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Kentecloth: Southwest Voices of the African Diaspora

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[reprinted courtesy of The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)]

"KENTE CLOTH" WADES INTO STORYTELLERS' WATERS

From a full-length performance poem in script form to a teen-ager's image-laden perception of self, "Kente Cloth: Southwest Voices of The African Diaspora" (University of North Texas Press) revives on paper the ancient tradition of "griots" or storytellers. James Mardis, an award-winning poet and radio commentator in Dallas, has compiled an anthology that features mostly unpublished writers. Collecting the work of more than 45 scribes primarily from Louisiana and Texas, Mardis has succeeded in capturing the rhythm-and-blues lives of people in a common-folk vernacular. Simple, earnest and true. "Kente Cloth" is divided into four basic categories: Witnesses, Performers, Tellers and Signifiers, with a range of styles and tales that tantalize the reader into jumping into a pool of griots. Jesse Truvillion's "A Stray Dog's Great Day," Nadir Bomani's "Someone's Knockin' at My Door" and Phyllis Allen's "The Red Swing" run the gamut from tribute to modern-day vignette. The poetry of Monica Denise Spears, Bertram Barnes, Zenaura Melynia Smith, Gayle Bell, Freddi Evans, Glenn Joshua, Mawiyah Bomani and Kalamu ya Salaam are lyrical emotion-rides, while the prose of Bernestine Singley, Charley Moon, and James Thomas Jackson invoke fiery responses. "Lovve/Rituals & Rage" by Sharon Bridgforth brings the joy of performance art to the page and the gentle "Soul Soother" by Zenaura Smith, a freshman at John Ehret High School (in New Orleans), offers a touch of innocent love. Even editor Mardis slips in a folktale and a couple of poems, most notably "Sting," an ode that balances lemonade and death. A dozen New Orleans writers add their unique perspectives to this collection, including Michael Ollie Clayton, saddi khali, Cassandra Bailey, Nadir Bomani, Barnes, Evans, Joshua, Perkins, Salaam, Smith, Spears and Mawiyah Bomani. The African-American literary scene is a steadily evolving and expanding landscape, and "Kente Cloth" turns the spotlight around to shine on the South. Mardis wanted this collection to represent the joy of the oral tradition, "The elders may be gone in body, but their lessons linger in the living and sharing of these stories, poems and plays. Listen for the voices...the oral dance of tongue to teeth and song to heart." "Kente Cloth" is a visual tribute to the legions of unscripted griots and a worthy addition to any shelf that holds African-American literature.

The introduction of this book is almost as good as the fiction and poetry inside. Mardis talks about how these writers are connected even though they live in the five state southwest area. He is right. They are writing about their lives and about how we are more connected by experience than other writing will have us believe. If these are the new black writers of the southwest, boy the New York publishers have really missed the boat!