The Fire This Time

The Fire This Time

Adult nonfiction
"After George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin on
February 26, 2012, I took to Twitter. I didn't have anywhere else to
go. I wanted to hear what others, black writers and activists, were
thinking about in Sanford, Florida..."
Jesmyn Ward, editor of and contributer to The Fire This Time,
was pregnant then and writing about five men she'd grown up with who
were lost young to violence. She suspected Zimmerman would be
acquitted. Many people were seeing Trayvon as a thug, a hoodlum who
somehow deserved to die. They did not see him as Ward did.
"...Trayvon Martin was a seventeen-year-old child, legally and
biologically, Zimmerman was an adult. An adult shot and killed a child
while the child was walking home from a convenience store where he'd
purchased Skittles and a cold drink. Everything, from Zimmerman
stalking and killing Trayvon to the way Trayvon was tried in the court
of public opinion after his death, seemed insane. How could anyone
look at Trayvon's baby face and not see a child? And not feel an
innate desire to protect, to cherish? How?"
We all benefit from what Ward was inspired to do. She put
together a collection of thought and feeling provoking essays and
poems by contemporary writers on the past, present, and future of race
in America. Among them you'll find:
*Edwidge Danticat providing the epiphany that if third world country
citizens had the collective trauma of African Americans, US law would
give them assylum protection;
*Carol Anderson describing white rage, a resentment that flares up in
retaliation any time blacks make progress. Think the rise of the KKK
in the post Civil War South. With power and privilege unfairly
concentrated in white hands, these outbursts can be cloaked in law and
order respectability like the voter suppression laws enacted after
Obama's election;
and *Garnet Cadogan's revelations about the perils of walking in New
York while being black.
The piece that will stick with me the most was Emily Raboteau's
Know Your Rights! Raboteau starts with a description of a trip to a
bridge she took with her husband and their two chldren. At one point
her hot, thirsty, tired four-year-old threw himself to the ground.
She said that if his defiance continued as he grew it could get him
killed.
Think about it! Overwhelmed little people act out. When one of
mine (back in the day) refused to go further my concern (as a
nondriver) was how to get us home. Other whites worry about being
judged by bystanders. But none of us had/have to link this
developmentally normal behavior with being killed young. Nobody
should have to.
At the end of her introduction Ward wrote, "I hope this book
makes each one of you, dear readers, feel as if we and Baldwin and
Trethewey and Wilkerson and Jeffers and Walters and all the serious,
clear sighted writers here--and that we are composing our story
together. That we are writing an epic wherein black lives carry
worth, wherein black boys can walk to the store and buy candy without
thinking they will die, wherein black girls can have a bad day and be
mouthy without being physically assaulted by a police officer, wherein
cops see twelve-year-old black boys playing with fake guns as silly
kids and not homicidal maniacs, wherein black women can stop to ask
directions without being shot in the face by paranoid white homeowners.
I burn and I hope."
AMEN!
On a personal note, I am at the in-laws' studying through those
long, something like 10, hours before the kids arrive. I can't do
something fun or useful for study breaks or raid the fridge or play
with Joey cat. The only comfy chairs are in the tv room. And the in-
laws call me Emily even though I've asked them not to. I am quite
lonely but looking forward to Amber and Brian getting here and the big
meal.
I had a great experience Tuesday that reinforced my respect for dining
services. The van had collected food from the UMaine dining commons
and delivered it to Black Bear Exchange's food pantry. Lisa needed
people to repackage it and store it in the two huge freezers. I went
over and volunteered after work. I was so happy thinking of the
people and families who will enjoy the pizzas, ham, chicken,
strombolis, fresh veggies, cheese and all the other good stuff. And
the freezers are jam packed.
I hope you, my readers, have a great Thanksgiving with much to be
thankful for.
A great big shout out goes out to my dining services family whom I am
deeply grateful to be a member of and Lisa and the students who run
(and totally rock) Black Bear Exchange.
jules (NOT EMILY) hathaway


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