Literary Persuasions: Book Reviews by Aberjhani

Lights, Cameras, and Poetry: On Evolving Cultures in Savannah, Georgia

2/12/2023

I thought about the poems and creative nonfiction in Patricia A. West’s book, Still Water Words (2020), for quite some time after seeing more and more film crews on different sites in Savannah, Georgia (USA). In 2022, I watched crews at work in the Benjamin Van Clark Neighborhood on the set for director David Gordon Green’s Halloween Ends. In early 2023, I observed technicians, actors, and grip trucks on a set for Ava Duvernay’s Origins project (based on Isabel Wilkerson’s book: Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents) not too far from the previous location.

The proliferation of movies shot in the city strikes me as confirmation of how much change the film industry has brought to the entire state of Georgia. That is particularly notable when observing how the modern high-tech cosmopolitan culture of the industry occasionally bumps against unflattering political and social attitudes and behaviors from the past.

Outdoor lighting specialists set up night-time floodlights for filming on a set for Halloween Ends in the historic Benjamin Van Clark neighborhood in Savannah, Georgia, USA. (Photo by Aberjhani)

Such was the case when segments of Wakanda Forever were filmed in the Mary Ross Waterfront Park in Brunswick at the same time (October 2021) the trial of three White men was getting underway for killing Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, in the same city. It is also a strange kind of irony for visiting actors, directors, or producers who attempt to reconcile their enjoyment of a pleasurable evening in the Plant Riverside District with their confusion over the name of the beautiful bridge shimmering a short distance away.

Poetic Considerations

The writings in West’s Still Water Words, Poems and Stories from Ancestral places, on the other hand, bring us people and locations whose simple existences were major contributors to historic events so many now find useful to their creative and economic purposes. Through a double lens forged of pride in her Gullah Geechee heritage and of finely-honed literary craftsmanship, West delivers captivating portraits and tales of strivers, doers, family anchors, and customs. A retired Assistant Professor of English at Savannah State University, the task is one for which she is well equipped. For example, we learn in the oral history poem titled “One Day,” how elder cousin Richard West “knew secrets of the woods…”:

…If church was held after dark, they would
Swing a tightened, lighted lantern
To scare the snakes away.
Can’t you see him swinging that light high
to get the ol’ folks by?
Talking trash to the snakes in the woods?

In the poem “Stirring Culture in Those Cooking Pots: Savannah’s Alongshore Dinner Women,” she pulls back the curtain of herstory to acknowledge women who played an important role helping African-American longshoremen perform their demanding jobs during days of Jim Crow segregation. Because the men were not welcomed in any nearby White dining establishments, Black women often prepared full meals to sell on the docks:

The dinner women
were already stirring
culture in those
cooking pots, loading

food-filled pots, pans,
and dishes they
remembered from the
old people in Parker’s Ferry
to satisfy the wishes of hungry longshoremen.

They were men of might and muscles––
Lifting and carrying cargo along the docks,
Unloading goods to go onshore,
Building the shipping industry, boosting a coastal economy,

yet starving for respect…

Front cover of Still Water Words: Poems and Stories from Ancestral Places, by Patricia Ann West.

Inevitable change or predatory gentrification?

The erasure of Black history is something African Americans in Savannah have witnessed repeatedly on both large and small scales. One of the most often-cited instances is that of entire neighborhoods which were bulldozed in the early 1960s to make way for Interstate 16 and a flyover ramp (itself now targeted for removal). That decision forced the destruction of the Savannah Union Train Station on West Broad Street (now MLK Boulevard), recognized at the time as a central hub of businesses run by African Americans (primarily) and Jewish Americans in the area.

In addition to Union Central, entire neighborhoods like the legendary Frogtown and an assortment of once-thriving businesses were obliterated. As native Savannahian and Pulitzer Prize-winner James Alan McPherson recalled in his essay, Going Up to Atlanta: “There is not one house where I lived as a child still standing.”

