* * *
“my liberation as an Indigenous woman is linked to the liberation of Black women, and the Two Spirit and Queer community, and I’ve learned by listening to Black feminists like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Angela Davis, Luam Kidane and Hawa Y. Mire that resurgent Indigenous and Black feminisms are the spine of our collective liberation. ... To me, Ferguson is a call not only to indict the system but to decolonize the systems that create and maintain the forces of Indigenous genocide and anti-Blackness. I have a responsibility to make space on my land for those communities of struggles, to centre and amplify Black voices and to co-resist.”
– Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist
“So the work that’s required to reconnect us to our real selves involves having your own language. So this is a place where Hawaiʻi is a very good teacher. Because it’s daunting to think about re-learning a language you never knew, where people have forced you not to know your own tongue. It’s horrible, it’s what happened to you. So this is something that can go out among indigenous people around the world. Yes you cannot even relearn, you can learn your original language. And if you can do that, there are nuances of thought, of feeling that you are then able to use to help the world.”
– Alice Walker, interview with the Hawaiʻi Independent
* * *
Table of Contents
Kizza | 9
#SomeLivesMatter
Black Girl Magic is at battle with Black Hotep arrogance
Gregory Pōmaikaʻi Gushiken | 11
woodwork
Kelvin Kellman | 12
Survival
Brian Rigg | 13
Before Ballroom
The Ballad of Lady M
Kaʻimilani Leota Sellers |
14.0250° S/171.4265° W
Country of Patriarchs
Hisham Bustani | Translated by Maia Tabet | 21
Gaza
Daniel Brooks | 25
This Place
Jumping the Broom with Strangers
Spirit of Ruthie
The Image That Is Not
Morgan Christie | 32
Sterling
revenant
the tundra / bedtime story #3
alternate names for (young) black men
Melissa Jones | 40
Grocery List: Identity
Leslie Dianne | 41
Kings of Country, Queens of Sky
Sophia Egbelo | 42
Remember Your Name
travis craig | 61
self-portrait: buckwheat with shotgun and self-awareness [image]
Lowell Thomas Bundick | 62
My People Are Not Your Party Theme
Stronger Than Koa
Jonathan Andrew Perez | 67
My life coming back as a peep
My water is drinkable
The Indigo
henry 7. reneau, jr. | 71
lady sisyphus
a grain of truth
two birds: this flesh, this spirit, escaping the painting
waiting for the sun
Duane L. Herrmann | 76
Not Evident
Fire Tender
I am...
Hidden in Plain Sight
Stolen Children
Humanity in Process
.chisaraokwu. | 82
Fly Dead Fly
In The House of the Ancestors
If I lay awake at night
Herbert Woodward Martin | 87
“Bull” Connor or The Southern Butcher
Black Moses
Brancusi
Second Prose Poem
Patrick A. Howell | 91
Of Beasts and Their Masters
Ralvell Rogers II | 103
dear reader,
“Down By The Riverside”
Dreaming Woke
Bench Sitting
A Story for Too Many
Cowardice Pride
On-Sight: My First Big XII Conference
Amirah Al Wassif | 116
Give me your teeth!
Semein Washington | 121
Finding Our Bodies Again
Risking Their Bodies for Once
The Hertford County Undertakers
Author & Artist Bios | 127
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Author & Artist Bios
.chisaraokwu. is an American Nigerian poet, actor & healthcare
futurist. She has been published in academic, literary journals and
anthologies. She believes Trader Joe’s mint hot chocolate should
be available year-round.
Daniel Brooks is from Indianapolis, Indiana. He graduated
from Indiana University-Purdue University in 2015 with a BA
in anthropology. He is a special education teacher and master’s
student of sociology at Arizona State University. His work has
appeared in the Indianapolis Review, Spillwords and Chicago Poets
United to End Homelessness.
