One out of five ain't too bad, I thought, snuggling up.
But I didn't discover until recently his true uniqueness: He is the only one of my brothers who assumes responsibility for all his children. The other four all fathered children during those Saturday-night chases of twenty years ago. Children--my nieces and nephews whom I will probably never know--they neither acknowledge as their own, provide for, or even see.
It was not until I became a student of women's liberation ideology that I could understand and forgive my father. I needed an ideology that would define his behavior in context. The black movement had given me an ideology that helped explain his colorism (he did fall in love with my mother partly because she was so light; he never denied it). Feminism helped explain his sexism. I was relieved to know his sexist behavior was not something uniquely his own, but, rather, an imitation of the behavior of the society around us.
All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience. "The more things the better," as O'Connor and Welty both have said, speaking, one of marriage, the other of Catholicism.
I desperately needed my father and brothers to give me male models I could respect, because white men (for example; being particularly handy in this sort of comparison)--whether in films or in person--offered man as dominator, as killer, and always as hypocrite.
My father failed because he copied the hypocrisy. And my brothers--except for one--never understood they must represent half the world to me, as I must represent the other half to them.**
*A pseudonym.
**Since this essay was written, my brothers have offered their name, acknowledgment, and some support to all their children.
1975
PART FOUR
JUST EAST OF the central African great jungle belt lies an open Savanna believed to have been the home of the first human beings--hunters and gatherers set apart from the great apes in part by their ability to walk upright, which enabled them to fashion tools. Now, studies being carried on... propose that the first implements crafted by these people were not designed by men to hunt animals, as has long been assumed, but by women, to gather plants for eating.
--"New Anthropological Finds: The Swords Started Out as Ploughshares," MS. Gazette, August 1979
SILVER WRITES
IT IS TRUE--
I've always loved the daring ones
Like the black young man
Who tried to crash All barriers at once, wanted to swim
At a white beach (in Alabama) Nude.
Of all the poems I wrote during the period of most intense struggle for Civil Rights* (the early sixties), this one (from Once) remains my favorite. I like it because it reveals a moment in which I recognized something important about myself, and my own motivations for joining a historic, profoundly revolutionary movement for human change. It also reveals why the term "Civil Rights" could never adequately express black people's revolutionary goals, because it could never adequately describe our longings and our dreams, or those of the non-black people who stood among us. And because, as a term, it is totally lacking in color.
In short, although I value the Civil Rights Movement deeply, I have never liked the term itself. It has no music, it has no poetry. It makes one think of bureaucrats rather than of sweaty faces, eyes bright and big for Freedom!, marching feet. No; one thinks instead of metal filing cabinets and boring paperwork.
This is because "Civil Rights" is a term that did not evolve out of black culture, but, rather, out of American law As such, it is a term of limitation. It speaks only to physical possibilities--necessary and treasured, of course--but not of the spirit. Even as it promises assurance of greater freedoms it narrows the area in which people might expect to find them No wonder "Black Power," "Black Panther Party," even "Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party" and "Umoja" always sounded so much better and sui generis, if in the end they accomplished (perhaps) less.
When one reads the poems, especially, of the period, this becomes very clear. The poems, like the songs of that time, reveal an entirely different quality of imagination and spirit than the term "Civil Rights" describes. The poems are full of protest and "civil disobedience," yes, but they are also full of playfulness and whimsicality, an attraction to world families and the cosmic sea--full of a lot of naked people longing to swim free.
*Older black country people did their best to instill what accurate poetry they could into this essentially white civil servants' term (acknowledging the ultimate power behind the formulation of the majority of America's laws) by saying the words with a comprehending passion, irony, and insight, so that what one heard was "Silver writes."
1982
ONLY JUSTICE CAN STOP A CURSE
TO THE MAN GOD: O Great One, I have been sorely tried by my enemies and have been blasphemed and lied against. My good thoughts and my honest actions have been turned to bad actions and dishonest ideas. My home has been disrespected, my children have been cursed and ill-treated. My dear ones have been backbitten and their virtue questioned. O Man God, I beg that this that I ask for my enemies shall come to pass:
That the South wind shall scorch their bodies and make them wither and shall not be tempered to them. That the North wind shall freeze their blood and numb their muscles and that it shall not be tempered to them. That the West wind shall blow away their life's breath and will not leave their hair grow, and that their fingernails shall fall off and their bones shall crumble. That the East wind shall make their minds grow dark, their sight shall fail and their seed dry up so that they shall not multiply.
