Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

On Josephine Baker and the Politics of Educating Americans

1/23/2023

"Josephine Baker and Chiquita Abstract Magenta" digital painting by Aberjhani. Now available for purchase at Pixels.com, Fine Art America, and here at Bright Skylark Literary Productions.

The article on Josephine Baker (1906-1975) for Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance was written by Sandra L. West (1947-2019). Until working on the book project with her, my perception of the great diva had been shaped primarily by quick glimpses of classic black and white images of her dancing either nude or semi-nude.
She was to me a pretty, comical, innately sensuous, island girl with some vague connection to the United States and France. Research revealed and corrected the many layers of a misunderstood truth.

I began this post to draw attention to the above Josephine Baker tribute art series. Just as I was completing it, disturbing news arrived: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s Department of Education had rejected an Advanced Placement course addressing different aspects of African-American Studies. The rationale for doing so was that it paved the way for ideological indoctrination into the “Woke movement” as fueled by Critical Race Theory. That is something DeSantis has strongly opposed and stated the proposed AP African-American Studies course lacks educational value.

Dr. Lisa Hill, one of the authors of the program, said at its launch in September last year: “The course encourages students to examine each theme from a variety of perspectives, without ideology, in line with the field’s tradition of debates.” In short, the objective is to expand access to the kind of knowledge which impacts our understanding, or misunderstanding, of the demographically evolving world in which we live. It was the same goal that I and different contributors to Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance had when completing it.

Perceptions and Realities

The intensity of DeSantis’ objection to progressive initiatives when it comes to racial factors have long puzzled many People of Color. Perception of the governor’s political strategy is not very different from how Justice Clarence Thomas’s unyielding conservatism is viewed among many Blacks. While it appears to make no sense within the context of their daily social reality, it stands up well enough as abstract legal conception.

A frequent assumption regarding DeSantis is that he is Latino and his interests should, therefore, automatically align with those he decries as woke ideologists. However, despite the smiling photograph of him on Hispanic culture pages, the governor’s publicized heritage is Italian––not Latinx––going back several generations. He clearly has found it more politically advantageous to let Americans assume whatever pleases them while presenting himself, more than anything else, simply as a committed conservative republican.

It would be fair enough at this point to ask what any of this has to do with my current celebration of Josephine Baker. The answer is pretty much: everything. Were it not for the social, political, and financial inequities and omissions which daily impair the lives of people belonging to different demographic groups in America, there would be no need for certain types of corrective considerations. As it is, levels of awareness concerning different cultural experiences directly influences the quality of all Americans’ lives.

Detail from "Josephine Baker Stardust Silhouette" art by Aberjhani. Now available for purchase here on Bright Skylark Literary Productions, on Pixels.com, and at Fine Art America.

What I knew and did not know about Josephine Baker’s story prior to studying it in depth for Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance had caused me to consider her in much less regard than I should have. But it wasn’t the victorious Baker and other Harlem Renaissance greats who had lost out to all those years of unknowing. It was me and other misinformed individuals like me.

From New Art Series Product Page:

"Cheers went up around the world in 2021 when French officials announced American-born actress, singer, and World War II spy Josephine Baker would become the first Black woman to be inducted into the Parisian Panthéon. The announcement made me smile because Josephine Baker is one the historic figures celebrated in Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (this year 2023 is the 20th anniversary of the encyclopedia’s publication).

"The new 2023 edition prints of Baker featured in this series are mixed media and digitally textured interpretations of classic historical photographs and posters categorized as public domain. Some of the new prints are abstract expressionism, or surrealistic impressionism, and others enhanced antique sepia. Baker is widely celebrated during Women’s History Month, Black History Month, and in general as an iconic international entertainer. I sometimes think of her as America’s loss (due to the extreme Jim Crow racism practiced in the United States during her lifetime) and France’s gain."