Lowell Thomas Bundick
My family and I joke all the time about me being born on the
wrong island. Reigning from the islands of Maui and Hawaiʻi, the
armed forces brought my grandparents together on the mainland
and it’s here they crafted their own little corner of aloha spirit,
deep in the heart of Texas. As for me, I’m the second generation
“born off the rock” and however far away from my true home I
am, I know that I’ll always have the little corner my family created
for me to help spread the aloha to each and every person I meet. At
least until we travel back to my grandparents’ home for a little bit.
In college, I studied theatre (performance and production), where
I really started to learn more about my identity and culture.
Poetry, as well as the performance of poetry, is a pretty new
skill I’m working to master. Recently, an app called Duolingo
announced they would be teaching ‘Olelo as a free language
course. I’ve been diligently studying the language of our people
and continuing to read of the history of how we began.
Hisham Bustani is an award-winning Jordanian author of five
collections of short fiction and poetry. He is acclaimed for his bold
style and unique narrative voice, and often experiments with the
boundaries of short fiction and prose poetry. Much of his work
revolves around issues related to social and political change,
particularly the dystopian experience of post-colonial modernity
in the Arab world. His work has been described as “bringing a
new wave of surrealism to [Arabic] literary culture, which missed
the surrealist revolution of the last century,” and it has been said
that he “belongs to an angry new Arab generation. Indeed, he
is at the forefront of this generation – combining an unbounded
modernist literary sensibility with a vision for total change....
His anger extends to encompass everything, including literary
conventions.” Hisham’s fiction and poetry have been translated
into many languages, with English-language translations
appearing in prestigious journals across the United States, United
Kingdom, and Canada, including The Kenyon Review, Black Warrior
Review, The Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, World
Literature Today, and The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly. In
2013, the U.K.-based cultural webzine The Culture Trip listed him
as one of Jordan’s top six contemporary writers. His book The
Perception of Meaning (Syracuse University Press, 2015) won the
University of Arkansas Arabic Translation Award. Hisham is the
Arabic Fiction Editor of the Amherst College-based literary review
The Common, and the recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation’s
prestigious Bellagio Fellowship for Artists and Writers for 2017.
Morgan Christie
Morgan’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Room, Aethlon,
Moko, Obra/Artifact, Blackberry, as well as others, and has been
nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of Net. Her chapbook
‘Variations on a Lobster’s Tale’ was the winner of the 2017 Alexander
Posey Chapbook Prize (University of Central Oklahoma Press,
2018) and her second collection ‘Sterling’ is due out next year
(WordTech Communications, 2019). She is the winner of the
2018 Likely Red Fiction Chapbook contest, where her collection
‘When Dog Speaks’ will also be published in 2019. Morgan recently
completed her Masters in Creative Writing.
Currently residing in Birmingham, AL, travis craig has been
focused primarily on visual art the past 10 years. His mixed media
work includes elements of painting, sewing, woodwork, screen
printing, and collage. He has participated in group shows and
exhibits on both coasts and all in-between. also a musician and
writer, his novel, 99 City, was released in 2005 by Kytflyte Press,
receiving praise from the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright
Foundation, amongst others. A former literature professor, craig
has served as poet-in-residence at Blue Mountain Community
College (Oregon), and has received a Margaret Walker Memorial
prize in both fiction and poetry; his most current work may be
found in the Black Lives Matter issue of Wild Age Press (2018).
Leslie Dianne is a poet, novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and
performer whose work has been acclaimed internationally in
places such as the Harrogate Fringe Festival in Great Britain, The
International Arts Festival in Tuscany, Italy, and at La Mama ETC
in NYC. Her poems have appeared in The Pangolin Review, Soft
Cartel, Esthetic Apostle, PopShot, Ink and Voices, S/tick, Rue Scribe,
and Furtive Dalliance and are forthcoming in RAW Journal of Arts
and Vita Brevis.
Sophia Wubung Egbelo was born in Queens, New York. She
enjoys exploring cultures and traditions of indigenous tribes.
