|
Bound to
Violence
Yambo
Ouologuem
on Violence, Truth and Black History
Interviewed by Linda Kuehl
|
I interviewed Yambo
Ouologuem in his publisher’s office in March, shortly
after the American publication of his first novel, Bound
to Violence (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), which
won the Prix Renaudot in France and which has been
acclaimed here as “the first truly African novel.”
Surely it is an amazing book—for epic grandeur, the
compression of seven-and-a-half centuries of African
history from 1202 to 1947, when his fictitious nation,
Nakem-Zuiko, is on the threshold of independence; for
cultural sweep: legends, myths, chronicles, religious
matter woven into an opulent narrative; for eloquence:
the cadence and music of the prose, splendidly
translated from the French by Ralph Manheim; and for
pride and courage: the risk of a black man showing his
own history with complexity, humor, and shrewdness that
must indeed threaten platitudes and deceptions shared in
his own native Mali as well as in Afro-America. |
Linda: Is
Bound to
Violence the
first truly African novel, as it has been called?
Yambo: It’s not the first novel written
by an African. It’s just that the others were written from the
point of view of a native son, which is to say that if the
writer was born in Senegal, he wrote about Senegal, and if he
was born in Congo, he wrote about Congo. I never conceived of
writing from the viewpoint of a Malian or in an African language
though I don’t mean by this that I am not a nationalist. I
only mean that you have to understand black history through a
kind of unity. My book covers eight centuries and is at the same
time a fresco, an epic, a legend, and a novel.
Linda: How much is absorbed from
chronicles and documents?
Yambo: The book was not absorbed. These
were ancient, Arabian, medieval, old Portuguese, and old Spanish
manuscripts, and I condensed and raised them to the level of
legend. Only from the point of view of form is it fiction, for
it’s about history and politics. In fact, when I first gave it
to my publisher, he said it was impossible to do that way
because I gave names of real people involved in crime, people
who killed and trained asps, so I had to change the names and
make the actual countries into one imaginary one. I did give the
real name of Saif—the dynasty in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan—and
the Saif still exists.
But I speak of the empire of Nakem-Zuiko
which is an anagram. Most names have been reversed which is
perhaps why, the day after my book won the prize in France,
there was a military putsch in Mali, and many political meetings
took place with everyone trying to see whether his own private
life or his own murders or those of his predecessors were
described.
Linda: Was it a coincidence that the
putsch occurred the next day?
Yambo: I don’t say it was a coincidence.
But the fact is that before giving me the prize the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of France and the Ambassadors in Africa and the
Presidents of the Republics wanted to give me a prize for a
basic documentary history. But, since in France, you cannot win
two prizes for one book, the Ambassadors were asked not to give
theirs because then I couldn’t get one for its literary value.
Anyway, for diplomatic reasons, my publisher
didn’t want to emphasize political content. He had paid a
lawyer to avoid trouble, and if, after that, the book was
presented as a kind of secret about Africa, he would soon be
involved in trials. But when it was published, I received many
letters from Presidents of many Republics, each one thinking I
had intended his own country.
Linda:How did Malians respond?
Yambo: Since it was the first time and
Africans had won a major literary prize—and I was 28 at the
time, competing against about 1000 French writers who were 50,
60, 70 years old—they felt proud. On the other hand, there
were those who said, yes, what he says is true, but should he
say it.
Linda: Why did they question this?
Yambo: Many of them belong to that
category of people who define themselves in reference to what
the white man thinks. They wanted to give the white an image of
Africa that would flatter the white. But what people forget is
that whites did not come to Africa after one year of fighting
but after 28 years of fighting, and were then able to colonize
because there was a division of states which had made slave
trade possible. Sometimes there was collaboration between the
white and black chiefs in order to conquer other states and
share the benefits of that conquest. Whites played the game of
being great reconcilers and black chiefs thought only of their
own interest.
Linda: You have called African history
prior to white imperialism an “orgy of violence.” Is this
why some Africans and Afro-Americans may have objected to your
book?