Aberjhani
Creator of the Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle
Co-creator of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

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Art and Words Make an Exceptional Kind of History

8/22/2022

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(Official Postered Chromatic Poetics for Aberjhani’s Bright Skylark Literary Productions ©2022 with copy of 2022 Flannery O’Connor Review ant detail from “Closer to Where You Are.” Art on cover of FLOCR titled “Sermon in the Valley of Broken Angels” by Aberjhani.)

Regular readers of this blog may recall I previously stated my non-fiction book, Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind, was only one part of a planned trilogy of creative works to address the layered complexities which make up the corpus of O’Connor’s celebrated writings. Major second and third parts of the trilogy, in the form of visual art and poetry, have just been published in the 2022 Flannery O’Connor Review (FLOCR, Vol. 20).

The review, edited by Marshall Bruce Gentry, is published by Georgia College in Milledgeville, Georgia (USA), where O’Connor lived and wrote most of her adult life. This new volume represents a double milestone for the publication which, as seen on the front cover, commemorates 20th and 50th anniversaries.

To purchase the 2022 review please click here.

The event is a particularly significant one for me not only because it delivers on the pledge to produce an unusual form of commentary on an iconic author’s writings and cultural influence. It also marks the first time my visual art has been on the cover of a major academic journal and a substantial selection of my images featured inside the publication. In addition, my poem History and Prophets’ Prerogatives, which until now has only been available in very limited broadside and art poster editions, has made its international debut in the same pages.

Story behind the Artwork

Combining visual art with literary expression has long been one of my favorite strategies for communicating different important, and sometimes controversial, concepts. Whether dealing with environmental justice, online privacy issues, critical race theory, or anything else, the approach has often yielded positive results. Although I’ve utilized it effectively enough in several of my own books––most notably ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love and Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah--the thought I might be able to do so in an educational journal such as FLOCR never crossed my mind.

It likely would not have occurred if I hadn’t accepted an invitation from editor Gentry to attend the Flannery O’Connor and Families Symposium while the COVID-19 pandemic was still going strong in June 2021. Attendance at the symposium, as it turned out, inspired several of the images included in the current review. Others were works in progress which I intended to either add to O’Connor-themed art already completed, or reserve for a future exhibit.

At this point, the art in the journal is not accessible for viewing anywhere else but plans are underway to make one or two of the images available as prints and in other formats in my online art store. (Anyone wishing to let me know which artwork they might like to see become available for purchase as a print is invited to contact me via the form at the end of this article.)

In Good Literary Company

In addition to my own contributions, the 2022 FLOCR includes important discussions by diverse scholars addressing various aspects O’Connor’s work and legacy. Among them are the following:

“Intention, Piety, and Mode in Flannery O’Connor” by Clarke Owens
“‘Deep in the Stacks’: An Interview with Nancy Davis Bray” by Nancy Davis Bray and Megan Savage
“Nuns at Luncheon in a Hayloft: O’Connor’s Debt to Aldous Huxley in ‘Good Country People’” by Bryan Abel Ragen
“Justifying Excessive Virtue: Daredevil Charity and Crime Noir in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘The Comforts of Home’” by Nathan M. Kilpatrick
“Jacques Maritain and Flannery O’Connor: The Life and Death of a Child” by Fernanda Rossini
“Wondering and Wandering: An Interview with Louise Florencourt on Her Life and Her Family” by Louise Florencourt and Robert Donahoo
“Review of Justin Mellette’s Peculiar Whiteness: Racial Anxiety and Poor Whites in Southern Literature, 1900-1965” by Laura L. Behling
“Review of Sandra E. Godwin and Helen Matthew Lewis’s A White Liberal College President in the Jim Crow South: Guy Herbert Wells and the YWCA at Georgia
State College for Women, 1934-1953” by Virginia Wray
“Review of Ann McCutchan’s The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Author of The Yearling” by Marshall Bruce Gentry.

