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LITERARY MAGAZINE

H A K I M A D H U B U T I
Old School War Essay

A M I R I B A R A K A
Verbal Fisticuffs with Bill O’Reilly

D R . T O D D B O Y D
Ta k i n g I t t o t h e H e a d

B A K A R I K I T W A N A
Race and Hip Hop

Y U S E F K O M U N Y A K A A
Poetic War Stories

R A Q U E L R I V E R A
W h e r e d o P u e r t o R i c a n s f i t i n t o Hi p Ho p

C A M I L L E Y A R B R O U G H
In the Midst of an Artistic Journey

O F L O V E , WA R & H I P H O P
SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 1
2 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic www.mosaicbooks.com
issue fourteen, finally

Contents

Generation Flex | 8
Former Source editor and author of The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and
the Crisis in African American Culture, Bakari Kitwana brings an intellectual
voice to the dialogue of hip hop and politics.
by Thabiti Lewis

Rican Havoc | 12
In five Q&As, hip-hop head and scholar Raquel Rivera, New York Ricans From
the Hip Hop Zone, breaks down the culture in Black and Brown.
by Ron Kavanaugh

Love and War | 14

Three literary stallwarts revisit America’s battle-fatiqued history

> essay
Truth’s Consequences
by Haki Madhubuti

> essay
Yusef Komunyakaa’s Vietnam War Poetry
by Angela Salas, Ph. D.

> dialogue
...with liberty and justice for all
Amiri Baraka chats with Bill O’Reilly

Black Heads | 28
Dr. Todd Boyd, The New H.N.I.C: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip
Hop, approaches the new cultural movement with an unsettling urgency.
by Lee Hubbard

All Praises Due |34

Writer, dancer, educator, and actress Camille Yarbrough talks about her life and
prolific career.
by DuEwa Frazier

SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 3

 SUMMER 2004
No. 14
LYNNE d. JOHNSON Editor at Large
DEATRA HAIME Reviews Editor
RON KAVANAUGH Editor/Publisher

Mosaic Literary Magazine (ISSN 1531-0388) is published four times

per year by the Literary Freedom Project. Content copyright © 2004.
No portion of this magazine can be reprinted or reproduced in any form
without prior permission from the publisher.

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Contact the editor

We welcome letters and comments. Send us an email,
magazine@mosaicbooks.com or a letter: Mosaic Literary Magazine 314
W 231St. # 470 Bronx, NY 10463. Please visit Mosaicbooks.com for
guidelines on submitting poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and essays.

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POSTMASTER
Please send address corrections to Mosaic 314 W. 231 St #470
Bronx, NY 10463

4 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic www.mosaicbooks.com

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Facing Our Skeletons

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Relations
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your skeletons.
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Change is
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 ★
brighter days
After a brief hiatus we’ve returned to the grind. Happy
to be back, elated to put an end to the when’s-the-
next-issue-coming-out mantra.
The one good thing about absence is it gives you time
to think about the challenges faced––printing costs,
time dedication, personnel––and you know what, this
sh*t‘s tough. In our absence Book and Readerville
magazines have ceased publication. But please don’t
ask why we continue. Sadists, I suppose, all with rent-
paying commitments, who have to carve out time
weeks in advance to find a few hours to read. Hats off
★
to anyone–fool–hardy enough to start a new
commercial literary venture.
To that end, there is good news. After some unplanned
hiccups, we’re in the home stretch of completing our
I.R.S. paperwork. Mosaic Literary Magazine will begin
publishing under the auspices of the Literary Freedom
Project, a not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to
creating opportunities for social change through
literature and creative thinking.
Besides publishing Mosaic, we will also host readings;
continue to present the Re:Verse Festival, our annual
celebration of independent publishing and media;
and hold literature workshops for teens in
communities of color, instructing them on the
importance of critical and social thinking through
literature and media. (Social change through the arts)
I have to confess, the Literary Freedom Project did not
spring from an altruistic epiphany. It came out of a
desire to survive and the realization that for lovers of
books independence is the only way we can.
After many a day spent begging for ads while witnessing
the self-publishing explosion–writers bearing the weight
of not only writing but also publishing their own work–
I realized that I should lead instead of follow. By forming
coalitions publishing can be conquered on a small
but important level. The independence from pursuing
advertisers will, in the end, give us the ability to examine
freely the torrent of poetry and literature that often
beset and occasionally brighten our office.
In order to start a successful organization we must sure-
up our strong point, Mosaic. We’ve invited a cadre of
cognoscenti to help steer Mosaic and strengthen its
foundation. It’s our hope that our new editorial board
will guide Mosaic as it ascends to preeminent
independent literary publication. ★
The nonprofit status, new editorial board, and our
continued commitment to literature will, if not ensure
success, at least guarantee survival.
Ron Kavanaugh
Editor/Publisher
★
 2
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 generation flex
BY THABITI LEWIS
BAKARI KITWANA, EDUCATOR AND FORMER SOURCE EDITOR, BREAKS DOWN HIP HOP AND RACE

Sanoizm, Village Voice

THE MAY 2002 ISSUE OF BLACK ENTERPRISE MAGA-
ZINE PUBLISHED THE FIRST OF A FOUR-PART SERIES
THAT EXAMINED THE GLOBAL ECONOMY OF HIP HOP
IN THE AREAS OF MUSIC, FASHION, SPORTS, AND
FILM.

The goal of the series was to reveal the power of hip hop in shaping
advertising campaigns and directing consumer purchases. The
very existence of a four-part study of hip hop’s influence on popu-
lar culture speaks volumes regarding its prevalence in the lives of
America’s and the world’s youth culture.

What is most interesting is that amid all the hoopla about hip hop’s
economic success one author has settled on analyzing the hip-hop
generation and the sociopolitical forces shaping it. Bakari Kitwana’s
The Hip Hop Generation: the Crisis in African American Youth in