She holds a B.A in Journalism and Media Studies from Rutgers
University. She earned her M.F.A from Fairleigh Dickinson
University. Some of her short stories have been published in The
Kalahari Review, African Writer, and The Single-Story Journal.
Joy Lehuanani Enomoto Is a Kanaka Maoli, African American,
Japanese, Caddo Indian, Punjabi and Scottish visual artist,
archivist, social justice activist and kiaʻi o Mauna Kea. Her work
engages with mapping climate justice, extractive colonialism, salt
water conversations that occur within the space of the diaspora,
the policing of black and brown bodies, the Black Pacific,
demilitarization and other issues currently affecting the peoples
of Oceania. Her artwork and scholarship have been featured in
Contemporary Pacific: A Journal of Island Affairs, Detours: A Decolonial
Guide to Hawaiʻi, the Routledge Postcolonial Handbook, Na Wahine
Koa: Hawaiian Women for Sovereignty and Demilitarization, Finding
Meaning: Kaona and Contemporary Hawaiian Literature, Amerasia
Journal, Bamboo Ridge: Journal of Hawaiʻi Literature and Arts, Slate
Magazine, Absolute Humidity and Hawaiʻi Review.
Joy has worked as a set designer for Lyz Sotoʻs play, Her Bodies
of Stories, and in 2018 worked with regional youth organization
Youngsolwara to co-curate the exhibition Mai Em(ocean) in
Suva, Fiji with PNG artist, Jeffry Feeger and also travelled with
Youngsolawara members to use art as a tool to support West
Papua. She participated in artists talks during the Melanesian
Arts Festival in Honiara, Solomon Islands. Also in 2018, as part
of her master’s portfolio, Joy worked with spoken word artist
and climate justice activist, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner and community
photographers in Majuro to facilitate the exhibition Aelõñ in
Aibojooj (Beautiful Small Things). In January 2020, Joy continued
her collaboration with Jetnil-Kijiner for the exhbition Inundation at
the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Art Gallery.
Gregory Pōmaikaʻi Gushiken is a queer Kanaka Maoli (Native
Hawaiian) writer from Nānākuli, Hawaiʻi. A 2018 graduate of
the English and Political Science departments at the University
of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, they are currently a Ph.D. student in Ethnic
Studies at the University of California, San Diego, where they write
about kūpuna, kuleana, and kuapapa in occupied Hawaiʻi.
Duane L. Herrmann is a survivor, learning to be human, on
the Kansas Prairie with trees, the breeze and writes. His poems,
stories, histories and memoirs are published, in print and online,
in the U.S. other countries in several languages. Some has won
prizes. He has two histories, five books of poetry, and a sci fi
novel. All this, despite a traumatic childhood embellished with
dyslexia, cyclothymia, ADD and PTSD.
Patrick A. Howell is an award-winning banker, business leader,
entrepreneur and writer. His first work was published with the
UC Berkeley African American Literary Review and Quarterly Black
Book Review. Mr. Howell, is a frequent contributing writer and
executive producer to the Huffington Post and has been cited in
national platforms as equities.com, NBC BLK and The Grio. Howell’s
integrated book of poetry-design, Yes, We Be was published by
Jacar Press in February of 2018. This summer he graduated the
Leopardi Writer’s Conference in Recanati Italy to complete work
on Quarter ‘til Judgement Day, a coming of age experimental fiction
work. His book Dispatches from the Vanguard will be published by
Repeater Books (distribution with Penguin/Random House) in the
Summer of 2020.
Melissa Jones is a singer/songwriter and poet from Oakland
California. She attended the University of San Francisco where she
received her B.A. in English/creative writing. She later attended
Mills College in Oakland where she received her M.F.A in creative
writing, specifically focusing on poetry. Melissa’s work has
been featured in various journals such as Diagram Magazine, 580
Split Magazine, Springgun Press Journal and Poetry Nation. She is
currently a self -published author of two collections of poetry,
Pineapple Grenades and Black Girl Mango Seeds. Melissa has also
released an album with her band No Lovely Thing entitled She Be,
which also blends an infusion of her songwriting and poetry. She
is currently working on multiple music and poetry projects to be
released in the near future.
