That Old Black (Literary) Magic

During the Christmas that I was pregnant, my mother bought me the book African American Writers: Portraits and Visions by Lynda Koolish. Recently, while doing my ongoing research on Maud Cuney-Hare, I happened upon this recorded interview with Koolish.

Green Collar Jobs

Yesterday while driving and running errands I was listening to News and Notes on one of the NPR stations and heard an interview with a man named Van Jones who works with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Cali's Bay Area. His interview centered around a Green Collar Jobs bill that he and some others are working to push through Congress. If accepted, it will allot money to teach the poor/working class about environmentalism and train the people to work in the "green" jobs sector. He raised some really interesting points about the feasibility of the idea and the way that companies are choosing to send the majority of manual labor, blue collar jobs (once avenues that people of color took to escape poverty) to various overseas countries. Since green collar jobs are being phased out and there is such a push for all things "organic," "sustainable" and "eco-friendly"-- especially on the West Coast of the U.S. -- green jobs can occupy the place that blue collar jobs once did.

VJ also spoke about the ways that environmentalism has typically been the domain of the privileged and that they often have goals that seem abstract or remote to people who have concrete economic and health concerns related to the here and now (cuz it's all about the money, ain't a damn thing funny...). When environmentalism is "broken down," spoken about plainly (solar panels as a way to decrease grandma's electric bill, cleaning up the air so that little sis won't have to walk around with an inhaler in her pocket) it opens environmentalism up to a wider audience of people willing to work toward its ends.

Of course, I must say that this attempt to rally such interest is ironic being that most "people of color" are descended from ones for whom there was no name given to environmentalism; it was simply a way of life. Think of truck gardens from back in the day. Or Alice Walker's observations in In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens about rose bushes sprucing up the weathered rural shacks. Even recently it was common to pass by housing projects and be uplifted by the sight of the container garden of a ghetto grandmama (herself a vibrant trans-PLANT from some country locale). And Latinos are still, by and large, landscapers and gardeners and migrant workers. In my neighborhood, many Latino families keep beautiful home gardens. As a matter of fact, just before I gave birth last year, I begged/bought a few tall sunflower stalks (my Oxum side couldn't help herself) from a Mexican family whose yard was filled from one end to the other with them.

In any event, there are lots of little (actually major) sidebars and environmental justice corollaries to this Green Jobs bill, the most obvious and exciting being that such training would be a benefit to the overall health of the workers, their (our) families and communities. Rather than take any more detours allow me to direct you to this Green Options Interview .

(Housing project image at top from The Welcome Project website)

Peace to Maestre Diz

Whether in the form of odes that find their way into some roots-style sambas in Brazil, las ofrendas of Mexico or so many of the other traditional arts, those with souls tied to Latin America have gilded the act of remembering. They are devoted to honoring the living family and remembering the kinfolk hidden behind the veil (Was it Sandra Cisneros who said that for Mexicans the dead aren't gone, they just live--so to speak-- in the next room?). And such a respect there is for teachers!

What I'm driving at is that I came across this interview with Flora Purim where she makes it a point to mention Dizzy Gillespie. Here's a bit of what she had to say:

"If you ever come to my house, there are pictures of [Diz] all over my walls. In the three years I spent singing with the United Nations Orchestra, he taught me so much... He would sit in the back of [the tour bus] with me for several hours telling life stories about his family and things that happened to him. I loved him not just for [what he taught me about music], but I loved him also because he gave me a lot of insight and spirituality..."

Robert Farris Thompson on Daughters of the Dust

Robert Farris Thompson has some insightful things to say about Julie Dash's old film, Daughters fo the Dust. Check out this video clip as well as this fairly new interview with the filmmaker.