by Gayl Jones
Professors Sought for the Nzingha University
We are seeking professors to teach at Nzingha University. Please send us your course proposals. Currently we have an interest in teachers of the following:
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Afrocentric Biology
• Maritime History
• Lighthouse Management
• Afromodernist & Free Speech Literature
Argentine Tango
Dine at the new Argentine Tango, owned by Tita Rodriguez, Afro-Argentinean member of the Daughters of Nzingha.
Our Womenfriends Get off Welfare
Several of our womenfriends have started a new Daughters of Nzingha bookstore. They specialize in Afromance novels and say that so many New World African women have been purchasing their publications that it has enabled them to get off welfare.
Think Tank
The Garvey Center for the Advancement of Science in the African Diaspora is starting a new think tank. All New World African scientists interested in joining this new think tank should contact the Garvey Center or Prof. Dr. Naughton J. Savage, Esq., of New Guerrilla Thinkers Inc., a subsidiary of Savage Thinkers Inc. (additional information available on request).
Note: You all know Dr. Savage, the husband of our own Joan Scribner Savage.
NEWS ABOUT DAUGHTERS OF NZINGHA MEMBERS
Note: Some Daughters of Nzingha names are not printed for security purposes.
Ethnobotanist Sophia Esmond has started Ethnoscience magazine.
So-in-so is senior editor with our archives and is eager to receive manuscripts for our womenfriends. She is also the editor of Nzingha Online.
Joan Y’all Can Print My Name Scribner Savage is the new director of the Nzingha Foundation.
Y’all-know-who-we-mean’s new book Remix is now on sale. It is the first volume in a series of books remixing Western literary tradition. She is the author of the wildly satirical How to Build a Negro, Fuck the Fucking Fuckers and Their Fucking Fuckery: A Neo-Caribbean Novel, The Colored People’s Book of Architecture and Urban Design, and Steppenwolf and Step ’n’ Fetch it: Afro-eccentric Essays. She has been doing a tour of all the Nzingha bookshops and says her book How to Build a Negro is still her most best-known and popular novel. I’m surprised by the extent to which New World Africans ourselves are still interested in the Negro. We are still very much interested in the Negro no matter how often we change our names. I’m a New World African of multiracial and multicultural descent myself, but it is also good to know that peoples of color are wise enough now to know that they are the primary audience for my satirical novels.
OUT OF THE COUNTRY IN SOMEBODY ELSE’S COUNTRY
California Association of Nzingha and the Association of Nzingha of Northern Canada are in the Caribbean on a new strategy which cannot be printed here for security reasons. They are said to be setting up protected areas for persons of color and the other disenfranchised peoples of the world who consider themselves natives.
The San Pedro River People of Color Birdwatchers Association are watching birds along the Nile.
The author of The Mysterious Rendezvous in the Congo is in the Republic of the Congo.
One of our editors is traveling in China and learning Chinese herb medicine.
The designer of our Daughters of Nzingha T-shirts, a noted sculptor, is holding a workshop for Not for Members Only in Prague. Most of us don’t know why she considers herself a Daughter of Nzingha, since she spends most of her time in Europe. (If any of y’all other neo-African Cosmopolitan Artist Types Seeming to Prefer Neo-Nazi Europe for Europeans-Only Europe to You Know There Are Still Slaves There in Africa or even the It’s So Hot It Makes Even My Chemically Straightened Hair Nappy I Should Start Wearing an Afro Again Girl I’m Glad I Never Stopped Wearing an Afro It Never Was Just in Vogue Styling the Natural What Kinda English is This Caribbean Y’all Must Be Reading Apollinaire You Know Them Stories That’s Set in Prague Colored Girls in Prague who are interested in learning how to sculpt contact [email protected].)
INTERVIEW WITH MONKEY BREAD
What made you get the idea that we should just publish anybody and everybody?
Well, I do limit it to the descendants of the African Diaspora Holocaust or various peoples of color who identify with Africa.
But doesn’t that mean we don’t have any standards?
Well, we do say that our standard is free speech. That’s our standard.
When did you first get the idea, though?
When I was drinking root tea. And also sometimes when I write letters to my womanfriend who is a Not for Members Only member of our group. She collects my letters and my stories which I’ve written over the years and reads them, you know. So I thought our organization could do that. Nadine is sorta like my own personal archives.
Have you changed your approach to writing over the years?
Well, I keeps trying to get freer. You know, mixing my words with whatever I wants to mix them with. I think there’s a lot of limitations in print. That’s why I would really like to use all forms of audio and video. If there could be a book that contained not only the book but other forms of communication as well. Where when people opens the book it ain’t just a book, but can contain a CD or a video, a newsletter, a press release, all kindsa forms of communication.
You should go on the radio.
