Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

Author Octavia E. Butler & The Fire This Time

1/22/2025

Introduction

Long lauded for her masterful blend of science fiction and realistic social observations, author Octavia E. Butler’s name over the past decade has grown to command greater and greater attention as a highly-significant American master of literary innovation. That conviction has intensified with the tragic fires which decimated communities in southern California during the first half of January 2025 and left survivors on edge as they waited to see what a years-long drought, and the legendary Santa Ana winds, would deliver in the second half.

The historic tragedy, along with the return of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, led many posting on social media to bestow the word “prophetic” upon Butler’s classic 1993 novel, Parable of the Sower, due to the author’s seemingly prescient allusion to them. Butler herself famously coined the term histofuturism , making her a histofuturist, to describe her method of researching and analyzing past societal trends to gain understanding of problematic present-day conditions and devise strategies for correcting such dangerous imbalances.

The cautionary implications of Butler’s work were evident enough 15 years ago that she was one of 5 Notable Women of the Past and Present featured in my special Black History Month and Women’s History Month article series published on AXS’s former Examiner platform in 2010. It should be noted that Butler’s novel did not become a New York Times bestseller until 2020. For the first time since the Examiner platform folded, the tribute article to Butler is presented (with minor edits) in full along with the review of Parable of the Sower then included. [Although fire caused extensive damage in Los Angeles County’s Eaton community within Altadena , where Butler is buried, her grave-site reportedly sustained minimal damage.]

A Grand Dame of Sci-Fi

Octavia Estelle Butler achieved the unprecedented feat of winning three major science fiction awards––the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, all in 1985––before going on in 1995 to also win the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award. This achievement, in addition to a number of other honors, established Butler as a “grand dame” of science fiction. It also placed her within the genre on a level comparable to that of Toni Morrison or Alice Walker within mainstream literary fiction.

The daughter of Laurice and Octavia M. (Guy) Butler, the author was born June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California [where approximately 8,000 structures have been destroyed by fire in January 2025]. After attending Pasadena City College, California State University in Los Angeles, and the Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop, she went on to launch her literary career in 1976 with the publication of the novel Patternmaster. Over the three decades that followed, until her death February 24, 2006, she would publish almost a dozen more novels including Kindred and Parable of the Talents; and the short fiction collection, Bloodchild and Other Stories.

Innovative Literary Vision

Butler’s work explores and expands the basic language of science fiction. In particular, she utilizes an interest in such subjects as psionic abilities, genetic engineering, different forms of power, and advanced alien intelligence to explore more earthbound themes of racial and sexual awareness. The various categories into which human beings place each other might be seen through Butler’s literary glasses as hierarchies that do more harm than good by encouraging and sustaining degrading forms of dominance rather than mutual respect or tolerance. In an essay for NPR titled U.N. Racism Conference, she observed the following:

“Back during the early 1960s there was a United Nations television commercial, the audio portion of which went something like this: ‘Ignorance, fear, disease, hunger, suspicion, hatred, war.’ That was it, although I would have added, ‘greed’ and ‘vengeance’ to the list. All or any of these can be the catalyst that turns hierarchical thinking into hierarchical behavior. Amid all this, does tolerance have a chance?

“Only if we want it to. Only when we want it to. Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.”

The author was particularly noted for her creation of unique yet believable female characters and her accomplishments in this area paved the way for such contemporary Black women speculative fiction writers as Tananarive Due and Nalo Hopkinson.

Speaking to Los Angeles Times reporter Jocelyn Y. Stewart, Tananarive Due stated, "In black speculative fiction, we are a tiny family and Octavia Butler was our matriarch.”

Parable of the Sower

precisely as many say it is doing in 2025Within the first dozen pages of Parable of the Sower, readers encounter a typical family armed with guns on their way to church, a headless corpse, a naked homeless woman, a community walled in by terror, and a young woman dreaming of stars.

The dreamer is 16-year-old Lauren Oya Olamina, the would-be-sower and teller of the parable. The place is California. The time 2024-2027 A.D. And nothing in America is how it used to be. The world to come, as Butler presents it in this novel, is one ruled by the more brutal forms of anarchy [with the threat of autocracy steadily increasing, precisely as many say it is doing in 2025].

