo di Marcia Out f abysses of Illiteracy, Through the labyrinths of Lies, Across the waste lands of Disease . . . We advance! Out of the dead-ends of Poverty, Through the wildernesses of Superstition, Across the barricades of Jim Crowism . . . We advance! With the Peoples of the World . . . We advance! 1945 - Richard Wright: Black Boy "H. L. Mencken. I knew by hearsay that he was the editor of the American Mercury, but aside from that I knew nothing about his. The article was a furious denunication of Mencken, concluding with one, hot, short sentence: Mencken is a fool.... I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen, consumed with hate, denouncing everything American, extolling everything European or German, laughing at the weaknesses of people, mocking God, authority. What was this? I stood up, trying to realize what reality lay behind the meaning of the words . . . Yes, this man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club. Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for there they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as a weapon? No. It frightened me. I read on and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it.... I had once tried to write, had once reveled in feeling, had let my crude imagination roam, but the impulse to dream had been slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing.... I forged more notes and my trips to the library became frequent. Reading grew into a passion.... I read Dreiser's Jenner Gerhardt and Sister Carrie and they revived in me a vivid sense of my mother's suffering; I was overwhelmed.... I now knew what being a Negro meant. I could endure the hunger. I had learned to live with hate. But to feel that there were feelings denied me, that the very breath of life itself was beyond my reach, that more than anything else hurt, wounded me. I had a new hunger. In bouying me up, reading also cast me down, made me see what was possible, what I had missed. My tension returned, new, terrible, bitter, surging, almost too great to be contained. I no longer felt that the world about me was hostile, killing; I knew it..... I smiled each day, fighting desperately to maintain my old behavior, to keep my disposition sunny. But some of the white men discerned that I had begun to brood.... I knew of no Negroes who read the books I liked and I wondered if any Negroes ever thought of them. I knew that there were Negro doctors, lawyers, newspapermen, but I never saw any of them. When I read a Negro newspaper I never caught the faintest echo of my preoccupation in its pages. I felt trapped and occasionally, for a few days, I would stop reading. But a vague hunger would come over me for books, books that opened up new avenues of feeling and seeing, and again I would forge another note to the white librarian. Again I would read and wonder as only the naive and unlettered can read and wonder, feeling that I carried a secret, criminal burden about with me each day.... I told none of the white men on the job that I was planning to go north; I knew that the moment they felt I was thinking of the North they would change toward me. I would have made them feel that I did not like the life I was living, and because my life was completely conditioned by what they said or did, it would have been tantamount to challenging them.... I could drain off my restlessness by fighting with Shorty and Harrison. I had seen many Negroes solve the problem of being black by transferring their hatred of themselves to others with a black skin and fighting them. I would have to be cold to do that, and I was not cold and I could never be.... It was when the Garveyites spoke fervently of building there own country, of someday living within the boundaries of a culture of their own making, that I sensed the passionate hunger of their lives, that I caught a glimpse of the potential strength of the American Negro.... Their [Negro Communists'] emotional certainty seemed buttressed by access to a fund of knowledge denied to ordinary men, but a day's observation of their activities was sufficient to reveal all their thought processes....Communism, instead of making them leap forward with fire in their hearts to become masters of ideas and life, had frozen them at an even lower level of ignorance than had been theirs before they met Communism." 1952 - Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man "The point now is that I found a home--or a hole in the ground, as you will. Now don't jump to the conclusion that because I call my home a "hole" it is damp and cold like a grave; there are cold holes and warm holes. Mine is a warm hole. And remember, a bear retires to his hole for the winter and lives until spring; then he comes strolling out like the Easter chick breaking from its shell. I say all this to assure you that it is incorrect to assume that because I'm invisible and live in a hole, I am dead. I am neither dead nor in a state of suspended animation. all me Jack-the-Bear, for I am in a state of hibernation." 