Such destruction in the name of civic leaders’ definition of “progress” could, in some cases, be considered results of inevitable change. Others might justifiably be described as predatory gentrification. Poems like “13 Dundee” (p. 46) in Still Water Words rescue people and places from both potential fates:

                        Dancin’ down Dundee Lane!
                        Miz Theodosia recitin’ Dunbar on Waters at St. Paul
                        “When Malindy Sings”––
                        “The whole thing!”
                        We used to click-clack,
                        shoot marbles, losing then coming back…

The poet adds in a footnote: “The old Dundee Street home site is now the location of the Tiny House Project serving formerly homeless veterans and has been renamed The Cove at Dundee …”

Increasing Value of Remembrance

Two short creative nonfiction pieces––“Dear Carolina: A Letter of Memories” and “Mattie’s Time” (pp. 81-96)–– allow the author to “pay homage for days out in the country and across the bridge to South Carolina.” The book concludes with the poem “Come, Day Clean” (p. 102). The poem employs the Gullah declaration to invoke resilience in the face of various forms of injustice. It can, in some ways, be read as a vigorous spiritual response to Billie Holiday’s classic lament, “Strange Fruit,” in which southern trees have: “blood on the leaves and blood at the roots.” In fact, West categorizes her poem as “A Ntata- A Poetic Outcry.” Here are a few lines:

Come, day clean!
Over southern trees evergreen,
Rise up over us with new hopes;
Leave worry in last night’s dark and low.
Spread light over us lowly like a balm.
With laughter and lore, help our spirits calm…

Incorporated within the 102 pages which make up Still Water Words are more than a dozen images of people (including the author’s parents) and documents which enhance the already considerable power of the text. Interestingly enough, it is the well-preserved linguistic authenticity which lends Still Water Words a kind of time-bending cinematic quality possibly on par with the movie-making enriching Savannah’s already fabled story.

The destruction of cultural legacies witnessed in countries like Ukraine and Syria over the past few years––or even in entire towns destroyed by fires and floods in America––have underscored how unwise it is to take gifts of everyday life and people for granted. West’s extraordinary volume is a great reminder of the increasing value of such remembrance.

By Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

More on Poets and Poems

0 Comments

A Grandmother’s Gift: Juneteenth and the Novels of Robert T.S. Mickles Sr. (part 1)

6/4/2022

0 Comments

("Hands Reaching out for Freedom and Justice" Postered Chromatic Poetics for Aberjhani's Bright Skylark Literary Productions 2022)

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., declared Juneteenth a federal holiday in celebration of the official end of legalized slavery in the United States of America on June 18, 2021. More than a decade before that momentous event, the late author Robert T.S. Mickles, Sr. (1953-2021) published the novel Blood Kin, A Savannah Story. Mickles’ novel takes readers inside the painful ambiguities of slavery as his ancestors, some of whom were slaves, and some of whom were slave traders, experienced them. The following foreword from Blood Kin is the first of two statements scheduled to acknowledge Mickles’ enduing literary legacy, and, in observance of Juneteenth 2022.

Foreword to Blood Kin, A Savannah Story

As this book goes into publication (2007), the city of Savannah is involved in the process of reinterpreting the significance, artifacts, and impact of slavery that was practiced here during the 1700s and 1800s. This reinterpretation is not so much
about dredging up the pains and shames of an inglorious past as it is about setting straight the historical record of people who lived daily through “the peculiar institution of slavery.” As much as facts tell us about specific events and practices in history, they rarely give us the full story of the human hearts beating in the shadows of those events.

Blood Kin is a story of those human hearts as told by Robert T.S. Mickles, Sr.,
great-grandson of former slaves on his father’s side of his family and a descendant of Portuguese slave traders on his mother’s side. Born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1953, Mickles moved with his family to Washington D.C. just three years later. Growing up in Washington, he knew nothing about his deeper southern roots. That changed when he turned thirteen years old and his mother sent him back to Savannah to live with his father in the city’s historic community of Sandfly.

In Savannah, his grandmother, Mrs. Beulah Tremble, told him stories of what
life had been like for slaves in the region. Having been born in 1888, first-hand
accounts of slavery were typical subjects of conversation while she grew up herself. She kept and shared the knowledge passed on to her until her death at the age of 100 in 1988. Mickles recalls that many of her stories were about harsh
times, but a lot were about days of memorable joy. In addition to his grandmother, many others shared their stories with Mickles throughout his teen years, entrusting to him a rare treasury of valuable folk history.

