Introduction of Marlon James at Cornell University by Carole Boyce Davies

  Carole Boyce Davies and Marlon James, Ithaca, NY, 12 Oct 2017. 

Photo by Stephanie Vaughn

MARLON JAMES INTRODUCTION
The Creative Writing Program of the Department of English, Cornell University
Fall 2017 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series
presents:

Marlon James, Novelist

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned;
Until there are no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation;
Until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes;
Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race;
Until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.
Until bigotry and prejudice and malicious and inhuman self-interest have been replaced by understanding and tolerance and good-will;
Until all Africans stand and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as they are in the eyes of Heaven;

The chorus as we know is:  “There will be war,” a promise of unending violence. And we already know that these wars are both across national boundaries; but often internal as well. And in the case of the Americas, the violence of indigenous genocide, the African maafa and the succeeding three centuries of enslavement and continuing colonialism, American imperialism and its attending ills, have cumulatively produced a certain unending violence, often re-enacted within groups. 

These words from Haile Selassie’s  1963 speech to the United Nations are just as relevant now as they were over fifty years ago. I begin with them deliberately.  They inspired  and were charged by Jamaican reggae legend Bob Marley in one of his classics. It is significant to mention these two conjunctions, as they are precisely what animates Marlon James’s classic text.  Bob Marley functions as a veiled fictional presence in Marlon James’s prize winning,  A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014). Bob Marley was the voice of  resistance, throughout the US and Caribbean Black Power period, (1970’s-90’s) engaging political and knowledge fields like Pan Africanism,  Rastafari, the African Diaspora, Human Rights but also Love, Sexuality and liberation, for a generation, with rhythms and lyrics that became movement anthems that still endure.  In many ways the singer, as he is termed in this novel,  becomes the creative metaphor  or center of the text, if one exists;  but also the one who in many ways generates the text and around whom but also to whom, some of the killing is directed. Marlon lets us see the singer through the eyes of several male characters but also through the voice of Nina Burgess the most fully developed woman in the text, who lives to migrate to the U.S. 

But around the singer as around Nina Burgess, who functions as a witness,  there is an extreme masculinized violence  in language, as in politics and definitely in practice, that populates this not at all brief history.  Some call it a polyphony others a cacophony  or even a whirlwind of voices, another,  a collage of voice through which these stories are told in a cast of characters already made it seems for screen and optioned by HBO.   Here the dead speak right from the start. Here assassins execute; CIA agents operate; killers kill; drug dealers deal in what all reviewers agree is an epic novel, taking Caribbean literature fully into new possibilities.  For one of his fellow Jamaican writers, Geoffrey Philp author of Garvey’s Ghost  the following assessment:  “Compared to earlier writers, Marlon does not prettify or romanticize the violence.  He pushes the boundaries of what is possible in Caribbean writing and goes to places in his writing that many of us have not dared to go.”  

For me, a Caribbean-American feminist critic,  Marlon James had revealed his ability to develop a space for women and resistance in The Book of Night Women.  (2009)  set in plantation Jamaica in which before “Django”  we have an enslaved woman, killing a rapacious slave master and burning down a plantation great house (think of a Linda Brent who does not hide in the attic for seven years) and walking away from the act.  Still my favorite is his John Crow’s Devil  (2005 )  an experimental and surprisingly beautiful encounter  with his version Caribbean magic realism,  sexuality, insanity, possession, the supernatural with corrupt evangelical ministers as the lead characters,  all carried out in a Caribbean country side,  which will never make it into the tourist brochures. This book we learn was rejected over 70 times. For the would-be writers in the audience:  Courage!

Marlon James who describes himself as a post-post-colonial, in the sense of no longer having to deal with the UK but with the USA was born in Jamaica in 1970.  He writes about his coming into himself as a writer and in claiming his sexual identity in “From Jamaica to Minesota to Myself” New York Times, March 10, 2015. And finding himself in Minnesota,  even as he gains international fame, he remains grounded,  as  he wrote, after the acquittal of the police killer of Philando Castille, the realities of  the psychic and physical violence of continuing racism and the possibilities of accidental  or deliberate police execution  as a reality for black people in America.  It is a classic critique which I recommend to all titled:  “Smaller, And Smaller, and Smaller” (June 17, 2017) which my Writing Black Experience read today and had amazing responses to:

I have a big global voice, but a small local one, because I don’t want to be a target, and resent that in 2017, that’s still the only choice I get to have. … I go out of my way to avoid police, because I don’t know how to physically act around them. Do I hold my hands in the air and get shot, Do I kneel and get shot? Do I reach for my ID and get shot?