(Original photograph of Octavia E. Butler by Cheung Ching-Ming. Edit with Butler quote by Bright Skylark LP)

Everyday life becomes an actual war between the “haves” and “have-nots” battling over each other’s few pitiful possessions. Children are stolen into slavery; women are raped at will. Dogs roam the land as wild killers. Policemen are barely distinguishable from criminals, and drug-crazed maniacs run around setting fires for the high of their lives.

Such is the world in which Lauren finds herself as she comes painfully of age. Black, bold, and brilliant, she has the misfortune of having been born with “hyperempathy.” This hyperempathy “is what the doctors call an ‘organic delusional syndrome’… I get a lot of grief that doesn’t belong to me, and that isn’t real. But it hurts.”

The syndrome is one that literally puts flesh on the spiritual equation that hurting another is equal to hurting oneself. The disadvantages of her condition are magnified that much more when she is constantly forced into gunfights to save her own or someone else’s life. For example: “I knew at once that I’d hit him. He didn’t fall, but I felt his pain… Then he toppled, and I collapsed with him.”

Described as a “sharer,” Lauren deals with her condition and her world by immersing herself in the composition of “Earthseed.” At first, “Earthseed” is nothing more than a kind of juvenile poetry that aids her understanding of life in general. She later decides it is nothing less than a revelation of universal truth regarding the permanent nature of God as on-going change:

“Any change may bear seeds of benefit./ See them out./ Any change may bear seeds of harm./ Beware./ God is infinitely malleable./ God is change.”

For Lauren, serious change comes at the age of eighteen when marauders kill her family along with numerous others and burn down their neighborhood. She is forced to team up with two neighbors she has never really liked. They set out somewhat vaguely for possibly Oregon, Washington State, Alaska, or Canada. As they travel, like Dorothy and company on their way to see the Wizard of Oz, they are joined by others searching for the magic of sanity. Ex-slaves, former prostitutes, a once-wealthy doctor, and orphaned children all eventually find their way into the caravan, all courageously led by Lauren.

Despite constant violence, hunger, and the threat of firestorms sweeping across the land, they maintain their vows to protect each other and even find love among their numbers. Nearly at the bottom of hell, Butler’s characters levitate naturally toward a sense of family in order to survive and flourish. Racially, socially, and temperamentally mixed, they manage to achieve a strained but functional unity. Without realizing it, Lauren evolves into a kind of warrior prophet, a futuristic Harriet Tubman leading her rainbow coalition of survivors beyond the reach of Armageddon.

From the quotes at the beginning of each chapter, readers know that Lauren’s ideas and teachings inevitably become “Earthseed: The Books of the Living.” The book is clearly a manual for surviving social, political, and personal chaos. Lauren leaves little doubt as to where she stands:

Embrace diversity.
Unite––
Or be divided,
robbed,
killed
by those who see you as prey.
Embrace diversity.
Or be destroyed.

Octavia Butler set her novel some thirty-five years in the future from the date she wrote it, which as of this writing (in 2010) places it fifteen years in the future. Most of what Parable of the Sower has to say regarding contemporary times is implied rather than overtly stated. However, the man Lauren eventually marries, Bankole, realizes that all the horrors of their time are not new:

“In the early 1990s while I was in college, I heard about cases of growers doing some of this––holding people against their wills and forcing them to work without pay. Latins in California, blacks and Latinos in the South. Now and then, someone would go to jail for it.”

Imagine that: a man in what was then the future commenting on a past so eerily relevant to what is now the present.

by Aberjhani
Author of These Black and Blue Red Zone Days
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
and creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

For More on Octavia E. Butler
and California Wildfires

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AI Flips the Interview Script with 5 More Questions for 1 Author

9/4/2023

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To read the first seven questions of this AI interview conducted by AILC Contributor 444 with author-poet-artist Aberjhani, please visit LinkedIn.com at: AI Flips the Interview Script with 7 Questions for 1 Author. The final five begin now with number:

8.

ILC CONTRIBUTOR 444: Your collaboration with Luther E. Vann on ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love (2008) was a unique fusion of poetry and art. How did this collaboration influence your creative process and approach to your subsequent works?

Aberjhani: Working with Luther on ELEMENTAL was like nothing I’d ever done before because I wanted the writing to be genuinely ekphrastic. That meant it should reflect the impulses and ideas first expressed in his visual art rather than my own independent concepts. To do that, I had to study the ways Luther developed his style and then utilize what I learned to express his understanding of things like community and certain spiritual beliefs. But part of what attracted me to the project in the first place was recognizing how much his metaphysical paintings already mirrored certain spiritual philosophies expressed in some of my poetry.

