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Yes Cynique, yesssssss!!!!!!! Man down, shots fired, Unkel Troll you got what you wanted I assume; some confrontation and a response. Considering the complete irony of you taking the time to post on a Black owned website which couldn't have possibly been made by a Black person because we are too stupid to learn coding or to turn on a computer, on behalf of Troy I appreciate you taking the time to click through several pages to write this which gives Troy impressions on the two ads on this page or clicks, and earns Troy Ad Revenue from a billion dollar business to keep running this business. Your contribution, as stupid as it is, contributes to the empowerment of the people. What I hope is that you go to every Black website you find and tell your buddies to do that too. While no one likes to read your vitriol, we will take your money since we can never be repaid for what we've given this country: art, music, entertainment and infrastructure. If Blacks weren't here all the US would have that they actually created is... Oh that's right White's in this country/from this country, like you haven't created or excelled in anything. Okay you're allowed to vent. It's gotta be frustrating that everything great about America was created or made more important by Blacks. No original musical artforms born in America except Jazz, Gospel, Blues and Rock (Black people) Fledgling sports associations before Blacks became a part of the games. Greatest moment in the Olympics (The take down of the Nazis by Jesse Owens) The Civil War was lost until Lincoln finally allowed 200,000 Blacks to fight. You know what's funny is that Whites in the US don't even have a literary movement to claim. I can't think of one... maybe the Confessionalists poets, but they all killed themselves didn't they? Plath and Sexton. Oh, maybe the Beat poets... nah they stole their rhythm and cadence from Black jazz writers and poets. You don't even have a movement that was as fertile as the Harlem Renaissance. I mean damn, no music, no literary movement, crappy at sports, and kissing cousins all while you have dominated society? I guess I'd be mad too Unkel. Carry on.

So just as I began to open up my laptop to write a review about yesterday's event (First Read Expo 2015), I was surprised to see such a nice write up about me! Thanks Troy, that was very nice of you. I appreciate the love and support that you do for us as African American writers and the vessel that leads to awareness (knowledge, wisdom and understanding). It was such an honor to be in the presence of my fellow authors, guest speakers, and watching everyone interact and network by sharing their stories through their passions. Thanks again, can't wait for 2016!

Yada, yada, yada. This cretin epitomizes the "Christian" breed of American that Isis targets. So when terrorists sneak into the country amidst the influx of Syrian refugees, gun totin Neanderthals like Uncle Adolph will be decimated in their attempt to preserve the way of life these latter-day Barbarians want to preserve in the beloved country they stole from the Indians and totally corrupted and ruined . We all know that this white skinned jackal would trade every one of those 6 empty boasts above if this would just make his half-inch penis grow longer. LMAO. Seig Heil! Crawl back into your cave. Your tea is getting cold.

This dude is on the wrong message board ^^^^^ lol. Brother Ruckus keep shooting... eventually you'll hit whatever target you're aiming for.

It never ceases to amaze me how readily we allow for equal opportunity while we are never given the same chances. Kudos to you Troy for representing the true quality of what is supposed to happen in the US.

