Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

Why Genocide in Ukraine Matters to A Black Poet in America (Pt. 2 of 2)

4/7/2022

Once underway, Russia’s “special military operation” immediately brought to mind all the most inhumane atrocities human beings have committed against other human beings. Mainstream media groaned about how nothing like it had been seen on the European continent since World War II. For me, the specific tools and strategy involved to carry out the slaughter were less significant than the intent to commit it.

(If you missed part 1 of this essay and wish to read it please click here.)

In how many forms over how many centuries have we seen the same barbaric inclination manifest with heartbreaking blood-drenched results? Ukrainians in particular will recall: there was once a neighboring country near the Black Sea called Circassia, but it no longer exists because Russia did to it (1830s-1870s) exactly what Russia is attempting to do to Ukraine at this historic 2022 moment.

They will remember in particular the Ukraine famine of 1932-1933 which ended the lives of almost 4 million people. They cannot forget the take-over of Crimea in 2014. When considering these things, it becomes easier to understand why they have opted overwhelmingly to die in battle rather than exist in a repressive autocracy proclaiming itself a democracy.

Some Useful Lessons

For humanity as a whole, it remains difficult to understand why we insist on duplicating the ignorance of the past instead of building upon whatever wisdom might be gleaned from it. If the enslavement of Africans and the eventual rejection of their chains had not been enough, then some kind of useful lessons should have been learned from: the Holocaust (1941-1945, approx. 11 million killed, including Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Romas, Gays, and others); the Cambodian “Killing Fields” Genocide (17 April 1975- January 1979, nearly 2 million killed); and the Rwandan Genocide (7 April to 15 July 1994, approx. 800,000 killed).

From 2 to 6 million is a number often cited when calculating Black lives lost during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Nobel laureate Toni Morrison put the figure at 60 million. The number of Black lives lost during the process of capturing Africans combined with that of Blacks who died in slavery throughout the resulting diaspora may very well be incalculable. What is certain is the documented assumptions of members of one population deciding they possessed the right––some convinced themselves it was an obligation––to destroy the cultural integrity of another population.

‘A Large-scale and Treacherous War’

Whether Russia’s ceaseless bombing of Ukraine may be properly defined as genocide is something scholars and politicians might debate but which Ukrainians cannot. Virtually addressing Israeli lawmakers on March 20, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pointed out:

“This is a large-scale and treacherous war aimed at destroying our people. Destroying our children, our families. Our state. Our cities. Our communities. Our culture. And everything that makes Ukrainians Ukrainians. Everything that Russian troops are now destroying. Deliberately. In front of the whole world.”

For me, now a month and a half later, it has been too much like watching the proverbial oversized bully flanked by two Goliaths even larger than he taking turns punching a solitary 99-pound book-wormish classmate. Except the bully came armed with tanks, warplanes, and long-range missiles, and the bullies’ victim was not a solitary school boy.

The victim is a sovereign democratic nation which at the beginning of the war, on February 24, 2022, had a population estimated at 44.1 million. At this point, a quarter of Ukraine’s population has been displaced, including more than 4 million refugees fled to other countries. Videos of atrocities committed in Mariupol, Bucha, Borodyanka, Irpin, and elsewhere have left the international community stunned with disbelief.

Injustice Anywhere

At least three times each year--when honoring his birth, acknowledging the pain of his assassination, and commemorating the 1963 March on Washington, DC––people across the globe invoke the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on nonviolence and human rights. One of his most memorable pronouncements states: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Dr. King’s words clearly do not end with considerations of the social, political, or cultural battles undertaken by Black Americans and which have placed them among the foremost defenders of justice and democracy in the United States. The concept is easily applicable to the now famous blue and yellow shades of Ukraine’s enduring flag.

In his historic appeal to the U.S. Congress on March 16, 2022 , Ukraine President Zelenskyy cited King’s I Have a Dream speech and paraphrased his key refrain to emphasize:

“I can say, ‘I have a need: I need to protect our sky.’ I need your decision, your help, which means exactly the same, the same you feel when you hear the words ‘I have a dream.’”