We later reversed that dynamic when he graciously provided covers for my novel, Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player, and poetry collection titled The Bridge of Silver Wings. That kind of partnership across mediums is rare, so his death in 2016 left me feeling unanchored, if you will, for quite some time. Eventually it forced me to tap back into instincts of my own for experimenting with visual artistry. That, over the past five years or so, has led to the creation of fine art photography and digital paintings which have been exhibited offline and also sold in my online art store.

9.

AILC 444: Speaking of which, your distinctive "Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle" is a testament to your versatility as a contemporary creative. How does your visual art complement your written works, and what unique aspects of creativity do you find in each medium?

ABERJHANI: Thank you. I like to say that my visual art intensifies the physical expressiveness of my literary endeavors, and the literary expands and makes more accessible different contemplative dimensions of the visual. I believe that’s most apparent when visitors to the art product pages on my Pixels.com and Fine Art America profiles read the descriptions posted with artwork. But for me, both are forms of communication with the world, so some of the art descriptions are more like stories and have been repurposed as blogs.

The “unique aspects of each medium” come into play when creating the works as well as when engaging them. My art and photography are often the results of attempts to document natural or historical phenomena. Examples of that are The Savannah River Bridge the Morning After Hurricane Matthew and different abstract digital paintings I’ve done on gun violence, racism, and the pandemic in America. In fact, I recently completed a book of art and texts, called Black and Blue Letters from the Red Zone, dealing with these issues and hope to see it published in the not-too-distant future. It’s basically the illustrated edition of These Black and Blue Red Zone Days with additional texts by guest authors.

10.

AILC 444: Your skills as a storyteller are showcased in the essay collection The American Poet Who Went Again as well as the novel Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player. Could you discuss how your narrative style has evolved over the years?

ABERJHANI: American Poet was written from 1997 to 2008 and is a collection of essays which combine memoir with literary journalism. Within that same decade-long time-frame, I wrote poetry that I performed for spoken word open mics, a lot of journalism pieces, and completed work on Encyclopedia of the HR as well as Wisdom. I’m going to say that insofar as the writing in American Poet goes, the style developed from a fusion of everything else I was doing and resulted in an individual form of literary journalism and documentation. As personal as some of the essays are, my goals was to share them as reports on our evolving times.

In observations of Suicide Prevention Week The Kindle eBook Edition of Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player will be available as a FREE DOWNLOAD from September 9 to 12, 2023.

When it came to Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player, which was first published in 2006 as Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World, I gave myself permission to write without the sculpted restrictions required by the essay form. I wanted the novel to be a dance with language while also confronting serious social issues like suicide, recovery from childhood trauma, climate change, and creative license balanced with individual responsibility and accountability. I wanted the book to literally sing, so made song lyrics an integral part of the narrative. The experience of writing the novel was the exact opposite of what I had done previously when writing nonfiction. Working on it helped relieve the stress that came with living in the past to recover the stories of Harlem Renaissance heroes and sheroes, and from confronting the social tensions that followed September 11 in this century.

11.

AILC 444: Your collection of memoir essays, Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah, provides insights into personal experiences blended with journalistic observations of environmental and racial issues. How do autobiographical elements influence your creative process, and do they contribute to a deeper connection with your audience?

ABERJHANI: Coming from a #BIPOC community in Savannah, Georgia, which is also the oldest Black community in the state, autobiographical elements tend to infuse my creative process with depths of emotion and intentional commitment which otherwise might not exist. I believe they do strengthen connections with audiences because a lot of readers can relate to many of those factors. For starters, Savannah itself is a city which has played some keys roles in the history of the United States, such as being one of the original 13 colonies, and it continues to be strategic in the present as the location of a major seaport and a major hub of the modern film industry. It is also home to the historic HBCU Savannah State University, which I attended for a time years ago as an Upward Bound student. On a more personal level, I grew up in a family steeped in the same kind of cultural values and customs which have influenced different forms of cooking, music, spirituality, and social trends all over the world, and which makes it easier for many to feel a strong connection to much of what I write.

12.

AILC 444: As we conclude, could you share a glimpse into your upcoming projects and how they align with your overarching artistic and advocacy goals?