The annual publication of the Flannery O’Connor Review is a major literary event to which general O’Connor readers and academic instructors look forward every year. Its articles and book reviews are important influences on dialogues concerning the author’s noted value in educational and religious institutions around the world. They also go a long way toward interpretations of her expressed attitudes, often described as ambiguous or ambivalent, toward African Americans. Such studied reflections have become increasingly important as Americans continue to evaluate past cultural trends and practices while navigating major changes in their country’s demographic composition.

By Aberjhani

For more on Flannery O’Connor please check out the following:

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History and Erasure: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (Pt. 1 of 3)

5/4/2022

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"Luther and the Coming of Light" digital art by Aberjhani C2022)

Introduction

.he last thing I expected to find myself writing about as we moved deeper into the year 2022 was a 3-way war between Russia, Ukraine, and professed defenders of democracy around the world. But write about it I have on the LinkedIn website as well as here at Bright Skylark. Hopefully, the articles have made it clear one of my primary concerns regarding the war has been the brutal erasure of history and culture as well as that of human lives.

The Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah series was first published in my AXS cultural arts column as an expression of that same concern. It is reposted at this time both to encourage unwavering support in their struggle for what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called “the right to live,” and, in observation of the 14th anniversary of the publication of ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love:

Contributors to Unique Traditions

Upon his passing on April 6, 2016, Luther E. Vann joined an illustrious group of brilliant contemporary African-American creative artists who, prior to their transitions, produced numerous celebrated works which have added tremendously to Savannah’s (Georgia, USA) reputation and value as a favorite travel destination for lovers of the cultural arts.

Vann (b. 1937) and Allen Fireall (1954-2014) bestowed upon the city a legacy of fine visual art that documented daily life in different communities throughout the Low Country in Georgia and South Carolina. Like artist William M. Pleasant Jr. (1928-1997) before them, they also contributed greatly to the unique traditions of Gullah art.

(Digital portrait of late Savannah Gullah artist Allen Fireall by Aberjhani)

In many cases, particularly where Fireall is concerned, their painted canvases depict scenes representative of historic cultural activities rarely practiced as part of everyday living in contemporary times. Making nets and sewing quilts by hand, for example, are more likely to be done for creative enjoyment [or to be sold as cultural artefacts] rather than, as they once were, out of simple necessity.

Similarly, men and women carrying bushels of crabs atop their heads, or gathering in parks or alongside roads to wait for job assignments are seen even less rarely (if ever). Nor are you as likely while driving or walking down a lane in the American South to see women in adjoining back yards laughing and talking as they hang freshly-washed laundry out to dry.

Restoring Erased History

The late world-renowned Rev. Dr. Ja A. Jahannes (1942 -2015) was something of a polymath whose exceptional talents included writing plays, poems, novels, and children’s books–– as well as publishing anthologies, producing fine-art photography, composing music, teaching, and delivering inspired sermons. Through his multiple positions as an educator at the HBCU Savannah State University, a minister at Savannah’s now 105-year-old Abyssinia Baptist Church, and a public intellectual, Jahannes empowered many others to pick up where he would leave off.

The names presented here are not done so to invite nostalgic reveries, though studied reflections are certainly appropriate for people familiar with them. They are offered (and a number of others could easily be included) to help prevent their consignment to discarded files marked “erased history, or being deleted, via guerrilla decontextualization by omission, from the more “official” channels of documented acknowledgements.

Whether using the term “erasure of history” or “history of erasure” the final definition points to the same legacy-destroying result: the removal of consequential names and events from their authentic historic context and thus from public awareness. An erasure of history indicates the active or conscious deletion of a subject from various official records. Histories of erasure, as it were, possess the paradoxical distinction of referring to accumulated instances of eradication. The first describes the act of omitting relevant events or biographies. The second describes accounts of such actions.

The late painter William M. Pleasant Jr. surrounded by some of his celebrated works.