1969 - Amiri Baraka: Black Art Poems are bullshit unless they are teeth or trees or lemons piled on a step. Or black ladies dying of men leaving nickel hearts beating them down. Fuck poems and they are useful, wd they shoot come at you, love what you are, breathe like wrestlers, or shudder strangely after pissing. We want live words of the hip world live flesh & coursing blood. Hearts Brains Souls splintering fire. We want poems like fists beating niggers out of Jocks or dagger poems in the slimy bellies of the owner-jews. Black poems to smear on girdlemamma mulatto bitches whose brains are red jelly stuck between 'lizabeth taylor's toes. Stinking Whores! we want "poems that kill." Assassin poems, Poems that shoot guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys and take their weapons leaving them dead with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland. Knockoff poems for dope selling wops or slick halfwhite politicians Airplane poems, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . .tuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuh . . .rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . . Setting fire and death to whities ass. Look at the Liberal Spokesman for the jews clutch his throat & puke himself into eternity . . . rrrrrrrr There's a negroleader pinned to a bar stool in Sardi's eyeballs melting in hot flame Another negroleader on the steps of the white house one kneeling between the sheriff's thighs negotiating coolly for his people. Aggh . . . stumbles across the room . . . Put it on him, poem. Strip him naked to the world! Another bad poem cracking steel knuckles in a jewlady's mouth Poem scream poison gas on beasts in green berets Clean out the world for virtue and love, Let there be no love poems written until love can exist freely and cleanly. Let Black people understand that they are the lovers and the sons of warriors and sons of warriors Are poems & poets & all the loveliness here in the world We want a black poem. And a Black World. Let the world be a Black Poem And Let All Black People Speak This Poem Silently or LOUD ------Haki R. Madhubuti: a poem to complement other poems "change. life if u were a match i wd light i unto something beautiful. change. change. for the better into a realreal together thing. change, from a make believe nothing on corn meal and water. change. change. from the last drop to the first, maxwellhouse did. change. change from a programmer for IBM, thought him was a brown computer. change. colored is something written on southern out-houses. change. greyhound did., i mean they got rest rooms on buses. change. change. change nigger. saw a nigger hippy, him wanted to be different. changed. saw a nigger liberal, him wanted to be different. changed. saw a nigger conservative, him wanted to be different. changed. niggers don't u know that niggers are different. change. a doublechange. nigger wanted a double zero in front of his name; a license to kill, niggers are licensed to be killed. change. a negro: some- thing pigs eat. change. i say change into a realblack righteous aim. like i don't play saxophone but that doesn't mean i don't dig 'trane.' change. change. hear u coming but yr / steps are too loud. change. even a lamp post changes nigger. change, stop being an instant yes machine. change. niggers don't change they just grow. that's a change; bigger and better niggers. change, into a necessary blackself. change, like a gas meter gets higher. change, like a blues song talking about a righteous to- morrow. change, like a tax bill getting higher. change, like a good sister getting better. change, like knowing wood will burn, change. know the realenemy. change, change nigger, standing on the corner, thought him was cool. him still standing there. it's winter time, him cool. change, know the realenemy. change: him wanted to be a TV star. him is. ten o'clock news. wanted, wanted. nigger stole some lemon & lime popsicles, thought them were diamonds. change nigger change. know the realenemy. change: is u is or is u aint. change. now now change. for the better change. read a change. live a change. read a blackpoem. change. be the realpeople. change. blackpoems will change: know the realenemy. change. know the realenemy. change yr / enemy change know the real change know the realenemy change, change, know the realenemy, the realenemy, the real realenemy change your the enemies / change your change your change your enemy change your enemy. know the realenemy, the world's enemy. know them know them know them the realenemy change your enemy change your change change change your enemy change change change change your change change change, your mind nigger. ------Mari Evans: I Am a Black Woman I am a black woman the music of my song some sweet arpeggio of tears is written in a minor key and I can be heard humming in the night Can be heard humming in the night. I saw my mate leap screaming to the sea and I / with these hands / cupped the lifebreath from my issue in the canebrake I lost Nat's swinging body in a rain of tears and heard my son scream all the way from Anzio for Peace he never knew . . . . I learned Da Nang and Pork Chop Hill in anguish Now my nostrils know the gas and these trigger tire / d fingers seek the softness in my warrior's beard I am a black woman tall as a cypress strong beyond all definition still defying place and time and circumstance assailed impervious indestructible Look on me and be renewed 1970 - Robert Hayden: El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) The icy evil that struck his father down and ravished his mother into madness trapped him in violence of a punished self struggling to break free.... Sometimes the dark that gave his life its cold satanic sheen would shift a little, and he saw himself floodlit and eloquent: yet how could he, "Satan" in The Hole. guess what the waking dream foretold?... He X'd his name, became his people's anger, echoed them to vengeance for their past; rebuked, admonished them, their scourger who would shame the, drive them from the lush ice gardens of their servitude.... Time. "The martyr's time," he said. Time and the karate killer, knifer, gunman. Time that brought ironic trophies as his faith twined sparking round the bole, the fruit of neo-Islam. "The martyr's time."