A collection named for the gifted filmmaker Steven Spielberg, a book that explores the stereotypes we are given by Hollywood and their effect on us all.
Dr. Niama Williams' STEVEN is a psychological triumph. This long overdue Song of Survival, punctuated by the cataclysmic overtures of epiphany, minimalist agreement, and happenstance, is proof that the arrival of the truth does not always come via verbal messenger. From the beginning with "Schindler's List," Dr. Williams asks the film’s director to explain, “robbing a people of their origins." She poignantly points out that Middle Passage descendants live without a traceable identity and unlike the majority, “…cannot fabricate what was deliberately stamped out of existence." Dr. Williams' text provides a tracing of the indelible markings each of us makes on the other, and on the collective consciousness of American society.
Excerpt
SCHINDLER'S LIST
The premiere of Spielberg’s Schindler’s List on network television was, fittingly, a landmark occasion. This first viewing of the film left me not quite the emotional wreck I was after Oprah and Jonathan Demme’s Beloved. What stuck, however, was Spielberg’s question following the longest credits in film history: “When do we begin to hate?” he boldly asked his shell-shocked audience; “that,” he said, “was the question research for this film made me want to answer.”
The answer came to me as easily as if someone had posed a simpler query, such as ”what, pray tell, might be the time?”
Spirit does not die. If we continually make that religious and philosophical statement through ritual and if we remember, then the physically deceased members of the family continue to be a part of that family, and we are assured of immortality. For the family to be healthy, its continuity and wholeness must be continually experienced.
-----Dona Richards, "The Implications of African-American Spirituality"
we begin to hate, steven,
when we are deprived.
your people's songs survive, steven,
ours have been ripped forever.
our progeny know our ancestry only so far
then there is nothing
blank space.
your people's family pictures were destroyed
whole branches of our families were split broken fractured
seeded
forcefully
with foreign seed
and wiped from the griot's memory.
we cannot mourn our dead because we have no names to give them.
their given names
what does this term mean?
in Africa were there given names?
or does the term arise
from a slaveholder
giving you a name.
your songs survive steven
in even my dimmest memory
i have no idea who my people were
i go back so far
and then
dust.
tears.
bodies at the bottom of the ocean.
i could not cry for your people steven
your people have a place to go back to
living monuments
lists names dates places firm memories
spaces in an otherwise complete family tree
for me
for my people
there will always be permanently severed branches
Maafic shears
nothing grows in barrenness
we cannot fabricate what was deliberately stamped out of existence.
i have no home, steven;
my people have no home.
forever, steven.
this is a permanent hurt
an irreparable damage
no foundation can connect me to my people, ever.
the connection is irretrievably lost.
forever, steven.
so no
i could conjure no tears for the jewess in furs
evicted from her home
her gold menorah taken stored catalogued
her descendants at least will know her name
can go to a mass gravesite and point
can go somewhere in Europe and find kin
my people are forever strangers to me steven
i will die and never know
the songs i might have sung
the scars i might have worn with honor
the mutilation i might have suffered.
i have no sympathy for the Schindler Jews, steven
because they were everywhere singing
and my songs are permanently forgotten.
how do you excuse robbing a people of their origins, steven?
what honest film can you make about that?
i have no tears for the Schindler Jews, steven,
because for all their misery, steven,
Holocaust survivors maintain their history
they have records names dates history songs
songs! steven;
memories.
i will forever be a blind woman on the African continent
my people's names stripped even from epic memory
my origins annihilated steven
so i do not mourn for the Schindler Jews, steven;
their malady is finite.
i do not know how long black people will pay
for what we were forced to give America.
and somewhere
somewhere in the place we all wait to be born
my African ancestors starve and wait, steven.
my ancestors starve and wait.
