Michael Strode > Recent Status Updates

There have been some valuable insights offered here on cultivating deeper collaboration in long term projects by shifting what we ask of spaces we build together. The desire to do effective work must be balanced with the opportunity to build relationships. In this way, the group feels less like an insufferable burden we need to escape than a shared commitment to a different vision of the world.

Not since Julius Lester's "Search For The New Land" have I been so gripped with urgency in consuming a text. Lester wove a historical amalgamation mining news articles, fading memories, personal journals and passing conversations to create a narrative which dabbled in memoir and found poetry. adrienne maree brown is no less extraordinary in constructing a biographical field manual for collaboration and coproduction.

"Land was like the air and water; it could not be owned. The first owners therefore could not have acquired it legitimately. They must have taken it."

The original robbery. Are you complicit in continuing an original robbery by complying with a notion of "property" which is itself an ongoing corruption of the Commons where protection of the private is sacred and the public is always up for interpretation?

A necessary line is often drawn between scholarship and storytelling since so much of the latter form depends upon exaggeration and color, but the best histories desire to give you a bit of both. Jackson has struck that combined chord in this work drawing us through the stories to be informed by the scholarship.

The text rewards patient and diligent readership around the 6th chapter where names begin to appear and the back story of national decrepitude is revealed even as the young people arise in hope once again seeking liberation. The dilemma of leadership in a post-colonial society is examined as achieving a balance between realism and idealism while not falling into the temptation to feed your citizens platitudes.

In the minutiae of history we are certain to discover the subtle undertones which give texture to bold milestones of the past. Those letters traded between organizations and organizers discussing their triumphs, fears and the road ahead. Organizational meeting minutes. Notes which seemed so simple at the time of authorship now suddenly critical for an accurate and complete retelling of the story.

Part of me aches to state that the preface has been the most enjoyable and easy to navigate portion of the text. Here Armah backgrounds his writing process and mild contention with Achebe over a misquote. The lack of character names has found me misplacing myself during many a scene transition. Similar disorientation occurred during Invisible Man and I am hopeful it will pass as he begins to tie off the story.

Each time I feel compelled to cast the text aside as a loquacious discourse of journalistic hodgepodge, I find myself struck by some particular insight discovered as the article draws to its necessary and eventual conclusion. There is a balance of informed authorship, eloquence and cohesiveness which the text fails to achieve, but still much to be learned about how a rigorous press shapes each successive era.

Of the texts on parenting and rites of passage I wish I had encountered 10 years ago, this one holds the distinction of striking the best balance between brevity and completeness. It does not attempt to be exhaustive in its explanation, but seeks only to introduce the reader to the subject matter as springboard for personal investigation. The text does not read as a collection of dictates, but a conversation.

Organizational propaganda is one of the most richly expressed lessons to be drawn from this examination of Panther literature. They adapted quickly to the media landscape by playing up the merits of their victories while publicly reconsidering their failures. Employing this strategy both internal and external to the Party, they used a fierce control of their media narrative to consolidate their community influence.

The possibility exists that only those fortunate enough to study under Ellison at Rutgers or Yale will ever know the full measure of his cultural and literary genius. "Invisible Man" was one revelation while "The Shadow and the Act" are the other. Music, literature or film, he was nothing less than an everyman of the arts speaking self deprecating about his own merit while deeply comprehending the artistic process.

Historical research at this level of specificity is frequently given to navel gazing, but the text was revived for me with the writings on Amelia Johnson and Black separatism which rendered new insights into how the subject was broached in the Black church post Emancipation. There was also a necessary discussion on attaining American citizenship through confrontational discourse between marginalized populations.

Ellison is a lover of ideas and this quality positions him amongst the most admired thinkers in my view. His thoughtful fiction which engaged political dialogue while not being didactic was preceded by a long tenure as a literary and cultural critic giving attention to nature of Blackness as it was processed in the art and literature of his era. Astonishingly enough, he considered these essays as undeveloped work.

The text is rich with a literary momentum similar to Ellison's "Invisible Man" compelling you through the agony of the early conflict. The two protagonists are related finding both searching for acceptable space in a hostile world where "friends" of the Negro stand blind to their own naivete with Norton/Dalton and Jan/Jack each manipulating the Black condition to the accomplishment of their own designs of destiny.

As I am reviewing the fight scene between Gus and Bigger, I am seeing flashes of the film "Juice". Tupac as Bishop being the modern era Bigger Thomas. I didn't realize how many parallels the two narratives shared. Of course, that might be said of many urban movie plots in the 90's.

