A quick look back at September
Dear Friends,
October is putting on its coat and bidding farewell, ready to walk out the door. September lingers in the room awkwardly, jacket slung over its arm, wondering when it will get a chance to say goodbye.
My apologies for the delayed missive. Life, dangerously delicious, unpredictable, unhinged, but decidedly delightful life, got in the way and demanded I dance. How could I not stop for a twirl?
I’ll keep this short since September is impatient to leave.
Thank you for loving the episode on Africanfuturism, Africanjujuism, Afropantheology. I still struggle to find the best word to describe the “historical existence of Africa and her scattered children” as Amiri Bakara describes the multilayered and variously textured nature of how Black/African people experience the continuum of the past, present and future. I do quite like his definition: Afro-Surrealism – the whole of our story retold and foretold, modern tales and old!
D. Scot Miller, author of “The Afrosurreal Manifesto”, distinguishes Afro-Surrealism from other such categorizations by its focus on the present. “There is no need for tomorrow’s-tongue speculation about the future,” he writes. “Concentration camps, bombed-out cities, famines, and enforced sterilization have already happened. To the Afrosurrealist, the Tasers are here. The Four Horsemen rode through too long ago to recall. What is the future? The future has been around so long it is now the past.”
We moved on to discuss folklore (or the lack thereof) in Ousmane Sembène’s Tribal Scars and Other Stories. Did you get a chance to watch Black Girl? It’s a classic of African cinema. I included a link to the full movie in the notes of the episode. We closed out September (and entered October), with a discussion about the women who founded certain groups and clans on the African continent. Threaded through all this, as promised, are invitations to pre-order my upcoming book “The Watkins Book of African Folklore”. I hope you do. I just finished going through the first round of proofreading and it’s a mighty fine book if I do say so myself!
What to Expect from MA in October
More explorations of founding mothers in African history and folklore.
The final installation of this year’s MA Quarterly Essay which investigates the symbolism of neck rings in African ornamental culture.
Thank you, as always, for being here.
Be well,
Helen