8 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic www.mosaicbooks.com

Crisis, unlike other books on rap music
from James Spadey, Tricia Rose, Greg Tate,
and Nelson George, Kitwana’s book does
more than record the history and trends
of the music. It offers an analysis of the
obstacles facing this post-civil rights gen-
eration, namely their racial, social, politi-
cal, and economic struggles. The text is
divided into eight chapters ranging from
an introduction and definition of the new
Black youth culture to race wars, activism
in the hip-hop generation and the chal-
lenge of rap. Perhaps the strongest chap-
ters are “Young, Don’t Give a Fuc* and
Black,” “The New Black Youth Culture,”
and “The Politics of the Hip-Hop Genera-
tion.” The latter was especially engaging
because it illuminates the internal horrors
of Black-on-Black crime and underground
economies as well as the age-old conun-
drum that has plagued the Black commu-
nity of “old guard” leadership eschewing
the youth and the legitimacy of their con-
cerns. However, the lengthy discussion on
“gangsta” films entitled, “Young, Don’t Give
a Fuc* and Black” is a must read, for here
Kitwana takes the films to task for promot-
ing negative behavior and cultivating
skewed social views. His discussion of con-
temporary cinema seems to capture the
essence of the hip-hop generation he sug-
gests is in crisis.
Kitwana’s arrival at this point stems from
his experiences as a teenager in New York,
his undergraduate years as a student/activist at the
University of Rochester, and from a tenure as edito-
rial director of Third World Press, where he enjoyed
a close relationship with his friend and mentor Haki
Madhubuti. While at Third World Press he pub-
lished The Rap on Gangsta Rap, which along with
stints as executive editor and political editor at the
Source magazine led to the publication of The Hip
Hop Generation. It seems his varied experiences from
grassroots to corporate have balanced his perspec-
tives quite well, as is evidenced by the quality of his
latest work.
In the introduction to The Hip Hop Generation,
Kitwana states that his examination of the hip-hop
generation (those born between 1965-1984) “is an
attempt to jumpstart the dialogue necessary to change
our current course.” Among the most important top-
ics of dialogue are: How high incarceration rates af-
fect Black lives, why the unemployment rate of young
Blacks is double that of Whites, what it means to
come of age in first generation of post-civil rights
America, and what issues are focal to this generation’s
activism and political agenda.
He is equally critical of the older civil rights genera-
tion, which is ironic because they were equally criti-
cal of their elders for also failing to allow the youth to
build on their political and social gains.
Although Kitwana is to be commended for his at-
tempt to critically examine sexism and misogyny, at
times he seems to have mistaken some genuine male
bonding for anti-female behavior. “America has so
vilified young Black men that we’ve circled the wag-
SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 9
 ons, excluding all others, including Black
women.” Attributing this to gangs, prison, and
street culture. The weakness in this argu-
ment lies is the very natural reality of male
bonding that is healthy and socialized by
activities outside of the prisons or gangs,
which are not the only reality for Black
males. Also, this discussion lacks the force
of some of his other chapters due to a sur-
prisingly unbalanced commentary that
completely omits male perspective on the
subject (except for the misguided antics of
Tupac and Mike Tyson, whom he
correctly critiques). Nonetheless,
what is important about his dis-
cussion of sexism and misogyny
is that it does not omit the rel-
evance of feminist perspectives
and the problems of sexism and
misogyny in the hip-hop genera-
tion.
I recently chatted with Bakari
about his book and his view of
the state of things for the hip-hop
generation.
Thabiti Lewis: In some of your recent inter-
views you have been critical of Russell
Simmons and his political aspirations.
Weren’t you among those in the planning
room when Simmons, David Mays, and
other head hip-hop honchos convened the
initial press conference. Are you still in the
mix, so to speak and if not, why?
Bikari Kitwana: [Simmons] doesn’t want to
deal with young activists who haven’t done
something or don’t have money. Thus, they
deal with Al Sharpton, Jessie [Jackson], Ben
10 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic
Chavis. They don’t understand that this is not a time for
grandstanding; this is a new movement. Ben [Chavis]
knows the history of SNCC (Student Non-violent Co-
ordinating Committee), which the elders helped get off
the ground, yet he failed to tell Russell and them, “I can
help you but you need to start your own group.” The
civil rights generation just did not do enough to help us
build political organizations. They have to ask them-
selves what they did to contribute to the current gen-
eration.
TL: What I find interesting is that impresario Russell
Simmons, whom you critique in your
book, is on the periphery of the age range
for those included in the hip-hop genera-
tion, yet he has managed to position him-
self in the center of the political force of
this generation. How is that possible and
does it mean that he is an exception or
that his political direction has validity?
BK: It’s important to me that any antago-
nism with Russell is played down. We
need to build an organization and a move-
ment and it can’t be done with too much
attention focused on petty differences.
My differences with Russell aren’t personal and em-
phasizing them makes it seem like we have personal
beef, which we don’t. It’s a difference of stategy and
tactic. I’m sure we’ll have an opportunity to work to-
gether down the road, and I don’t want anything I say
to be construed as “hatin’” or to be used to block that.
Also, I have older brothers who are Russell’s age which
makes it easy for me to see the delineations—what he
thinks is important differs from the hip-hop generation.
Look at his stuff and read between the lines and there
is no consciousness at all.
TL: Someone may ask, what makes Bakari Kitwana
the person to intellectualize about hip hop, much less
www.mosaicbooks.com
carve out who gets into or excluded from
the hip-hop generation? I am from St.
Louis and went to college in New York,
and let me tell you, people were constantly
challenging the validity of my claim to rap
music and hip-hop culture because I was
not from the East coast, although, now we
have the Nellys, Hot Boys, Master Ps and
other regional successes. Still, the younger
heads might contend that you are on the
cusp of the very generation you delineate,
that your Long Island origins, instead of
NYC proper, pushes you out of the box.
BK: This book expresses how rap
and its generation speak to the
realities of what we grew up with,
how the music touches on ma-
jor social and political issues they
faced. However, the truth is (in
response to my being from out-
side New York City) that EPMD,
Public Enemy, Eric B. and Rakim,
Keith Murray, and A Tribe Called
Quest are just a sampling of those
from Long Island whose contri-
butions to rap are indisputable.
TL: I think it is fantastic that you have
moved yourself out of the role of “leader”
and into that of participant, seeking solu-
tions towards moving the political, eco-
nomic, and race struggles of this genera-
tion forward. Why not take this book and
shout: “Here, I have the answer; read this
and you will know what to do?” I only say
this because [Hip Hop Generation] ad-
dresses numerous pressing issues that im-
pact youth and elders in contemporary
society.
BK: I want my book to spark a dialogue. I want to
be part of the solution. I’m a writer and theorist and
hope that I can contribute something to the conver-
sation around hip hop that has for too long needed
to go to another level. I want folks to start thinking
about the issues differently. Stop thinking that hip
hop as a musical form is all this generation is about
is a big first step. We need to take another giant step
forward in terms of social change and hip hop pro-
vides a unique opportunity. However if we expect it
to come via rap lyrics alone, we’re fooling ourselves.
Any of the existing groups could play that role. For
example, old school Black Panthers instead of ar-
guing with the New Black Panthers could help them
get the organization off the ground
and not make the same mistakes they
did. But this can’t be done by preach-
ing, talking down to young heads or
repeatedly telling us how many miles
old heads walked to school bare-
foot.
TL: Judging from these comments it
appears that a new political focus was
the impetus for your book? It seems
to me that your critique of these com-
ponents of Black politics derives pri-
marily from the study of the civil rights movement
and for that matter, your involvement in Black power
institutions. Would it be safe to make such assump-
tions?
BK: The hip-hop generation has new things to say
about politics in the 21st century. This book came
about largely because the civil rights and Black
power movements’ messages needed to be rede-
fined for our generation [hip hop]. They have failed
to incorporate our issues to make those institutions
more relevant, like NAACP, Operation PUSH, and
Urban League. ★
SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 11
 RICAN HAVOC

RAQUEL RIVERA, NEW YORK RICANS FROM THE HIP HOP ZONE, REFLECTS
ON THE LATINO CONNECTIONS TO THE ORIGINS OF HIP HOP

by Ron Kavanaugh

You clearly recognize the link among Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and hip hop, but what occured to make
the form almost completely identified with Black culture?
It has been a combination of the way the entertainment industry has marketed rap and also the misun-
derstanding of the shared cultural territory (which extends way beyond hip hop culture) between
African Americans and Puerto Ricans.

Does it matter that Blacks have taken the major role in rap when you consider it’s more about a
culture as opposed to race or heritage?
The fact that African Americans have had the predominant role in rap is an important fact and object of
study because it points towards notions of race and ethnic identity and how they impact cultural
production. It also reveals some of the ways in which race and ethnic identity are used as selling points
by the entertainment industry.

Even though rap is currently a multi-racial and multi-ethnic phenomenon both in terms of production
as well as consumption, race and heritage continue to be of crucial importance within rap music.

12 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic www.mosaicbooks.com

Since Black culture has become the dominant culture in shaping today’s styles do you think future Puerto
Ricans rappers will wear their pride the way Fat Joe does?
The entertainment industry is extremely fickle. I would not venture to predict what will happen. I do hope that
with the future come more Puerto Rican rappers who are knowledgeable about their history and culture. That
does not mean that every Puerto Rican rapper has to say she or he is Puerto Rican every 5 seconds, but that the
way they do express their Puerto Ricanness responds to the complexities of being Puerto Rican.

How do you feel about Latins who rap without reference to their own heritage?
I think its fine. There is room for everything under the sun, especially if its coming from the heart. The Latino
experience in the United States is very diverse, and art should be a reflection of that.

A few years ago there seemed to be a strange wave of Latin performers (Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin,
Cristine Aguilera) totally entrenched in American pop music but at the same time being embraced as the
new Latin beat. Is this the future of Latin rappers?
Market trends are pretty unpredictable. Who would have predicted in the early 90s that there would be a
renewed interest in the history of hip hop in the late 90s? Who would have predicted in the early 90s the fad
within commercial rap music which started in the late 90s of including Spanish words in rhymes? Latino
rappers may become media darlings tomorrow or they may be stripped of their legitimacy. Who knows? ★

SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 13

 of

love
war
14 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic
&
www.mosaicbooks.com
 America’s return to the dubious situation of conflict merits an oblique

look at war. Not as a contemporary conundrum but as a persistent

belief.

The Gulf War is only the latest in a long line of choices America has made

as an aggressor. Political stances taken today were held during the Vietnam

War, Korean War, Spanish American War, et al. And just as many have

spoken out in the past, including Baldwin, Hughes, DuBois, here, views on

America’s battles have resulted in three disparate yet unifying voices;

reflection on the benefits of the first amendment, the empathy developed

for an enemy, and a cautious ode to America.

These poets, all pillars, continue to exercise their most basic right.

Speaking with a disquieting urgency, using free speech to confront

contemporary ills while bringing to the fore the lasting results of past

conflicts.

Truth’s Consequences

e
Poet Haki R. Madhubuti gives his views on war and its reprocussions

Yusef Komunyakaa’s Vietnam War Poetry

An essay on Dien Cai Dau

by Angela Salas Ph. D.

...with liberty and justice for all.

Amiri Baraka and Bill O’Reilly obliquely discuss the first amendment.

SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 15

 Haki R. Madhubuti

TRUTH’S
CONSEQUENCES

16 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic www.mosaicbooks.com

I DO NOT WEAR AN AMERICAN FLAG ON MY COLLAR, NOR IS THERE A
FLAG ON MY CAR OR ON A WINDOW IN MY HOME. FOR THOSE WHO
PROUDLY DISPLAY THE FLAG I FEEL THAT IT IS THEIR RIGHT TO DO SO,
JUST AS IT IS MY RIGHT NOT TO JOIN THEM.

I am a veteran, volunteering and serving in the United States Army between

October 1960 and August 1963, discharged honorably and early to attend
college on the G.I. Bill of Rights. The military was my way out of debilitating
poverty and I will never speak ill of it. However, I am wise enough to not send
my sons when the options of a first-class university is there for them (two of
them attended Northwestern University). On the road to becoming a poet, I
have learned to love America. Coming to this feeling was not easy or expected.
On my many journeys, if I’ve picked up anything, it is to question authority.

SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 17

 As a poet, educator, publisher, and cultural activ-
ist I have had the privilege to travel and interact
with people in nearly every state in the United
States. I have served on the faculty of major uni-
versities in Illinois, New York, Washington D.C.,
Ohio, Maryland, and Iowa. Between 1970 and
1978, I commuted by air each week between
Chicago and Washington D.C. to teach at Howard
University. In the early eighties, I drove each week
between Chicago and Iowa City for two and a
half years to teach and earn a graduate degree at
the University of Iowa. These commutes and other
travels, nationally and internationally, over the last
three decades have enlarged me in unexpected
ways. The United States is a very large and beauti-
ful country. Its population is reasonably well-edu-
cated and is highly diverse––racially, ethnically,
religiously, economically, and culturally. This re-
ality gives me cause for hope.
This hope has helped me to escape the trap of
accepting simple generalizations about racial and
ethnic groups and narrow assumptions about their
political positions. Serving in the United States
Army as a very young man, taught me that close
quarter living, serious open-minded study, daily
conversation, and interaction with people of other
cultures can do wonders in eradicating stereo-
types and racial and ethnic pigeonholing.
My work over the last thirty-nine
years has been confined almost ex-
clusively to the African-American
community, the same community
where I live, work, and build institu-
tions. As a result, I have few White,
Asian, Latino American, or Native
American friends or associates. I am
quite aware that there are literally
tens of millions “good and well”
meaning people of all cultures doing
progressive political and cultural work every day.
I say this because it is very easy to take the negative
18 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic
acts of some people and assign them to all people
of a particular ethnic group, race, or culture. But
the plain truth is that we are all individuals. It is
best to accept or reject people based upon their
individual talents, gifts, intellect, character, and poli-
tics. America’s many cultural and ethnic groups
share the English language, public education,
popular culture, mass media, and the powerful
and effective acculturation into Western civiliza-
tion and culture. In essence, if we are honest, we
are more alike than many would admit.
I wrote in my book Enemies: The Clash of Races
(1978), that I love America, but loathe what
America had done to me, my people, and other
non-white citizens of this country. I still stand on
these words. We must never forget that America’s
“democracy” was built on the destruction of the
hearts, minds, souls, spirits, bodies, and holocausts
of the Native peoples and Africans. This fact is not
taught in the nation’s elementary and secondary
schools, or universities––although it remains the
secret behind the enormous economic success of
the United States. The nation’s inability to hon-
estly come to terms with its own bloodied past
with public debate, acknowledgement and resti-
tution remains at the heart of the centuries-old
racial divide. The sophistication of today’s op-
pression of Native peoples, Black, Latino, and poor
people is much more insidious, insti-
tutionalized and thereby excused by
media, politicians, and corporate
America as something of the past.
At the same, time, we must acknowl-
edge the vast changes in voting rights,
employment, housing patterns, po-
litical representation, legal and health
care structures, access to secondary
and higher education, and the cre-
ation of a large, yet fragile Black
middle class. None of this would have come about,
if not for the many Black struggles over the last one
www.mosaicbooks.com
hundred years that forced the powers that be to
accept their own laws, and not discriminate against
people purely on racial or ethnic differences.
Our struggles here for full citizenship, equality, and
fair access to all the opportunities afforded White
citizens remains at the core of progres-
sive Black struggle. Our right to be politi-
cally active is fundamentally what de-
mocracy is about. This is no small right.
My work of writing, teaching, editing,
publishing, traveling to speak, organiz-
ing conferences, and workshops and
other cultural and political activities that
I and other like-minded people of all
cultures are involved in could not be
done in Afghanistan, China, Nigeria, Haiti, Iraq,
Liberia, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Libya, Colombia,
Kuwait, and most of the member nations of the
United Nations.
In the early seventies, I often thought of migrating
to Africa. However, after visits to many African na-
tions, discussions with African Americans who have
migrated and returned, and my non-romantic as-
sessment of the African continent economically,
politically, and culturally, I decided against it. I
realized after a great deal of soul searching and
private and public debate that I could help Africa
and its people (us) more by working hard to be a
success here and like the Irish, the Jewish, and
other ethnic groups reach out to my people
abroad. This decision remains critical in my think-
ing and actions today.
My focus is to let young, and not so young broth-
ers know that we do have realistic options in
America. It is my responsibility to communicate to
you that our ancestors’ centuries old bloodied
fight for human, economic, and political rights in
the United States has not been in vain. Our people,
against unrealistic odds, have taken the dirt,
crumbs, scorn, and ideas of America and secured
a tangible future for generations of Blacks to com-
pete and make their own statements about suc-
cess and attainment.
Yes, there is still much more to do. I have tried to
give some insight into the politics of that work in
this book. However, many (not all) Af-
rican Americans have more freedoms,
prosperity, liberties, and possibilities
in the United States than Black people
any place in the world today. Of
course, those of our people in this
category are still a fragile minority. As
contradictory, inconsistent, racist and
unfair as America continues to be, it
still is a nation that does afford a
chance, an opportunity to those who are intelli-
gent, organized and strong, focused and bold, se-
rious, hard working, and lucky enough to make
their statements heard.
I can state unequivocally that my publishing com-
pany, Third World Press, publishes only the books
that I, and its editorial staff agree upon. Yes, there
has been political and economic pressure on us
to not publish certain books. However, these pres-
sures did not directly come from the United States
government. The two African-centered schools I
co-founded, New Concept preschool and the
Betty Shabazz International Charter School like-
wise continue to exist without open opposition
from the government.
For 21 years, myself along with other conscious
and committed young brothers and sisters oper-
ated multiple bookstores in Chicago and only
closed them in 1995 because of serious competi-
tion from the super chain bookstores. But that, in
the United States, I and millions of others have
been able to fight for our space even in often dif-
ficult political and economic structures is a com-
ment on the possibilities of this country.
(continued on page 40)
SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 19
20 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic www.mosaicbooks.com
yusef komunyakaa’s
VIETNAM WAR POETRY

Angela M. Salas, Ph.D.

In a review of Yusef Komunyakaa’s Magic City, Jennifer Richter notes the volume “illustrates that at-
tempting to know the world and make sense of it is, in fact, a lifelong process.” In “Sunday Afternoons,”
from the same volume, the young narrator asks, “Where did we learn to be unkind?” While Magic City
takes as its subject a childhood spent in Klan country, the question of where “we learn to be unkind”
is central to Komunyakaa’s work.

One crucible in which Komunyakaa’s vision was forged was that of the Vietnam War, where he served
as a correspondent from 1969-70. His 1988 volume Dien Cai Dau (meaning crazy in the head) is
explicitly about the Vietnam War experience; however, Komunyakaa’s every volume is an assertion
about what it is to be an African-American male, what it was to be a military correspondent (hence
both witness and participant) during the Vietnam War, what it means to have been raised in the Jim
Crow South, and what it has meant to see and know things he ought not. The issues with which
Komunyakaa grapples in Dien Cai Dau include: the uneasiness of the soldier of color sent to battle
other people of color; empathy for the enemy, whom he nonetheless brutalizes; awareness of women
as victims of war and of male aggression; and the certain knowledge that serving alongside whites will
not afford him equal regard in the world.

