African American/Black Writing & Visual Art
"Den of Iniquity" mixed media artwork by Mark Harris
Reflection Question:
How does the top of the image relate to what's underneath in the past and in the present? Where do you locate yourself?
“Start ‘em Early” sculpture by Lorraine Bonner
Reflection Question:
What does "Start 'em Early" evoke about intergenerational trauma, the legacy of slavery, and the impact of education?
U Have the Right by James Cagney
You have the right to be right. You have the right To Claim, To Rename, To Redefine.
You have the right To Judge / To Frisk / To Choke. You have the right to remain standing; to remain whole, without being questioned. You have the right to ignore others’ rights. To speak for all victims and tell a room of widowed mothers to shut up.
You have the right to Not See Color and firebomb diversity out of your field of vision. You have the right To Invade, To Displace, To Demoralize. You have the right to feel easily threatened. You have the right to the right side of history and to enjoy the good weather of a touring oppressor.
You have the right to trivialize the memorials of our dead while your missing daughters are canonized their schools closed and festooned with roses.
You have the right to be inconvenienced by protests, by funerals, by the lives you didn’t approve. Yfou have the right to ride to hounds To turn lynching into a fraternal hazing workout To turn lynching into a popup shop or video game app and award souvenirs.
You have the right to not see the problem / To browse safari thru our communities. To love wild animals while dismissing grown men as savages / as monkeys. You have the right to prefer a comfortable lie over the truth.
You have the right to claim genocide as culture; To fellate weapons & sponsor the indignity of war; to see war as a product, to copyright its blood.
You have the right to justify torture and take selfies with the dead.
You have the right to be both the victim and the knife in the dark; To be the dark itself & the light glinting off the blade; to be ubiquitous and unseen.
You have the right to Ethnically Cleanse Until Culturally Clean & Repeat. You have a right to misunderstand history Just Enough then edit the facts that make you uncomfortable.
You have the right To Condescend, To Humiliate, To Desecrate; To redefine words used against you and dismiss our testimony; To control our prescriptions while telling us we’re crazy.
You have the right to riot in the name of football; torch buses and Dumpsters not in your backyard—whether you win or lose; anarchy as good fun! Boys being boys! and all…
You have the right not to be questioned; to never be held accountable. To in fact do the accounting! To claim what hasn’t been offered.
You have the right To Shoot & Not to Be Shot. You have the right to demand God act on your order with the Power of Now. You have the right to complain when our prayers get too loud.
If you ask me to swear on a Bible, I have the right to ask if you’ve read it.
Anything in your history can but will never be used against you.
Knowing and understanding that if you cannot remember which of your grandparents were members of the Klan, then your history will be expunged.
You have the right to hope your enemies don’t read history. You have the right to have no enemies. You have the right to close your door on their grievances.
You have the right not to be sorry. You have the right to be armed and assumed innocent. You have the right to protect your best interests. You have the right of way. You have the right to be right.
James Cagney is poet and the author of Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour of Chaos Theory (Nomadic Press, 2018), winner of the PEN Oakland 2019 Josephine Miles Award; Martian: The Saint Of Loneliness (Nomadic Press), awarded the 2021 James Laughlin Award. And Ghetto Koans: A Personal Archive (Black Lawrence Press, 2025) James is a Cave Canem fellow who lives in Oakland.
Reflection Question:
What race is "you" in this poem? What race is the speaker? How are sarcasm and irony used to interrogate society by commonly used terms?