... He fell upon his face before Allah the faceless in whose blazing Oneness all were one. He rose renewed renamed, became much more than there was time for him to be. 1978 - Maya Angelou: Still I Rise You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me down in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries. Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't take it awful hard 'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin' in my own back yard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise. 1980 -June Jordan: Poem about My Rights Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear my head about this poem about why I can't go out without changing my clothes my shoes my body posture my gender identity my age my status as a woman alone in the evening / alone on the streets / alone not being the point / the point being that I can't do what I want to do with my own body because I am the wrong sex the wrong age the wrong skin and suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach / or far into the woods and I wanted to go there by myself thinking about God / or thinking about children or thinking about the world / all of it disclosed by the stars and the silence: I could not go and I could not think and I could not stay there alone as I need to be alone because I can't do what I want to do with my own body and who in the hell set things up like this and in France they say if the guy penetrates but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me and if after stabbing him if after screams if after begging the bastard and if even after smashing a hammer to his head if even after that if he and his buddies fuck me after that then I consented and there was no rape because finally you understand finally they fucked me over because I was wrong I was wrong again to be me being me where I was / wrong to be who I am which is exactly like South Africa penetrating into Namibia penetrating into Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Backland and if after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to self-immolation of the villages and if after that we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they claim my consent: Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what in the hell is everybody being reasonable about and according to the Times this week back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they killled hime and before that it was Patrice Lumumba and before that it was my father on the campus of my Ivy League school and my father afraid to walk into the cafeteria because he said he was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong gender identity and he was paying my tuition and before that it was my father saying I was wrong saying that I should have been a boy because he wanted one / a boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and that I should have had straighter hair and that I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should just be one / a boy and before that it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me to let the books loose to let them loose in other words I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A. and the problems of South Africa and the problems of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white America in general and the problems of the teachers and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social workers and my particular Mom and Dad / I am very familiar with the problems because the problems turn out to be me I am the history of rape I am the history of rejection of who I am I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of my self I am the history of battery assault and limitless armies against whatever I want to do with my mind and my body and my soul and whether it's about walking out at night or whether it's about the love that feel or whether it's about the sanctity of my vagina or the sanctity of my national boundaries or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity of each and every desire that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic and indisputably single and singular heart I have been raped be- cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic the wrong sartorial I I have been the meaning of rape I have been the problem everyone seeks to eliminate by forced penetration with or without the evidence of slime and / but let this be unmistakable this poem is not consent I do not consent to my mother to my father to the teachers to the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the pardon idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in cars I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name My name it my own my own my own and I can't tell you who the hell set things up like this but I can tell you that from now on my resistance my simple and daily and nightly self-determination may very well cost you your life