Yambo: I did not say that the history of
Africa was an orgy of violence. I only said that black people in
Africa were oppressed, and that if the black man wants a better
place to live he has to know his own history and not define it
by thinking the only enemy is white. He has enemies too among
what they call black aristocracy, and the black man never was a
Negro before the black aristocrat sold him as a slave. It was
the black aristocrat who made black people become Negroes. If
you look at the entire history, you find there were three stages
of oppression: blacks oppressing blacks, Arabs oppressing
blacks, and whites oppressing blacks. Which is why I said you
cannot deal with a single country of a single region of a single
tribe. You cannot write from the point of view of a nationalist
language if you want this comprehensive vision.
Linda: If Africans themselves were
responsible for slave trade—
Yambo: Excuse me. Let me say that Africans
were not the only people in the world to be responsible because
domestic slave trade—that is to say, internal slave
trade—existed throughout the world. You know, of course, about
France before the Revolution, and you know about Russia before
the Revolution when Russians were sold as domestic slaves in the
market and other public places. The only difference is that
except for the black man there was no international traffic.
Linda: According to your book, Arabs
falsified African history.
Yambo: I means that many mistakes have
been made inside and out of Africa about the Arabs, Many people
thought the Arabs were a mirror image image of African
civilization. Look at the phenomenon of Cassius Clay—or,
should I say, Muhammad Ali? Cassius Clay—or Muhammad
Ali—thought that the best way to find his roots—which is to
say, with Africa—was to go through Arabian civilization. But
that’s a mistake. If he had read the Koran—the Holy
Scriptures—he would have found in it a code defining the
status of slaves, so that slave trade is inherent in
Mohammedanism. It is as if a Jew—because he didn’t know his
own history—referred to Hitler in order to discover his own
identity. But this isn’t Muhammad Ali’s fault because the
history presented to him didn’t show him that Arabs were the
great slavetraders.
Linda: Is the black American’s affinity
for Africa based upon ignorance and romanticism?
Yambo: No. What I am saying is that—to
take an image, for example—if a mother loves her child, it
doesn’t mean she loves a doll that gives her no trouble or
that it is always clean, neat, and so forth. She knows a child
is difficult to care for and that it happens to be dirty. But
that doesn’t prevent her from loving her child.
Linda: However, does the Afro-American
acknowledge the dirt?
Yambo: The dirt is not only in African
history but in all history. Look at the Greek past. And the dirt
doesn’t come from the people. It comes from the leaders, and
the notables, the chiefs who oppress the crowd.
Linda: But Afro-Americans see oppression
coming solely from whites and not at all from black notables or
aristocrats.
A. Look, it took me a lot of courage
to write this book which is about oppressors who were my own
family and I did my best to be as universal as possible.
Linda: Did you see John Williams’ review
in the Times Book Review? It confused me because he
seemed to review a novel totally different from your own and
appeared to be minimizing and making palatable, so to speak,
what Afro-Americans may not wish to hear.
Yambo: I too was confused. But this is for
Mr. John Williams to answer. I think you should ask him if he
reviewed the novel
Linda: Did you feel pressure as an African
from Mali to write history in your way?
Yambo: Not at all, because I’m involved
in publishing textbooks. I want Blacks to be educated in their
own context and not in reference to either Arabs or whites.
Before we had books in which people used to say things like,
“It’s noon. Father should come home soon.” Or, “It’s
snowing outside. We are eating at the table.” How nice to be
home while it is snowing outside.” And the children would ask
the teacher, “What’s snow?” And the teacher would answer,
“Snow is cotton, but cotton that melts.” And the children
would ask, “Well, how can cotton melt?”
So, you see, this had nothing to do with
their original culture. And even here, in this country, you have
history written in English, seen through the eyes of English
travelers. You have few publications that are translations from
true authentic traditional ancient manuscripts or from African
documents or from Ethiopian tradition or Islamic ancient
manuscripts. You have things only seen from the point of view of
whites.
Linda:Can you be proud of a history based
upon violence perpetrated by the Saif—your representative
tyrant?
Yambo: The problem is to know whether we
men can really do something in the world in which we have been
involved through violence. That’s the point. We are bound to
violence, but need to think the matter over and see how to be
human beings living in peace together. And those who want to
find their roots should not define themselves in reference to
the outside enemy—the white—since the enemy can be black
also. In black America, I’m sure those who want to improve
conditions of the black man do not think it’s a good thing,
that, in the context of oppression, the whites present them with
a few successful blacks in order to make them believe there is
no problem at all.