Guerrilla decontextualization by omission tends to occur frequently when it comes to African-American cultural arts workers who have not been embraced by certain institutions. Whatever prominence they command stems more from the direct support of, and engagement with, appreciative audiences than from disinterested commercial outlets. Some, such as William M. Pleasant Jr., had the good fortune to produce heirs, like Jalal Pleasant, who also became accomplished artists and have labored to ensure their parent’s work is properly noted.

The Example of Luther E. Vann

All of the people mentioned here have won some level of recognition in their own right. Vann earned his place beside the luminous talents he has joined through a lifetime of dedication to both the spirit and the forms of his craft. It was that dauntless commitment which prompted organizations like the Telfair Museum Friends of African-American Art to back the publication of the ekphratic book, Elemental the Power of Illuminated Love, in honor of his individual genius.

NEXT: Laureates and visionaries: Chronicling legacies of black artists in Savannah (part 2/3)

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on Cultural Preservation and Erasures of History

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2022 Holiday Letter for a Poet Gone to War: Poem with Video

3/14/2022

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News reporters have logged a lot of stories about native Ukrainians returning to their homeland, or home towns, to defend their country against Vladimir Putin’s invasion. One of the most moving to me is that of ballet dancers who packed their leotards away and began learning how to shoot guns and make Molotov cocktails.

The dancers reminded me of fellow open mic poets following 9/11. With pens and notebook pads (paper, not digital) tucked in their luggage and pockets, they headed off to do battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I was, at first, deeply disturbed to see certain poets enlist. Eloquence would not shield them from bullets, chemical weapons, or missile attacks. Then I recalled those wordsmiths who already had served in different military capacities during times of conflict. (I was also encouraged to consider my own military instructions when I received training in one specialty for peacetime duties and in another for warfare.) Holiday Letter for a Poet Gone to War was written to acknowledge my friends’ continuation of that specific literary legacy. A quote from the last two lines has become fairly popular.

An Extraordinary Contrast

Watching now from a distance as Ukrainians do all they can to fend off the Russian president’s murderous unprovoked attack on Ukraine, I am certain there are poets and creative souls of different disciplines among them. Indeed, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s creative gifts were celebrated before began and have become more so since then, presenting an extraordinary contrast between perceptions of his basic character that of his adversarial counterpart. Yet, where Russian soldiers themselves are concerned, poets also undoubtedly march, fight, and write among them as they do among Ukraine’s troops.

The poem below is followed by a YouTube video of Jon Lucien’s (1942-2007) The War Song. It is for all those across the globe who believe mostly in spending their time creating beauty to inspire humanity but who now are forced to engage in one of history’s most tragic markers: war

Holiday Letter for a Poet Gone to War

If in the midst of mannequin bombs
disemboweling pregnant insanity,
a poem of love should seduce your lips,
sing each soul-dazzling stanza
with such soft rapture as an angel might.

If your comrade’s head should explode while
you sing with such soft rapture as an angel might,
bandage your heart with thoughts of simpler things--
mowing the lawn, washing dishes,
waking up dreaming in your lover’s arms.

What can bombs know of the illuminated fields
so golden with heaven in your heart’s sacred lands?
How can bullets hope to penetrate the armor
of your soul’s endless capacity for love?

If death should suck the marrow from your bones
while you mow the lawn, wash dishes,
or wake up dreaming in your lover’s arms,
remember: you were born a child of light’s wonderful secret--
you return to the beauty you have always been.

(from the book Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black by Aberjhani)

The War Song by Jon Lucien

More from Aberjhani on War in Ukraine 2022
Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Angel of Peace 2022
Ukraine, Russia, and the Art of Being Human
Angel of War and the Year 2022
Voices of Poets on War and Peace

By Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
and Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

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African Americans Far from Home (part 1): In Search of Dreams Deferred

2/17/2022

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“These clients taught me that, no matter one’s ethnicity or cultural background, most people around the world share similar traits or concerns such as money, health, family and love.”
––author Darrell Gartrell

The African-American identity within the international community is much like a global brand which historically has helped enable the career success of Black U.S. citizens outside their homeland. That is less surprising than it first might seem when considering: the heroic roles American Blacks have played in events such as World Wars I and II in Europe; or when acting as ambassadors of the cultural arts worldwide; or, when coaching voters in South Africa on how to elect Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (1918–2013) as the country’s first Black and democratically-elected president.