ABERJHANI: Earlier this year, I participated in a video project in support of preserving Georgia’s 100 miles of coastline along the Atlantic. My contributions to the project involved urging all Georgians to remain mindful of the need for corrective action regarding renaming the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge. Additional footage dealt with the erasure of homes and entire neighborhoods, along with the stories that go with them, where historically influential BIPOC Savannahians were born or grew up.

Something I’m holding myself accountable for in regard to preventing such erasure is a music heritage book and documentary project I started during the pandemic with legendary radio programmer Ike Carter of WHCJ Radio at Savannah State University. Carter is something of a cultural arts historian who has some exceptional insights into what it meant to grow up in Savannah during some very interesting Jim Crow times and then moving beyond that to become a champion of what he prefers to call African-American Classical Music. Working with him to compose just the narrative of his life, legacy, and the times that shaped them could become the most impactful work I’ve done since Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. More important than anything else is the potential the musical heritage project holds for helping all of us adapt to the many changes we’re having such hard times with right now, especially in the areas of evolving cultural demographics and efforts to refine practices of democracy in countries around the world.

AILC 444:Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and experiences with us, Aberjhani.

ABERJHANI: This was fun. I look forward to doing it again sometime.

By AILC Contributor 444 & Aberjhani
Presented in partnership with AI Literary Chat Salon

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Revisited: Philosophy of the Midnight Skylark in a Jazz Suite Mode 2023

4/26/2023

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("Midnight Magenta Skylark" art by Aberjhani)

Writers, poets, and artists often draw creative inspiration from each other in ways that produce memorable moments. Such was the case in 2012 when Death of a Bebop Wife author, Grange "Lady Haig" Rutan, happened upon a post of my poem, “Philosophy of the Midnight Skylark in a Jazz Suite Mode,” on the former Creative Thinkers International community website.

I was slightly familiar the music of her former husband, jazz pianist Al Haig. However, I knew nothing at all about her own work at the time, and consequently was stunned when she sent me a message to express the impact my poem had had on her.

What follows, in observation of Jazz Appreciation Month, National Poetry Month, and Poem In Your Pocket Day, is the poem Rutan found moving enough to write me about, and the response from her which I treasure still. The communication is presented in her original all-caps style:

Philosophy of the Midnight Skylark in a Jazz Suite Mode

          Hot rumbling notions of bittersweet blueswomen
          fog elegant sidewalks with the ghosts of tears
          howling saxophonic testimonies to lies
          told on history––and blame placed on love.

          Street lamps and big cats wear my face gently
          like a mask of painted poems and nude prayers.
          In a midnight skylark jazz suite mode
          the downbeat climbs its way back up to clarity.

          Perfumed adagios of purple lull twilight to sleep
          as rivers of winged reflections wake the power of dreams.
          Feather and bone unravel while tongues of song
          spit overloaded gigabytes of pain exploding faith.

          Stoned lions roar nuclear lyrics about the way
          it used to be never coming back again. Tough shit so
          truly uncool. In a midnight skylark jazz suite mode
          piano sorcerers translate prophecies of angst

          into silk equations of bebop equals mc/square sublime.
          by Aberjhani
          (from The River of Winged Dreams)

DEAR MOST TALENTED WITH A GOD GIVEN TALENT FOR WEAVING WORDS OF HEARTFELT WONDER,

DEAR ABERJHANI,

I AM IN A FESTIVAL OF AFTER DARK WITH YOUR WORDS RUMINATING AND FALLING OVER AN ONTO MY HEART, MY BEBOP HEART.

"PERFUMED ADAGIOS OF PURPLE LULL TWILIGHT TO SLEEP" HAUNTS ME AS I SPEAK ABERJHANI AND I AM HUMBLED.

"TONGUES OF SONG SPIT OVERLOADED GIGABYTES OF PAIN EXPLODING FAITH" BRINGS SUBTLE TEARS AS I WRITE.

"STONED LIONS ROAR NUCLEAR LYRICS ABOUT THE WAY IT USED TO BE NEVER COMING BACK AGAIN" AND I AM STILL HERE, STILL IN MY WORLD WEARY BEBOP JOINT NOW ELEVATED TO THE HIPPEST, JIVE GIG IN TOWN AT TAMM E. HUNTS JAM.