I ask that their fathers and mothers from their furthest generation will not intercede for them before the great throne, and the wombs of their women shall not bear fruit except for strangers, and that they shall become extinct. I pray that the children who may come shall be weak of mind and paralyzed of limb and that they themselves shall curse them in their turn for ever turning the breath of life into their bodies. I pray that disease and death shall be forever with them and that their worldly goods shall not prosper, and that their crops shall not multiply and that their cows, their sheep, and their hogs and all their living beasts shall die of starvation and thirst. I pray that their houses shall be unroofed and that the rain, the thunder and lightning shall find the innermost recesses of their home and that the foundation shall crumble and the floods tear it asunder. I pray that the sun shall not shed its rays on them in benevolence, but instead it shall beat down on them and burn them and destroy them. I pray that the moon shall not give them peace, but instead shall deride them and decry them and cause their minds to shrivel. I pray that their friends shall betray them and cause them loss of power, of gold and of silver, and that their enemies shall smite them until they beg for mercy which shall not be given them. I pray that their tongues shall forget how to speak in sweet words, and that it shall be paralyzed and that all about them will be desolation, pestilence and death. O Man God, I ask you for all these things because they have dragged me in the dust and destroyed my good name; broken my heart and caused me to curse the day that I was born. So be it.
This is a curse-prayer that Zora Neale Hurston collected in the 1920s. And by then it was already old. I have often marveled at it. At the precision of its anger, the absoluteness of its bitterness. Its utter hatred of the enemies it condemns. It is a curse-prayer by a person who would readily, almost happily, commit suicide, if it meant her enemies would also die. Horribly.
I am sure it was a woman who first prayed this curse. And I see her--black, yellow, brown or red, "aboriginal" as the Ancients are called in South Africa and Australia and other lands invaded, expropriated, and occupied by whites. And I think, with astonishment, that the curse-prayer of this colored woman--starved, enslaved, humiliated, and carelessly trampled to death--over centuries, is coming to pass. Indeed, like ancient peoples of color the world over, who have tried to tell the white man of
the destruction that would inevitably follow from the uranium-mining plunder of their sacred lands, this woman--along with millions and billions of obliterated sisters, brothers, and children--seems to have put such enormous energy into her hope for revenge that her curse seems close to bringing it about. And it is this hope for revenge, finally, I think, that is at the heart of many People of Color's resistance to the present antinuclear movement.
In any case, this has been my own problem.
When I have considered the enormity of the white man's crimes against humanity. Against women. Against every living person of color. Against the poor. Against my mother and my father. Against me ... When I consider that at this very moment he wishes to take away what little freedom I have died to achieve, through denial of my right to vote . . Has already taken away education, medicine, housing, and food . . That William Shockley is saying at this moment that he will run for the Senate of my country to push his theory that blacks are genetically inferior and should be sterilized .. . When I consider that he is, they are, a real and present threat to my life and the life of my daughter, my people, I think--in perfect harmony with my sister of long ago: Let the earth marinate in poisons. Let the bombs cover the ground like rain. For nothing short of total destruction will ever teach them anything.
And it would be good, perhaps, to put an end to the species in any case, rather than let white men continue to subjugate it, and continue their lust to dominate, exploit, and despoil not just our planet, but the rest of the universe, which is their clear and oft-stated intention; leaving their arrogance and litter not just on the moon, but on everything else they can reach.
If we have any true love for the stars, planets, the rest of Creation, we must do everything we can to keep white men away from them. They who have appointed themselves our representatives to the rest of the universe. They who have never met any new creature without exploiting, abusing, or destroying it. They who say we poor (white included) and colored and female and elderly blight neighborhoods, while they blight worlds.
What they have done to the Old, they will do to the New.
Under the white man every star would become a South Africa, every planet a Vietnam.
Fatally irradiating ourselves may in fact be the only way to save others from what Earth has already become. And this is a consideration that I believe requires serious thought from every one of us.
However, just as the sun shines on the godly and the ungodly alike, so does nuclear radiation. And with this knowledge it becomes increasingly difficult to embrace the thought of extinction purely for the assumed satisfaction of--from the grave--achieving revenge. Or even of accepting our demise as a planet as a simple and just preventive medicine administered to the universe. Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it. In any case, Earth is my home--though for centuries white people have tried to convince me I have no right to exist, except in the dirtiest, darkest corners of the globe.
So let me tell you: I intend to protect my home. Praying--not a curse--only the hope that my courage will not fail my love. But if by some miracle, and all our struggle, the Earth is spared, only justice to every living thing (and everything is alive) will save humankind.
And we are not saved yet.
Only justice can stop a curse.
1982
NUCLEAR MADNESS: WHAT YOU CAN DO
NUCLEAR MADNESS IS a book you should read immediately. Before brushing your teeth. Before making love. Before lunch. Its author is Helen Caldicott (with the assistance of Nancy Herrington and Nahum Stiskin), a native Australian, pediatrician, and mother of three children. It is a short, serious book about the probability of nuclear catastrophe in our lifetime, eminently thoughtful, readable, and chilling, as a book written for nuclear nonexperts, as almost all Americans are, would have to be.