Linda: This is a sophisticated perspective
and difficult to base a revolution upon because—
A. On what can you bas a revolution?
Linda: Upon something more simplistic.
Yambo: But more realistic.
Linda: Reality simplified.
Yambo: How can you base a revolution on a
life? What you do is just what Saif has been doing.
Linda: As a white American, I know my
history and I am ashamed of—
Yambo: I beg your pardon. You say you are
ashamed of your history, but you mean that you already know it
and you judge—not from the point of view of historical
fact—but from orals. They are two different disciplines.
Politics has nothing to do with morality. I don’t know in any
part of the world an honest politician because in politics you
have compromise and when you compromise you cannot speak in
terms of morals. You only speak in terms of efficiency and
power.
Linda: However, if someone is trying to
find his heritage when he has been cut off from it, indeed cut
off from his entire past, then I see a dilemma if the history he
discovers is not a noble one but, like all histories, violent.
Where does that leave the person but in a precarious position?
A. Do you know that, in France, whites
had been writing to tell me my book was the work of a
revolutionary and that I wanted black to suppress all whites
because blacks were so cunning and powerful and had such a great
way of dealing with people that whites looked like puppets? And
do you know that some people said I was a black Sade and that I
was even dangerous because I didn’t dare put my photo on the
French edition?
Linda:How did you answer them?
A. That I didn’t intend to be
orthodox either politically or socially or from a racial
viewpoint. If we really want to do something, we have to see
ourselves as we are, and to be proud of oneself does not mean
looking at one’s ugliness but at one’s whole.
Linda: Who perverted African history?
A. At the end of the Second World War,
somebody wanted to give an ideal image of Africa, but not
knowing how to do this, said that Africans were Egyptians,
connecting Africa with the great Egyptian civilization. What he
should have done was studied was studied traditional societies
and shown ways in which they were great and not in connection
with any other.
Linda: You have said that “Negro art
found its patent nobility in the folklore of mercantile
intellectualism,” and that masks made by Saifs were buried in
mud and ponds and dragged up to be sold as if they were four
centuries old. And that this was inspired by the European
ethnologist represented by your character, Shrobenius, who
“resuscitated an African universe . . . which has lost all
living reality.”
A. Of course, dealing with art in this
cunning way is not particular to African art but to all antiques
though it is common throughout Africa. My character, Shrobenius
is based in fact upon the German ethnologist, Leo Frobenius. I
received a letter from his family thanking me for not mentioning
that he had been kicked out of Africa for hiring gangsters and
stealing. Frobenius was the consequence of the esthetic of
primitive mentality, of those ethnologists who wrote about the
black man as a nice silly boy adoring God, cut off from reality,
living in the purity and innocence of the African world.
They studied head and facial angles to
determine the connection between the Negro and animals. When
people got fed up with this ideology, they tried to connect
black and Greek civilization because by then blacks were helping
whites fight two world wars. It’s like what happened during
the Biafra War—sentimentality for suffering people—only at
that time it wasn’t sentimentality for suffering Negroes but
for people who were good friends. So it was also successful and
that Frobenius was also successful and that ethnologists
exploited African art for commercial ends.
Linda:Were you being satirical about Saif’s Jewish heritage?
A. No, because it was not imaginary
since that heritage belongs to the history of Ethiopia, to the
Negus of Ethiopia, Negus meaning King of Kings. The present
Negus is called Haile Selassie, which means the power of
trinity, so that you have all the religions which were the
background of Christianity. I needed Saif’s Jewish background
to parallel the three states of oppression I mentioned earlier,
there being also three stages of religion—the Judaism being a
kind of spring from which Christianity and Mohammedanism were
connected through paganism.
Linda: You scatter exclamatory phrases
throughout your narrative, phrases like “God curse his
kingship!” and “God keep his soul!” and “Oh sacrilege!?
Are these humorously intended?
A. They are a way of getting the
rhythm of traditional African music as well as getting a
spiritual thread and general trend of life. Suppose you are
talking about something important and suddenly I say, “Now a
message from your sponsor.” The humor is a way of making
subtle hints and reminding the reader that we are dealing with a
world in turmoil.
Linda: Were there any technical
difficulties in writing this novel?