AND I WANT TO BRING YOU SOLACE; I WANT YOU TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT WHAT YOU WROTE BECAUSE IT IS EXQUISITE. I ALMOST FEEL YOU WERE THERE YOUR WORDS ARE SO AUTHENTIC AND I WANT YOU TO KNOW THERE IS NO BLAME TO BE PLACED ON "LOVE" BECAUSE THIS IS WHY YOU WROTE THIS "PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDNIGHT SKYLARK IN A JAZZ SUITE MODE AND...

THIS IS WHY I WROTE DEATH OF A BEBOP WIFE: BIOGRAPHY OF AL HAIG: THE CHOSEN PIANIST OF CHARLIE PARKER AND DIZZY GILLESPIE...I DID IT FOR THE DOWNBEAT OF "CLARITY" AND MY LOVE FOR THE BITTERSWEET TAPESTRY WOVEN OF ALL THE PLAYERS THAT ARE NOW ON THE BIG GIG IN THE SKY .

I DID IT FOR YOU, I DID IT FOR ME. AND I ASKED CHARLIE PARKER TO COME INTO THIS JAZZ NETWORK AND SPEAK TO YOU AND TO ALL OF US, CHARLIE TALK TO ABERJHANI:

CHARLIE PARKER:
"IT'S JUST MUSIC; IT'S TRYING TO PLAY CLEAN AND LOOKING FOR THE PRETTY NOTES BUT ITS

DISTINCTIVE FEATURE IS ITS STRONG FEELING FOR THE BEAT. THE BEAT IN A BOP BAND IS WITH THE
MUSIC,
AGAINST,
BEHIND IT,
IT PUSHES IT,
IT HELPS IT;
HELP IS THE BIG THING;
IT HAS NO CONTINUITY OF BEAT,
NO STEADY CHUG-CHUG JAZZ HAS,
AND THAT'S WHY BOP IS MORE FLEXIBLE (EXCERPT FROM TO BE OR NOT TO BOP BY DIZZY GILLESPIE AND AL FRASER).

THANK YOU FOR YOUR EXQUISITE POEM.

GRANGE LADY HAIG RUTAN - AUTHOR
CADENCE JAZZ BOOKS

In Jazz Suite Mode Conclusion

Why Rutan’s words moved me so deeply on a personal level should be evident enough. Beyond that, I celebrate her lyrical appreciation because it falls so solidly into the tradition of call-and-response that gives jazz music much of its vitality and artistry. Within the lines of Philosophy of the Midnight Skylark in a Jazz Suite Mode she heard a call to give voice to her own bebop inclinations. By doing so, she honored and contributed to a musical art form which continues to inspire and empower with exuberant creativity and humanity that she did.

Aberjhani
Author of These Black and Blue Red Zone Days
Co-author 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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Unexpected Freedom: Juneteenth and the Novels of Robert T.S. Mickles Sr. (part 2)

6/14/2022

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As America observes Juneteenth 2022, the word freedom means a lot of different things to people all around the world. To Ukrainians fighting against Russians to preserve the sovereignty of their homeland, it means battling against overwhelming odds to defend both themselves and advocates of democracy. To climate change refugees, it implies a global acknowledgement of their plight and what their dilemma means, or should mean, to all people. In the United Sates, for many students, the word freedom means being allowed to attend classes without fear of becoming victims of a mass shooting.

(To read part 1 of this 2-part celebration please click here.)

Writing in Isaiah’s Tears, his second novel, author Robert T.S. Mickles, Sr., addressed the concept of freedom as an existential dilemma. At the same time that it provides a newly-freed slave with options never before available to him, it also creates new responsibilities and dangers. That paradox, Juneteenth notwithstanding, is one with which African Americans, and humanity in general, wrestle to this day.

Foreword to Isaiah’s Tears

In his ESSENCE Magazine bestseller, Blood Kin, A Savannah Story, Robert T.S. Mickles introduced readers all over the world to the residents of Woodloe Plantation as they grappled with the violent chaos of the Civil War and struggled to adapt to the changes taking place in their lives as well as to simply survive. For best friends Lew and Robert, one of the greatest changes they experienced was the fantastic discovery that they were brothers, both of them sons of Master Jones, one of them free, one of them a slave.

