SOUNDTRACK: JAMILA WOODS-Tiny Desk Concert #699 (January 29, 2018).
Jamila Woods is the Associate Artistic Director of Young Chicago Authors, the non-profit organization behind the Louder Than a Bomb youth poetry slam festival. She also did guest vocals on a slew of albums recently.
Last year she released her debut album HEAVN. But there is so much more
Singer, songwriter, poet, educator and community organizer Jamila Woods is also a freedom fighter: a voice that celebrates black ancestry, black feminism and black identity. “Look at what they did to my sisters last century, last week,” goes a line from “Blk Girl Soldier,” her powerful opening number at the Tiny Desk.
A cool bass line from Erik Hunter opens “Blk Girl Soldier.” I don’t love the music that much (too jazz lite for me) but the lyrics are outstanding
We go missing by the hundreds…
The camera loves us, Oscar doesn’t…
They want us in the kitchen
Kill our sons with lynchings
We get loud about it
Oh now we’re the bitches
Woods’ delivery is fantastic and the backing vocals (and keys) from Aminata Burton add a nice touch. Throughout this song and the others the drums are great–different sounds and rhythms from Ralph Schaefer.
Woods followed “Blk Girl Soldier” with “Giovanni,” another anthem of black female pride, inspired by the Nikki Giovanni poem “Ego Tripping.” The original text includes no punctuation, not a single comma or period, and reveals a liberated prosody that is also illustrated in the song. Listen how her lyricism interplays with the rhythm section’s syncopated groove to create a captivating state of emotional buoyancy.
I love the stops and starts and the groovy bass and soaring guitars from Justin Canavan. But once again, I’m more enamored of her lyrics
Little Bitty you wanna call me
100 motherfuckers can’t tell me
How I’m supposed to look when I’m angry
How I’m supposed to shriek when you’re around me
“Holy” opens with just keys and a punctuating drum beat. This song is a slower one and it is all about self-empowerment.
Of particular note is her recurring theme of self-love, as heard in “Holy,” the last song in this set: “Woke up this morning with my mind set on loving me.” (What a refreshing affirmation to hear “loving me,” instead of the predictable “loving you.”)
I don’t like R&B, but I could see this album transcending that for me.
[READ: November 12, 2017] The Resurrection of Joan Ashby
I received an email from A.M. Homes touting this book (obviously, I wasn’t the only one). It was quite an encouraging email so I decided to give this fascinating book a try. Boy, did I love it.
The book opens with a clip from the Fall issue of Literature Magazine. It is a story about Joan Ashby, wondering where she has been all of these years. The article says that they have been allowed to look at her childhood notebooks.
At thirteen she wrote nine precepts she was determined to follow in order to become a writer
- Do not waste time
- Ignore Eleanor when she tells me I need friends
- Read great literature every day
- Write every day
- Rewrite every day
- Avoid crushes and love
- Do not entertain any offer of marriage
- Never ever have children
- Never allow anyone to get in my way
Eight years later she burst onto the scene with her first collection of short stories about incest, murder, insanity, suicide, abandonment and the theft of lives called Other Small Spaces. Four years later in 1989 her second book Fictional Family Life was a collection of superbly interlocked stories.
She was considered brutal and unsparing and wrote very powerfully.
During all of this time, her parents were irrelevant–they didn’t seem to think much about her when she was young and when she became successful she had little to do with them.
The “magazine” prints excerpts from these stories and here is where Wolas really shines. She creates story fragments that really show off what a great writer Ashby (and of course, by extension, Wolas) is.
These are followed by an interview and her last public sighting–a reading of her work. It was at this reading that her first shock was revealed–she had gotten married. And when she toured for the second book, the women who revered her were outraged by this betrayal.
The opening section is “continued after the break” which is basically the rest of the book.
Part 1 introduces us to Martin Manning the man who would marry Joan Ashby. She told him that her writing came first and she wanted no children. He was fine with that. They had a modest wedding. Her parents were not invited and his parents were also estranged. Although the groom’s guests far outnumbered hers.
Two months after their wedding, she discovered she was pregnant.
He was thrilled. She went back and forth for a time. She considered leaving him outright. She could not give up her life. And yet she decided against all sense to stay with Martin.
She became a pregnant goddess. She felt great, the baby was great and she made friends with other pregnant women in town.
She was even still writing. She had a massive novel underway. Martin often asked her about it, which upset her as she liked privacy when she wrote.
It was a violent story called The Sympathetic Executioners about people who hired themselves out as killers. We see a lengthy section of the book which is engaging and horrifying.
She read to the baby inside her. But she would only read classic novels. Even after Daniel Manning was born, she read him only great literature–there was no children’s lit for him. He was a good baby and she adored him. He was also precocious and begin reading on his own very early.
Soon enough, Daniel even began writing his own stores And they were quite good (for a child). Joan had them bound for him. He created 99 in all (but something prevented him from making that 100th book).
And yet in all that time she never once told him that she was a writer. Never once. She felt the need to keep something of herself to herself.