A. The technical difficulties came
from not wanting to write a mere story. I wanted to convey the
rhythm of Africa, the rhythm of the blues when I was singing
despair, sometimes the rhythm of jazz. And, of course, it’s
horrible to try to translate the beat of music and the idea of
pure sound into phrases and sentences, though not because I was
writing in French per se, but because French was for me a
foreign language. I had to be somewhat half black and half white
because I was dealing with a foreign civilization. But I
understood the language is nothing but a tool and that one can
be oneself by mastering it, and I was mastering French by giving
it the very breath of the black past. So too could the black
American master Western civilization, have a hold on it, put it
at a distance, have a critical view of it, and so make it
something different. I don’t consider myself a Frenchman or
a French writer. I am an African conscious of his whole history
and tradition and that’s why nothing can offend me. I have a
background on which to rest. And I am not boasting about that
past or about my family but just showing it because that’s
life. And what’s important in life is not making money but
believing there are important things to be done and being linked
with tradition because that’s what makes a man be a real
man—not the fact that he’s universal. Universality begins
with individuality. That is to say, it is when you are yourself
that other people recognize themselves through your own
humanity. If you belong to nothing, you are an artificial man.
Linda: On the other hand, tradition can
restrict, even crush, individuality.
A. Individuality can conflict with
tradition, but this is the western point of view, not the
African. What is dramatic for me and for all Africans is that
when your mother and father die, they leave a continuation of
themselves, so that you keep things that have been given to you
by that generation but can move further and take another step.
For example, Konrad Lorenz, the scientist, has shown the
differences between man and bees. Bees are very clever. They
repeat their tradition, but they make no progress. In one
thousand years the same bees are making homey. But what makes a
man a man is that he has discovered light and light has led him
to the wheel and the wheel has led him to something else, and
that the man living in our century has all the feelings of that
first man, Adam, but goes on opening and enriching them.
The individualistic tradition in Africa is
connected to the ideal of the group, whereas here it’s the
individual in relation to a group for a brief moment after which
he forms a new group. So tradition here is more brief. As for
the unity and strength of Africa, this cannot come from West
Africa because that would mean it comes from England or France
or Portugal or Spain because these countries have been in
control. It must come from the unity of black Africans and
Afro-Americans. This is the main concern of my book. To be bound
to violence for the black man consists of being more conscious
about himself, seeing things in a wide context and not from the
point of view of a local tribe.
Linda: Why did you name your final chapter
“Dawn”?
A. Because the country is going to be
independent. And I chose the game of chess because it’s most
representative of the medieval presence in the context of the
modern strength of violence and non-violence through two
characters—Saif and the Bishop—with Raymond-Spartacus
Kassoumi in the background just elected as someone supposed to
free the people. With dawn one thinks that tomorrow is another
day. I used the game because it provides a double idea. You have
everyone discovering the card of the other, because in order to
move you have to know the other’s intention, and there’s
another meaning of game which is a system played among other
systems—a somewhat atomistic conception of all the substances
of the world, the four elements of playing together.
Linda: Is Raymond-Spartacus equipped to
play the game as well as Saif?
A. That’s the problem of violence
and non-violence. You have men of love and men of bluff, and
apparently the men of love have won at the end. The Bishop has
won because Saif has thrown the trained asp inside the flute
into the flames so that there is no longer death but dialogue.
And then Spartacus knows Saif’s secret because the Bishop told
him. Still, at the end of the dialogue, Saif has managed to be
the last one to speak, so the debate is open. And let me say
that violence is not barbarity. Violence is the way of knowing
how to play the game of the other and outplaying him.
Linda: Do you personally have any taste for this game?
A. If I had a taste for
this kind of game I think I would not have written the novel.
Source: Commonweal (11 June 1971)
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Guarding the Flame of Life
/
Strange Fruit Lynching Report
Contemporary African Immigrants to The United States /
African immigration to the United States
* * *
* *
African Renaissance
/
Kwame
Nkrumah, Kenyatta, and the Old Order /
God Save His Majesty
For Kwame Nkrumah
/
Night of the Giants /
The Legend of the Saifs /
Interview with Yambo Ouologuem
Yambo
Bio & Review
African
Renaissance (Journal)
* * *
* *
|
Our African
Journey
We stood in El Mina slave dungeon, on the
Cape Coast of Ghana on a recent trip to West
Africa, overwhelmed by despair, grief, and
rage. Without needing to verbalize it, we
were both imagining what reaching this spot
must have felt like for some long-ago,
un-remembered African ancestor as she stood
trembling on the precipice of an unknown and
terrifyingly uncertain future.
It was hard to process the fact that for
over three hundred years, millions of women,
men and children, mothers, fathers,
grandmothers, aunts, sisters, brothers,
potters, weavers, had begun their long and
brutal journey of being captured, kidnapped,
sold, and enslaved from the very spot where
we now stood the portal now infamously known
as the door of no return.
Growing a Global Heart
Belvie and Dedan at the Door
of No Return |
 |
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Bob Marley— Exodus
Bob
Marley was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and
musician. He was the lead singer, songwriter
and guitarist for the ska, rocksteady and
reggae bands The Wailers (19641974) and Bob
Marley & the Wailers (19741981). Marley
remains the most widely known and revered
performer of reggae music, and is credited
for helping spread both Jamaican music and
the Rastafari movement (of which he was a
committed member), to a worldwide audience.
* *
* * *
Exodus
By Bob Marley
Exodus! Movement of Jah people! oh-oh-oh,
yea-eah!
Well uh, oh. let me tell you this:
Men and people will fight ya
down (tell me why!)
When ya see Jah light.
(ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!)
Let me tell you if you're not wrong; (then,
why? )
Everything is all right.
So we gonna walk—All
right!—through
de roads of creation:
We the generation (tell me why!)
Trod through great tribulation—trod
through great tribulation.
Exodus! All right! Movement of Jah people!
Oh, yeah! o-oo, yeah! All right!
Exodus! Movement of Jah people! oh, yeah!
Yeah-yeah-yeah, well!
Open your eyes and look within.
Are you satisfied with the life you're
living? uh!
We know where we're going, uh!
We know where we're from.
We're leaving Babylon,
We're going to our father's land.
One, Two, Three, Four
Exodus! Movement of Jah people! oh, yeah!
Movement of Jah people!—send
us another Brother Moses!
Movement of Jah people!—from
across the Red Sea!
Movement of Jah people!—send
us another Brother Moses!
Movement of Jah people!—from
across the Red Sea!
Movement of Jah people!
Exodus! All right! oo-oo-ooh! oo-ooh!
Movement of Jah people! oh, yeah!
Exodus!
Exodus! All right!
Exodus! now, now, now, now!
Exodus!
Exodus! oh, yea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-eah!
Exodus!
Exodus! All right!
Exodus! uh-uh-uh-uh!
One, Two, Three, Four
Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! Move!
Open your eyes and look within.
Are you satisfied with the life you're
living?
We know where we're going;
We know where we're from.
We're leaving Babylon, yall!
We're going to our father's land.
Exodus! All right! Movement of Jah people!
Exodus! Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! Move!
Jah come to break downpression,
Rule equality.
Wipe away transgression.
Set the captives free!
Exodus! All right, all right!
Movement of Jah people! oh, yeah!
Exodus! Movement of Jah people! oh, now,
now, now, now!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! Move!
uh-uh-uh-uh!
Movement of Jah people!
Move!
Movement of Jah people!
Move!
Movement of Jah people)!
Move!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people)!
Movement of Jah people)!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people! |
* * * * *
The Slave Ship
By Marcus Rediker
Strange Fruit Lynching Report
/
Anniversary of a Lynching
Willie
McGhee Lynching /
My Grandfather's Execution
Dr. Robert Lee Interview /
African American Dentist in Ghana
African Aid breeds African dependency
Speaking Truth to Power: Selected Pan-African Postcards
By Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem (Author)
Salim Ahmed Salim
(Preface), Horace Campbell (Foreword)
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem (1961-2009)
was a Rhodes scholar and obtained his D. Phil in Politics from Oxford
University. In 1990 he became Coordinator of the Africa Research and Information
Bureau and the founding editor of
Africa World
Review. He co-founded and led Justice Africa's work, becoming its
Executive Director in 2004, and combined this with his role as General Secretary
of the Pan-African Movement. He was chair of the Centre for Democracy and
Development and of the Pan-African Development Education and Advocacy Programme
in Uganda and became the UN Millennium Development Campaign's Deputy Director in
2006.
* * *
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* * * * *
|
Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power
By Zbigniew Brzezinski
By 1991, following the disintegration first of the Soviet bloc and then of the Soviet Union itself, the United States was left standing tall as the only global super-power. Not only the 20th but even the 21st century seemed destined to be the American centuries. But that super-optimism did not last long. During the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century, the stock market bubble and the costly foreign unilateralism of the younger Bush presidency, as well as the financial catastrophe of 2008 jolted America—and much of the West—into a sudden recognition of its systemic vulnerability to unregulated greed. Moreover, the East was demonstrating a surprising capacity for economic growth and technological innovation. That prompted new anxiety about the future, including even about America’s status as the leading world power. |
 |
This book is a response to a challenge. It
argues that without an America that is
economically vital, socially appealing,
responsibly powerful, and capable of sustaining
an intelligent foreign engagement, the
geopolitical prospects for the West could become
increasingly grave. The ongoing changes in the
distribution of global power and mounting global
strife make it all the more essential that
America does not retreat into an ignorant
garrison-state mentality or wallow in cultural
hedonism but rather becomes more strategically
deliberate and historically enlightened in its
global engagement with the new East.
 |
Jefferson's Pillow
The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black
Patriotism
By Roger W.
Wilkins
In
Jefferson's Pillow, Wilkins returns to
America's beginnings and the founding fathers who
preached and fought for freedom, even though they
owned other human beings and legally denied them
their humanity. He asserts that the mythic accounts
of the American Revolution have ignored slavery and
oversimplified history until the heroes, be they the
founders or the slaves in their service, are denied
any human complexity. Wilkins offers a thoughtful
analysis of this fundamental paradox through his
exploration of the lives of George Washington,
George Mason, James Madison, and of course Thomas
Jefferson. He discusses how class, education, and
personality allowed for the institution of slavery,
unravels how we as Americans tell different sides of
that story, and explores the confounding ability of
that narrative to limit who we are and who we can
become. An important intellectual history of
America's founding, Jefferson's Pillow will change
the way we view our nation and ourselves. |
* * * * *
|
Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007
By Matthew Wasniewski
Black Americans in Congress, 1870–2007—
beautifully prepared volume—is a
comprehensive history of the more than
120 African Americans who have served in
the United States Congress. Written for
a general audience, this book contains a
profile of each African-American Member,
including notables such as Hiram Revels,
Joseph Rainey, Oscar De Priest, Adam
Clayton Powell, Shirley Chisholm, Gus
Hawkins, and Barbara Jordan. Individual
profiles are introduced by contextual
essays that explain major events in
congressional and U.S. history.
Part I provides four chronologically
organized chapters under the heading
"Former Black Members of Congress." Each
chapter provides a lengthy biographical
sketch of the members who served during
the period addressed, along with a
narrative historical account of the era
and tables of information about the
Congress during that time. Part II
provides similar information about
current African-American members. There
are 10 appendixes providing tabular
information of a variety of sorts about
the service of Black members, including
such things as a summary list, service
on committees and in party leadership
posts, familial connections, and so
forth. |
 |
* *
* * *
 |
Allah, Liberty, and Love
The Courage to Reconcile Faith and Freedom
By Irshad Manji
In Allah, Liberty and Love, Irshad Manji paves a path for Muslims and non-Muslims to transcend the fears that stop so many of us from living with honest-to-God integrity: the fear of offending others in a multicultural world as well as the fear of questioning our own communities. Since publishing her international bestseller, The Trouble with Islam Today, Manji has moved from anger to aspiration. She shows how any of us can reconcile faith with freedom and thus discover the Allah of liberty and love—the universal God that loves us enough to give us choices and the capacity to make them. Among the most visible Muslim reformers of our era, Manji draws on her experience in the trenches to share stories that are deeply poignant, frequently funny and always revealing about these morally confused times. What prevents young Muslims, even in the West, from expressing their need for religious reinterpretation? |
What
scares non-Muslims about openly supporting liberal
voices within Islam? How did we get into the mess of
tolerating intolerable customs, such as honor killings, and how do we change that noxious status quo?
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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