curate

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But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? by Frederick Douglass

via Tiffany Gill

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I lived on Philpot Street, Fell’s Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming “hand-bills,” headed CASH FOR NEGROES. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness. The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number have been collected here, a ship is chartered, for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed.

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? by Frederick Douglass

I am in Baltimore this weekend. Independence Day is just an excuse to eat bushels of crabs with my family. This passage brings it home where and when I am.

America’s Voice | Who Killed Brisenia Flores?

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Our Sea of Words: Poetry from Oceania and Beyond

Monday, July 13, 2009
7:30 pm
Pegasus Books Downtown Berkeley
Shattuck Ave. at Durant

Maile Arvin is a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) poet from Kentucky and Hawai’i. Her work is published in two chapbooks by Kearny Street Workshop, Same Place, Same Time (2006) and 12 Ways: an anthology of the Intergenerational Writer’s Lab (2007). She is also a graduate student in the PhD program in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu is a Tongan American scholar, poet and community activist. Her work has been published in Amerasia, The Contemporary Pacific and The Berkeley Poetry Review. Fuifuilupe is a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley and she is on the organizing committee of OLO; One Love Oceania, a Pacific Islander community response to homophobia.

Loa Niumeitolu’s poetry is published in Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poetry in English. Her essay “The Route Back to Tonga,” is published in Homelands: Women’s Journeys Across Race, Place and Time. Niumeitolu is a community organizer around issues of prisons and incarceration. She is a founding member of One Love Oceania, a Pacific Island women’s queer support and political group in the Bay Area.

Craig Santos Perez, a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guahan (Guam), is the co-founder of Achiote Press and author of the poetry book from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008). He is currently a PhD candidate in Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Caroline Sinavaiana, Associate Professor of English at UH Manoa, teaches Oceanic and comparative literatures, and creative writing. She has published, lectured, and read her poetry and scholarship in many countries, including the US, China, India, Italy, Barbados, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, and New Zealand. Poetry collections include: Alchemies of Distance (Tinfish, AA Arts, & Institute for Pacific Studies), and Mohawk/Samoa: Transmigrations (AA Arts). Her book on traditional comic theater in Samoa – House of the Spirits — is forthcoming from the Institute of Pacific Studies. At present, Sinavaiana is completing a new collection of poetry, and a memoir with the working title, Nuclear Medicine.

Our Sea of Words: Monday, July 13, 7:30 pm at Pegasus Books, Berkeley « the maile vine