With the legacy of his grandmother’s stories and his community’s history,
Mickles stepped behind Savannah’s fabled “moss curtain” to reveal an original literary vision of human beings discovering their deepest humanity in the midst of war, racial oppression, individual fear, and individual hope.

Although Savannah for a period was a major location for the import and sale of slaves, Mickles shows how it was also a place where the line between those who were “free” and those who were enslaved was sometimes a bit more relaxed than in many rural areas of the South. This is not to say that the author excuses an institution ultimately responsible for the death of untold millions, or that he views slavery through proverbial rose-colored glasses. It is, however, to say that he is willing to examine the cracks and crevices of history in order to tell a story others might not be willing—or even able, for that matter—to tell. It is the story of how Blacks and Whites stumbled across the dividing lines of race and slavery only to discover that each was as flawed, needy, and human as the other.

Above all, Mickles provides us with an insightful novel of how our sense of
humanity preserves itself when assaulted with the degradation of denial, shame,
and physical brutality. His Blood Kin is a story that retrieves dignity from the
trash pile of disgrace and restores it to a place of honor and value. It is one with
which many can identify and which, quite possibly, all should embrace.

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

0 Comments

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

2/17/2022

0 Comments

Relationship building, arguably, comprises the heart of Gartrell’s institutional success and the soul of his memoir’s emotional intelligence.

(If you missed part 1of this article you can click here to check it out.)

Connecting with the right people to help establish and staff his Wisdom21 schools presents a challenge repeatedly met in innovative ways. Often crucial in this regard are women. His relationships with the same––notably, per the text, repeatedly initiated by them––at times blur what would be considered in the U.S. as lines of professional propriety. You might even say they were completely erased in certain cases. Gartrell is not insensitive to the point and wrestles with its implications and potential consequences.

Loneliness and Rules of Engagement

In a chapter titled “Land of Ladies,” he theorizes that during his time in the country, Japanese women were “especially lonely and in desperate need of love.” This, despite having a reputation for making “the best marriage partners on earth” (p. 108). A variety of factors are cited as possible reasons for their loneliness and desperation but the dangerous end result was an apparent (at least to the author) acute vulnerability which made them easy prey for unscrupulous foreign tourists. As for the author:

“…Back in the U.S., I led a fairly typical life and tended to shy away from romances not suitably cultivated, wholesome, or clean. In Japan, however, the rules of engagement were radically different. In many respects, there were no rules at all... As an aspiring businessman, community leader, and person of conscience, I felt it my duty to address…concerns as appropriately as I could…” (p. 110).

Given the radicalized and revolutionized factions of gender equality activists around the world in 2022, much more could be written about the author’s observations of and experiences with Japanese women. This writer would encourage exactly that for one important reason. A key component to surviving the transitions from homogenous cultural models which many have experienced in the past to more diverse communities currently forming is this: a willingness to understand how members of different cultures experience that of “others.” Powerful examples are presented throughout the subject text.

A definitive example of the possible pitfalls and drawbacks of mixing private intimacies with business ambitions may be seen in what the author describes as a “paper marriage” convenient for legal purposes. In addition to proving herself an extremely competent business partner, his native-born wife Kazumi calmly overlooks her husband’s involvement with two mistresses (a practice widely documented as acceptable in Japan). However, just as the expanding Wisdom21 enterprise begins to spiral downward, her expertise and devotion both disappear.

Black Community in an Asian World

Something many will likely be surprised to learn about when reading 21 Years of Wisdom is the extensiveness of the Black presence in Japan. The discovery makes for a completely different scenario from the solitary status reported by James Baldwin in “Stranger in the Village”––or for that matter by explorer Matthew A. Henson as he planted a flag with Robert E. Peary at the North Pole in 1909––and thereby increases its value as a recent addition to the literature of Black expatriates.

The nonprofit Japan African American Friendship Association had been established in the country some years before Gartrell’s arrival. His rapid rise in prominence, however, made him a suitable choice to lead it following the 1995 passing of the previous president, Harry Stevenson. He would hold that position for a decade.