Kelvin Kellman writes from Nigeria. He’s had works featured
or forthcoming in The Stockholm Review, Green Briar Review, The
Blue Mountain Review, and elsewhere. When he’s not writing (for
himself) or reading, he’s freelancing either as a journalist or as a
ghost writer.
Kizza is a disabled Black queer poet and author. She was ranked
as one of the top 30 slam poets in the world by PSI in 2018. With
numerous publications to her credit, her forthcoming hybrid full
length collection, Baptism, is due out on Capturing Fire Press in
June 2020.
Herbert Woodard Martin has recently had his 10th volume
of poetry issued by Wayne State University Press. The volume is
titled: The Shape of Regret. Martin is The Poet Laureate of
Dayton, Ohio.
Jonathan Andrew Pérez, Esq. has published poetry in
Collateral, Prelude, The River Heron Review, Blood Tree Literature,
The Write Launch, Meniscus Literary Journal, Rigorous, The Florida
Review, Panoply Magazine, Dovecote, Junto Magazine, Blood Tree
Literature, Cold Mountain Review, Piltdown Review, Adelaide Literary
Magazine, Mud Season Review, Meat for Tea: the Valley Review,
Poached Hair, The Esthetic Apostle, The Tulane Review, Spectrum
Journal, The Tiny Journal, Muse/ A Journal, The Bookends Review,
The Westchester Review, Metafore, Crack the Spine Quarterly, Silver
Needle Press, Projector Magazine, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Rise Up,
BARNHOUSE, The Chicago Quarterly Review, Worcester Review,
Abstract: Contemporary Expressions, Cathexis Northwest Press,
Inklette, Rumblefish Quarterly, Projector, Hiram Poetry Review and
Quiddity on NPR and in “Footnote: A Literary Journal of History.”
He has a poem forthcoming in POETRY in January 2020.
Jonathan teaches a course “Poetic Procedural Justice: What Role
Does Poetry Have in Law and Justice?” previously at Hunter
College and will teach at Wesleyan University Summer 2020.
Jonathan is a poetry reader for The Rumpus.
henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words of conflagration to awaken
the world ablaze, an inferno of free verse illuminated by his
affinity for disobedience that commits a felony every day, like
a chambered bullet of immolation that blazes from his heart,
a phoenix-fluxed red & gold, exploding through change is
gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author
of the poetry collection, freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero
Press) and the e-chapbook, physiography of the fittest (Kind of a
Hurricane Press), now available from their respective publishers.
Additionally, he has self-published a chapbook entitled 13hirteen
Levels of Resistance, and his collection, The Book Of Blue(s) :
Tryin’ To Make A Dollar Outta’ Fifteen Cents, was a finalist for the
2018 Digging Press Chapbook Series. His work has also been
nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Brian Rigg has previously been published in Grain Magazine,
Windsor Review, Canadian Dimension, Descant, Fireweed, and The A3
Review. His work has also been anthologized in Ma’ka: Diasporic
Juks: Contemporary Writing by Queers of African Descent and Seminal:
The Anthology of Canada’s Gay Male Poets. He is the author of A
False Paradise (ECW Press). Brian is a 2016 LAMBDA Fellow. He
lives in Toronto, Canada.
Ralvell Rogers II is an ambitious storyteller from Kansas City,
Missouri, who focuses on realistic fiction and reflective and
provoking poetry. His writing can be found in River City Poetry,
Genre: Urban Arts, and Flint Hills Review. Before graduating with
his BA at Emporia State University, Rogers was the first student-
recipient of the Presidential Award for Distinguished Service to
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in 2018. Currently, Ralvell lives in
Arlington, Virginia.