Who, watching the reduction of Ukraine’s beautiful citizens and cities to piles of corpses and rubble, can doubt they are witnessing injustice in its most malevolent form? What could be more unjust than a sustained concentrated effort to erase an entire people’s culture, history, and presence from the earth? A day will come soon enough when onlookers denouncing the onslaught will have to decide whether efforts to help stem the rushing streams of blood have been meaningful in any significant life-saving way, or if they merely constituted an unintentional form of further enabling orchestrators of the butchery in Ukraine.

By Aberjhani
(© National Poetry Month 2022)
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

For more from Aberjhani on War in Ukraine 2022 please check out:
            Why Genocide in Ukraine Matters to a Black Poet in America Part 1
            Holiday Letter for a Poet Gone to War Poem with Video
           Volodymyr Zelensky 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

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Back Doors and Racial Inequality Prior to the Age of Coronavirus (COVID-19)

9/6/2020

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Art graphic by Aberjhani for narrative excerpt from the book Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind.

For more than one demographic of America's diverse populations, Black, White, Brown, Red, Yellow, and combinations thereof--male or female and different-flavored sexual identities--back doors were once synonymous with emblems of racial, economic, and political oppression in their most cutting conspicuous forms. They stood alongside crosses burning with flames of hatred as opposed to crosses gleaming with messages of love or redemption, with “Whites Only” and “Coloreds” signs attached to public restrooms and water fountains, seats at the backs of buses and trains or up in balconies of theaters, segregated beaches, pamphlets on eugenics, and “strange fruit” (as Billie Holiday sang) hanging from southern trees.

Evoking this historical twentieth century function in the first half of the twenty-first century would seem ridiculously archaic if not for striking counterparts in the form of hate crimes, mass incarceration, black bodies repeatedly falling to gun violence, and economic gentrification so often directed against people of color. Moreover, all of this has been repeatedly, casually, streamed on large and small screens around the world. Many current-day legal and illegal immigrants from Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe know something about the back-door experience because they, too, have lived it. Time has not removed the necessity of documenting how too many of us still dehumanize and eradicate our fellow human beings seeking shelter from the world's increasingly destructive "natural" and "man-made" storms.

Rear entrances have, however, served more inspired purposes as well. Some have provided meeting places for secret lovers. Others have been transformed into Eden-like refuges carpeted and ceilinged with vines blossoming fragrant roses, morning glories, wisteria, or honey suckle. Nothing wrong with thinking of love as emblems of hope or love. On certain days of the month, you can find in our present time (at least in Georgia) many people who are battling poverty lined up at the far ends of churches to receive brown bags filled with food which otherwise would end up in dumpsters.

Sensibilities of an Uncanny Nature

There is also in this era of technological wonders the notion of digital back doors which allow hackers to sneak in and out of computer systems belonging to people other than themselves. Whether that is a good or bad thing tends to depend on the hacker, his or her affiliates, and the intentions in question. Coming to personal and professional terms with the impacts of O'Connor's, McPherson's, and Berendt's blazing passages has felt at times like someone slipped invisibly into my life and effectively hacked it. The beliefs, assumptions, and confirmed certainties of a comfort zone forming fragments of an established identity––that of mine and many others'––were compromised and eventually reconfigured.

More than anything else, the back door as it is approached in the pages [of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door Of Mind] represent points in time, places in space, and regions of the spirit where sensibilities of an uncanny nature either collide or converge. Stepping through it led to the kind of adventures and misadventures for which we are rarely prepared, yet somehow often end up welcoming. The results are the kind which continue to increase literature's prized value as it pertains to specific communities and the world at large, providing solace and shelter during the best of times and the worst.
(From the book Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind ISBN 1-716-68481-1)

Aberjhani
Harlem Renaissance Centennial 2020

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Discovering 'The Many Ways of Looking at a Black Man' in 2017 (part 1 of 2)

1/17/2017

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Photo collage of men featured in original Nov '97 ESSENCE Magazine feature. From top left: Maxwell, Aberjhani, Sean "Puffy" Combs, Michel Marriott, John Edgar Wideman, Tiger Woods, and Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt. (Collage inspired by original photography of Barron Claiborne)

Since the publication of "The Many Ways of Looking at a Black Man" special feature story in ESSENCE Magazine, November 1997, perspectives on men of African descent in the United States of America have evolved to cover a lot of ideological territory. That observation rings as true for everyday citizens of the country as it does for mainstream media, in which we have seen a gamut of extreme images, sometimes horrifying bloody, sometimes wonderfully inspiring.

The atmosphere of combativeness generated when the country's President-Elect, Donald Trump, chose to castigate civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) for exercising his right (some might say duty) to voice concerns over political legitimacy, removed any doubt that a lot of work still needs to be done where race relations are concerned. In light of the increasingly disturbing violent deaths of African-American men, women, and children over the past few years, prompting me to wonder if their names inexplicably would soon join the others, and in light of unconcealed attempts at disenfranchisement, an industrial prison complex that gorges itself on Black men's lives, and other irrefutable factors, "The Many Ways of Looking at a Black Man" takes on new and powerful significance in this year marking the 20th anniversary of its publication.

Among other things, it is also, as Black History Month approaches, one more reason to think back with gratitude for the leadership which Susan L. Taylor, now founder/director of National Cares Mentoring Movement, provided as editor-in-chief of the magazine for some 20 years. In the noted classic issue, she reminded readers of this: "Whatever parcels of power we claim today were not surrendered to us willingly or without long and painful struggle. That struggle continues because our oppression continues..."

Nevertheless, the dominant theme for the occasion was more one of celebration than protestation. As such, the following description of the African-American man is from the magazine's contents synopsis and introduction to the original feature:

"From sexual icon to warrior to caretaker--he is our black man. In this annual men's issue, we explore how he handles power, privilege and pain... He is many things to many people: husband and lover, father and son, brother, friend, sex symbol and political nightmare, crossover icon and business mogul..."

Those bright powerful noble words make a poignant contrast to the vivid horror of Black men's and boys' bodies falling in American streets to the repeated blasts of gunfire. That does not mean they are no longer relevant.

On Timelines and Parallel Conditions

We know in 2017 that how Black Men are perceived, perceived, or guerrilla decontextualized, is extremely important because of the various circumstances and events that have led to their deaths, or incarceration, in more instances than anyone can accurately count.

Alleged perceptions of unarmed black males as immediate threats to armed policeman's lives (or a would-be policeman in the case of George Zimmerman's shooting of Trayvon Martin) has resulted in numerous deaths declared "justifiable" under Stand Your Ground laws. Stunningly, Edward Lewis, who in 1997 was publisher of ESSENCE and CEO of Essence Communications, Inc., wrote in the November issue:

"Some victims of police brutality don't live to tell about it. They die from bullets and blows and choke holds that are found--upon review by higher authorities--to fall roughly within acceptable guidelines. Others, who seek redress, often find their paths blocked."

Could not Lewis's words written 20 years ago have been penned just as easily in 2017? Think Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray,Terence Crutcher, Walter L. Scott, Sandra Bland and, sadly, many more.

A Few Thoughts from Trevor Noah

Refuting Stereotypes of Irredeemable Infamy

Perceptions of Black men as dead-beat fathers have been reinforced by actual institutional systems designed to keep them at an economic, social, and political disadvantage. Perceptions of Black men as criminals increased with a manufactured war-on-drugs that first created the means for them to become suppliers of illicit substances and then, once they did so, punished them with prison sentences far more severe than equally-guilty White counterparts.

Call it the guerrilla decontextualization of an entire segment of American citizens' character and reality. One dangerous result of these manipulated perceptions and misconceptions of African-American men has been intensified inherited biases which, in turn, appear to have made institutional racism more severe than ever.

Unlike those who foster the above incongruences and paradoxes, Susan L. Taylor and her editorial board chose for their extraordinary annual men's edition to showcase a spectrum of black masculinity that was not based on a stereotype of irredeemable infamy. To accomplish this, they opted to present well-known and not-so-well-known Black men in the feature.

Among the outstanding aspects of the lay-out design was the line of light orange and blue text across the full-page black and white photographs of the subjects. Below are the names of the seven men featured, followed by a few of the words used to describe them, listed in the order that they appeared on pages 87-126:

Singer-Songwriter Maxwell: soft-spoken, playful, sizzling.
Golf Champion Tiger Woods: gifted, sophisticated, wholesome, young, fresh.
Political Advocate Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt: committed, impassioned, single-minded,
Entrepreneur-Entertainer Sean "Puffy Combs: self-confident, bankable, resilient, astute
Author-Poet Aberjhani: considerate, kind, resourceful, artistic, alert.
Writer Michel Marriott: reckless, noble, rueful, keen, masculine, vivid.
Author John Edgar Wideman: brilliant, somber, deliberate, original, intense.

In addition to those represented in the cover story, some of the other articles and profiles shined spotlights on: basketball legend Michael Jordan (actually seen shaving his head in a full-page ad for his cologne), actor-activist Harry Belafonte, actor Michael Beach, NFL footballer Keyshawn Jackson, poet-publisher Haki Madhubuti, intellectual properties manager Phillip Madison Jones, singers Tony Rich, Brian McKnight and Kenny Lattimore, and designer Dion Lattimore.

Addressing the difficulty of being a Black prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson murder case, Christopher Darden avowed in the special edition that grief does not play racial favorites when a loved one is lost to violence. Speaking of the Goldman and the Brown families, he acknowledged, "Their tears were the same color as the tears I have seen so many times before in the eyes of Black survivors of violent crime. I cannot distinguish between the two."

NEXT: Discovering 'The Many Ways of Looking at a Black Man' in 2017 (part 2)

Aberjhani
Bright Skylark Literary Productions
January 2017

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For Love of Paris and a More Compassionate World (Part 2)

11/21/2015

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"This fire that we call loving is too strong for human minds. But just right for human souls." Aberjhani (from ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love. Poster art by FamilyShare.com)

You can enjoy part 1 of this article by clicking here. Part 2 begins now:

Impressive 21st-century technological advances notwithstanding, we have no reasons at present believe our modern global version of the Tower of Babel is about to crumble and then reconstruct itself any time soon. Terrorists, warlords, and state governments alike would do best to include within their strategic plans sufficient measures of sanity beyond the impulses to attempt to coerce each other into unlikely forms of submission.

Different values and worldviews do not have to mean inevitable violence or conflict. They can mean greater enrichment of each other’s lives. Leadership theorist Max De Pree wrote as truthfully as anyone has when he stated:

“We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion” (Leadership is an Art).

That holds true in modern times whether you propose to be a leader of young malleable individuals eager to become catalysts for positive change or of more established groups dedicated to securing a specific legacy. What matters, above all else, is that everybody matters.

Diversity is an aspect of human existence that cannot be eradicated by terrorism or war or self-consuming hatred. It can only be conquered by recognizing and claiming the wealth of values it represents for all. The situation would be quite different if the violent extremism which has come to characterize anarchistic terrorism and government-sanctioned warfare actually resolved anything. The problem is they do not. Advances are claimed on one front and then annihilation––physical, mental, and spiritual–– witnessed on another. Global poverty, dis-empowering illiteracy, health crises, and human trafficking linger like the ultimate toxic nuclear radiation. The hearts of infants beat their last, blood dries on abandoned corpses, and souls take their leave of now useless broken bones.

Of Love and Bridges

The 13th-century Sufi mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi, whose poetry in Persian has been translated into superb English versions by the 21st-century American poet Coleman Barks, told us that “Love is the bridge between you and everything.” Those are marvelous words to contemplate when struggling to make sense of the avoidable carnage in Paris, Syria, Nigeria, Mali, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Equally marvelous to contemplate is the confluence of sensibilities that has bypassed time, space, and nationality to make Barks’ name virtually synonymous with that of Rumi’s.

Paris in particular is known in part for its many bridges and is legendary as a place that evokes mesmerizing creative expressions of love, in both the greatest of artists and the most ordinary men and women. However, if the idea of loving those whom you have been taught to recognize as your enemies is too overwhelming, consider more deeply the likelihood that we are all much more alike than we are unalike.

Individual cultures and ideologies have their appropriate uses but none of them erase or replace the universal experiences common to all human beings. What civilization does not contain within its histories tales of sons, daughters, husbands, and wives who have been lost to conflict, and whose deaths left gaping voids that could be filled with nothing but grief? In what land do people not hope that the coming New Year will bring with it fewer reasons to bow before fear or despair and greater inspiration applied to an empowered sense of hope and dignity? The more healing options do not have to be dragged into a disposal bin designed for unrealistic dreams and desires.