Do I say I’m an English teacher and get shot? Do I tell them everything I am about to do, and get shot? Do I assume than seven of them will still feel threatened by one of me, and get shot? Do I simply stand and be big black guy and get shot? Do I fold my arms and squeeze myself into smaller and get shot? Do I be a smartass and get shot? Do I leave my iPhone on a clip of me on Seth Meyers, so I can play it and say, see, that’s me. I’m one of the approved black guys. And still get shot?

… You will never know how it feels to realize that it doesn’t matter how many magazines articles I get, or which state names a day after me. Tomorrow when I get on my bike, I am big black guy, who might be shot before the day ends, because my very size will make a cop feel threatened. Or if I’m a woman, my very mouth. And a jury of white people, and people of colour sold on white supremacy will acquit him. And even me hoping for hipster points on my fixed wheel bike, is countered by them thinking I probably stole the bike.

Marlon James won the 2015 Man Booker Prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings, and has also won many other prizes for his other works.  He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and teaches English and creative writing at Macalester College.

Thomas Glave in  his introduction to  Our Caribbean.  A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, (2008)  says:  “What would it be like to attend – to truly hear,  for once – the many conversations that we have had with each other and still need so very much to hear? What would it be like to listen to and now, by way of a gathering of voices like this once, actually observe these conversations between ourselves?”   

I invite you to listen to Marlon James.




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2014 Annual FLASC Symposium Moca @ The Crossroads

2014 Annual FLASC Symposium 

2014 Annual FLASC Symposium  Moca @ The Crossroads

What happens when politics of class and culture collide? 

Saturday, June 14, 2014  |  4 - 8 pm

MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, NORTH MIAMI

770 NE 125 Street, North Miami, FL 33161

While communities across the United States are becoming more diverse, more globally connected and less territorialized, artistic institutions that are entrenched in frozen concepts of representation, interpretation, communication, programming and access; not only have less relevance within their communities,  but find themselves in conflict with the very people for whom they were created.

Join some of the nations leading art scholars as they present the latest information and ideas and delve into the salient questions:

What role can artists and art institutions play with residents who live in an 

increasingly globalized and continually de-territorialized world? 

How can artists and art institutions organize sociopolitical and cultural 

dis/order with this globalized existence?

SPEAKERS

Houston Baker

Distinguished Professor, Vanderbilt University

Jessy Benjamin

Kennesaw State University 

Linda Carty

Syracuse University

William Cordova

Artist, Yale University

Margo Natalie Crawford

Cornell University 

Carole Boyce Davies

Cornell University

Jose Gutierrez

Miami Triennial 

Redell Hearn 

John Hopkins University 

Pete Wayne Lewis

University of Massachusetts 

Satya Mohanty

Cornell University   

Nkiru Nzegwu

New York State University at Binghamton

Alfredo Triff

Miami Dade College/University of Miami

For more information, please call  305.893.6511 x 12110

Special 10th Anniversary Issue of Anthurium: "Intellectual Formations: Locating a Caribbean Critical Tradition."

Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal | University of Miami: 

Anthurium, a peer reviewed Caribbean Studies Journal, publishes original works and critical studies of Caribbean literature, theater, film, art, and culture by writers and scholars worldwide exclusively in electronic form. Founded by Sandra Pouchet Paquet in 2003, Anthurium promotes a lively exchange among writers and scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences and other disciplines who hold diverse perspectives on Caribbean literature and culture and offers a mixture of fiction, poetry, plays, critical essays, cultural studies, interviews, and visual art. Book reviews and bibliographies, special thematic issues and original art and photography are some of the features of this international journal of Caribbean arts and letters.

Current Issue: Volume 10, Issue 2 (2013) "Intellectual Formations: Locating a Caribbean Critical Tradition."

http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/anthurium/

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The Verdict: Trayvon Martin and the Criminalization of Black and Latino Youth

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The Coalition for the Exoneration of Marcus Garvey is petitioning Senator Bill Nelson, Representative Frederica Wilson, and the Congress of the United States of America for the exoneration of Marcus Garvey:

http://www.causes.com/actions/1722148-urge-congress-to-exonerate-civil-rights-leader-marcus-garvey

We are also petitioning President Barack Obama to exonerate Marcus Garvey:

http://signon.org/sign/exonerate-marcus-garvey?source=c.url&r_by=4631897

Thank you for your support..