Kaʻimilani Leota Sellers
Kaʻimilani graduated with honors from the University of
Hawaiʻi at Hilo. She taught language arts in Hawaiʻi and now
teaches literary arts at the School for Creative and Performing
Arts, in Lexington, Kentucky. She is presently enrolled in an
MFA for Creative Writing through Eastern Kentucky University.
Kaʻimilani’s work has been published in Yellow Medicine Review
and in Nepantla: An Anthology, Queer Poets of Color.
Maia Tabet is an Arabic-English literary translator living in
Washington DC. Her translations have been widely published
in journals, literary reviews, and other specialized publications,
including The Common, the Journal of Palestine Studies, Words
Without Borders, Portal 9, and Banipal, among others. She is the
translator of: Sinan Antoon’s The Baghdad Eucharist (Hoopoe Press,
2017); White Masks (Archipelago Books, 2010, and MacLehose
Press, 2013) and Little Mountain (Minnesota University Press, 1989,
Carcanet, 1990, and Picador, 2007) by the renowned writer Elias
Khoury; and the co-translator, with Michael K. Scott, of the winner
of the 2010 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), Throwing
Sparks (Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, 2012) by Abdo
Khal.
Semein Washington is a 28 year old poet whose published work
can be found in Light, Eye to the Telescope, Sijo: An International
Journal of Poetry and Song, and Sonder Midwest. Semein’s work
is ecstatic poetry discussing topics of nature, science, religion,
music, comic books and human experience. He currently lives in
Richmond, Virginia and teaches as an adjunct professor of English
at John Tyler Community College.
Amirah Al-Wassif
My name is Amirah Al Wassif, I am a freelance writer, I am
writing in the literary field in various areas including articles,
novels, short stories, poems as well as writing songs. I am an
Arab writer and I have 5 literary books in Arabic, I am writing in
English in the field of literature and publish my literary works
in the international English cultural magazines. So, I write in
literature in Arabic and in English. Actually, I am an Arabic writer
who is fond of the English language and I love to express about
myself, my thoughts, and my imagination in English. So, let me
tell you my story. In 2014, I published my first book entitled who
do not eat chocolate, then in 2016 I published another book entitled
emotional publications and in 2017 I published a novel entitled Mrs.
Suzan and her sisters In 2018, I have two new books in print. The
first book entitled the memory of 50 poor men and the other book
entitled from Nairobi to Hollywood.
My first passion is literary writing in English, I am currently
working on producing literary books for children, teens and
adults representing different cultures all over the world. Now,
I have finished writing my first English book in the field of
literature for children and adults, my book entitled the cocoa boy
and other stories, this book provided with illustrations and will be
published soon.
When I imagine my life without writing, I cannot. Whenever my
mind tried to draw the image of tomorrow without writing, I find
my mind stopped working.
* * *
Editor Statement – LynleyShimat Lys
Wi hokišak kuš (We are all related / connected) – Andrew Jolivétte, Louisiana Creole educator of Opelousa, Choctaw, Atakapa-Ishak, French, African, Irish, Italian, and Spanish descent.
Following the leadership of Professor Andrew Jolivétte, I view my responsibilities to community through the lens of kinship relations – I commit to being good kin to all my relations. In the communities that I and my family come from, the specificity of cultural influence and the mixed-race and multiethnic nature of community are essential aspects of what it means to belong to and to listen to community stories and voices. I recognize all the peoples in my communities, and I listen. I try not to center whiteness in my work and to focus on supporting the work of Indigenous scholars, Black scholars, and Afro-Indigenous scholars.
