My brother is a fast walker.

What crossed my mind was a number of things, all of them related to where I’d come from that morning, how I awoke to a sleeping wife and a five-week old baby, and rode my bicycle from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, over the Manhattan Bridge, and through Manhattan to their cheerily painted office.

Leaving the office, I cycled home, returning to my wife and son.  Nadia’s labor lasted 48 hours. There were times when she was so weak her body was bowed like a heroin addict surfing the earth’s centrifugal force. My son Selah’s eyes are pure sincere.

In the prologue to Woven Stone, the Acoma Indian poet Simon Ortiz writes, “A man makes his prayers; he sings his songs; he considers all that is important and special to him, his home, children, his language, the self that he is. He must make spiritual and physical preparation before anything else. Only then does anything begin.”

This weekend I built a bamboo bicycle. Respect, appreciation and thanks to Justin, Evan, Marty, and Sean at Bamboo Bicycle Studio.

Can I write a novel that is expansive and ambitious? I suppose, we’ll see…

blue laying below and around us,

I give myself in to the whim that if we are to plummet,

Our bodies might fall, but the heart is a bird

Who does not cease.

Whence goes inspiration?

Same place thoughts go during dark days and celebration.

Recalling it all from the erection that forced me to stand

apart from you the first time

we danced when we were twelve

and I was too shy to speak more

than a question

To last night when

I made a decision about forever.

I am

Ready.

Speak to me in the language of love.

Et tu?

BINARY OPPOSITION: “One of several influential characteristics or tendencies of Western and Western-derived thought,^{[citation needed]} and that typically, one of the two opposites assumes a role of dominance over the other. The categorization of binary oppositions is “often value-laden and ethnocentric”, with an illusory order and superficial meaning.” Wikipedia (a contemporary source of truth)

Further Explanation:

The issue is how publishing houses market, publish, and view works by African-American authors and about African-American communities, and how those works are received by the general American public. The argument is that works by African-American authors don’t receive the attention they justly deserve; that historically, most work about the African-American community that does receive attention is written by white authors and thus perpetuates the structures related to colonialism (an assertion that some have naively made about me and Hold Love Strong); and that currently, the most heavily marketed and published work by and about the African-American community is work that perpetuates negative stereotypes, often referred to as Urban Literature or “Street Lit”.

But this is not the problem that needs to be remedied in the world of literature with regards to how it is influenced and constructed by race. Rather, the complaints by African-American writers represent  that we and the wobbled world of books are confronted by a particular disconnect between how as Americans, we perceive ourselves and perceive others. Undoubtedly, it was the white world that conjured up and forwarded the “otherness” of the people of the African Diaspora. But there are also African-American writers who have embraced and celebrated this “otherness” in a manner, which although perhaps self-empowering and integral to their writing, has, in the end, only served to fuel the notion of African-Americans as others and thus a people who can’t be understood or known in an intimate and heartfelt manner by anyone else other than someone who shares their complexion. Of course, this is an ignorant assertion, one which the highly celebrated and respected African-American author  James Baldwin cited as tending to be, “a matter of indigestible fury and slogans and quotations.” In addition, it disregards some of the works of our greatest writers, including that of Baldwin, and the works of authors of other cultures and creeds that aim to do only what writing is meant to do—create community, build empathy, and celebrate our idiosyncrasies and universal humanity.

The complaint by African-American writers is indicative not of publishing but of our society, a place in which our public schools are more segregated and fractured than they were prior to the historic Brown versus Board of Education decision and illiteracy has become a national epidemic, the silent killer of our collective social and economic progress. Therefore the energy put into the arguments by accomplished writers such as Tayari Jones, Bernice McFadden, Martha Southgate, and Carleen Brice to name a few, is commendable and  for the most part accurate, but it is also misguided. For it will not change the racial divisions in the world of books, a condition established and built long before current publishing and reading trends, and it will only serve to further alienate the readers they’re seeking. After all, when was the last time a reader came to a book because its author declared that their work should be more widely received? Thus, as writers in a country in which the value of books and literature is often questioned, we need to ask ourselves when and with whom did we learn to read and appreciate books and with whom and to what degree are our children learning to do so currently.  For it is the homogeneity and the failings  of our schools–where our sons and daughters, the readers of the future, learn the value of stories about people like and unlike themselves–where we find not only the key to our survival as writers but what this fight is all about.

Inspired by the birth of my son, Selah,  and following a meeting with the Editor-in-Chief of Artlog, I’ve reorganized the website, and started to include some of my other projects. I also got  some good news concerning Hold Love Strong, so I figure I should share it.  Recently, I was selected the 2010 Marilyn Hassid Emerging Author by the JCC Houston and Hold Love Strong was selected as the book that The College of Holy Cross’ incoming freshmen class will read this year.

Also, Tikkun Magazine just reviewed HLS in the same breath as the great Israeli writer David Grossman:  “The genre of the novel has a unique capacity to unpack social reality as it manifests in the consciousness of ordinary human beings living through horrendous times. David Grossman and Matthew Aaron Goodman are…” Read the Review Here

So although all we keep hearing about the book world and publishing is that the industry is broken and soon to be dead and that fiction is irrelevant, don’t believe it. In fact, even if it’s true, deny it.  At this juncture in history, the need for creative thought, critical reflection and analysis, and the building of community is too great to do otherwise. So if you write, keep writing. If you read, keep reading. And, of course, if you dance, keep dancing. And when you start to worry or feel down, think: WWJD (What would John do?). Then walk out the door and stride through your town or city with some bounce in your step. After all, its not our last breath but when we lose hope that we die.