New Book: Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment

Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment

Editor Carole Boyce Davies

Publication Date:  July 2011

ISBN: 978-0-9562401-6-3

Price: £16.99

Claudia Jones was a smart, politically-wise, brilliant, transnational feminist, Pan Africanist theorist and cultural activist who brought together in her speeches and writings the politics that is now seen as a necessary way of intersecting a variety of political fields and positions. Known as the founder of the first London carnival and the editor of the first black newspaper the West Indian Gazette in England, Claudia Jones’s activism bridged US and the UK with the black world politics of decolonization that ushered in contemporary community empowerment. For the first time, in one place, Claudia Jones Beyond Containment… brings together her essays, poetry, autobiographical and longer writings, expanding our knowledge of several fields. Providing us with the clarity of the ideas of a black woman activist-intellectual of her period, for a fuller understanding of Caribbean, African American and the larger African Diaspora discourses. Claudia Jones Beyond Containment is essential reading.

Important Endorsements for Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment

'Claudia Jones is one of my personal heroines. I spent my formative political years in Claudia Jones’s London stamping ground of Notting Hill – it was the classic centre of post-war black activism in Britain. Most West Indian immigrants in the 1950s came by boat to Southampton and the train from there took them into Paddington. Hence the large black community in that part of West London. So I know people who had worked with Claudia Jones and spoke of her with awe. She founded two of Black Britain’s most important institutions; the first black newspaper, the West Indian Gazette and she was also one of the founding organizers of the Notting Hill Carnival.

The ‘hidden history’ of women’s contribution to progressive politics has been concealed for too long. This important book is part of the process of putting that right. Claudia Jones was an iconic figure who inspired a generation of black activists and deserves to be much more widely known. This book is a fitting memorial.' ~ Diane Abbott, MP, Westminster, London.

'Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment transcends the silencing and erasure historically accorded women of achievement: it makes accessible and brings to wider attention the words of an often   overlooked twentieth-century political and cultural activist, who tirelessly campaigned, wrote, spoke out, organized, edited and published autobiographical writings, poetry, essays on subjects close to her political heart – human rights, peace, struggle related to gender, race and class – this is a collection that unites the many facets of a woman whose identities as a radical thinker and as a black woman are not in conflict.

'Carole Boyce Davies, author of the acclaimed Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (2008), continues the task of ensuring that Claudia Jones takes her rightful place in the exalted list of twentieth-century Caribbean intellectuals in the Diaspora, including her compatriots George Padmore and C.L.R. James, who engaged with the world to make it a more enlightened place and whose legacy still deserves to resonate.' ~ Margaret Busby, OBE, Writer, Broadcaster and Journalist, London.

'Carole Boyce Davies’s brilliant book, Left of Karl Marx, did so much more than recover the life and legacy of Claudia Jones.  She threw down the gauntlet, forcing us to rethink many of the  fundamental assumptions and conceits of Marxism and to come to terms with Claudia Jones’s radical critiques of racism, women’s oppression and colonial rule. But Davies isn’t done. In this stunning collection of Jones’s essays, speeches, autobiographical reflections and poems, Davies not only underscores why Jones stands among the world’s most important radical theorists and organizers of the 20th century, but she reveals the Trinidadian-born, transnational intellectual as artist and visionary.' ~ Robin D. G. Kelly, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern Carolina and author of Freedom Dreams: The Back Radical Imagination.

'Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment lifts veils of ignorance and erasure that obscure a brilliant, 20th century human rights advocate. With this Collection of Jones’s writings, Carole Boyce Davies provides the 21st century with an important opportunity to revisit our collective histories and current struggles shaped by feminist, anti-racist, communist Claudia Jones, a Caribbean-born activist and intellectual who influenced international struggles of blacks, women and workers for social justice.' ~ Joy James, Williams College, USA and author of Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics.

'In Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment, Carole Boyce Davies has uncovered a super-excellent collection.... commendable not only for their breadth-of-scope but largely also for their intellectual sharpness and acuity.... while all based on past events these writings are so very directly relevant today, especially in the manner in which they assist our understanding of contemporary world politics with the US and the Anglo-American bloc playing a leading role. Indeed, Jones’s interventions are as deep and relevant as to provide a direct prognosis of contemporary US imperialism in the era of globalization. There can be absolutely no doubt that Jones was an activist and an ideologue, who used and tirelessly mobilized her identity as a member of the Young Communist League and other organizations to help in the fight to establish a new, more just, equitable and humanitarian social order.' ~ Dr Kwadwo Osei-Nyame Jnr., Lecturer in African Studies, School of Oriental & African Studies, (SOAS), University of London.

Source: http://www.ayebia.co.uk/new-releases.html

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