I Know We Can!!! by Avotcja
We have been here before
We’ve sang in the face of the Klan
And danced with feet all bloody
On the decks of Slave Ships
On the “Longest Walk”
On Freedom Marches, in Jail cells
And Concentration Camps
Oooops Ghettos
That we were supposed to call our home
We know this place
The Concrete Jungles, the Reservations
A curse of & by the uncivilized
Who have forgotten
The healing beauty of Grass & Trees
And the gift of clean Water to drink
And have lost their ability to love
We are familiar with
The senseless mayhem of perpetual War
The addictive lust for power
The intoxication of blood lust
And those who prefer
The inhumane sacrifice of their Souls
As they try to steal ours
Yes
We have been here before
We know the Hanging Tree, the rope
The rape of our bodies, our Cultures
The theft of our Songs & our Children
We have swam through the slime of misogyny
We’ve been here… we know
Racism, greed & stupidity have no conscious
And it is only a matter of time
Before the insatiable self-destruct
Before they devour each other
We’ve been through it all before
And we can get through it all again
We just have to be careful
Very careful…
The madness of this Narcotic is contagious
We must not get drunk on the stench of this poison
We have too much work to do
We must turn this suicidal Drug
Into fertilizer & let our tears
Fall down on deserts, glaciers & jungles
And run down the faces of
Good hearted people everywhere
I cry & I cry & I cry &
My tears come down like a Waterfall
An unending Waterfall for all the victims of
“Civilization”
We have been here before & together we can heal!
I know we can!!!
“7089” wheat paste by Chip Thomas, Oakland, 2016. Photo by Edsel Rivera.
James “Chip” Thomas, MD, was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, son of an African American doctor. He has lived and worked on the Navajo Nation Reservation for over 25 years as an Indian Health Services physician. He is also a photographer, artist, and activist aka Jetsonorama. His large, wheat-pasted black-and-white images focusing on cultural visibility and social justice have appeared in the Southwest, in Oakland and elsewhere.
Reflection Questions:
What would help the U.S. move away from incarceration as the answer to violence, crime, and people's fears? How have Black communities been impacted by our carceral systems more than others?
Avotcja has been published in English & Spanish in the USA, Mexico & Europe. She’s an award winning Poet & multi instrumentalist. She’s a popular Bay Area DJ & Radio Personality on KPFA and KPOO.& leader of the group “Avotcja & Modúpue” (The Bay Area Blues Society’s Jazz Group Of The Year in 2005 & 2010). Avotcja teaches Creative Writing & Drama & is a proud member of DAMO (Disability Advocates Of Minorities Org.), PEN Oakland, California Poets In The Schools, Local 1000 American Federation of Musicians & an ASCAP recording artist. Her Book is With Every Step I Take 2 (Taurean Horn Press 2022) can be found on AbeBooks.
Reflection Question:
What victories from the past are being eroded today, and what actions are you taking to address that?
The Thrift Shop by André Le Mont Wilson
I was sixteen in 1980 Los Angeles, when I decided to visit the last thrift shop along my record scavenging route between school and the bus stop. The shop resembled a converted house with its pitched roof and small space. I opened the screen door, exited the light, and entered the den.
“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!” The thrift shopkeeper laughed at a daytime talk show on homosexuality. I never paid much attention to shopkeepers, but this one stood tall, big, old, and white to this sixteen-year-old black boy. The shopkeeper rested his head on his hand as he sniggered at the television set on his glass counter which contained jewelry and medals. He stopped laughing and shifted
his eyes from the queers on TV to the one who walked in his door.
I asked, “Do you have any records?”
He answered, “Right over there,” pointing to cardboard boxes on the Persian rug.
“Thank you.”
I knelt at my first box. My nose inhaled the aroma of old vinyl. Hands searched the records. Flip. Flip. Flip. Fingers found the motion picture soundtrack to Jesus Christ Superstar. It was a double album! My oldest brother took me to see this movie musical in 1973. I have watched it on TV every Easter since.
I next found The Carpenters. This 1971 album put the brother and sister duo on the pop charts with their hits “Superstar,” “For All We Know,” and, my favorite, “Rainy Days and Mondays (Always Get Me Down)”!
I was on a roll now. If I found these gems among the albums, what gems awaited among the singles? I raised my head from the last box of albums and asked the shopkeeper, “Do you have any singles?”
“Right over there.” He pointed to a record rack which stood in the middle of the aisle like a Christmas tree.
I rushed the rack. I browsed the records. Click. Click. Click.
A voice behind me warned, “You steal any of my records, I’ll shoot you.”
I turned. Behind the glass counter, the white shopkeeper aimed a gun at me. The thought flashed my mind, Is that gun real? I saw his eyes and knew. The gun is real.
My Mama never gave me THE TALK, the talk many African American parents give their children about what to do when confronted by a person with a gun, but I instinctively knew not to talk back nor to make sudden moves. I also instinctively knew that I could do everything right and still end up dead. I could do nothing at all and still end up dead. Too scared to run, I continued to browse records. Click. Click. Click.
Waving his gun, the shopkeeper hurled insults. “You Verdugo Hills boys suck. Your people are always coming in here stealing my records!”
Click. Click. Click. My hands shook as I slid a single from its sleeve. I was unable to focus on the artist’s name, the song title, the single’s condition. I told myself, Andre, whatever you do, don’t drop the record, because you’ll have to make a sudden move to pick it up.
Finding I would not flee and confirm his suspicions that I was a thief, the shopkeeper struck up a one-way conversation with me at gunpoint. “I have a son. He’s in college. He’s the quarterback on the football team. Now, he has a colored roommate who’s his bodyguard. In fact, all the colored boys on his team are his bodyguards. They make sure no one messes with him on or off the field. Them mothers got shoulders this big.” Gun in hand, he stretched his arms wide, and then returned the gun to aim at me.
He said this as if I should be proud that “my people,” black bodyguards, protected his white son. By aiming the gun at me, the father let it be known that if black bodyguards protected his son, a black gun protected the father. More interested in The Carpenters than in quarterbacks, I feared he would shoot me if I failed to show enthusiasm for his story. I squeaked, “Wow.” I examined every single on the record rack without wanting one.
Nodding his gun, the shopkeeper demanded, “Aren’t you going to buy more records?”
Is he forcing me at gunpoint to buy records? “I did not find anything I like,” I lied. I feared he would shoot me if I did not buy something. I made my first of three dangerous moves. With Jesus Christ Superstar and The Carpenters tucked under my arms, I walked towards a man holding a gun at me. “How much for these albums?”
“Two-fifty.”
As much as I dared as I glared at his gun, I protested, “Two-fifty for this? Look at the cover. It’s worn around the edges.” Actually, I only had two dollars on me. I feared he would shoot me if I returned one of the albums.
“All right, then two dollars.”
“It’s a deal.”
But we did not shake on it. I then made my second dangerous move. I reached into my pocket to pull out my wallet. The shopkeeper leaned back from the counter, his gun leveled at me. I placed the ones on the counter.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Have a nice day now, you hear?”
I made my third dangerous move. I turned my back on a man holding a gun at me. I walked toward the door. My back arched. I waited for the bullets, the pain, the loss of consciousness. I prayed, Please, don’t shoot me in the back. Please don’t shoot me in the back. Nothing happened. I left the man with his TV and his gun as his only companions. I exhaled when I walked outside.
Of all the things I remember, I recall the peculiar quality of the sunlight found nowhere else in this world. The white stucco walls and gray concrete sidewalks reflected sunlight I thought I would never see again. I blinked at the sun and thought, I’m alive.
A version of “The Thrift Shop” was first published in the online journal, Not Your Mother’s Breast Milk.
André Le Mont Wilson was born the son of poets in Los Angeles. He began writing his own poems after his parents’ deaths in 2012. He honed his skill at telling five minute stories at Moth StorySLAMS in San Francisco and Berkeley before switching to writing essays. “Quarry,” his first flash nonfiction, was first published in sPARKLE + bLINK 98 in 2019. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2018.
Reflection Questions:
Have you been threatened with a gun before? What are some ways we could address gun violence and racism to prevent experiences like the one André Le Mont Wilson wrote about in this essay?