Cynique, that is a very eloquent, well written picture of the situation. It does look that way. Of course writing has its own pleasures and meaning beyond writing for a public or an audience. You think, you learn. You create a world you live in. Tolkien experienced the joys of such creation years before he found a publisher. It's enough in its own way. And I hope that in your long life you've enjoyed those rewards for its own sake, too. Some of us sorcerers crave an audience more than others. But how many Americans have read "King Bongo and Mile Zero" by the great Thomas Sanchez. Well, to answer your question, it probably has to be good jobs first that can allow families to have breakfast and dinner with each other in the morning and afternoon. The parents are not overworked and get paid vacations. Then perhaps...we probably need good jobs in inner cities first. Leisure time. Black people are a small minority as well and that also makes it difficult to find an audience, if they read less than whites, spending their entertainment money fast and cheap, but if the black author bores or offends whites because the subject matter of his fiction touches on or is about racism his audience shrinks again. It is an issue writing for whites instead of blacks or trying to get whites to enjoy black subject matter. I'm sure it must've been discussed here at the aalbc. And given the biological basis of escapism, it's like fighting an addiction. It's probably a losing battle. A doomed cause. Getting people to perform, however, perhaps can awaken the spirit that would enjoy reading more. I was going to start a fictional journal or blog called the Journal of Anti-escapism to explore what escapism is or how it had come to be. I don't believe a lot of old folklore and English ballads were escapists at all. It was to be published by Margo Lane. Only the ANTI-ESCAPIST knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men! Here is some of the material I was writing for it. This was to be a sort of motto: Three wonders for the workers under the sky, Seven for the bosses with their hearts of stone, Nine for the soldiers doomed to die, One for the miser gnawing his bone In the land of Money where the sliver screen shadows lie. True art to tell them all, true art to move them, True art to bring them all, and in the darkness show them That in the land of Money the silver screen shadows lie. "There are two slave storytellers. One tells the slaves gathered around at night after a hard days work picking cotton that if they do their work--work they must do being the decendents of Ham and therefore cursed to do it--and don't complain about it, don't rebel, don't run away, when they die--they'll go to master's heaven where they won't ever have to work again and can eat all the watermelon they want to their heart's content. The slaves cannot read the Bible so they must take master's word for it. On another night after more back breaking work, he tells them that the Mighty Abe Lincoln, disquised as an eagle, is going to personally swoop down on the plantation and free them, bust their chains with his mighty Samson hands. Abe is a giant, ten feet tall, they say. A Dark complexioned man. President of the United States. It feels good after a hard days work to hear this. This storyteller is popular. It cost the slaves nothing (in terms of thought or effort) to enjoy his stories and the master approves. Some of the slaves dream about this when they go to sleep, it is as vivid as a movie would be today. The flag is his cape. Abe beats up the whole Confedrate Army single handedly and converts a beautiful Southern girl to the Union cause. She falls madly in love with him. They get married. She doesn't go mad and his sons don't die off young. Happy ending. No mention is made of a bloody civil war or the atrocities and cruelities that will occur. Or that freeing the slaves wasn't the only reason for the war. That the Mighty Abe will be taken down by a single bullet. Or that Reconstruction will end in Jim Crow. The Klan will ride giving them nightly terrors. And they don't have to do anything. Just wait. Good ole Abe will free them himself, personally. They stay on the planatation. On another plantation a slave storytellers tells the tired slaves about how one of their brethren defying masters vicious dogs, overseers and the wilderness escaped up North to Freedom land. And he describes how this slave made a success of himself there working on a whale ship at sea and how eventually he was able to save enough money to buy the freedom of his wife and children. A few slaves did in fact achieve such success, though not all of them were able to buy back their families. Fredrick Douglas being the most famous escaped slave of his time. The Slave storyteller also told of another slave who didn't make it, that slave was caught and whipped and never got more than a mile off the plantation. Or that he made it up North but his master's men recaught him and brought him back. Perhaps the teller of the tale is a freedman who reenslaved himself to tell the slaves this story or the very man that was recaptured. Which one of these tales is more honest, more worthy of the teller, more worthy of the listener to hear and to understand? Which is worth believing in and imagining. Which offers the slaves dignity, which recognizes their humanity and which does not. Which is utterly dishonest? Which is more truthful. Escapism is like the first two tales. A real person hearing the third might be inspired to run away, not in fact escaping from harsh realities because the dogs are hounding him, but to find a higher goal and purpose. Or he might be too afraid to act. But which offers even a slim chance of a better life? Which would you choose to believe in, to imagine, to fantasize about, if you were a slave? Eating water malons in Heaven? Or finding freedom in the here and now. Anti-escapism will allow you to ask yourself these questions and find your own answers. I'm not telling you to write about slavery. This is not an attack on genres for a strict realism, it's an example of the values and goals involved in telling any kind of story. Is it going to be significant or superficial. Is it going to be honest or dishonest. What status quo are you defending? Escapists like to pretend that mainstream product is apolitical. But there is a lot of politics in what is omitted from entertainment, from discussion. Keep in mind, as you read this, however, that anti-escapist values doesn't make a work great literature, fiction still must be judged on other criteria besides its good intentions. A boring morality play is still boring. But is it better to have some good intentions rather than none at all? The wage slave complaint of escapist writers and readers is that after work, because of bad news, or because they cannot change the world, they have a right to escape from reality. Escapsim is a measure of how powerless and weak people feel or are. Yet escapists tend to favor tough guys and gals, unrealistic stories about strong men saving the world in their fiction, while they themselves are afraid to deal with reality. They are posers and hypocritics. Although I love the work of Robert E. Howard, he was a gifted storytellers, his character Conan would never have killed himself, yet sadly Howard killed himself. I don't see how escapism makes people stronger. Escapism is only justifable in a Utopia. Margo on the power of movies: Because we are primed for flight or fight by our instinctive, reactive more ancient brain, escapism is often a Pavlovian process of wiring us to identify with heroes and heroines who always escape danger and never die. Conflict and agression, sex and violence, get our immediate attention. Yet is it a good thing to be repeatedly told that only the superpeople will save you? Yet there are no superpeople in real life. You don't have to save yourselves. Is that not a false sense of security? Is a black and white world view, rather than shades of gray, much better than a medieval morality play. It doesn't encourage audiences to think for themselves. Despite its very real enjoyability, its very real power, escapist films are ultimately a dead end for society, individuals and culture." I wanted to also use these lines from Dylan's man in the long black coat to suggest that people should join the Shadow-like Anti-Escapist: There are no mistakes in life, some people say And it's true sometimes, you can see it that way But people don't live or die, people just float She went with the man in the long black coat

Cynique, thanks, but I think your comments on rap are well said, much more articulate than mine, shorter and to the point. I'm in my midfifties. I came to this country the same month Martin Luther King was assassinaed. It's a vivid memory because of the news reports. You can google me if you want to but I don't think you'll find much about me online right now or anything for that matter. I don't really want to promote myself here. I've not written many books and most of them are unpublished except for a self published one that I am trying to get republished by an established publisher. I figure a finished book should be better than a plain old manuscript. I've written a screenplay that I'm trying to get made into a film or a play. I like science fiction, horror, fantasy, genre stuff. I don't know if I want to reveal more. Shouldn't I save it all or my memoirs? I'll think about it. Yes, I am a man of mystery, an international man of mystery--the ANTI-ESCAPIST--for the weed of greed will bare bitter fruit. I was thinking about Bookmobiles to promote books. What do you think? If some one can offer the homeless showers in old buses, why not take a bus ride and read or buy a book in a mobile library or bookstore? If illiteracy is a wound--we need a sort of M.A.S.H. unit of sorts for non-readers. A social space of some sort. We could even offer indie films on a bus ride--how much should riders give. Will the city allow parking? Should it be free?

I hate doing this, but if the Black, successful writers did something similar, the Black book stores and websites would be in a much better position. They wouldn't have to donate their money, simply their time in their home cities. Just a thought. This is good though.