Komunyakaa won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for the 1993 volume Neon Vernacular; his work strives
mightily toward canonization and, I predict, the Nobel Prize. Influenced by French and Russian
literature, powerfully surrealistic, steeped in the work of the Language poets and masterful at intertextual
riffs, Komunyakaa’s poetry “approaches the intensity of no less a figure than prototypical canon
quester Ralph Ellison in his bid for mainstream American literary status” according to Alvin Aubert. And
Vince Gotera, Komunyakaa’s friend, former student, and one of the first to write sustained critical
examinations of Komunyakaa’s work, asserts that the poet wishes that his work, including the poems

SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 21

 comprising Dien Cai Dau, be “tested with the
full rigor applied to all serious literature.”
This dedication to craft does not, however, re-
move Komunyakaa’s poetry from the political
sphere. On the contrary, Komunyakaa him-
self, in a 1986 interview with Gotera, articu-
lated his discomfort with what he called a “neo-
Fugitive” school of poetry, divorced from the
political concerns of the world, saying “I be-
lieve poetry has always been political, long be-
fore poets had to deal with the page and white
space. . . .There seems always some human
landscape that creates a Paul Celan. Too many
contemporary poets would like to dismiss this
fact.”
We know that war can create poets. Dien Cai
Dau speaks boldly about the Vietnam War as
the landscape that helped produce Yusef
Komunyakaa’s particular, yet universalizing, po-
etic vision. Komunyakaa deploys symbolism,
surrealism, journalistic language, Vietnamese
and African-American idiom, imagism, allusion,
and even revivified cliche to give life and voice
to those individuals, white, black, Vietnamese,
American, women, men, rape victims and rap-
ists, whose human dramas occurred in the midst
of the war. In so doing, Komunyakaa refuses to
allow the claim that, because his experience
and witness are outside the reader’s (as white,
as young, as female or draft resister) that they
need not grapple with the issues that burn in
his poems. Instead, Komunyakaa writes on
terms that require a reader’s interaction with
his work and with the witness it bears. What he
does to stunning effect is, through exquisite
craftsmanship, universalize his experience so
that even young, white, Northern readers can
say “yes, I get it. I can see that Vietnamese
woman being consumed by Napalm in ‘You
and I Are Disappearing.’ I can see and feel the
horror.”
22 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic
Komunyakaa extends his poetic hand (and his
metaphors) too overtly to justify criticism that his
vision is too particular for wide consumption.
When Komunyakaa spoke at Adrian College on
October 3, 1996, an African-American man asked
him if he found his work overlooked or resisted by
white readers. “No,” Komunyakaa replied, “I write
in images. Images are pretty universal. Images in-
vite the reader as a participant in the making of
meaning.” Earlier in the discussion, Komunyakaa
had declined to answer questions of what indi-
vidual poems are “about,” saying, “I desire the
reader to get to the end and go back to the begin-
ning. I don’t want the reader to just say, ‘OK, it
means this’ and throw it away.”
A 1992 interview with Muna Asali, New England
Review, puts a fine point on issues of race in
Komunyakaa’s poetry: after Asali asked him about
how he avoided the “ghettoization” of his work,
Komunyakaa replied that “ghettoization is imposed
upon certain people, and . . . is a pigeonhole that
the artist attempts to traverse by all means. But we
cannot crawl out of our skin, even when we try to
lie to ourselves or say that race doesn’t matter . . ..”
Race matters, particularly when it is race that per-
mits others to question your humanity and to
pathologize you. However, writing and being read
exclusively on racial grounds (however valid they
are) risks being relegated to the ranks of special-
interest writer. On the other hand, requiring,
through imagery and the deferral of resolution,
that readers enter the poem and participate in cre-
ating its meaning, is to cross the color line and drag
the reader back with you. What could be more
political than to confront a young white reader
with what the black soldier heard in the field: that
while the soldier was fighting for democracy in
Vietnam, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated
for fighting for the democratic rights of blacks in
America. And what could be more activist and
political than making a reader, years after the fact,
feel that she too, stands impotent and complicit as
www.mosaicbooks.com
another woman burns “like a sack of dry ice,”
“like a cattail torch/dipped in gasoline,” “like a
shot glass of vodka,” “like a burning bush/driven
by a godawful wind”?
The reader’s guide in the trip through Dien Cai
Dau is a haunted young African-American soldier.
In the interview with Asali, Komunyakaa speaks of
his very particular African-American narrative per-
sona in Dien Cai Dau, saying:
This black soldier in Vietnam . . . seems
rather uncomfortable with his role.
Maybe the agent of free will lurks like a
specter in his psyche. Or perhaps he
feels guilty, because he has a sense of
history and he knows that he’s merely a
cog in the whole contradictory machin-
ery some might call democracy or even
manifest destiny. Maybe he has singled
himself out because he feels responsible.
After all, we are condemned to carry the
weight of our own hearts. Indeed, this
soldier seems limboed in a kind of
existential loneliness.
This soldier is alone with his questions. He is
tormented by Hanoi Hannah, who asks why a
black man would fight the white man’s war; who
taunts him with Tina Turner music; who blurts
out news of racial unrest in America. He finds,
further, that the race rules in effect in Bogalusa
have been transplanted to this place so far from
home. In “Tu Do Street,” the black soldier still
has his “place” when it comes to R&R:
Music divides the evening
I close my eyes & can see
Men drawing lines in the dust.
America pushes through the membrane
of mist & smoke, & I’m a small boy
again in Bogalusa. Whites Only
signs and Hank Snow.
The lines are still drawn in the dust of this combat
zone: whites and blacks are to remain separate and
unequal. “America pushes through the membrane”
when, banned from the club, as from bars back
home, the soldier wanders to a place where “black
GIs hold to their turf also,” looking for female com-
pany to prove that he is not “a small boy/again in
Bogalusa”:
An off-limits sign pulls me
deeper into alleys, as I look
for a softness behind these voices
wounded by their beauty and war.
Back in the bush at Dak To
& Khe Sanh, we fought
the brothers of these women
we now hold in our arms.
There’s more than a nation
inside us, as black & white
soldiers touch the same lovers
minutes apart, tasting
each other’s breath,
without knowing these rooms
run into each other like tunnels
leading to the underworld.
Vietnam, like America, is divided in ways meant to
humiliate and emasculate the black soldier; yet the
soldier, struggling to retain his humanity, empathizes
with the prostitutes he uses and whose brothers he
may have killed. He has enough humor to realize
that, despite the illusion created for the white GIs,
the prostitutes traffic in both black and white sol-
diers, aided by rooms that “run into each other like
tunnels.” Jim Crow meets Vietnam and brings along
all its ugliness and inherent absurdity.
“Facing It,” the final selection in Dien Cai Dau im-
plies, but refuses to give, resolution to the existential
crises of the war. “Facing It” takes place at the Viet-
nam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. and
is, as Gotera writes, “Literally a reflection about re-
flections; it is a ‘facing’ of the dualities that govern
SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 23
 this everyday life: there and here, America and
Vietnam, living and dead. . . . Komunyakaa . . .
presents, practically unmediated, a series of im-
ages.” “Facing It” reads this way:
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t,
dammit: No tears.
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way — the stone lets me go.
I turn that way — I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet’s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I’m a window.
He’s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.
24 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic
Perhaps the most wrenching lines in the poem are
those about the white veteran. “[T]hen his pale
eyes/look through mine. I’m a window.” Is this a
moment of empathy, when the white vet can see
“through” the black’s eyes — really see with him?
Or is it, perhaps more probably, a continuation of
the racial status quo in America, with the white
veteran seeing through the black as if he is not
there; as if they have no common ground? And
has this veteran, who has “lost his right arm/inside
the stone,” been mutilated in the war, or is this loss
a momentary trick of the eyes? There are no
answers: instead, we have images of past memory
and present time. Andrew Johnson is now a name
on the Memorial and a white flash the narrator
remembers and forces the reader to see. The
Memorial itself can absorb the narrator, the other
veteran’s arm, much as the war absorbed the lives
and blood of the 58,022 Americans whose names
are inscribed on Maya Lin’s arresting black wall.
Komunyakaa has spoken of his poetry as an act of
witnessing. It is also an act of assertion. He speaks
with immediacy, clarity, and force about the vio-
lence and cruelty we do to each other. In an age
in which poetry is widely considered either threat-
ening or impotent, Komunyakaa’s poems speak
with a force that provokes stunned silence in my
own classrooms. They do this, I think, because
Komunyakaa is so gifted at speaking through the
horror of seeing and experiencing the harms
people inflict upon people, whether out of anger,
despair, hopelessness, carelessness, or ignorance.
Komunyakaa confronts Jim Crow, rape, self-ha-
tred and all the things we would rather avoid dis-
cussing in mixed company; in so doing, he re-
quires that his readers do so also. We come away
from this confrontation emotionally bruised yet
oddly relieved of the burden of silence maintained
around both the Vietnam War and issues of race
in America. We are all “condemned to carry the
weight of our own hearts,” and Yusef Komunyakaa
provides us with an inventory of the things we
carry. ★
www.mosaicbooks.com
Yusef Komunyakaa

SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 25

 ...WITH LIBERT Y AND
JUSTICE FOR ALL

26 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic www.mosaicbooks.com

Bill O’Reilly interviews Amiri Baraka
The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News, January 22, 2003
partial transcript

BARAKA: What was slavery? What happened to slavery?

