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LITERARY GENOCIDE


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The ongoing relationship between writers and readers is age old and has been called one of the greatest social experiments  of humanity since it is  this bonded sense of communication that has forged empires and invented religions.

 

There is little argument about the passion and range of our oral traditions that pre-dated slavery, but much of what was passed on from one generation to the other as folklore and traditional stories was invariably lost as we transitioned to English from the tongues in which our history was recited.

 

On this side of the Atlantic, due to the constructs of our forced labors and the need of the slave-masters to craft a new breed of  man, one of the first things we lost as we were deliberately stripped of our language was the power to transmit our oral traditions.

 

Once released from servitude, the need to chronicle our journey became a vital mission and our writers wrote. What grew out of this need to give expression to our worldview and perspective was the beginning of the “Slave Narratives” which were acknowledged as some of the greatest work from that historical era even though the bulk of them were either lost or destroyed.

 

Unarguably, it was the power of these books that were the spark for the abolitionist movement and helped produce outrage and antislavery sentiments in other countries. Another book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is credited with being a fiery catalyst that added fuel to help ignite the Civil War. Books by Frederick Douglass were so powerful and insightful that they outsold most books by prominent white writers.

 

During the tumultuous Reconstruction Era (when white southerners got reparations for lost property following the civil War), it was writers/scholars such as Booker T and W.E.B. who kept our people tuned in to what was going on, dispensing knowledge, advice, and hopes of redemption.

 

The tradition of using the written word as a social platform continued, gaining preeminence during The Harlem Renaissance where the ugliness and evil of institutional racism was laid bare between the covers of books by a host of world-renown black writers. This was no doubt, the heyday of black literature with a flowering accent on liberation, black pride and self-sufficiency.

 

With the commencement of The Civil Rights Movement, the push for a viable black literary heritage was upheld and supported by writers such as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Chester Himes who extended the boundaries of telling stories with a social consciousness. Our books celebrated us. In the 80s Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and other black female writers asserted themselves.  

 

Is it a sort of literary genocide that our books, for the most part, no longer teach us? Of course, any writer worth his salt is free to write as his ambitions dictate without any responsibility to his audience to warn, or to enlighten, or to educate. My personal opinion is that when a people are mired in the depths of a horrendous social crisis where the survival of the whole may be imperiled, then those who possess skills and talents conducive to the welfare of the nation and doesn’t employ them to benefit the cause is useless to that cause.

 

To illustrate how important reading is and how one single bit of info can potentially save lives, here I go again, Pioneer1, with one of my observations! Anyway, in the feds joint, the brothas from DC and the brothas from NC didn’t get along and we had some serious beefs; the strife between us was constant. One day I read about ‘blockbusting’ where families from NC were transported to live in DC and I shared it with DC, and just as sho’ as shit stank, we got close and all the beefing stopped. We were cousins. I know that may seem simplistic but that info that I read and passed on, saved lives.

 

When our writers write with purpose, the reader would know that it is best sometimes, when searching for answers, to first examine the obvious. Sometimes, the things that make us laugh can make us cry because you can’t pick up one end of a stick without picking up the other end as well. For example, our most prized collective asset is our melanin, that wonderful pigment that blackens us.

 

When a people are in their native land, their skin, hair and body composition are physiologically designed to both complement and to withstand the rigors of that environment. When we were home, we didn’t suffer from sickle cell because our cells were designed with a built-in malaria defense system which we needed. However, once in the US, the same defense system that protected us at home was now useless and the cells mutated, sickling, thus causing this disease that is mostly common to us and no other people. Same thing with melanin. As long as were we in our natural clime, the pigmentation did precisely what it is designed to do and it performed its function to flawless perfection.

 

So, now that we’re over here in a different climate, our bodies function oddly. Melanin protected us from the sun at home, but over here, where we are operating against the laws of our collective nature, our bodies don’t produce enough Vitamin D. And this lack of Vitamin D  is a primary contributor to the high incidence of cancer in the black community. And white doctors have known this for decades but withheld the info that something as simple as taking Vitamin D could save your life. That’s why our writers must write.

 

The medical society has confirmed that there are two primary reasons why blacks die from COVID-19 at such alarming rates, and both involve a lack of Vitamin D.

That is why the writers who are intent and interested in being a uplifting voice for the community must write with purpose. Otherwise, we will commit literary genocide

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