The body of literature on African Americans’ adventures outside the United States is extensive and among the world’s richest and most entertaining. The significance of such explorations has been well documented in volumes like Tyler Stovall’s Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (1996); and, in musician Stew’s and Heidi Rodewald’s 2008 award-winning musical, Passing Strange (adapted for the screen by director Spike Lee in 2009).

Fans of iconic author James Baldwin’s famous 1953 essay, “Stranger in the Village,” will recall his blues-flavored musings, while staying in a snow-covered hamlet in Switzerland, on the evolution of racial identities in America. Contemporary author Darrell Gartrell’s 2016 memoir, 21 Years of Wisdom: One Man's Extraordinary Odyssey in Japan, contains equally-compelling insights but presented, obviously, through a very different lens.

Baldwin was an American Black Man self-removed from his beloved community of Harlem in New York City to escape the toxic atmosphere of Jim Crow racism and further develop as a writer. Gartrell did something many techno-charged Millennials accustomed to the practice of working remotely at home might find intriguing: he left his home in South-Central Los Angeles with the intention of seeking and claiming his fortune in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Journey to a Distant Shore

Gartrell introduces readers to his life in the city of Osaka, Japan, 1990s, as he is driving home on a mostly deserted street at 4 a.m. and pulled over by a policeman––on a bicycle. (The scene is more gently humorous than foreboding; yet, for readers unable to shake scenes of fatal encounters between Black people and American policemen over the past decade, it makes a strong contrast.) What starts out as a routine traffic stop for running a red light on a street absent of any other traffic evolves into a requirement for the author to upgrade his international driver’s permit to a valid Japanese license. As he begins to accomplish this, he is reminded of a lesson in survival particularly valuable for the millions of people today immigrating, or fleeing as refugees, from one country to another:

“I would discover in the most blatant way that the driving exam itself had little to do with actual driving, but rather, how well you could take an ass kick’n and keep on tick’n—or at least smiling––a fundamental theme in Japanese society and culture called gaman” (21 Years of Wisdom, pbk ed p. 8).

In the pages which follow, as he experiences a series of thrilling ups and painful humbling downs, it become clear this ability to survive in order to thrive has served him well more than once. And very likely will do so again.

Before delving deeper into the narrative detailing his rise to eminence in Japan’s language school, or “eikaiwa (ae-kai-wa)” industry, Gartrell takes us back in time. Readers are treated first to the thoroughly American story of his mixed ancestry. We are then steered through scenes from his youth, including a visit to Savannah, Georgia, at the age of six with his father, Barnet Gartrell.

From Tragedy to Triumph

Thanks to the entrepreneurial “hustling” of Barnet Gartrell, our narrator’s family had the good fortune of living in relative upper middle class comfort next door to Harlem Renaissance great Flournoy Miller (a celebrated performer whom this writer wrote about in Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance). Comfort, however, did not mean immunity from disruptions such as some of the most violent race riots in American history, harrowing confrontations with members of L.A.’s notorious street gangs, and death. As he points out regarding one fateful season in his adolescence:

“There was a lot to ponder that summer: losing my father to cancer, my best friend and two classmates to murder, even the dog was killed” (p. 30).

The very elements which shade his youth with a sense of tragedy also push him to earn a B.S. degree in finance from California State University and begin exploring possibilities of establishing a life for himself in Europe, or elsewhere, outside the United States. A series of almost mystical encounters eventually find him negotiating his way through the intricacies of Japanese language and customs.