I commit to centering story, supporting Indigenous and Black knowledge and knowledge keepers, and to being responsible and accountable to community – the communities I come from, am part of, and teach in, as well as those of my genealogical and chosen kin, such as Creole and mixed Indigenous polities. As a Native person, I come from mixed Indigenous communities which include Native people, French settlers, people of African descent, and others. My personal history ties me to a Black-led and Black-centered community in Berkeley, Oakland, and the Bay Area, on Ohlone land, which also includes Indigenous, multi-ethnic and multiracial community. In addition, I have strong ties to Indigenous-led and Indigenous-centered communities in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. I am engaged in researching my family history and being good kin to Black, Indigenous, and other relatives of my family. As a person with a family history that includes mixed Indigenous / settler polities and a personal history that includes Black-led and Native-led multiracial and multiethnic polities, I value the foregrounding of multiracial and multiethnic communities. I work to facilitate the dissolution of settler optics of whiteness in favor of the resurgence of Indigenous, Black, and multiracial forms of kinship, ethnic specificity, and community responsibility.
On The Call for Work and Putting Together the Book
All of us at Hawaiʻi Review are aware of the lack of representation of Black people, Indigenous people, People of Color, and other vital groups of people in the publishing industry. Part of our mission as a collective is to be community-based and community-oriented, and to work as a collective led by Indigenous governance and best practices for resisting inethical and exclusionary trends in publishing.
My goal in issuing this call for submissions was to allocate space to necessary work in which creatives from Black, Native, and Afro-Indigenous and Black-Indigenous communities have already been engaged. As an editor, I refuse the idea of serving as a gatekeeper to keep people out, and instead focused on including work from all relevant submissions and creatives. The call was issued in relation to two quotes from Alice Walker and Leanne Betasamoke Simpson on Black-Indigenous relationality and resurgence. The work of Tiffany Lethabo King in Black Shoals also forms a key theoretical and practical element in ongoing conversations among Black and Indigenous communities.
We are very fortunate to know and work with artist and scholar Joy Lehuanani Enomoto, who graciously allowed us to use the 2013 work Crossroads as our cover image.
Future Publications
Moving forward, Hawaiʻi Review will be establishing paid arts residencies to engage Black and Indigenous creatives and other community creatives from UH Mānoa and beyond as guest editors for future collections. We very much value the insight and lived experiences of creatives from communities traditionally underserved and done a disservice by the publishing industry.
* * *
Theoretical Frameworks from Tiffany Lethabo King, The Black Shoals
Tiffany Lethabo King predicates her project in The Black Shoals on the ethics of Black radical movements. She says,
My inheritance is that, as a Black person living under relations of conquest, I care about native people’s survival. And I do not care because I have a Native grandmother or ancestor. I care because the Black radical politics that I have inherited cares about Native people. It does not do it in response to political cajoling or guilt. It does not do it in the hope of coalition. It does not do it out of self-hatred. This ethics that eschews and actively resists genocide as an order of modernity and making of the human subject proper is an ethics of Black radical struggle, period. It is a Black radical politics that proceeds and moves toward Black and Indigenous futures. (xiii)
In this statement is a refusal to subscribe to leftist concepts of coalition which have traditionally excluded Black people and perpetuated anti-Blackness. We also see a refusal to make claims to be Indigenous to the area occupied by North America. King points out ongoing traditions of Black radical politics to resist genocide and the systems of power and privilege which rely on genocide for their existence and continuation. In addition, King refuses guilt and self-hatred as motivations.
In terms of the problems of coalition as a concept and practice, King elaborates on histories of anti-Blackness in leftist coalition building. She asserts that,
On the heels of vigorous and contentious conversations initiated by Afro-pessimists and activists committed to Black struggle about how anti-Blackness shapes the coalition politics of the left and people of color, I hope more than anything that this book provokes a conversation about how Black and Native communities can “end this world” and remake reality and its relations on more just terms. It may also be time to create some new grammar and an erotic politics rooted in the everyday that does not reproduce the problems of coalitional work for Black and Indigenous people. (209)
Rather than reproduce the structures of asymmetrical power and the embedded anti-Blackness of leftist forms of coalition, King suggests an end to these worlds and the creation of a new grammar and an everyday erotic politics.
* * *