http://www.hipiers.com/02aug.html
Let me focus for a moment on a correspondent: I've known Walidah Imarisha by mail for about 8 years and regard her as a black feminist activist, though she may not see herself that way. I was surprised early on when she made an issue of blackness, because her fan letters had come across as lily white. She asked me why I didn't have black characters in my fiction, and I responded that I did, and named several novels. She checked and agreed. That impressed me, because others have asked the same question and refused to accept my answer, accusing me of racism the same way some accuse me of sexism: more interested in the charge than in the truth. Walidah challenges folk, but she also listens. That marked her in my mind as different, and an entity to be respected. It's the way I try to be myself. I have opinionations busting out all over, but I pay attention to feedback. She sent me a booklet of her poems titled "This Back Called Bridge" subtitled "To find a way, to make a way, to be a way." The first poem is "By-Racial Blues" and it describes her early situation. "How come you sound like a white girl?" with the real question being "How come you're not black enough?" Her mother told her just to answer that she was brown. She remarks here (I'm deleting the poetic form, because I have a lot to jam in here; I hope the author will forgive me): "Yeah, that works...when you're six years old. After that, you better have something better to explain your mutt birth, your bastard existence, your lighter skin, your upturned nose. You can not straddle the color line, yawning like a canyon between your two halves. There is no middle ground in amerikan culture expression: you better choose or we'll do it for you." She envied the "shonuff" black girls who ruled elementary and middle school and regarded her as "the Oreo cookie child," black on the outside, white inside. She concludes: "I guess I will continue to be miscegenated and misunderstood, but I think I'm done with the bi-racial blues." That's just the first poem. You can find her via http://poetryoffthepage.com. She's the bad sista of the Good Sista/Bad Sista duo.
Walidah also sent me a copy of a book she helped edit, Another World is Possible, which relates to the horror of September 11, 2001. I opened it randomly and discovered hard-hitting political social economic commentary; this is not innocuous material. For example I learned that a few years ago they struck oil in the eastern portion of the Caspian Sea, estimated to be half again as big a supply as what's in Saudi Arabia. But how could they get it out? The area has no direct access to the sea and is surrounded by politically awkward territories. The best bet was a pipeline through Afghanistan, so they promoted the Taliban to take over and secure the region, making it safe for the Big Oil business. Then things got out of hand, as we know. So how come I didn't see this in the regular news? You can order it via www.newmouthfromthedirtysouth.com.
Sci Fi Writer Piers Anthony’s 2002 Blog about Walidah
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