I Am New Orleans: 36 Poets Revisit Marcus Christian's Definitive Poem

Title

This edition

"I Am New Orleans: 36 Poets Revisit Marcus Christian's Definitive Poem." Ed. Kalamu y Salaam. New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press/Rungate Press, 2020.

Table of contents

● Kalamu ya Salaam/Foreword 11
● Marcus B. Christian/I Am New Orleans 15
● Nia Gates/My Neighborhood Is Changing 28
● Karen Celestan/Blood Nativity 32
● Jerry W. Ward, Jr./Genders & Genres (law's labor loses love) 34
● JB Borders/We 38
● Kelly Harris-DeBerry/Post-Katrina Blues 40
● Marian Moore/Martha 45
● Nadir Lasana Bomani/The Last Days (My Uncle Michael Remembers) 46
● Mwende "FreeQuency" Katwiwa/Ode to New Orleans Home 48
● Mawiyah Kai EL-Jamah Bomani/Color 52
● Niyi Osundare/New Orleans Is People 55
● Christine "Cfreedom" Brown/When You Think of New Orleans: (Who, What, When, Where, Why, & How) 57
● Baakir Tyehimba/A Battle for Algiers 66
● Carol Bebelle/Letter to New Orleans 68
● Frederick "Hollywood" Delahoussaye/The Soul of NO 73
● Sha' Condria Sibley/No Invitation to the Cookout 77
● Sunni Patterson/My City Ain't for Sale 80
● Akilah Toney/Minstrel Jubilee 2019: The New Orleans Negro 83
● Professor Arturo (Arthur Pfister)/I'm So New Orleans… 86
● Mona Lisa Saloy/New Orleans, a Neighborhood Nation 99
● Maurice M. Martinez/Niggers I Have Known 101
● Akeem Martin/Sunsets 107
● Ayo Fayemi-Robinson/O.d. 108
● Quo Vadis Gex-Breaux/Waterlogged, Nomadic Katrina Songs 110
● Christopher Williams/These Men, New Orleans Men 114
● Ayo Fayemi-Robinson/Tribute to Carol Bebelle 119
● Peteh Muhammad Maroon/City of My Birth 121
● Kristina Kay Robinson/Indian Red 124
● Michael "Quess?" Moore/Comfort Food 125
● G.F. Smith/A Poem for New Orleanians in the Key of Hamlet Called "That Is the Question" 126
● Tom Dent/Return to English Turn 130
● Kalamu ya Salaam/Beneath the Bridge 138
● Chuck Perkins/Street Names 143
● Jahi Salaam/Wake up call 145
● Brenda Marie Osbey/Everything Happens to (Monk and) Me 150
● Jerry W. Ward, Jr./Afterword 157

[The volume also includes poems from the following, though some copies have apparently circulated without them, as above:
● Asali Eclesiastes
● Valentine Pierce
● Skye Jackson]

About the anthology

● Kalamu ya Salaam was introduced to Marcus Christian by Tom Dent, and views this anthology as carrying on the tradition of the work of these earlier writers (Larson 2020).

Publisher's description

● "This collection is a gathering of the saints. Contemporary writers with an ear to the ground, digging on the sense and sound of what all is going down. Plus, a couple of ancestor scribes whose amazing words and clear-eyed vision remain both accurate and relevant long, long after their physical demise. Hence, here is a compendium of views and visions, which collectively map the outlines of what it means to both be and to miss New Orleans" (publisher's website).

Reviews and notices of anthology

● Fischer, Uffe Dan Sparre. "African American Literature" 13 Oct. 2020. Website.

africanamericanliterature.net

Commentary on anthology

● Larson, Susan. "The Reading Life: Kalamu ya Salaam, Sunni Patterson." "The Reading Life" 27 Sept. 2020. WWNO (New Orleans Public Radio). Web.

https://www.wwno.org/post/reading-life-kalamu-ya-salaam-sunni-patterson

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