Interaction with one particular African-American from Atlanta proved exceptionally useful when the school founder clashed with the Yakuza (mob) over a dispute concerning a former employee’s dismissal. Before things could turn violent, his fellow expatriate handled the matter without the boss’s consent and informed him afterwards. Moreover, interestingly enough, it to a city with a more than 50 percent Black population that Gartrell returns at the conclusion of his Japanese odyssey.

5 Teachable Take-Aways

In the Author’s Note for 21 Years of Wisdom, readers are cautioned that people who identify with certain demographics may find some passages in his memoir offensive. He’s probably right. But many of those same individuals are likely to sidestep any sense of personal slight out of appreciation for the larger philosophical, geographical, and historical contexts in which the central story is embedded. They might also find Shannon Roxborough’s insightful foreword useful towards that end.

More than a few commenters have noted the stylish novel-like quality of Gartrell’s narrative. With that in mind: how interesting would it be to see a director such as Spike Lee, Steven McQueen, Regina King, or Quentin Tarantino produce a film adaptation of the book? Time will tell. For now, the following are 5 of what I consider to be important teachable take-aways from 21 Years of Wisdom:

Harmonious interaction between members of converging cultures is as dependent upon those entering a host country as it is upon indigenous communities accommodating them.
The literature of the African-American expatriate experience is one deserving of greater study within the contexts of both American academia and world literary forums.
The potential for mutually life-enriching experiences shared by immigrants and native residents on various shores is an extensively documented one, the study of which could serve America well as the country continues to evolve from one of a majority-White rule to one of a minority-majority population.
Alongside any strategies for raking in maximum profits, effective organizational leadership requires ethical practices which safeguard the integrity of an organization’s products, its image, and it personnel.
The mindful practice of cultural literacy provides an effective deterrent to mind-less violence between people of different nationalities, religious background, and other social distinctions.

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

0 Comments

‘Talks Between My Pen and Muse’ an Inspired Literary Debut from Poet Aurie Cole

4/10/2021

0 Comments

The title of Aurie Cole’s debut collection of poetry, Talks Between My Pen and Muse, caught my attention and held it from the moment I first saw it. That a contemporary young poet acknowledged such a thing as a “Muse” was captivating in itself because it meant the poet was willing to let something other than ego-driven rage, lust, envy, or self-righteousness control completely the contents of her lines. It also meant she was attempting a partnership between classic notions of how poetry functions in the world and her own modern vision of it. My curiosity was stirred enough to place the title on my list of poetry books to read during National Poetry Month 2021 and I am glad I did.

This is a slim volume of 75 pages divided into 8 parts. Obviously, the sections themselves would have to be brief but the emotional intensity and aesthetic intentions come through with impressive power and precision. Unless there should be any confusion, the title of each section includes its definition. For the purposes of this review, I will leave readers to discover for themselves Cole’s preferred definitions but these are the headings (caps per original text): 1) MUSE; 2) RELATIONSHIP; 3) PITY PARTY; 4) SABOTAGE; 5) MISCONSTRUE; 6) FORGIVE/FORGIVENESS; 7) REBOOT; and SELF LOVE.

“Loving, Happy, Untamed, Passionate"

What I thought I might encounter with the first poem was either a dialogue between the poet’s pen and her muse and or a monologue from one pouring out grievances to the universe. Instead, the very first poem is titled “Stolen Muse.” There is no doubting the seriousness of this theft as Cole screams at the beginning:

Somebody call the cops!
My muse has been stolen
I repeat my muse has been stolen…

The pain of this crime is felt in each stanza as she dramatically describes the sleep deprivation and loss of creativity it has caused. Yet there is also gentle self-deprecating humor while observing:

I feel too normal
I need my abnormality back…

The depth of her need is amplified with the following simultaneously pleading and demanding lines:

I want it back the way it was taken
Opinionated, LOUD, wild, confused
Loving, happy, untamed, passionate
Smart enough, encouraging, kinda shy
Uncorrupted by the norms of society
Unpierced by the actions of my peers
AND ALL MINE

In the poems which flow immediately afterwards, titled “Nicking,” “Lost Scared Afraid,” and “My Muse,” the poet’s attachment to what most inspires her can be understood at different times in different ways. In one moment, it is an addiction of a healthy variety rather than a destructive one. In the next, it reads and feels a lot like a love affair brutally interrupted by the kind of heinous disregard which too often in our current over-technologized world leads to tragic consequences.