Striving for Success

There is little Gartrell does not cover in his memoir, a book which could also serve as an important college classroom text on business ethics or cultural literacy. From the kind of quirky racial biases and distinct social preferences found in most countries, to observations regarding cultural r/evolutions and his own sexscapades, he paints a large, detailed, and frequently fascinating picture.

Since he is writing about a Black American living in Japan, readers might expect accounts similar in tone to the first chapter’s. Such stories are in fact delivered in a style which effectively blends rhythms of the author’s personal anxieties with the kind of detached observations one might expect from an anthropologist. This becomes less surprising when noting his basic personal philosophy: “…My main beliefs were and continue to be rooted in science. A scientific mind and a refined intuition constitute the perfect balance for any self-respecting Libra” (p. 166).

Anchored by the convictions of his beliefs and his Cal State degree, Gartrell takes his first steps as a “certified sensei,” or teacher, shortly after his arrival in Osaka during Black History Month 1991. In addition to working with a prestigious business college, he pulls double duty by offering private English lessons on the second floor of a McDonald’s restaurant while also managing to learn the Japanese language largely on his own.

By page 102, he is conducting lessons in his apartment. Then, rather “improbably” as Barack Obama described his election to the U.S. presidency, only 78 pages later he is opening his first Wisdom21 school. “I settled on the name ‘Wisdom21,’” he writes, “to reflect all the knowledge I had gleaned from reading New Age books, as well as the new millennium just a few years away” (p. 180)

The various obstacles he overcomes to expand this eikaiwa enterprise teaching English as a second language take their emotional and physical tolls. Keeping his eyes on a long-sought prize, he eventually manages to open a sixth branch in Japan’s capitol city and one of the major financial centers of the world: Tokyo.

NEXT: African Americans Far from Home (part 2): Intimacy, Ethics, and Take-Aways

By Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

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On Josephine Baker and the Politics of Educating Americans

Perceptions and Realities

From New Art Series Product Page:

Aberjhani
Creator of the Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle
Co-creator of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Art and Words Make an Exceptional Kind of History

Story behind the Artwork

In Good Literary Company

Contact Artist-Author Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

History and Erasure: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (Pt. 1 of 3)

Introduction

Contributors to Unique Traditions

Restoring Erased History

The Example of Luther E. Vann

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

2022 Holiday Letter for a Poet Gone to War: Poem with Video

An Extraordinary Contrast

Holiday Letter for a Poet Gone to War

The War Song by Jon Lucien

By Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
and Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

African Americans Far from Home (part 1): In Search of Dreams Deferred

Journey to a Distant Shore

From Tragedy to Triumph

Striving for Success

By Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

On Josephine Baker and the Politics of Educating Americans

Perceptions and Realities

From New Art Series Product Page:

AberjhaniCreator of the Original Silk-Featherbrush ArtstyleCo-creator of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Art and Words Make an Exceptional Kind of History

​Story behind the Artwork

​In Good Literary Company

Contact Artist-Author Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

History and Erasure: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (Pt. 1 of 3)

​Introduction

​Contributors to Unique Traditions

Restoring Erased History

The Example of Luther E. Vann

AberjhaniAuthor of Dreams of the Immortal City SavannahCo-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceCreator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

2022 Holiday Letter for a Poet Gone to War: Poem with Video

An Extraordinary Contrast

​Holiday Letter for a Poet Gone to War

The War Song by Jon Lucien

By AberjhaniAuthor of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannahand Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My MindCreator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

African Americans Far from Home (part 1): In Search of Dreams Deferred

​Journey to a Distant Shore

From Tragedy to Triumph

Striving for Success

By AberjhaniCo-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceAuthor of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My MindCreator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Aberjhani
Creator of the Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle
Co-creator of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

Story behind the Artwork

In Good Literary Company

Introduction

Contributors to Unique Traditions

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Holiday Letter for a Poet Gone to War

By Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
and Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Journey to a Distant Shore

By Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle