Reclaiming.Transforming! Sustaining→

Reclaiming.Transforming! Sustaining→
The Presentation of a Dilemma

The question is twofold in defining a space for "reclaiming" in cultural sustainability.

Are there elements of culture that we need to reclaim? And, in reclaiming them, do they have a place in modernity for sustainability?

I hope to receive your feedback on the questions above, and the more specific questions about African-American young women following the story, toward the end of the post.

Three weeks ago, a young lady beeped and pulled me over to the side of the road. She first asked, “do you still do storytelling?’ ‘Do you remember me?” She then stated, “We were at a car detailing business about four years ago. You spoke to me and you changed my life, and I will never forget you.” The capacity in which I had spoken those years prior came from the discipline of "jaliya (the art of storytelling). It is the disposition of a jalimuso to tell others their role in society through the art of storytelling. At that moment of delivery, my words were not so much of sustaining her culture as it was of reclaiming it. The storyteller’s labor is not one of designation for stage presentations alone, but more aptly to relay history and transform our communities.

William Westerman writes in Wild and New Arks: Transformative Potential in Applied and Public Folklore, "Whereas folklorists are interested in the transformation of materials, I also want to look at how human beings are transformed through the creative or artistic process.".....First among these is the transformation of the artist/and/or the individual audience member. Each person can be changed by the experience of creating a work of art or witnessing one.....One of the profound psychological effects of being an audience member is that, in addition to being emotionally moved by the work of art, there is always the potential to be permanently changed intellectually or spiritually by the experience.".....I recognize that this is an individualistic outlook resulting from American upbringing, but perhaps this is a contribution we can make to social change.”

When Tangie, pulled me to the side of the road, I did not at the instant, remember the young lady or the words that I spoke. But the excitement in her recall reassured me that I was laboring in jaliya and manifesting nommo. “Nommo, is water and the glow of fire and seed and word in one. Nommo, the life force, is the fluid as such, a unity of spiritual-physical fluidity, giving life to everything, penetrating everything, causing everything….And since man has power over the word, it is he who directs the life force. Through the word he receives it, shares it with other beings, and so fulfils the meaning of life.” Janheinz Jahn, Muntu.

Tangie revealed that the agency of  my words engendering her transformation,  were urgings of reclaiming the greatness of her culture, and empowering the gifts of her womanhood. Having been bombarded with media images of beauty not reflected in self, music and videos hyped in gangster treatment of women, she had succumbed to that energy and belittled expectations of herself. In hearing her story of engaging with young men of wayward character, I spoke to the center of self from an Afrocentric perspective. “Afrocentricity demands commitment to greatness based upon the true historical character of the people. Knowing full well that the only road to happiness and harmony is excellence in everything. Our path to that road is set out for each of us by the ancestors.” Molefi Asante, Afrocentricity.

My soul work projected the need for Tangie to reclaim the inheritance and essence of her beauty. It ventured inward to raise her confidence and self-esteem. It laid claim to a purposeful journey. Her exclamations of, “I will never, never forget you,” and “You changed my life,” brought me to tears, and do at this moment. For, it was an understanding, “that the gifts we give at times of transformation are meant to make visible the giving up we do invisibly.” Lewis, Hyde, The Gift. In a happen stance from four years prior, a circle appeared. I came to know the gift passed through someone, and came back to visit me.

As we parted, we exchanged hugs and cell numbers. Warmed by our reunion, Tangie drove away in her Lexus, a celebration gift for extending her nursing career into anesthesiology. I drove away immersed in blessings, with her heavy urging upon my heart. “You have to talk to girls. “You have to keep working with young sisters.”

So, I question, what do young African-American women need to reclaim? What is the intent of transformation? And, how do we engage in such a way as to make the work relevant to their aesthetics and world view?  


It is 2010, but the words of my grandson’s Great, Great, Great, Great Aunt, Anna Julian Cooper still ring true. “With all the wrongs and neglects of her past, with all the weakness, the debasement, the moral thralldom of her present, the black woman of to-day stands mute and wondering at the Herculean task devolving upon her. But the cycles wait for her. No other hand can move the lever. She must be loosed from her bands and set to work.” Shirley Wilson Logan, We are Coming: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth Century Women.


I invite you to the conversation, and look forward to your comments and answers.

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In The Middle of Precious Part II

Mapping the Definition of Cultural Sustainability

In The Middle of Precious Part II

In our Leadership and Self-Development class at Goucher, we acquired the process of examining assumptions.  It was enlightening to discover how unaware we are of the role assumptions play in our thoughts and actions. The exercises that Professor Ross-Veatch led had a binocular effect in viewing our groundwork projects. This fine tool was made pinpoint evident in that evening’s reading from our Cultural Sustainability session.

In the prior day’s session, we encountered a theoretical topic that broached emotional borders.  It began in a discussion about an occurence at our artistic social event.  The deliberation formed misunderstandings relevant to the issue of cultural authenticity v. authenticity of the moment. The discussion led to discomfort zones on racial tensions in America. The classroom setting became the vessel to explore actualities we might encounter in doing the work of cultural sustainability. The exercises on assumptions from our Leadership Class, and Parker Palmer’s excerpts from Courage To Teach, provided strong insight into managing situations of conflict. Palmer states, “At its best, the community of truth advances our knowledge through conflict, not competition….conflict is open and sometimes raucous but always communal, a public encounter in which it is possible for everyone to win by learning and growing. Conflict is the dynamic by which we test ideas in the open, in a communal effort to stretch each other and make better sense of the world. Further, Palmer relays, “it is our commitment to the conversation itself, our willingness to put forward our observations and interpretations for testing by the community and to return the favor to others [that keeps us in the truth.]” To be in the truth we must know how to observe and reflect and speak and listen, with passion and with discipline, in the circle gathered around a given subject.” The pinnacle lesson that tied these truths together was made crystal clear in the video of Chimamanda Adichie’s The Danger of One Story. Adichie's lecture is a profound, melodic and eloquent rendering that should be heard by every story researcher, writer, teller and listener.

The MACS Program Fall Class of 2010 has many stories to discover and tell. The totality of the residency, the intellectual study, the social gatherings, classroom and post classroom discussions, and the advisory sessions with Professor Turner have renewed brightness in my journey and forged new determinations.
The Residency did not just curtail analyzing theory while sitting at a desk. There was the manifestation of sustaining culture: A dinner with B’more crabs, conversation, and other cultural foods; a tour of Painted Screens; and, an evening of music, cowboy poetry, a drum circle, and storytelling. Collaborating with Jane Kamau from the first MACS contingency, tandem telling a story from her culture, The Kikuyu People Creation Myth was a humbling, yet invigorating experience.

From this juncture, this melding of culture consciousness, other emerging joint projects have seeded. Being in the middle of precious may footprint me to Guatemala helping children to tell their stories, and hoof me to New Mexico to joint teach educators in storytelling.  And thus, the journey continues.

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In The Middle of Precious: A Reflection of The MACS Program at Goucher College

In The Middle of Precious:  Part I

As I am writing this reflection of my first 10-day Residency in the Masters in Cultural Sustainability Program (MACS) at Goucher College, I am rooted like an ancestral tree. Sitting in a villa, my eyes behold the Caribbean Ocean between the Gros and Petit Piton volcanic mountains in St. Lucia. I languish on a simple expression, “I am in the middle of precious.”


I can feel no different about the aspect of my life that began at Goucher College. The first reading of The Gift energized my being, as I shared part of Hyde’s message immediately. Our storytelling organization, Keepers of The Culture: Philadelphia’s Afrocentric Storytelling Group was preparing for GriotWorks: Stories in Service Day. Storytellers offered their talents free to the community in the form of workshops and performances. In my e-mail of preparation and gratitude to the tellers I was able to render this message derived from my course readings.

In many ethnic cultures and folktales 'to eat' is interpreted as consuming the gift.  Lewis Hyde writes, ''A gift is consumed when it moves from one hand to another with no assurance of anything in return. There is little difference, therefore between its consumption and its movement."

Your bounty of creative spirit, your labor, keeps the gift moving, as we pass on the African Oral Tradition in servitude. And, assuredly, the inner gift that is the product of your labor becomes the outer gift that becomes a vehicle for culture.

And indeed, we fed our community well on that day of service, as we addressed community issues through the stories, and called out the neighborhood names…the Bottom, Strawberry Mansion, Germantown, South, West and North Philly, and more.

The MACS experience had intensely touched my life even before the initial 10-day residency began. The fly-wheel had commenced and the rolling action picked up greater speed in our Cultural Sustainability Class with Professor Rory Turner.

In this new classroom community, there was more in depth and applicable discovery. I experienced the diversity of the gift, and the deep desire of others to labor in its manifestation. I found that I wanted to learn more about the Appalachian culture, witnessed the passion of a Wampanoag to sustain her heritage, embraced the joy of humanity in the smiles of the children of Guatemala and their teacher, beheld a manifest dream in restoring a historical home, shared the love of story with a keeper of ranch traditions, and asked myself how does food tell stories of modern day communities?

Although the magnitude of the readings was overwhelming, I found there was no platitude in their context. As we shared our passions, and groundwork project ideas in the Cultural Sustainability class, it was exhilarating to read text that related to different classmates’ initiatives. My highlighter began marking excerpts and beside them, I penned the names of my collegues.

The value of matriculating a distant learning master’s degree is inevitably beneficial in time management. The distinctiveness of the residency program at Goucher procures a deeper method of learning from others with the same intent of sustaining culture. I came to embrace the value of knowing from the unexpected.

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