In the Tradition of Baring One’s Soul

The poems in the RELATIONSHIP section are as introspective and soulfully analytical as a reader might expect. But they also demonstrate Cole’s passion for language with titles like “Imbroglio” and “The Rage of Words.” The latter is particularly powerful for its depiction of language as a weapon in a battle between intimates. The quality of intimacy, in fact, is one of the stronger aspects of poetry throughout Talks Between My Pen and Muse. In poem after poem, it weaves back and forth between elements of trust and distrust, strength and fragility, condemnation and forgiveness, and love and risk.

The poems “Caged Bird” and “Caged Bird Freed” reinforce the perception of Cole as a writer with classic leanings. The titles’ obvious references to Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “Sympathy,” which provided Angelou with the title of her famous autobiography, place Cole within the tradition of soul-baring African-American literature without restricting her to it.

Instead of offering strategies for navigating the painful uncertainties of her personal journey, the Savannah, Georgia-born poet simply presents her own efforts at balancing them. In this way, she self-identifies with humanity as a whole rather than with a single segment of it. Near the end of the volume, she notes the following in a letter to herself:

I know you
From your favorite color
To your deepest secrets
From your untold feelings
To your wildest dreams

I care about
Your every word
Simplest request
Smallest dreams…

There is a tremendous amount to appreciate in this first edition of Aurie Cole’s debut volume as her pen makes its free-styling way through shock and despair toward hope and self-determination. However, it has to be said as well that serious readers of poetry are likely to find a number of typographical errors distracting. These are understandable enough because talented young poets rarely receive the kind of publishing support which ensures the absence of such mistakes. (How many, after all, such as the celebrated Amanda Gorman are likely to receive an invitation to recite their poetry at a presidential inauguration and subsequently get Oprah Winfrey to write a foreword for their book, basically guaranteeing its status as a number 1 bestseller?)

Other critically-minded readers may question the absence of poems dealing with such timely issues as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, or Black Lives Matter. In a way, it may be argued that the more deeply personal writings inspired by the poet’s muse are a kind of response to these very concerns as they illustrate the power of sheltering within the integrity of one’s own sanity in a world knocked off balance by myriad forms of chaos. The important thing may be the knowledge that Talks Between My Pen and Muse is only a first important literary step for Aurie Cole and readers hopefully can look forward to many more writings from her pen and muse in the future.

Aberjhani
Author of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

0 Comments

Student Authors Amplify Muted Voices in Book ‘Where the Rainbow Ends’

3/16/2021

0 Comments

Detail from "Hearing Silenced Voices" artwork graphic by Aberjhani for Bright Skylark Literary Productions.

“The most shocking moment in my life was when I was told that in two days I was leaving my country. It was a small moment in in which I felt that the world was falling on top of me.” ––English Learning High School Student (from the book Where the Rainbow Ends)

The purpose and value of Where the Rainbow Ends is spelled out clearly in the book’s preface by editors Jamie Hinds and Savanna Payne when they tell us: “Throughout the pandemic, our students have witnessed other historical events that took place in 2020. They have become witnesses to movements that are hearing silenced voices for the first time… They have become witnesses to change.”

The extraordinary significance of those words is demonstrated repeatedly in the collection of brief stories written by more than 90 anonymous English Learning Students in the Oklahoma City Public Schools system. These brave young authors range from fifth-graders to high-schoolers.

Intense debates regarding the migration of populations around the world have been ongoing for the better part of a decade but the voices of youth whose lives are most impacted by those debates are, as indicated, rarely acknowledged. Within this volume, they come through loudly and understandably enough. The word ‘understandably’ is emphasized here because the editors have very wisely left speech patterns and vocabulary as originally penned. These are, after all, individuals who are slowly adjusting to new ways of comprehending, relating, and behaving on different levels.

"Where the Rainbow Ends," a collection of voices by Oklahoma City Public Schools English Learning Students.