A Messy and Complicated Concept

The four letters that spell out the word “love”––or five (amour) in French, seven (Кохання) in Ukrainian, or six (upendo) in Swahili–– can indeed add up to a messy and complicated concept. Nevertheless, whatever danger it (love, amour, Кохання, upendo) might pose to human existence is far less fatal than strapping bombs next to one’s heart as if they were newly-earned wings. Nor is it more lethally addictive than the apparent rush that comes from investing billions in war machines and prisons instead of committing the same to much-needed medical research and education programs.

These children are eating in poverty-stricken Mali, Africa, where terrorists killed 19 people at a hotel just one week following attacks in Paris, France. (photo from UN Word Food Bank Organization and Daouda Guirou 06-2014)

Consider that pain and bewilderment at some point in the course of individual lives knocks people sobbing to their wretched knees no matter where those lives may have originated. Consider that universal agonies, common challenges, and simple human dignity make each of us worthy of some degree of compassion.

Imagine that the strength and resources which may be claimed through communication and reconciliation are far greater and much more sustainable than any likely to come from ignoring everything that binds the fate of one to that of another. The acknowledgement of a single possibility can change everything. It can heal a wounded city like Paris or restore humankind’s faith in what is best within us all.

Aberjhani
@ 20 November 20, 2015
Bright Skylark Literary Productions

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The 2015 Bid for Power and History in Savannah

11/16/2015

Diva Magazine photo of Edna Branch Jackson, incumbent mayor of Savannah, Georgia (USA). (http://www.divabydesignonline.com/dashboard.html?entry=news-georgia-gets-more-black)

Journalist Patricia C. Stumb, in a 1999 Connect Savannah news magazine story titled “Peace, love & blessings…,” wrote of how I “found worldly consciousness in the heart of [my] hometown.” Her observation was surprisingly precise because during that period while living in Savannah, Georgia, I had indeed become more aware of my hometown on the global scale of things. I had also become more cognizant of myself as an author whose influences and inspirations tended often to derive from regions far beyond it.

However, expanded consciousness or not, there was no such thing as overlooking the profound thematic shift that occurred in the city’s history when Floyd Adams became its first African-American mayor in 1996. That event prompted the composition of these lines:

By way of an African wind
a letter came today.
It was not scribbled over
Hallmark fantasies or
popcultural postcards;
it was engraved on sweat-dyed scrolls
manufactured by centuries
of anguish, struggle, determination.
––from the poem A Letter Came Today (I Made My Boy Out of Poetry)

The thematic transition grew even more powerful in 2003 with the election of Otis Johnson as mayor of the city and in 2011 when Edna Branch Jackson won the office. Up until this point, too much of the story of African Americans in Savannah had been one of a people continuously oppressed and suppressed by history itself. Different industries (such as film) and individuals benefited economically from that history but Blacks native to the city have rarely done so to any significant degree.

The Re-Historicization of a Narrative

The elections of Adams, Johnson, and Jackson created a thematic evolution that has helped the city prepare for even more dramatic and culturally inclusive demographic shifts already in progress. Call it the re-historicization of a narrative that dates back at least to late 1800s Reconstruction.
It was then that the privileges of freedom bestowed upon African-Americans certain political and social responsibilities pertaining to both themselves and their lighter-hued brothers and sisters. They learned what all before and since then have had to learn: democracy is not simply a license to indulge individual whims and proclivities. It is also holding oneself accountable to some reasonable degree for the conditions of peace and chaos that impact the lives of those who inhabit one’s beloved extended community.

The years had been a long time coming before citizens of Savannah could begin to envision new sociopolitical dynamics that involved something other than oppression in its various nefarious forms. Leadership has never been an exact science but it has always found itself particularly challenged when tasked with elevating one segment of a society onto a level more politically, socially, and economically equitable with another.

However, the 2015 bid for power and history in Savannah is about more than practicing leadership to balance weighted scales. It is about giving shape to an historical context capable of sustaining progress on multiple fronts. It is about negotiating changes which some may find difficult to accept but which in fact cannot be avoided. Fortunately, city residents can choose between two excellent candidates for the tasks at hand: contender Eddie DeLoach and incumbent Mayor Jackson. A run-off election between the two is slated for December 1, 2015.

