new reads

walked into my borders bookstore in Charlotte, only to find it's going out of business. Yellow, red, and black signs - 20% to 40% off - nudged me into buying things. After prodding and poking into books for hours, i picked up this month's copy of  Arise Magazine, the VIBE- with the Amber Rose  cover, and lord of the flies. happy with my picks.

I highly recommend this mag

look what i learned in hip hop school mama!

my final assessment for hip hop allows me to be creative. thumbs up.

cracking knuckles. time to loosen those creative juices too readily squelched by the heat of academic writing, looming deadlines, tricky conversations, imminent grades, tuition bills and liquid summer-time temptations...

As a framework for this endeavor, I am using David Kirkland's essay, "For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When Social Networking Was Enuf." This text struck chords on keys in my soul by allowing a voice to emerge I always knew but never knew. by saying its okay to write yourself into and onto everyday landscapes. by allowing me to sift through this thing called "bein a woman &  bein colored." by giving me the push to grow my own pheminism. to explore myself and others in multi-modal contexts.

The entries below are my reflections on my hip hop course both explicitly and indirectly. I've reflected on ways the course lends itself to fueling conversations around justice in classrooms,

I've put myself out there to define my own organic pheminism through poetry

I've inked my story

and considered the language of the oppressed at it relates to classrooms

I've daydreamed about my place in hip hop as a female

I've poked my nose in student poetry/rap

and I've thought about ways in which memory impacts identity- through hip hop...

my reflections are still sparse, skeleton-like in nature, but honest.

I've learned that I've learned a lot and processing that is in its first stages, but well underway.

call Me My Name

Bodies can render personal identities visible   

                   -Kirkland

"...you probably want to put it the other way so other people can read it," he says.

i think for a moment.            nope. i stand on the black and white checkered floor of the Ace of Spades Tattoo shop amid my certainties and uncertainties. My right arm outstretched and open. it's ready for the momentary rush of needles set to inscribe the name I've scribbled on a blank piece of paper- a name I've always known. always called myself. 

And as I stand in this strange room, I'm pulled back to memories.  

                        station wagon rides through Rancocas on the way to elementary school. 

 hearing my mom impart disconnected pieces of a life I can only access through the voices of others. she answers my period punctuated questions- she in the front, me in the back. 

                     "did i have a twin." 

                       no. 

                    "Did i have a brother. sisters."

                      if you did, she says, we would have adopted them too.

The questions trail as I begin to fill on the information. Even as a little girl I learn to take these pieces in moderation, mindful of how it leaves me breathless, often too contemplative.

"your name was Rosa." she adds without a question to prompt. "Rosa" hangs in the air... It doesn't quite roll off tongues in any pretty-type fashion. rather it flops off. belly flops into my little girl mind. I can remember sitting in the back of the station wagon, silently shifting and sifting this word in my head, trying to mark it as my own.  imagining this other life, this world connected to this name. Feeling like Harold with his purple crayon, I sketch narratives to tuck away for myself - to lock up in the safe spaces of little girl imaginations. only ready to come out and play when heads hit pillows before bedtime.

I pay my 100 dollars, tip included, and indulge in my fresh ink. Rosa. in my cursory script. my story, rendered visible. 

horizontal across the inside of the forearm. facing me, for me. and she's all mine. 

already feeling closer to my own skin, I'm 

loving this literature ink. 

I'm ready to see the discourses it engenders for myself and for others. 

i'm feeling greedy and good. 

Brave New Voices: A Look at the Evolution of Hip Hop

In my hip hop class, I asked my professor a question he eventually had me answer on my own. I asked him in many more words:  if hip hop is a platform for voice, where's mine?
drake gave me footing for my answer. hip hop, just like any other art, any culture, subsists on its ability to adapt and evolve. . . evolution is predicated in many ways on authenticity- which needs to arrive organically.





Thank Me Later: Hip-Hop During The Drake Era (short documentary) from Alexander Allen on Vimeo.

Drake just wasn't afraid to be him...





shouts to HipHop Since1987

Midnight Poetry Snacks

Up late night reading, feeding my addiction to learn.




Poem at Twenty-Six

it is midnight
no magical bewitching
 hour for me...
                    -Sonia Sanchez

a weak soul once told me she wanted to be wanted.
a fragile little girl once cried me she couldn't find her mama
a baby child once walked a thousand miles in my shoes.

The Buried Life

My mind is dreaming, dreamy, and faraway today. I'm not trying to fight any battles or do the right thing, I just want to Be. . . The freedom of writing and imagination are my allies. This entry will be scattered; it will not be a linear narrative. 

When you first start writing...you're scared to death that if you don't get that sentence right that minute it's never going to show up again. And it isn't. But it doesn't matter-another one will, and it'll probably be better. And I don't mind writing badly for a couple of days because I know I can fix it- and fix it again and again and again, and it will be better... Morrison

 Thanks Mama, I needed that.

it was between this and Carl Thomas's Summer Rain- im feelin like Brasil today

 

I've been fantasizing about and romanticizing the nomadic life.There's something magical about rootlessness. I live vicariously through this video as I sit with my second coffee of the day, sprawled magazines, and scholarly journal photocopies. final paper sits on another tab, awaiting to be tended.

I found this dope store today and promised myself after I get at least 3 pages of this paper done I can shop- it's called elementality- i'm diggin the aesthetics and the one-of-kindness of it. All of their stuff is made by the artist, for the people.

Elementality  http://www.elementalityonline.com/home.html

i mostly love the tattoo placement here- a kiss: simple and clean.
if i weren't a chicken, i'd do it.

I just might snag these necklaces. I love their delicacy and assumed strength.

purdy.


















They are also looking for artists to contribute to the mix... throwin it out there.


k ciao

Been Readin' 5/19

--I found all these drafts i'd written and never hit publish, some of them are unfinished, but I'm clicking publish post today.  
this one was dated 5/19
Been reading all types of new material. Poking my nose in genres I've never even heard before and buying books just because the author's names sound dope. It's an experiment in trying new things, I guess. I've made my system formulaic.

So, this new book I bought is one in surrealism. I've been dabbling a bit in  dream psychology-not to say this is a new phenomenon, i've always been fascinated by dreams- and I am intrigued by the natural story lines that occur to us every night. My dreams are beyond vivid.


Can't seem to get any silence; a sound I'd say whose power is acutely underestimated.