Now, you know they’d just think I was Aunt Jemima. At least the Daughters of Nzingha claims they know who I am and that’s why I considers y’all along with Nadine to be my primary audience. I don’t mix my words or change my words around none. I don’t have to explain none of my meanings to y’all. And I don’t negotiate my identity with nobody. Even our own peoples. I am who I am. I do writes for peoples who knows how to hear me. I writes with as many words as I wants and digresses as much as I can to get the ideas to the listeners. I think that is so important. Not only to tell the readers what happens in a story but to get your ideas to them, your opinions, and to also tell the reader how you feels about the events in the story. And also to be able to create characters who have different ideas and opinions from the ideas and opinions that you yourself has. Some peoples thinks when you creates a character and the character expresses an idea or a opinion that that is your own idea and opinion but I likes to create characters who are they own true selves, and I thinks that only the Daughters of Nzingha and Nadine knows what I’m doing. Somebody says that they’s essentially three kinds of readers: them that participates in the stories that they hear, them that just listens, and them that asks, What story was that I just heard? What was that story about that I just heard? You know what I mean? Ideally, a story should make them listen to all them kinds of listeners in one story.
What else do you have to say about the kinds of characters that you create?
I believes that there is several kinds of characters: they is the characters who does what they ain’t supposed to do, characters that does what they is supposed to do, characters who does what they’d like to do. You can create characters as people ain’t supposed to be and create characters as you thinks people is, create characters as you thinks people should be, and create characters as you thinks peoples should want to be. They is al I types of characters. But you’s got to have readers that knows what types of people that you is creating. Suppose you have created characters as they ain’t supposed to be in order to tell peoples that they ain’t supposed to act that way, but the readers thinks that you is creating characters as you thinks that people is, or they thinks that you approves of the behavior of them types of characters. But characters has to be they own free and true selves. I don’t believes that you can come into the book and say to the readers, I approves of this character, this character I don’t approve of, I believes that people is like this and they ain’t like that. I suppose they is some authors that does that, but I believes that characters has the right to they own thoughts and opinions, even if they is my inventions, but I knows that Nadine knows that, that’s why she m
y primary audience along with the Daughters of Nzingha, though Nzingha herself prefers the heroic types of characters.
Who is your favorite writer?
Ernest Gaines.
I would think that being a Daughter of Nzingha, you’d choose a womanfriend writer.
Naw. I likes the way that his characters narrates them stories, although some people thinks that he is conventional when compared to the more experimental-type writers. Writers like Clarence Major or Ishmael Reed or Steve Cannon or Trey Ellis. And I likes the man’s name. He’s got a perfecting name. I ain’t a member of the Perfectability Baptist Church like Nadine. I’m a Catholic. But I think that Ernest Gaines has got a perfecting name. I believe that is his true name, though he has got the name of somebody that has named theyself. Equally important is the types of characters that he creates. And what he says about how we’s got to tell our own histories, ’cause you can’t find our true histories in them news stories. Well, he was talking about going around to the newspapers trying to find the story about a murder that he knew about, and it wasn’t in none of the newspapers, ’cause they wouldn’t put it in them newspapers and magazines, but the folks would talk about it, so that’s how it became known to history, because the folks themselves would talk about it.
Of course Ernest Gaines could write about it.
Yes, he could write about it, but he can’t write about everybody’s stories. That’s another reason for my idea. ’Cause it’s us got to give worth to us own history and stories. Plus there is the factor of them people protecting themselves, so there is a lot of us history and stories that we’s got to tell us ownselves. We protects usselves too, ’cause there’s stories us don’t want each other to tell. Course we wouldn’t mind telling them if they wasn’t overhearing them, ’cause that’s African folklore. In African folklore, there’s folklore they wouldn’t tell them collectors at all. And a lot of them collectors they didn’t understand about digressions, so they’d edit a lot of them folklores so that it weren’t the true folklores. And they didn’t always know the worth of a story. And a lot of the story in them folklores ain’t just what you hear. But them Africans they tells all kindsa stories when they’s telling they ownselves stories. They’s Africans in America that only wants you to sing praisesongs. But in Africa they is all kindsa songs and stories.
How do you tell a story?
When I tells a story I starts with the story.
What do you mean?
I starts with the story. A lot of these modern-type storytellers the people keeps listening and still don’t know what happens in them stories. But I starts with the story itself. I know a lot of times even when Nadine tells stories she don’t start with the story. Sometimes she starts with everything but the story, but me I starts with the story.
I don’t exactly understand you.
’Cause I ain’t started with no story, that’s why. I starts with the story, but the listeners themselves has got to decide whether the story is worth hearing and how much of it they wants to hear. A lot of my stories only the Daughters of Nzingha thinks is worth hearing. Some of my stones only Nadine thinks is worth hearing. And I’s got other stories that only me myself thinks is worth hearing. Then I’s got stories that I don’t think is worth telling, and I’s got other stories that I thinks is worth telling, but I ain’t found nobody, not even Nadine, that I thinks is worth telling the stories to or that I thinks is worthy listeners. I mean, there is people that you thinks is worthy people, but that don’t have to mean that you thinks that they is worthy listeners to every story that you has got to tell. Nadine is worthy to listen to almost every story I gots to tell, ’cause I’s been telling her my stories and opinions since preschool. I tries to keep the peoples knowing where they is in my stories, not just where the characters is, but where the listeners is in my stories. I wants all my listeners to keep listening, but I don’t require that they listen to the whole story, just what they thinks is worth hearing. Sometimes I even writes stories that I don’t want the readers to hear all of.
Yes, I’ve read some of those stories of yours.
Some peoples thinks that that’s a flaw in the story, ’cause they’s used to stories where the writers wants you to hear all of the story. I might not want to tell all the story in that story. I might want to tell it in another story, or I might want someone else to tell the rest of the story, or I might not think that that story is a story that readers is supposed to or even needs to hear all of, but there’s them that thinks that that is a flaw and ain’t the storyteller’s prerogative. Or I might introduce a character in one story, but you don’t meet that character again till another story. Or maybe a minor character in one story is a principal character in another story. For example, I met a woman out here in Hollywood who started telling me a story about herself and she mentions somebody named Nadine. Nadine is my friend Nadine, and I knows it the same Nadine, but when she mentions Nadine Nadine is just a minor character in her story, ’cause she just met Nadine once and ain’t know Nadine, but if I tells my own story about me growing up in Covington or even about me in Hollywood Nadine would be a principal character and personality in my story, but in this other woman’s story she is only a minor character, though I wouldn’t say that Nadine is a minor personality in anybody’s story, though they is probably people who ain’t know Nadine who could create Nadine as a minor personality. I knows they is probably white people that has met Nadine and if they even mentions her in they story it is probably as a minor personality type and maybe even a stereotype.
That’s because in most Western fiction. . . . I forgot what I was going to say about Western fiction.
I do set some of my stories in the West, but I don’t tell no cowboy stories. That don’t mean no cowboy can’t be a component in none of my stories. Cowboys can sneak into almost anyone’s stories. Cowboys and cowgirls can be metaphors in almost any story. I likes to hear what peoples thinks of my stories, so that’s why I always likes to send copies of them to my womanfriend out in Texas City, I mean St. Mary’s, Texas.
I’ve never heard of St. Mary’s, Texas.
It’s another St. Mary’s named after St. Mary of Egypt, you know, the other Mary. I likes to have her tell me what she thinks about my stories. That’s Nadine. She’s in St. Mary’s, Texas. [Y’all knows I ain’t in St. Mary’s, Texas. I’m in Texas City, Texas. And Monkey Bread knows it.]
You keep your stories simple.
Most of them, yes I does. ’Cause there usedta be this woman that sometimes my womanfriend and I would visit when we was visiting her cousins in Lexington and she would sometimes read us very simple little stories and poems and then she’d say, Think deep, so I calls my simple stones Think Deep Simple Stories, though they ain’t all simple stories. She wouldn’t just read us simple stories and poems, but when she would read us simple stories and poems and we thought we understood them just because they was simple, she’d say, Think deep. That would let us know that they was Think Deep simple stories and poems. ’Cause they’s people that thinks that if stories and poems ain’t got a lot of literary allusions and ain’t read like T. S. Eliot that you ain’t have to think deep about what you’s reading or that it ain’t literature. So they thinks that T. S. Eliot is more literature or knows more about literature than them who writes Think Deep simple. My womanfriend I sends my stories to is the only one I know can think deep enough that even when I sends her silly stories she knows what I’m saying. Other people they be saying this is silly. We usedta be in love with the same man, so she probably knows me better than anybody else. You can’t go higher in a story than who you are or how you defines yourself. Even a simple story can tell you who you is. Plus she supposed to have one of them auditory memories, I mean Nadine, so she knows to read my stories aloud so’s she can remember them. And even if Nadine don’t think deep enough for some of the stories I tells, she remembers them. When I can’t find none of my stories, Nadine’s got them in her long memory herself.
Is she a writer, your f
riend Nadine?
She tells peoples stories. ’Cept sometimes she tells peoples everything but the story. This might be her inspiration to write some of her stories and send them to us. I think she can go higher than who she is myself. Or who she thinks she is. When I writes stories, I can’t go no higher than who I am. But I think Nadine can go higher than who she is. I advise everybody receiving this newsletter to send us their stories, though, whether or not the tellers of the story can go higher than who they is.
Not everyone.
I mean, the descendants of the victims of the African Diaspora Holocaust who’s got stories to tell or the peoples of color who identify with Africa. And don’t dumb ’em down. A lot of y’all thinks when y’all send out y’all’s stories and especially from past experience with the mass media that y’all has got to dumb ’em down. Or when y’all thinks that y’all is writing for colored people, I mean for the common colored person. Don’t send us no dumbed-down fictions. Y’all can write in Ebonics if y’all wants too, if y’all thinks that Ebonified English is more creative than standard English, which some of y’all fools just associates with them that ain’t people of color, but that don’t mean y’all’s got to dumb down y’all stories for us. And I’m also talking about y’all from the South, though there is people from the South who writes a more refined English than standard. We would like to receive free and confidently written stories. Y’all can also send tape recording and e-mail fiction. If you ain’t Erykah Baduh don’t send us no videos unless you’s telling a story in it. Let us know where the story is taking place, describe the peoples and scenes that needs to be described. Remember that listeners have got imaginations and sometimes their imaginations are richer than anything that they can hear. Tell your stories right and the listener tells as much of the story as you do. Fact, the listener might tell the better parts of the story.