Caldicott was six years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and calls herself a child of the atomic age. She grew up, as many of us did, under the threat of nuclear war. She recalls the fifties, when students were taught to dive under their desks at the sound of the air-raid siren and Americans by the thousands built underground fallout shelters.
During the sixties, political assassinations, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Vietnam War turned many people away from concern about atomic weapons and toward problems they felt they could do something about. However, as Caldicott states, the Pentagon continued resolutely on its former course, making bigger and "better" bombs every year.
Sometime during the sixties Robert McNamara, then Secretary of Defense, said that between the United States and the Soviet Union there already existed some four hundred nuclear bombs, enough to kill millions of people on both sides, a viable "deterrent," in his opinion, to nuclear war. The Pentagon and the Kremlin, however, apparently assumed this was not enough, and so today between the two "superpowers" there are some fifty thousand bombs.
What this means is that the U.S. and the USSR, literally have more bombs than they know what to do with: so they have targeted every city in the Northern Hemisphere with a population of at least twenty-five thousand with the number of bombs formerly set aside to wipe out whole countries. So even as you squeeze out your toothpaste, kiss your lover's face, or bite into a turkey sandwich, you are on the superpowers' nuclear hit list, a hit list made up by people who have historically been unable to refrain from showing off every new and shameful horror that they make.
For several years Caldicott has been on leave from her work at the Harvard Medical Center, and spends all her time practicing what she calls "preventative medicine," traveling across the Earth attempting to make people aware of the dangers we face. Like most medicine, hers is bitter, but less bitter, she believes, than watching helplessly while her child patients suffer and die from cancer and genetic diseases that are directly caused by the chemical pollutants inevitably created in the production of nuclear energy.
The nuclear industry, powerful, profit-oriented, totally unconcerned about our health, aided and abetted by a government that is its twin, is murdering us and our children every day. And it is up to us, each one of us, to stop it. In the event of a nuclear war all life on the planet will face extinction, certainly human beings. But even if there is no war we will face the same end--unless we put an end to the nuclear-power industry itself--only it will be somewhat slower in coming, as the air, the water, and the soil become too poisoned from nuclear waste (for which there is no known safe disposal) to support life.
What can we do? Like Caldicott, but even more so, I do not believe we should waste any time looking for help from our legal system. Nor do I have faith in politicians, scientists, or "experts." I have great faith, however, in individual people: you with the toothbrush, you in the sack, and you there not letting any of this shit get between you and that turkey sandwich. If it comes down to it, I know one of us individuals (just think of Watergate) may have to tackle the killer who's running to push the catastrophe button, and I even hope said tackle will explain why so many of us are excellent football players. (Just as I hope something will soon illustrate for us what our brothers learned of protecting life in Vietnam.)
As individuals we must join others. No time to quibble about survival being "a white issue." No time to claim you don't live here, too. Massive demonstrations are vital. Massive civil disobedience. And, in fact, massive anything that's necessary to save our lives.
Talk with your family; organize your friends. Educate anybody you can get your mouth on. Raise money. Support those who go to jail. Write letters to those senators and congressmen who are making it easy for the nuclear-power industry to kill us: tell them if they don't change, "cullud" are going to invade their fallout shelters. In any case, this is the big one. We must save Earth, and relieve those who would destroy it of the power to do so. Join up with folks you don't even like, if you have to, so that we may all live to fight each other again.
But first, read Caldicott's book, and remembe
r: the good news may be that Nature is phasing out the white man, but the bad news is that's who She thinks we all are.
1982
TO THE EDITORS OF MS. MAGAZINE
[I wrote the following memo a few weeks prior to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and a few months before the Beirut massacres, in response to an article, "Anti-Semitism in the Women's Movement," by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, which appeared in the June 1982 issue of Ms.]
THERE IS A CLOSE, often unspoken bond between Jewish and black women that grows out of their awareness of oppression and injustice, an awareness many gentile women simply do not have. For example, last year at the height of publicity about the Atlanta child murders I visited a small college in middle Ohio to read poetry. Two women, a white Jew and a white gentile, met me at the airport and drove me to a restaurant for dinner. I was wearing two green ribbons,* one on my overcoat and another on my sweater. As soon as the four white people at the opposite table noticed this (and perhaps it was merely my color they noticed) they ordered the piano player at the front of the room to strike up "Mammy's Li'l Baby Loves Shortnin' Bread," which they sang at the top of their lungs (the two women--a visual obliteration of the possibility of interracial woman bonding--hanging onto the men like appendages) and at the end of each stanza, after "Called for the doctor, the doctor said ..." they added, "... and another one dead!" with emphasis, foot-stomping, and hoots of hickish laughter. When they finished this, they clamored for a rendition of "Sweet Georgia Brown," which the piano player claimed (mercifully) not to know.