She had planned to finish that book before the baby came. And she did. But in what was certainly bizarre behavior. She ultimately gave up on it even though it was completed.
They hired a nanny. Her name is Fancy and she is Canadian. And she is awesome. She is a dynamic character all unto herself and I love her as much as anyone in the book. I’d love to learn more about her fascinating life (her story is quite cryptic). She stays with them for many years and becomes a part of the family. Until it is time for her to leave.
Then Joan was pregnant again. This second child, Eric was far more difficult–the delivery was tough, the babyhood was tough. He didn’t latch on easily. Nothing was easy from him. But Daniel loved him. He read his stories to baby Eric. And those were the only stories Eric would listen to–he wanted nothing to do with Joan’s beloved literature.
Eric also began putting things in his mouth–dirt, chalk–all the time. Ultimately this led to a non-fatal accidental overdose of chewable aspirin–he didn’t even realize he was popping them in his mouth.
One day Martin turned to her and said, “Do you eve think about having another child.” She did not turn her head to him when she replied “I never thought of having the ones we did.”
Martin meanwhile had become a famous ocular surgeon and was travelling the world performing miraculous surgeries. He had become something of a star far eclipsing her own.
When the boys were somewhat older and she had a smidgen of free time, she began writing a new book, Words of New Beginnings. Eventually she completed this novel and then in yet another confounding moment, she put it aside to help nurture her family.
Then the rest of her life took over, just as she feared it would. Daniel gave up on writing, he decided he wanted to do business even though he (and she) knew it was the wrong choice. But when he found out that she was an author, he was so mad that she had already done the thing he wanted to do that he gave up on writing and a bit on her.
Things grew more complicated when Eric, formerly deemed to be rather dull, proved to have an intense gift for programming (which may be why he hated fiction so much). Soon enough, he was entering (and winning) a contest for young programmers. Then he dropped out of school and was working nonstop to try to create a computer program that would revolutionize the world (and he was only 13).
Joan is of course worried about his reckless behavior–he’s hanging out with older boys, she’s finding cigarette butts and alcohol bottles around the yard, he’s sleeping a few hours a night. Worse yet he and his crew are taking up their entire house leaving her no space at all.
During this time of Eric’s success, Daniel has been living away in Washington DC, working. he was writing journalism of a kind. He and his mother talk but he seems to be keeping secrets from her.
As the first part of the book ends, Joan discovers that Daniel has done something so monstrous, so unfathomable, so horrific that it causes her to have something like a nervous breakdown.
Part Two of the book is short–it consists of a series of recordings by Daniel. We don’t know where they are from or to whom he is talking, but we delve a bit into his psyche as we learn about why he did what he did. Or if not why exactly, what could have driven him to do it. This section includes more excerpts from the Ashby short stories and, once again, Wolas gives a great example of her tight prose–I wonder if she’ll ever print these excerpts as full stories.
We also learn about an inspiring delivery boy named Kartar.
It was at this point when I started to wonder about the book a lot. Kartar is a young Indian boy and he is very Wise. He is deep and thoughtful and says little phrases that Inspire Daniel. It seemed a little too easy. And while it could all work out that there was an Indian boy who was sufficiently spiritual, it just seemed easy.
Especially later when Joan goes to India and meets other solicitous and spiritually tethered Indian people.
Joan had always wanted to go to India, since she a young writer. The fact that her husband went to India without her on business was something of a sore sport. But when she finally is able to go or, more likely, feels compelled to go, everyone is just too spiritually perfect. It’s exactly what she needs.
The thing that sort of bugged me throughout the end of the book was wondering if the whole point was a sort of superiority of eastern mysticism over western materialism. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that position–in fact I agree with it somewhat. Especially the way she describes it–if only we all had enough money to do nothing but meditate. But it just seems easy and unfortunate to make it seem like India alone can solve her problems.
I was pleased at least that she met a few westerners who were kind to her and that the split wasn’t total. Again nothing against India, it’s just an easy out to have her cured by India.
But I think it’s a minor thing that can be ignored because really what Joan needs is a place to clear her head and think about herself for a while. And if you’ve got money and time, which she does, Dar Es Salaam sounds like an amazing place to do it.
The end of the book is all about healing and despite my fears, it is a very enjoyable part–where serenity really does take over. And it also gives Joan a chance to get back to her writing.
The final page of the book brings us back to that magazine article–which I had more or less forgotten about–that was paused some 400 pages earlier.
Wolas has an amazing gift for writing. To create a character who is an amazing and inspiring writer and then to be able to write excerpts from stories in that character’s voice is pretty great. Not to mention, between the main characters of the book and the dozens of characters whom Joan Ashby creates, Wolas has done more than enough in terms of creating memorable people who you genuinely care about. I want to read more about Poloma Rosen and her young men. I want to read more about Simon Tabor and why he jumped off the roof. I even want to read more about the two young men who have hired themselves out as executioners.
This book was really quite wonderful. Thanks, A.M. Homes
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