O’REILLY: Well I was — I was — you know, that...
BARAKA: That was a long time ago.
O’REILLY: Slavery was older than some of your poems I read, you know.
BARAKA:& Well, are you saying Diallo — that was slavery. Are you saying...
O’REILLY: I’m saying the jury...
BARAKA: ... Byrd in Texas — that was slavery.
O’REILLY: I will tell you this. The jury that...
BARAKA: Are you telling me the man who was murdered in Alabama...
O’REILLY: ... had black Americans on it acquitted the policemen. That’s all I can tell you.
BARAKA: I know.
O’REILLY: Black Americans...
BARAKA: Are you going to tell me that Bush being against affirmative action, that’s not a continuation? Are you
telling me that Bush getting into office...
O’REILLY: With all due respect, Mr...
BARAKA: Baraka.
O’REILLY: Baraka, right. You know, I’m cloudy here because you’re throwing a lot of stuff at me. You teaching
schoolchildren...
BARAKA: I taught school for 20 years.
O’REILLY: ... is akin to me having Mussolini come in and teach children.
BARAKA: Well, your being on television is akin to having Goebbels on television.
O’REILLY: All right. Well, I guess we...
BARAKA: Joseph Goebbels. It’s the same thing.
O’REILLY: I guess we don’t have too much common ground, other than we both don’t like bigots.
BARAKA: We can talk about what — we don’t understand what each other is saying.
O’REILLY: All right. I’ve got to tell you I appreciate you coming on in. I think you’re a lunatic, and...
BARAKA: Yes. Well, I think you’re a lunatic who’s more dangerous because you’re on television.
O’REILLY: All right. Mr. Baraka, thank you very much. We appreciate it.
BARAKA: Thank you very much. That was short and sweet.

SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 27

 BLACK
BY LEE HUBBARD

AFRICAN AMERICANS WHO GREW UP LISTENING TO MARVIN

GAYE IN THE LATE 60s AND EARLY 70s HAVE A DIFFERENT

PERSPECTIVE ON LIFE AND WHAT IT MEANS, THAN THE ONES

WHO ARE NOW GROWING UP ON JAY Z, AND OUTKAST.