Video Notes on Past and Future Growth

The Infamous Iron Pipeline

Anyone hoping to replace Edna Jackson as mayor of Savannah is not telling residents anything new when they point out that the city has a crime problem which needs to be addressed in an aggressive manner. Certainly what happened to Crusader for Brotherhood advocate Semaj Clark in Yamacraw Village makes that about as clear as anything could. Yet what is true of Savannah is also true of Georgia, the United States, and the world in general (for this last we have the recent tragic example of the massacre in Paris, France).

It would be a mistake to buy into the notion that Mayor Jackson has been standing idly by and doing nothing but watching the situation grow worse. She has engaged the community not only on the issue of crime but on the topics of education, racial equality, economic growth, and the eradication of poverty. She has in fact addressed nearly every aspect of public administration and social justice while working devotedly as an inspired servant leader in this era of apparently nonstop globalization.

The issues of crime and gun violence in Savannah are not only about who is or is not sitting in the mayor’s office. They are about gun legislation that made it possible for Georgia to become part of the infamous iron pipeline allowing traffickers to illegally transport weapons to other states (such as New York) where stricter forms of regulation ensuring gun safety are in place. The issues, as it were, have to do with eliminating the underpinnings of poverty, classism, and the culture of racism that fuels criminality and perpetuates conditions which impede upward mobility.

Contender for position of mayor of Savannah: Eddie DeLoach. (photo by Steve Bisson for Savannah Morning News) http://savannahnow.com/opinion/2015-11-02/use-your-power-vote-today

Manifestation of a Progressive Vision

To say the incumbent mayor lacks vision for the city of Savannah would be a mistake as well. Jackson has been a catalyst, agent, and steward of positive change since as early as her participation in the Civil Rights Movement, and, as recently as when she lobbied President Barack Obama for his support on expansion of the Savannah River port. Her position as mayor of Savannah is itself the manifestation of a progressive vision for the city.

A better option than trying to paint Edna Jackson as a scapegoat might be to support her efforts to help Savannah fulfill its potential to become one of the world’s most dynamically cosmopolitan cities. That does not mean automatically agreeing with her various proposals. But it does mean taking a look at the larger picture while dialing back on presumptuous arrogance and condescension. Discourse and critical thinking are essential tools when it comes to securing progress in a democratic society. But in the end, unity and engaged participation are what make it happen.

Aberjhani
© Nov 2015 Bright Skylark Literary Productions

One Notable Measure of Just How Far Savannah Has Come:

<<Previous

Why Genocide in Ukraine Matters to A Black Poet in America (Pt. 2 of 2)

Some Useful Lessons

‘A Large-scale and Treacherous War’

Injustice Anywhere

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Back Doors and Racial Inequality Prior to the Age of Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Sensibilities of an Uncanny Nature

Aberjhani
Harlem Renaissance Centennial 2020

Contact the Author

Discovering 'The Many Ways of Looking at a Black Man' in 2017 (part 1 of 2)

On Timelines and Parallel Conditions

A Few Thoughts from Trevor Noah

Refuting Stereotypes of Irredeemable Infamy

For Love of Paris and a More Compassionate World (Part 2)

Of Love and Bridges

A Messy and Complicated Concept

The 2015 Bid for Power and History in Savannah

The Re-Historicization of a Narrative

Video Notes on Past and Future Growth

The Infamous Iron Pipeline

Manifestation of a Progressive Vision

One Notable Measure of Just How Far Savannah Has Come:

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Why Genocide in Ukraine Matters to A Black Poet in America (Pt. 2 of 2)

Some Useful Lessons

‘A Large-scale and Treacherous War’

Injustice Anywhere

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Back Doors and Racial Inequality Prior to the Age of Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Sensibilities of an Uncanny Nature

AberjhaniHarlem Renaissance Centennial 2020

Contact the Author

Discovering 'The Many Ways of Looking at a Black Man' in 2017 (part 1 of 2)

On Timelines and Parallel Conditions

A Few Thoughts from Trevor Noah

Refuting Stereotypes of Irredeemable Infamy

For Love of Paris and a More Compassionate World (Part 2)

Of Love and Bridges

A Messy and Complicated Concept

The 2015 Bid for Power and History in Savannah

The Re-Historicization of a Narrative

Video Notes on Past and Future Growth

​The Infamous Iron Pipeline

Manifestation of a Progressive Vision

One Notable Measure of Just How Far Savannah Has Come:

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Aberjhani
Harlem Renaissance Centennial 2020

The Infamous Iron Pipeline