PROUD FLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness (2003) ISSN: 1094-2254 A Product of Whose Environment?

Hawa Martina Jalloh and Artwork with Lowveens Jacques

Part I

“you, man, will you remember me and cry?”

-- Sonia Sanchez, “I Have Walked a Long Time,” Shake Loose My Skin (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999).

“We stood in arms, firing on the revolted slaves, of who we kill’d some and wounded many…and many…lept overboard, and drowned themselves in the ocean with much resolution.”

--John Barbot quoted in Vincent Harding, There Is a River (New York: Vintage Books, 1983).

My People, My People!

-- Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road (New York: Harper Collins, 1996).

“I have been a way so long.”

-- Sonia Sanchez, Homecoming (Detroit, MI: Broadside Press, 1969)

“mangi nyo (I’m coming), mangi nyo (I’m coming), mangi nyo (I’m coming).”

-- Sonia Sanchez, Does Your House Have Lions? (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997).

Part II

“my generation mourned Till as we all mourn Malcolm.”

-- Nikki Giovanni, “All Eyez on U,” Love Poems (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1997).

“The only revolutionary is a dead revolutionary.”

-- J. Edgar Hoover quoted in Asha Bandele, “blues poem 4 malcolm x,” Absence in the Palm of My Hands (New York: Writers & Readers, 1996).

“A product of my environment.”

-- Hawa Martina Jalloh, “A Product of Whose Environment?,” PROUD FLESH 1:2 (April 2003).

“The white man raped my mother. My mother was beautiful.”

-- David Diop, “A Time for Matyrdom,” Hammerblows and Other Writings (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1973).

Part III

“We were once blind, but it is so clear now.”

-- Kenneth Carroll, “The Domino Theory (Or Snoop Dogg Rules the World),” Catch the Fire!!! Ed. Derrick I.M. Gilbert a.k.a. D-Knowledge (New York Riverhead Books, 1998).

“We a BaaddDDD People.”

-- Sonia Sanchez, We a BaaddDDD People (Detroit, MI: Broadside Press, 1970).

“The revolution…will go on…if I never do anything, it will go on”

--Nikki Giovanni, Black Feeling, Black Talk/Black Judgment (New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1979).

“If they resist world unity and the progress of all races, kill them. Don’t hesitate! Kill them!”

-- Amiri Baraka, “Afrikan Revolution,” The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1999).

Part IV

“Some of us still gonna be free, Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm.”

-- Asha Bandele, “blues poem 4 malcolm x.”

“The man will try to grab our future too. Shall we let him?”

-- Ama Ata Aidoo, “Images of Africa at Century’s End,” An Angry Letter in January (Coventry: Dangaroo Press, 1992).

Take your capitalist accumulation. Add ignorance and racist pride. Subtract love and human dignity. Times desire to exploit. And find yourself a product of your environment. Now why don’t you decide… Who doesn’t measure up?

-- Hawa Martina Jalloh, “A Product of Whose Environment?”

© 2003 Africa Resource Center, Inc.