28 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic www.mosaicbooks.com

K HEADS
While this is apparent to most, you would never
know this listening to many African-American
leaders today. And look at the voting patterns of
younger Blacks compared to older Blacks. Older
Blacks have been the voice of the community for
so long that many younger Blacks feel that their
messages or the ideas that they wanted to convey
have gone unheard.
But recent studies show that this lack of voice has
led to a generation gap between the two
demographic groups. This gap on perceptions
and ideas is very apparent when one looks at
hip-hop music and its impact on the Black
community. While older Blacks don’t like some
of the messages that are conveyed in the music
and the usage of the word “nigga,” many younger
Blacks don’t think about this issue, and use the
word liberally.
The differences in the two groups can be seen in
how they look at each other and how they view
politics, history, and the importance of race in
today’s times. All of these issues are dealt with in
the book, The New HNIC: The Death of Civil
Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop by Dr. Todd Boyd,
an associate professor at the University of
Southern California Cinema School.
Boyd, the author of three previous books, and
the writer and producer of the film The Wood,
believes that hip hop and the culture that it
represents is the voice of the new Black
generation, which he feels is something that older
SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 29
 Blacks cannot accept. In his book, Boyd deals
with the myriad of issues that affect the two groups
and how they are at odds with each other. I was
able to talk to the loquacious Boyd about his book,
the hip-hop and civil rights generations, the word
“nigga,” and his confrontation with Spike Lee.
First, how would you define the civil rights
generation?
To me the civil rights generation marks the time
period of people who grew up during the time
when Black people were segregated by law and
were trying to push their way into the mainstream
of America. Then there is a generation of people
who grew up in the aftermath, between civil rights
and the Black power movement. They grew up in
the world that the success of civil rights gave them
different options.
How would you define the hip-hop generation?
I would define the hip-hop generation as the
people who were born or came of age after the
civil rights movement, who came off age during
the 1980s and the age of Regeanomics and after.
When there was no longer legal
segregation, but the impact of
racism was such that you got
the rise of crack cocaine, the
rise of the prison industrial
complex. Black people and
especially poor Black people
were pushed to the margins
and this culture of hip hop
gave those a voice to express
themselves.
Dr. Todd Boyd
So what about this divide between the hip-hop
and civil rights generation?
I think that this divide is pretty deep. We have a
generation of Black people from the civil rights
era who have gotten accustomed to assuming that
their experience is the experience that all Black
people have experienced, and that is not the case.
30 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic
People who grew up after the civil rights and
Black power eras have grown up in a different
era. It is hard for one generation to say this is the
way it is and to try and pass it down to another
generation, when another generation says we
see things differently.
At the end of the day, I am not saying that
racism has not disappeared. But I am saying
that there was a way in which people were
taught to think during the civil rights era. They
were taught to look at things a certain way.
That mindset is no longer applicable. That
mindset is out of style and it has played out. It is
one thing to grow up in a world where there is
segregation. But it is different when it is legal, and
people can put up signs. Things are just different
and the civil rights mindset is outdated.
So what do you mean by the new HNIC?
Back in the 1970s, people often used the phrase
HNIC or Head Nigger in Charge. This was a hot
1970’s thing. It had to do with the first people
integrating into mainstream society. I thought
about this when thinking about the book
title. There is now a new group of African
Americans who have integrated the
mainstream but in a very different way.
They did not go to the mainstream, the
mainstream came to them. These people,
to me, are the people who are best
defined by hip-hop culture.
When thinking about this, I looked at
Fortune magazine’s list of the 40 richest
people under the age of 40 and people
such as Master P, Michael Jordan, Will Smith, and
P Diddy were on the list. Most of these young
African Americans are connected to hip hop, and
this is very significant. You have a number of
people with that much money and power
connected to hip hop. This is a new Black ruling
class.
www.mosaicbooks.com
You are a tweener, a term that I and Bakari
Kitwana term for people who grew up right after
the Civil Rights Movement and just before the
hip-hop era. How does this make you feel when
you write, talk, and analyze hip-hop culture?
I look at it like this. You can call it being born
between the two. But I was born in 1964 and
there are a lot of people who are claiming hip hop
who were not around in 1979. There are people
in the hip-hop generation born in 1980 and 1981.
I can remember being in school and having a
contest to see who could remember the lyrics of
“Rapper’s Delight.” I feel closely connected to hip
hop. I was born the same year that Martin King got
the Nobel Prize. I am in some ways not part of the
civil rights revolution. civil rights are more of my
parent’s generation.
But with hip hop, I was there from day one. To
me, I feel connected to hip hop
although a lot of people my age don’t
feel that they have that connection. I
feel like I have the ability to look at
both hip hop and civil rights and
comment intelligently on both. When
I was on the set of the film The Wood
six years ago, when the young actors
on the film were working we would
sit up and talk about hip hop. The
older people on the film did not understand how
I could sit up there and talk about hip hop. To me
it is the ability to walk both sides of the strength. If
you are going to be significant you can’t walk one
way. You cannot be one dimensional.
What is the difference between the civil rights
mode of thinking and the hip-hop generation’s
mode of thinking?
Civil rights is very old school. It is valuable as
something historic to learn from, but it is not
something that can be applied today. Civil rights
was about access because Black people were
denied so much in this society. Civil rights was
about gaining access. We now live in a society
were people have access in some form. So we
have to cut the garment according to the cloth. We
have to recognize that things are different.
Now people are looking for empowerment. They
want to be able to participate in society and not as
a secondary player but as a major player. In that
way, civil rights will not do it. Hip hop is about
keeping it real. A lot of civil rights were about
accommodation. It was about putting on your best
face, acting a certain way and demonstrating to
the mainstream society that you were worthy of
being accepted. To me hip hop is not about
accommodation. It basically says that look, “we
are who we are. If you like us, cool. If not, that is
cool too.” The culture is not trying to fit in. That is
why I love that phrase, “I am going to do me.” I am
not going to do you or what everybody else wants
me to do. I am going to do me and be
true to myself. That is very much different
than the civil rights era. This is not to say
racism is gone and disappeared, but
times are different.
Speaking of racism, what did you think
about Trent Lott’s racist comments in
favor of segregation, which led him to
step down from his post as Senate
Majority Leader?
In a way, when things like that happen I am
glad. There are so many people who want to
act like there are no racists in our society or
racists in positions of power. When Black
people mention racism, people say we are
making too much out of it. Or that you have a
chip on your shoulder or that was in the past.
To me, when he made his statement, that was
confirmation of what we already know.
Trent Lott has had influence over something very
significant. The statement just indicated we have
a lot of people in this country who are still racist.
SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 31
 And what frustrated me about this was the fact
that everyone wanted to act like he did not mean
it. That it was a joke and off of the cuff. They
wanted to imply that the statement was not bad.
But ultimately, it was a good thing, because it is a
reminder that we still have a long way to go in this
country. That there are still racists, there is still
racism and that Black people and other people
of color are victimized by this.
How has hip-hop culture impacted the Black
community?
I think that hip hop has given the Black community
a voice. It has given the community a way to
express themselves. It has allowed people to
represent. Hip hop is about the good, bad, and
ugly in Black life. Some people don’t want to deal
with the bad and the ugly, they want to deal with
the good. But to me that is not progressive or is it
realistic.
Life is good sometimes, bad sometimes, and
sometimes it is ugly. Hip hop reveals that reality.
Also, people do not have a sense of
history. If you look at the blues, they
were talking about some of the same
things hip hop is talking about now. It
was specific to its time, but
nevertheless, they were dealing with
life. Hip hop is like a documentary
film; it attempts to capture a certain
sense of reality. I think that hip hop
has given the Black community a way to be seen
and heard in a very effective and dramatic way.
Why was there resistance to hip hop in the Black
music and civil rights community?
There was a lot of bourgeois amongst a certain
segment of Black people. They felt that since they
got there degrees, cars, jobs, businesses, and other
things that they wanted to assimilate. Hip hop
didn’t want to assimilate and it reminded many
Blacks of something that they wanted to forget
32 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic
about. You have to remember that when hip hop
came about, that was during the time of Jerhi
curls, sequence suits, and Prince.
No one was coming out in music with anything
hard core. Hip hop came and it was like “Yo, we
are taking it back to the streets.” Hip hop
educated a lot of people. A lot of people did not
know about Malcolm, the Nation, or other
elements of Black history. A lot of Black music
executives and Black civil rights people were
talking about Bill Cosby and trying to be Heathcliff
Huxtable. Hip hop started speaking to people
with more of an edge to it.
In the book you talk about the word “nigga”.
Why did you say it is the most beautiful and
powerful word that is used today?
I love the word “nigga.” It is my favorite word.
When I wake up in the morning, I say the word
ten times; Nigga, nigga, nigga, nigga, nigga. It puts
a smile on my face. I hate this N-word business
that was started with OJ. It is not like just because
you don’t say the word that racism will
disappear. If you could guarantee that if
people stopped saying nigga, then there
would be no more racism then I will be
all for not using the word.
The real issue with the word is what it
symbolizes. It symbolizes a very
problematic history in America, and that
is what we need to talk about. The word is just
window dressing. Hip hop has refined the word.
It is not about nigga. It is NIGGA.
Like Tupac said, “Never Ignorant Getting Goals
Accomplished”. Nigga. That is what I am about.
To me, any word that causes this much
controversy is something that we need to look
into and we cannot look into censoring it. I say
lets say it, until someone starts to look at the history
that makes that word so troubling in the first place.
www.mosaicbooks.com
To many civil rights activists and those who grew
up during that time, your comments about the
word Nigga, would trouble them?
They grew up at a time when the word was
exclusively negative. For them, it carries a different
weight than it does for other people. But we need
to be honest. Black people have been saying nigga
from day one. Black people used the word nigga
as much as they used the word, the. Clearly there
was a difference when someone was using it in a
negative way than a positive way. Like “My nigga.”
To me that is love. Or you can use it derisively. If
we are going to be honest, I don’t know how
many times White people called me a nigger. You
know after a while it did not make a difference.
Them calling me that did not make me feel good,
but after a while you deal with it. Instead of these
racists being able to hide and function in a covert
manner, I think that they need to be outed so that
everybody can see who they are and what they
are about. You cannot legislate the use of a word.
It is in all of these hip-hop songs and movies and
you cannot legislate the use of language. We need
to focus on challenging and hopefully trying to
eradicate racism.
What are some of the themes that you are trying
to convey in your book?
I want people to think about how things have
changed in society. I want people to recognize
that we cannot always apply 1960s thinking to
the 21st century. You cannot do that, if your head
is in a past era.
What is the most defining moment in hip-hop
history for you?
For me. I don’t know if I can reduce it to one
moment. I would have to say when I first heard
“The Message.” When I first heard Grandmaster
Flash in 1982, I was a freshman in college. Up
until that point, most of hip hop was kind of silly.
It was cool, but it was not serious. But then I
heard “broken glass everywhere, people pissing
on the stairs, you know they just don’t care,” and
I was like “wow.“
Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message” indicated to
me that rap could be more than talking shit,
bragging , and wilding out, which is cool.
Grandmaster Flash indicated to me that this music
could be used for comedy, drama, and politics.
To me that is the golden era of hip hop. Then a
year later I heard Run DMC’s “Its Like That” and
“Hard Times”.
How does this moment contrast with the most
defining moment in civil rights history, the
Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream“ speech?
Lately, I have been thinking about this “I Have A
Dream” speech. The whole refrain in the speech
is that I have a dream where people will not be
judged by the color of their skin but by the
content of their character. King used this
metaphor of a dream. When I think about King’s
speech, I think about Biggie’s dream. “It was all a
dream, I used to read Word Up magazine, Salt
and Peppa and Heavy D up in the limousine.”
To me, King planted a seed and that seed has
now grown into something different. Much love
and mad props to King, but to me what is more
relevant today is the dream that Biggie was talking
about.
That comment is sure to incite older Blacks.
How do they respond when you say this?
They get hot. They get pissed. What I say to them
is the purpose in life is to grow. You don’t get to a
point and stop. You should not reach a point in
life and stop. You should always grow. I always
say that if you are doing the same things at 30,
that you did at 20, then you have not made any
progress. To me civil rights, Martin King, and “I
Have A Dream” is what we did in 1964. But in
presently, we are doing something different and
we have grown.
(continued on page 42)
SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 33
 WITH A CAREER IN THE PERFORMING ARTS
THAT HAS SPANNED A LIFETIME, THE
ACCLAIMED SINGER, ACTRESS, POET, ACTIVIST,
TELEVISION PRODUCER, AND AUTHOR,
CAMILLE YARBROUGH IS AN INFLUENTIAL
FIGURE.

Recently, Yarbrough re-released on compact disc

The Iron Pot Cooker for a new generation of fans
anxious to hear some of her music, and get some
wisdom in their souls. Along with the release came
the title “foremother of hip hop” from Spin
magazine. And rightfully so, for she’s inspired a
generation of poets and musicians through her
lyrics and passion.

Looking at Ms. Yarbrough it’s hard to see on her

face the span of her history or feel it in her
presence. Time doesn’t show – she is smooth skin,
graceful walk, deliberate speech, and feminine
grace. You know that she is a legend.

34 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic www.mosaicbooks.com

ALL PRAISES DUE
by DuEwa Frazier
At first glance her regal stature brings to mind a
dean in academia–she did serve as a professor of
African dance at New York’s City College for twelve
years. You might also think she was one of the
characters on an episode of The Cosby Show, you
know, one of Claire Huxtable’s friends––she’s that
well coiffed and classy. Looking at Camille
Yarbrough you see your mother, your
grandmother, the auntie you never had, you see
a teacher and leader, all in one woman. A lover
and practitioner of dance, poetry, dramatic
theater, the written word as well as song and
protest for progress in the African-American
community, you wonder, how did this woman
get to be so many things and so good at so many
things? And thus, the answer, is her journey, from
past to present.
Camille Yarbrough was born in 1938, the seventh
child of a family of four girls and four boys, on the
Southside of Chicago, and has fond memories of
the people and community that surrounded her.
“When you walked down the street, the men
selling their vegetables, fruits, and wares would
be singing. They sung to you about what they
were selling. It was blues music. All around us
was blues music.”
The Dancer
Her initial inspiration came at fifteen when she
heard the sounds of drumming coming from a
local community center and knew she wanted to
be a part of that music. By seventeen, she started
studying primitive dance, a modified Katherine
Dunham technique, taught by the legendary
dance master Jimmy Payne, as well as Martha
Graham technique.
While a teenager, Yarbrough frequented the famed
Tivoli in Chicago. It was there she got her first
chance to see such renown entertainers as Moms
Mabley, Butter Beans and Susie, Coles and Atkins,
Billy Eckstein, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and
Lena Horne. When Camille saw singer, dancer
SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 35
 Josephine Baker for the first time, in the 1950s during
one of Baker’s U.S. performances, she was stunned.
“I had never seen a performer who performed like
her. Baker talked about how she witnessed a race
riot in East St. Louis when she was a little girl. I was
admiring of her and other artists who spoke out.
Baker stood up to the racism, she was outspoken.”
The blues of Chicago wouldn’t hold Yarbrough for
long. After high school Yarbrough started working at
a local calypso club. It was there she met members
from Katherine Dunham Dance Company who gave
her leads on dancing jobs in Canada and New York.
At the age of twenty, Yarbrough left
Chicago, first landing in New York.
There she stayed with the family of a
Puerto Rican dancer she knew. It was
a humbling beginning. Yarbrough was
looking for work, striving to pay rent
and make sense of the new world she
found herself a part of.
After a short time in New York, she
returned to Chicago where she
auditioned for John Pratt, husband
of Katherine Dunham. Yarbrough was accepted
into Dunham’s dance company in 1955, which
was then based in Los Angeles. “It was with Dunham
that I had a high level of dance training. We were
constantly rehearsing.
When we didn’t get work in theaters, we danced in
clubs. Dunham had thirty-five dancers and all the
performances involved showcasing African culture
from the diaspora. Katherine Dunham’s study, her
research as an anthropologist in African culture in
America, the Caribbean, Cuba, South American,
and Central America fueled much of the dances.
KDDC performed in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the
Americas. Yarbrough admits, “It was a cultural lesson
to perform these dances.” She strived to understand
the various lifestyles and personalities she would
36 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic
encounter as a dancer traveling the world. Her close
family upbringing from Chicago did not completely
prepare her for the worldly lifestyle of the artists she
worked and socialized with.
In 1960, shortly before the dance company
disbanded, the company traveled to Paris for a brief
tour. Yarbrough reveals, “I learned so much about
myself being in the company and about the frailty
of human nature and also the strength.” After dancing
with Dunham for five years, Yarbrough headed to
New York in 1961.
The Actress
Camille Yarbrough hadn’t been in New
York six months before she received her
first Broadway show Kwamina, which
made use of her dancing skills once again.
She later performed in plays such as: God’s
Trombone/Trumpets (1969); Lorraine
Hansberry’s To Be Young, Gifted and Black
(1970), and The Beast Story and Sambo
staged at The Public Theater.
The tour of To Be Young, Gifted and Black, started at
the Cherry Lane Theater, which preceded a 56-
city tour, showcasing the critically acclaimed play
on college campuses around the country. “It was
an amazing tour,” says Yarbrough. In addition to her
theater work, Camille was also acting on television
soap operas such as Search for Tomorrow and Where
the Heart Is. When asked why she didn’t pursue
acting in Hollywood as a means to further her career,
Yarbrough replies, “I was reading about Black
people, about Paul Robeson, and slave rebellions. I
listened to Black activists on the radio, my work
changed. I found that in this society, you get paid
for not having values, you get paid to keep this system
going.”
Camille, not desiring to keep the system of racism
and degradation towards Black people going, on or
www.mosaicbooks.com
off the stage and screen, set her goals on acting parts
that would tell the stories of Black people without
the added destructive Black images and perpetual
stereotypes.
Yarbrough asserts, “Black folk, Black artists used to
be concerned with freedom, but now, [acting] seems
to be solely about money.” As a working actress,
Yarbrough looked up to writers such as Lorraine
Hansberry and Alice Childress for their “thinking in
terms of the truth of what Black people were going
through.” Sharing what it was like to be a Black
actress in the sixties and seventies, and a conscious
Black actress at that, Yarbrough adds, “If you’re going
to be an artist, it is a difficult life. I was running from
racism, where the people were oppressed, where
the police oppressed us. We were discriminated
against as actors and performers. Not only did she
learn the ins and outs of her craft as a performer, she
also learned some ugly truths about the business in
terms of the people who hired you and could fire
you. “Even the shows you did, some directors would
direct you gearing towards racial stereotypes. I was
always in trouble for resenting those behaviors, so I
would be out of work for a little while.”
“I knew of plagiarism and how people were
exploited. During an open-call audition this woman
director took myself and three
other dancers aside, we had all
been with Dunham, she had
intentions on stealing our Dunham
moves, Dunham choreography.
She told us that we would get solo
dances or an understudy with
Ethel Ayler, a known actress here
in New York City, if we showed
her some Dunham moves. I began to see that these
people were stealing everything,” says Yarbrough.
She did as she was told, but only to the extent that
she would always have her dignity and integrity as
an artist and as a Black artist who cared to preserve
the culture of her people, not exploit it.
The Singer
A sudden illness reconnected Yarbrough to her
ancestors through prayer and a changed diet. This
also served as impedance for her first album, The
Iron Pot Cooker. The album was a culmination of
her performance show, Tales and Tunes of an African
American Griot, which she performed for two years.
When asked why she named her album, The Iron
Poet Cooker, Yarbrough replies, “Doing research and
thinking in terms of using the art for the people, I
found there were Nigerian female doctors who
would travel, they would have their iron pots, they
cooked herbs, healing mixtures in their iron pot. I
consider myself a healer, and thus, I too am the iron
pot cooker.” The songs on The Iron Pot Cooker, “But
It Comes Out Mad”, “Dream/Panic/Sonny Boy the
Rip-Off Man/Little Sally the Super Sex Star” were all
original spoken-word poems, before being set to
music.
The album dropped in 1975. Yarbrough made her
singing performances a full and fantastic production.
Coming from a background with Katherine
Dunham and theater, Yarbrough fit her song-
storytelling performances into Black history
monologues. “When you start your performance, if
it’s spiritual, you use a high pitch, I would ululate, a
traditional healing way of using the voice, for the
listeners. Ululation is also to clear the air, to set
the tone for spirituality. I’m reaching back into
our culture and bringing it back to us now.
When I did the shows, I had a projection of a
Nigerian door. The stage was black, the music
started in darkness and then came my spotlight.
I would come on stage with long African
earrings and a huge kente cloth gown. I would
sing to them in Hausa, an African language. I
also had African stools on the stage,” says Yarbrough.
When asked about the value of today’s music
Yarbrough comments, “The music now, the
vibrations are very destructive, not healing.”
Camille Yarbrough is a griot within her songs.
SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 37
 She tells a story of her people, she has always
told a story that her audiences can relate to and
take value from. Camille gives you life
experiences and praise and storytelling for
African ancestors, in her songs.
In recent years, Camille has performed to
packed houses ranging from school age children
to senior citizens as well as noted activists and
entertainers. Her concerts are called, “thought
provoking,” “soul stirring,” “culturally uplifting,”
and “African-centered.” Recently, Yarbrough
hosted and sang for the annual African Voices
Rhymes, Rhythms and Rituals Music and Poetry
Concert in Marcus Garvey Park, in Harlem,
singing songs of reverence to African spirits and
ancestors, for the hundreds in attendance.
Under the early evening sky and tall, sloping
trees Ms. Yarbrough, dressed in one
of her trademark flowing African
wrap gowns sang with a holy
deliverance and uplifted all in
earshot.
Yarbrough’s performance was a
sheer uplift. She set a standard for all
the other artists to hope they could follow, in
their own special way.
The Poet and Writer
Spin magazine named Yarbrough “the
foremother of rap.” Journalist Kevin Powell
stated in her CD liner notes, “There is no
question that Camille Yarbrough ‘raps’ on this
album, be it the tender ode to Black men ‘But It
Comes Out Mad’, or the panic sequence on
‘Dream.’“
Asked to reflect upon her foremother of rap
title, Yarbrough answers, “When you go to the
old, you see where the new comes from.
Everything I did on stage, without music, was
spoken word, it was rap.”
38 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic
Over the years, Camille Yarbrough has worked
with Jazz Mobile, a program that utilized poets
in the public schools, and taught drama and
poetry to young students. During a brief stint as a
student at Hunter College, Yarbrough began to
write stories for Black children.
The experience led Yarbrough to write her
acclaimed book, The Shimmershine Queens
(Putnam, 1989). Others followed: Cornrows
(Putnam, 1997); Tamika and the Wisdom Ring
(Putnam, 1994), and The Little Tree Growing in
the Shade (Putnam, 1996).
The Shimmershine Queens gives a message to
African-American youth to respect themselves
and others, achieve success and confidence
through knowing and connecting with their
culture and heritage, and reversing
negative self images through artistic
performance. The Shimmershine
Queens is a Parent’s Choice Award in
Story Winner. In Cornrows, A Coretta
Scott King Award Winner, Yarbrough
reinforces the beauty of Black culture
and African beauty for young readers
and families. The Little Tree Growin’ in the Shade
is a story that reveals an African family and it’s
three generations in the midst of a history telling,
by Yarbrough, weaving African proverbs and
spirituality with song, music and relation to the
Diaspora experience. Tamika and the Wisdom
Ring tells the story of a young girl striving to realize
her cultural heritage in the midst of such
destructive community ills as drugs and violence.
Yarbrough finds ways to mix her love of African
heritage with her messages of hope, beauty, self-
esteem, triumph, and discovery for Black youth
in all of her books. For years Yarbrough has
conducted workshops that entail her singing,
dancing, and storytelling in conjunction with
introducing her storybooks to the youth. It is with
Yarbrough’s African American Traditions
www.mosaicbooks.com
Workshop that she has conducted such diverse
performance storytelling for young audiences.
The Activist
During the 60s and 70s, there were marches,
riots, and protests. Black Panthers were being
jailed and killed. Black people were outraged
and fighting back. Camille Yarbrough was
always right there to support her brothers and
s i s t e r s . Ya r b r o u g h t o o k h e r o u t s p o k e n
perspective of the civil rights movement and
intertwined it with her performances. “I
would always lend my support. Every march
there was, every protest there was I was there
as a poet.
Yarbrough also seved as occasional host of
and features Black performers, musicians,
poets and book authors.
Although it may not have always been pretty,
easy, or glamorous, Camille Yarbrough has
journeyed on a particular path, a spiritual
and cultural path, leading her into the
positions of: griot woman, songsters, poet,
author, actress, teacher, dancer, lecturer,
actress, and broadcaster. She continues to
take her positions seriously, with grace and
humility.
Camille Yarbrough, renaissance woman in her
lifetime. For all these things, are the reasons
why we love and appreciate her and
appreciate her. ★

COMING THIS FALL

Bob Law ’s Night Talk, a conscious Black
radio show format, airing from midnight to 5
am on WWRL-AM in New York City. The goal
of the show was to give factual and
inspirational information about Black people, E. Ethelbert Miller
for Black people. “I’d say ’Good Morning ,
Africans’ at the beginning of the show. People John Rodriguez
would call in and talk and debate with our
guests and we loved it.” During the show Boogie Down Poets
Yarbrough talked with some of the most
intriguing, motivated, and conscious Black Archie Givens Collection
activists and scholars of the time. Dr. Leonard
Jeffries, Dr. Manning Marable, Dr. Betty
Carl Hancock Rux’s Asphalt
Shabazz, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Abiola Sinclair,
and Dr. Adelaide Sanford were all guests.
bell hooks’s The Will to Change
Yarbrough continues to lend her voice and
passion to progressive action for the Black Plus some other stuff
community. Most recently working with a
panel of educators and activists to form a new
★
leadership summit.

Today, she continues to write, record music,

perform, and host a public access television
show Ancestor House.” The show, produced
by Yarbrough, showcases the art, culture, and
SEPTEMBER 2004
perspective of people of the African Diaspora, ISSUE FIFTEEN

SUMMER 2004 | mosaic 39

 Haki Madhubuti
That I have never had the economic resources to
really compete with the major or midstream pub-
lishing companies is also a comment on the work
that still needs to be accomplished in this nation.
A central part of the responsibility of an informed
citizen is to question our government, specially its
foreign policy which helped to create an Osama
bin Laden, al Qaeda, corrupt monarchs in Saudi
Arabia and key nations all over Africa. As the na-
tion grieves and buries its dead, we must not allow
ourselves to just automatically buy into the an-
swers from our government. The larger question
from us must be why, after investing over thirty
billion dollars of our taxes a year, with few ques-
tions asked, is it that the Federal Bureau of Investi-
gation (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the
National Security Council and the Defense De-
partment didn’t have a clue to what was happen-
ing? And now there is a call from those agencies
for people who speak the indigenous languages
of Afghanistan and others. Could racism be the
reason for a lily white, angel bread security force
who can’t currently find its way out of a computer
program. Most certainly these people could not
get back in the field where the real dirty work of
human intelligence is being done.
Thirty billion dollars for what? This is the type of
gross incompetence and racism that Black folk
and others have to deal with daily.
So, young brothers, I want you and young people
of all cultures to know that the idea of America
can become a reality, can become the visionary
eye in the center of the storm, the organic seed
growing young fertile minds, can be the clean
water purifying the polluted ideas of old men fear-
ful of change, can take democracy from the mon-
ied few to the concerned majority if we believe in
its sacred potential and the potential of the twenty-
first century’s coming majority of Black, Brown
and locked out White people. The best of you
40 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic
must rise. This eminent majority must not have
the white supremacist mindset of the founding
patriarch or the ”superior” souls of the current
“rulership.” Those among this coming majority
must be nurtured and educated in the essential
tenets of democracy. Many of you have tasted
the debilitating effects of being denied your birth
rights. So when the time comes for you to lead,
you must be able to look your children in their
eyes and state with firmness and clarity that you
do believe in democracy and fairness for all
people and not just the monied few and numeri-
cal majority. We, too, stand and will fight for the
historical ideas of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence, United States Constitution and its Bill of
Rights. Finally, we must take ownership of our-
selves, our families, communities and this vast and
beautiful land. In doing so we will be making the
most profound statement on our citizenship, and
in the words of the great poet Langston Hughes,
”We too Sing America.” ★
This essay originally ran as “HARD TRUTHS: Sep-
tember 11, 2001 and Respecting the Idea of
America” on the online magazine Chickenbones:
A Journal (http://www.nathanielturner.com/
hakimadhubuti2.htm)
★ subscribe
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or visit us on the web at www.mosaicbooks.comSUMMER 2004 | mosaic 41
 Black Heads
Is some of the criticism of hip hop valid?
If you go back to the 1960s there was no hip hop,
but people were still getting shot and using dope.
You had pimps, hoes, and all of the negative things
that were talked about. A lot of hip hop is just
people talking shit. To me that is part of Black
culture. People talk shit and say things. To me,
hip hop captures various elements of Black life
that shouldn’t be taken seriously. There has been
Black people and especially
poor Black people were
pushed to the margins and
this culture of hip-hop gave
those a voice to express
themselves.
a lot of stupid people around from day one.
People who will mimic.
You have had a small beef with Spike Lee. Explain
this?
I wrote a piece about him in the L.A. Times about
his film Get on the Bus. In the piece, I wrote that
Spike was the man in the 1980s, but he had fallen
off in the mid 1990s. He got upset about the piece
and he had one of his boys send me a letter calling
me out. He had his producer send me this fax,
which I thought was kind of cowardly.
I called his producer back, but they would not
accept my calls. Sometime later, I ran into Spike
at a L.A. Lakers game at the old Forum. He tried to
loud talk me and call me out, as he was yelling
and screaming. But I have no beef with anyone.
We ought to be able to disagree with Black people
and sit down and chop it up. You take your
position and I take mine. We should at least be
able to sit down and show each other respect.
42 SUMMER 2004 | mosaic
In the book you write a lot about the Black Man/
White Man buddy roles in film. How did this
play in contemporary society and is this image
reality?
This is your typical buddy-buddy flick. The Black
man, White man genre. This was played out in
contemporary society though Bill Clinton, who
was one who people say, was connected to Black
culture. In one moment of trouble he was
connected to Vernon Jordan. When you think
about this image, you cannot help but think about
Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, Stevie Wonder and
Paul McCartney. Now there are situations where
you have this reality. Black Male, White Male
reality.
Back in the day, the Black man was always
subordinate, but now the Black man does not
have to be subordinate. Eminem needs Dre, more
so than Dre needs Eminem. At the moment of
Clinton’s impeachment, Clinton needed Jordan,
whereas Jordan did not need Clinton.
What do you think about those people who are
saying that Eminem is one of the greatest
rappers ever?
I don’t think that Eminem is the problem. But I
think it is what people put on Eminem. Eminem is
down for hip hop. If he were wack, niggas would
not fuck with him. He is not whack. Eminem of
late, is one who is taking the game seriously. You
can tell that he has been honing his lyrics. I am
not mad at him. But, it is what people put on him.
That is where I have problem. It is like Larry Bird.
When he was playing ball, he was a great
basketball player. But he was not the greatest player
ever, which is what they made it out to be. If you
are Black, that makes you feel uncomfortable,
because the media blows these White characters
out of proportion. ★
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 43
SUMMER 2004 | mosaic
cool annual festival

mosaicbooks.com
What’s your reason?
i can promote my editing services online
finding the latest books online is quick and easy
a cool place for self-publishers
helps me find bookstores in my community
I love the book clubs
dig i On average, a
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44
book in the course of a year.

LITERARY FREEDOM PROJECT

go your own way...

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