My primary criticism of this text is that it is so rigidly academic as to be nearly unreadable by the general public. It is a textbook case for fusing historical inquiry with novel writing technique a la Toni Morrison or Howard Zinn in order that you might create a body of literature that can remain both an enjoyable and enriching reading experience rather than being a footnote to a footnote in an academic journal.

The story compels you forward in a slow, willful progression as the ice fractures in the mind of our protagonist and he must reconcile the realization that he is without any identity he might call his own. Even relieving oneself of DuBois' veil of double consciousness affords no solace for one discovers that they are required to start building an entirely new basis on which to engage the world.

Ellison's introduction could have closed with his opening question "What, if anything, is there that a novelist can say about his work that wouldn't be better left to critics?" for what followed was a meandering upon a masterpiece. The Prologue remains exceptional as story staging. One is drawn into curious mind of a character whom validates himself in the world through sabotage for having refused him personhood.

Over the course of this past year fastidiously charting my journey through reading, I have encountered certain texts which I consider essential in documenting and expounding upon the Black experience. There is profuse mythology about the gender relationships in the Black community which this text serves to debunk in addition to fixing the stories of Black women firmly as actors in our struggle.

The Souls of Black Folks remains a richly descriptive and by extension experientially painful work of Black sociological literature. DuBois wrote so freely of the Black condition throughout the New South reaching deeply for understanding of present circumstances in the configuration of the Old South. This analysis is infused with the most subtle judgment leveled against the Black lives he encountered.

My initial inclination to dwell upon Cleaver's psychopathy has softened as I have discovered again certain nuances of his writing which strike high emotional tones. The text still remains a shining example of his hypocritical equivocation and evolving justification of past action preceding his later complete rebuke of the Black Power Movement.

There is something so peculiarly brilliant about the manner in which Lester structured this text. One is presented with what he calls a subjective history where the seriousness of the period since Hiroshima filled with suspicion, protest and war repeatedly overlaps an array of trivial details about the author's love life and career choices. All is woven together with such fluid and vibrant writing.

Turning full circle and arriving now at the essays in remembrance of Hoyt W. Fuller, I am convinced that this is a man whom needs his own compendium of material. He is not eulogized here in a manner that is typical of great writers passing on. He is a legend amongst legends for the force of his worth to a larger struggle than even our present orientation can imagine.

Thus far I have tempered updating between chapters, but this section has me particularly incensed and frustrated. The display of rancid indifference to exploitation is astonishing. Do you want an explanation for a widespread cynicism and disenchantment with the American ideal in the black community? Satter guarantees you an incisive study of how the government and the people were complicit in the rise of the ghetto.

The Preamble of Walker's Appeal provides an intriguing context for the rise and influence of black liberation theology where the theological construct provided the last bastion of "free" intellectual inquiry. Walker mines the potentiality of biblical scripture in order to establish the strongest case for the abolition of slavery calling upon moral suasion, Pan-African struggle and armed self defense when necessary.

One can feel when reviewing the literature of the Party that there are many mistakes to be tallied. I am ready to conclude that these mistakes only seem numerous when we don't consider the amount of actions taken. The Party while often tactical and strategic was still experimental activism. Are we as willing to try and fail in our maneuvers or have we been convinced that we lose time when we don't win every time?

This history of real estate and financial exploitation in Chicago is a veritable Rolling Thunder coaster ride through the peaks and valleys of housing activism. One is driven to such levels of excitement about the height of community engagement that existed amongst the Contract Buyers League only to see attenuation set in throughout the sustained federal trials. Justice is the culmination of extended struggle.

More significant than the intellectual rigor which Wright applies to the development of a black social theory throughout the text is his devotion to the building of black institutions which possess the capacity to transmit this social theory. Ideals without pathways to implementation is comparable to a seed in the wind.

Dr. Wright's assessment offers a bleak and relentless portrayal of the ability of black people to achieve social progress under the constraints of a racial construct which seeks to invalidates their personhood and lends itself to destructive coping mechanisms. While there is much that I might frame in a different manner, I've found it most impossible to disagree with his analysis of our need for a new social theory.

Carter G. Woodson presaged the pitiful state of our educational system and the dissatisfaction of OWS exploding among student groups. When you either fail to educate or poorly educate a growing portion of the population and no one stands against the injustice, it won't be long before that cancer spreads from one part of the body to the most vital organs sustaining the flow of life throughout your being.