One More Word on Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls.....

There is one great thing that happens when a movie like For Colored Girls is made. It opens up a whole world of discovery for poetry and artists that your average person probably isn't familiar with.

After posting this morning, I had to grab up one of my anthologies this afternoon to read all I could about Ntozake Shange. I feel inspired now to find her poem's interpretation on stage somewhere because from what I'm reading in the reviews.....that is really the way to see it.

But I also wanted to share a few other artists for your consideration......

Nikki Giovanni.

Aaah. I referenced her work sometime back on Skirt! and got some great comments. Her style, her words, her views. All of it. She's just fantastic. I love For Saundra for the capturing of the moment that was 1968. But I also have a huge affinity for Beautiful Black Men for the pop and groove of the words like lyrics and it's capture of the beginnings of the Black is Beautiful movement.

Amiri Baraka.

This man. Oh, my. Dutchman had me so stymied that I was flailing my hands in class trying to get the words out to describe my interpretation to my professor. (She nodded me patiently through it and I so appreciate her for that.) But I can't top Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note. There is hardly a time that I look at a night sky and don't think of that poem.

Ann Petry.

Like a Winding Sheet is a piece I can see in my mind sometimes. Actually.....I believe I think about it every time I put on lipstick. When you read something once or twice and it stays with you like that.......there's proof it's worth something. Something big.

And yeah, I'll let you know I first came across and read these pieces when I took an African American Literature class at my local community college. I took it when I was 32 years-old. And I read like hell. It was the kind of class that either wasn't offered or I didn't have time to take when I was in high school or college. And that is a shame, folks. Had I not taken that class I wouldn't have come across some of my favorite writers today like Richard Wright and James Baldwin. I wouldn't know and understand the history of writers like Ida B. Wells-Barnett or Booker T. Washington. Or the beauty of James Weldon Johnson or Charles W. Chesnutt.

So I'm pretty lucky, and I know it.

If everyone had the time (and inclination) to read and learn and grow all they could, we all just might be a better people for it. But that's just one woman's opinion.

Now get to your reading list!!!!

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