Those of us already proficient in the English language might wrinkle our brows when reading certain sentences with obviously faulty grammar. But we know what the authors mean and these sentences help us understand the gigantic challenge of uprooting oneself from a known cultural environment and reestablishing your life in a new unfamiliar locale. The most hard-hitting statements go beyond such considerations as syntax and brings to mind what the great Harlem Renaissance leader W.E.B. Du Bois called the worst blow which people of African descent suffered during slavery in America: the destruction of the Black Family.

Human migrations forced by desperation in our modern times have resulted in similar devastation; however, in the pages of Where the Rainbow Ends we experience painful separations as well as healing reunions. So it is that one student recalls prior to leaving El Salvador: “My sister went to the USA when I turned 4 years old but she got a VISA to get here so I have no memories of her.” The opportunity to make new memories would not come easily but it would come. Another student from Honduras demonstrated the importance of such a prospect when declaring: “And I learned to love my dad after seven years I was separated from him.”

Historical Consequences

Published by Project VOICE Industries, the 167 pages which make up this “collection of voices” represent a particularly important addition to discussions on immigration policies at a time when a new U.S. presidential administration has reversed executive decisions made by the previous one. That reversal has prompted a new wave young people, many without parental supervision, to take their chances on entering the United States under dangerous and illegal conditions.

Hopefully, additional volumes or ones similar to Where the Rainbow Ends will present readers with the flip side of the immigration coin by sharing the voices of different Americans’ experiences of adapting to immigrants. That is something I attempted to do in the story “A Brazilian Thanksgiving in Savannah” published in Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah. For the time being, it’s good enough to know my quote at the beginning of Where the Rainbow Ends has played some small role in helping the student authors amplify their voices and educate the world about the realities of one of the most consequential concerns of our volatile historical times.

Aberjhani
author of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

0 Comments

<<Previous

Literary & Cultural arts Persuasions:
Reviews & Remembrances by Aberjhani

Lights, Cameras, and Poetry: On Evolving Cultures in Savannah, Georgia

Poetic Considerations

Inevitable change or predatory gentrification?

Increasing Value of Remembrance

More on Poets and Poems

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

A Grandmother’s Gift: Juneteenth and the Novels of Robert T.S. Mickles Sr. (part 1)

Foreword to Blood Kin, A Savannah Story

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

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

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

Loneliness and Rules of Engagement

Black Community in an Asian World

5 Teachable Take-Aways

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

‘Talks Between My Pen and Muse’ an Inspired Literary Debut from Poet Aurie Cole

“Loving, Happy, Untamed, Passionate"

In the Tradition of Baring One’s Soul

Aberjhani
Author of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Author at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Student Authors Amplify Muted Voices in Book ‘Where the Rainbow Ends’

Historical Consequences

Aberjhani
author of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

Contact the Author

Archives

Categories

Literary & Cultural arts Persuasions: Reviews & Remembrances by Aberjhani

Lights, Cameras, and Poetry: On Evolving Cultures in Savannah, Georgia

​Poetic Considerations

​Inevitable change or predatory gentrification?

​Increasing Value of Remembrance

More on Poets and Poems

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

A Grandmother’s Gift: Juneteenth and the Novels of Robert T.S. Mickles Sr. (part 1)

Foreword to Blood Kin, A Savannah Story

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

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

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

​Loneliness and Rules of Engagement

Black Community in an Asian World

5 Teachable Take-Aways

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

‘Talks Between My Pen and Muse’ an Inspired Literary Debut from Poet Aurie Cole

​“Loving, Happy, Untamed, Passionate"

​In the Tradition of Baring One’s Soul

AberjhaniAuthor of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My MindCreator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Author at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Student Authors Amplify Muted Voices in Book ‘Where the Rainbow Ends’

​Historical Consequences

Aberjhaniauthor of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mindco-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

Contact the Author

Archives

Categories

Literary & Cultural arts Persuasions:
Reviews & Remembrances by Aberjhani

Poetic Considerations

Inevitable change or predatory gentrification?

Increasing Value of Remembrance

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

Loneliness and Rules of Engagement

“Loving, Happy, Untamed, Passionate"

In the Tradition of Baring One’s Soul

Aberjhani
Author of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Historical Consequences

Aberjhani
author of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance