The
two names are inextricably linked by time and culture and their relationship is
all the more evident now that both, as they say in some communities, have
passed. The passing of Baldwin in 1987
marked by the encomiums of Baraka were what led me to the core of my play, Waiting for Giovanni. It seems right to revisit that moment now
that Baraka, too, has joined the ancestors.
While
Baldwin was memorialized at a service in Manhattan's Cathedral of St John
Divine, I stood outside with many public mourners watching the family and
famous arrive; all of us waiting to let go of him although we didn't want
to. Even though Baldwin resided on the other
side of the world most of the time we still thought of him as always near—in Harlem
or on the Upper West Side or in the West Village. The streets reflected his words and his
spirit back to us always; whether we were writers or nurses, or shoe shine
men. He was under our skin like that
polish the brothers can never seem to get off their hands.
But
years later when I watched a documentary that showed the service I was incensed
that people like Baraka were given the privilege of praising him in death when
in life Baldwin had been so despised publicly by people like him. Baldwin's success in white literary circles,
his open homosexuality, and his international appeal all condemned him to the
dreaded categories: effete and Negro.
The young Turks like Baraka, Eldridge Cleaver, later Ishmael Reed and
others seemed to thrive on their disdain for women and for gay people both in
print and in public.
Maybe
it was just a generational thing--each new wave of writer/activists feeling
more progressive and cutting edge than the previous so the old must make way
for the new. I understand that feeling
from both the perspectives of the new and of the old. However with Baraka it's more difficult to
not be angry with him for several reasons.
He
was a wonderful organizer who tried to save Newark, New Jersey by sheer force
of will. He brought hope to a small,
economically and spiritually decimated city that had been betrayed by
everyone--Black and white. His dogged determination to
turn the city around was heroic. I
wanted his commitment to social justice to be more universal.
His
writing, when not marred by dogmatism, sexism and anti-Semitism (that latter he
clumsily tried to recant later in life), could be brilliant. His poem, 'Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide
Note,' remains one of the most powerful in the English language. His book, “Blues
People,” changed the way African Americans looked at music and each other. I don't like to use accusatory 'ism' and
'phobia' words because I understand these political perspectives often exist within
otherwise socially conscious people, especially of certain generations. I too will undoubtedly be accused of an 'ism'
or 'phobia' at some point as I grow older no matter how hard I try to keep up.
However
with Baraka it was especially painful to see him pass up his teachable moments. He ignored the power he had to reconcile
Blackness and sexuality for the youth that followed him even when he knew
personally how important it was. The
tragic murder of Baraka's lesbian daughter and her lover by a wife batterer in
2003 was preceded 20 years earlier by the murder of his sister Kimako, also a
lover of women.
Kimako
owned a shop in Harlem; it was the first place I bought a piece of African
clothing. She was beautiful, sensual,
and astute; a woman who knew her artifacts, her fabric and her business. I never went to the shop without encountering
another writer or other artists who weren't beguiled by her. Her murder, by an acquaintance she'd been
trying to help get on his feet, sent an entire community of women into
mourning. And so too her brother.
But
that connection never seemed to lead Baraka to the next step in understanding
the underlying connection between all of our struggles for dignity. It never led him, as far as I know, to
stepping up to embrace that dignity publicly so that the next generation of
young Turks might shed their reflexive macho sexism and homophobia.
Many
times I saw Baraka fail to do a right thing; be arrested for hitting his wife; not pay attention at
public readings to younger female writers; or worse dis them for departing from
his gospel. So it will always be a complicated mourning for his passing. His
genius will stand in the writing he leaves behind, but so too must his flaws.
His
wife, Amina Baraka, did something he never could. She attended the Hunter College (NYC)
symposium that honored the life of Black, lesbian poet, Audre Lorde on the
anniversary of her passing. There Amina
read a tribute to her murdered daughter, retelling the painful story to the
audience and making the connections that her husband did not. She understood Audre's proclamation:
"Your silence will not save you" as a personal call to testify. Her tears were the spiritual river that
flowed between us, her daughter and Audre creating the possibility of healing.
Baldwin
and Baraka came to some nominal rapprochement later in life. Maybe as the young Turks age they can see
themselves more clearly in the ones who've gone before. In “Waiting for Giovanni” my character Jimmy
asks about the young, Black militants who dismiss him:
“…have their senses been perverted by the way their manhood was
brutalized:
Slavery, Jim Crow, night shift jobs.
But haven’t I too been
beside them?”
The answer, of course, is yes.
Jimmy had been there, in the struggle.
But it’s sometimes difficult to embrace a brother that the culture has
insisted is ‘the other.’ It can even be
difficult for the brother to embrace himself.
Still
it was the disapproval of people like Baraka which might have intimidated
Baldwin into not publishing "Giovanni's Room." That would have been a literary and a personal tragedy.
Fortunately Baldwin was not the weak piece of
fluff Baraka and the others may
have thought a homosexual to be.
***