While no one could ever be so naïve as to deny the dehumanizing horrors of slavery as it was often practiced in the United States during the 1700s and 1800s, Mickles was bold enough to share with us a story that his grandmother, Mrs. Beulah Tremble, a daughter of slaves, had shared with him. It allowed for a different perspective on America’s “peculiar institution” and has stimulated within classrooms fresh dialogues on the full meaning and impact of that same institution.

In Isaiah’s Tears, part two of the author’s Savannah Stories, we meet fifteen-year-old Isaiah Jones. For Isaiah, the end of slavery in the United States in 1865 means the beginning of a long but very challenging life as a free man. In the pages that follow, Isaiah shares the story of that life with a group of friends from Howard University in Washington, D.C. And what a story it is!

Following the death of both his parents and the acquisition of his sudden unexpected freedom, Isaiah has to choose between life as he has always known it––and life as an uncertain adventure in a new and uncertain world. He makes a solemn pledge to keep his remaining family safe and help them establish new lives as free individuals. His story is at times laugh-out-loud comical and at other times heartbreakingly tragic.

As a reader, one cannot help but whisper little encouragements and at times hold one’s breath while watching Isaiah grow from an adolescent who had never expected to be anything but a slave in his life [in]to a young man anticipating a future with his new wife, an infant daughter, and his aunt and her children. He recounts his determination to work the fields of Woodloe Plantation until saving up enough money to move his family North, then settling in Washington, D.C. However, neither freedom nor money, he discovers, can guarantee safety or happiness.

As evidenced by the quotes on the back of this book, Mickles’ debut novel, Blood Kin, A Savannah Story, won him the kind of acclaim that most first-time authors only hope to receive and that even many veteran authors have rarely experienced. As he did in that first installment of his Savannah Stories, Mickles delivers in Isaiah’s Tears an amazing tale that says as much about who Americans have been in the past as it does about who we are right now, a people intent on making the concepts of freedom, democracy, and “the pursuit of happiness” as real in practice as they are meaningful in concept.

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

Author Octavia E. Butler & The Fire This Time

Introduction

A Grand Dame of Sci-Fi

Innovative Literary Vision

Parable of the Sower

For More on Octavia E. Butler
and California Wildfires

Please use this form to contact Author-Artist Aberjhani, or the one below it to comment on this article.

AI Flips the Interview Script with 5 More Questions for 1 Author

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11.

12.

By AILC Contributor 444 & Aberjhani
Presented in partnership with AI Literary Chat Salon

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Revisited: Philosophy of the Midnight Skylark in a Jazz Suite Mode 2023

Philosophy of the Midnight Skylark in a Jazz Suite Mode

DEAR MOST TALENTED WITH A GOD GIVEN TALENT FOR WEAVING WORDS OF HEARTFELT WONDER,

In Jazz Suite Mode Conclusion

Aberjhani
Author of These Black and Blue Red Zone Days
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

Contact 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

Unexpected Freedom: Juneteenth and the Novels of Robert T.S. Mickles Sr. (part 2)

Foreword to Isaiah’s Tears

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

MORE ON JUNETEENTH AND RELATED TOPICS

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Aberjhani

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Author Octavia E. Butler & The Fire This Time

Introduction

A Grand Dame of Sci-Fi

Innovative Literary Vision

Parable of the Sower

For More on Octavia E. Butler and California Wildfires

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AI Flips the Interview Script with 5 More Questions for 1 Author

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By AILC Contributor 444 & Aberjhani Presented in partnership with AI Literary Chat Salon

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Revisited: Philosophy of the Midnight Skylark in a Jazz Suite Mode 2023

Philosophy of the Midnight Skylark in a Jazz Suite Mode

DEAR MOST TALENTED WITH A GOD GIVEN TALENT FOR WEAVING WORDS OF HEARTFELT WONDER,

In Jazz Suite Mode Conclusion

AberjhaniAuthor of These Black and Blue Red Zone DaysCo-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

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Art and Words Make an Exceptional Kind of History

​Story behind the Artwork

​In Good Literary Company

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Unexpected Freedom: Juneteenth and the Novels of Robert T.S. Mickles Sr. (part 2)

Foreword to Isaiah’s Tears

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

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For More on Octavia E. Butler
and California Wildfires

By AILC Contributor 444 & Aberjhani
Presented in partnership with AI Literary Chat Salon

Aberjhani
Author of These Black and Blue Red Zone Days
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

Story behind the Artwork

In Good Literary Company

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