###
THE BALLAD OF BILLY THE KIDD
first view of him
butt in the air
carefully balanced on a piano stool.
cannot believe it has been seventeen years
i have forgotten what to expect.
but then
concerts weren't like this
my high school years.
not this massive.
in on "The Rectum" joke,
i feel a true Easterner
love that he is from long island
fantasize living there.
he starts
he plays
the sound fills an impossibly huge stadium
we sing along
sixty
thousand
of
us.
we know
every
single
word.
when we choose
"the ballad of billy the kidd"
i lose myself:
head bops
braids fly
foot taps
and i
along with the rest
know
every
word.
unless you've been through it
u can't understand--
there is no love
no love
like sixty thousand people
singing your song
back to you.
a song you've composed and written
before many in this audience were born
individually
i doubt many of us would make our own church choirs
but en masse
in this place
the words are soft
if u close ur eyes it sounds whispered
it never rises above a certain octave
but it is steady
permanent
unrelenting.
i wonder how he feels
night after night of such love.
it is not the ovations i would remember
but the audience singing the final chorus of my signature song
no prompting
no accompaniment
no hesitation.
why is it some people are this fortunate
and others sleep on streets?
i do not fault him for this
the author of billy the kid
allentown
the downeaster alexa
admitted "borrower" of boats
he knows.
II.
my girlfriend and i get on the subway
we exit the rectum's new neighbor
i shout so only she can hear
"five and counting"
enumerating the black people i see.
we get on the subway
hedge bets
how many will get off at City Hall
how many stay on til Fernrock.
by Race-Vine she exclaims
"there's none left!"
we laugh
"now we don't have to stay on til Fernrock
to complete our research"
"the billy joel demographic" i laugh.
what i do not say
is how my heart sinks
when the mass of my people
get on at city hall.
i have not noticed the white travelers.
did not look into their faces
judge their eyes.
i only remember one woman
sharply european nose
falsely pink cheeks.
the young one
clutching her program and tshirt
looked at me uncomfortably i realize now
changed her seat.
but as the mass of my people get on
and the whites exit
i am bombarded by the tiredness
the aching feet
the low paying job
the no job
the pot smell
the pregnancy
the first down jackets
the anguish
the depression
the long term ill will.
my mood plummets.
this, I think, is why I hate the ghetto
this is bona fide re-entry
no astronaut
not even Mae
could survive this test.
and we do it
every
damn
day.
i wonder now
how did our grandmothers do it?
how did they go clean those perfect houses
cook on those perfect dishes
and not poison the whole lot?
i was raised to laugh at black folks with french provincial
but now i understand.
if i had to come home
every day
to that heavy despair
that weighted depression
those vacant, hurting eyes
i'd sure as hell kill someone.
every
damn
day.
in this light
drive-bys make sense!
but i remember him
that massive
celestial
chorus
standing in the check cashing place line the other day
my mistake to go on the first
i remember standing there
an thinkin
i got to get outta here
a soul could die in this place.
oyster bay long island
billy, please,
tell me how u got out
tell me
how
u got out
i'm dyin here
and i don't think
a soul
is listening.
BREASTLESS WOMEN
America is afraid
of a full-breasted
heavy-hipped
white woman.
all the big female stars are flatchested;
meryl streep got every role at yale
but she don't have no tits.
hell, even halle berry skinny as a rail
so she plastered all over Essence.
i watched The English Patient
marveled at how natural it was
her dropping her dress
to get in the tub with him.
nothing lewd or obscene
just something natural
lovers do.
but she didn't have no tits either.
flat as an ironing board.
and i thought
where is the naked white woman
with a bustline?
with a butt?
what happened to that blonde model
a few years ago
leaned on that car
in that black and white dress
and changed some minds?
marilyn monroe stroked white women out
women were getting breast enlargements
praying for hips
couldn't deal
with the big legs.
what happened?
we went from marilyn and rita hayworth
pinup girls with somethin to hold on to
to breastless waifs:
meryl sharon stone sandra bullock julia roberts halle
the Waiting To Exhale women had some padding
but bare-bones whitney was the star
the only one we saw in the throes of passion.
what gives, hollywood?
what gives, america?
men are supposed to be attracted to what looks fertile
is breastless in?
then why the newsmagazine story:
women going out of the country
for implants
why only full-breasted women
for porno?
what gives, america?
or is that it?
you can't give?
you cannot nurture?
we've known this since our arrival
the indians learned too late
you cannot nurture
you ridicule signs of plenty
you do not want the appearance of plenty
of lushness
cause then people would ask to eat
to be fed
to be whole.
breastless women.
who did not nurture you, america?
and why have you cut off her limbs?
WHISPERS OF THE HEART is artist and author J. Allen Wilson's second book of poetry.It can be autographed and shipped within 48 hours of order. NO LONGER AVAILABLE.
