Negritude and the Black Arts Movement

Negritude and the Black Arts Movement

“Sellout” by LG Damas I feel ridiculous/ in their shoes/ their dinner jackets/ their starched shirts/ and detachable collars/ their monocles and/ their bowler hats ………………. I feel ridiculous/ among them/ like an accomplice/ among them/ like a pimp/ like a murderer among them/ my hands hideously red/ with the blood of their/ ci-vi-li-za-tion

Black Art Black Art and Black Aesthetics: Poesis as Politics Points Does this poem conform to formal norms? Which ones? Where do you turn when you can’t get out of the Bubble? Larry Neal Defines the B.A.M. Project • To align the projects of the black artist and political activist • To fashion a collective goal: the destruction of double consciousness

Amiri Baraka (1934- )born Leroi JonesBohemian, Black Power Advocate, Communist Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, poems, 1961 Blues People: Black People in White America, 1963 Dutchman and the Slavedrama, 1964 The system of Dante’s hell, novel, 1965 Home: Social Essays, 1965 A Black Mass (1966 Tales, 1967 Black Magic, poems, 1969 Four Black Revolutionary Plays, 1969 Slave Ship, 1970 It's Nation Time, poems, 1970 Raise Race Rays Raize: Essays Since 1965, 1971 Hard Facts, poems, 1975 The Motion of History and Other Plays, 1978 Poetry for the Advanced, 1979 reggae or not!, 1981 Daggers and Javelins: Essays 1974-1979, 1984 The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, 1984 The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues, 1987 Transbluesency: The Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones, 1995 Wise, Why’s Y’s, essays, 1995 Funk Lore: New Poems, 1996. Somebody Blew Up America, 2001 The Book of Monk, 2005 Tales of the Out & the Gone, 2006 Billy Harper: Blueprints of Jazz, Volume 2, Audio CD, 2008 Ancient Music

DutchmanA Modern Myth of Black Assimilation Major Themes Race and Racism: Assimilation, Self-hatred Violence and Cruelty: The violence of white oppression that murders blacks in a literal and figurative sense. Passivity: A by-product of assimilation that, for Baraka, makes a community stagnant, incapable of producing leaders or innovators. And yet, it is a passivity whose transgression results in self-destruction (perhaps of a positive variety, but more than likely not) Sexism: Emasculation, The Siren/Fury archetypal devouring female Allegory a subway “heaped in modern myth” Symbolic Associations and Locales The Story of Adam and Eve, The Flying Dutchman, Dutch Slave Ships, the subway or “flying underbelly of the city”

Tainted Forms of Expression • Talking Points: • Costume Prescribed modes of revolt. • Black Baudelaire: The Relationship Between the Black Artists of the 60s and Extant Poetic Forms • Symbolism: Black Baudelaires and Black Niggers • “I bet you never once thought you were a black nigger”. CLAY Are you angry about anything? Did I say something wrong? LULA Everything you say is wrong. [Mock smile] That's what makes you so attractive. Ha. In that funnybook jacket with all the buttons. [More animate, taking hold of his jacket] What've you got that jacket and tie on in all this heat for? And why're you wearing a jacket and tie like that? Did your people ever burn witches or start revolutions over the price of tea? Boy, those narrow-shoulder clothes come from a tradition you ought to feel oppressed by. A three-button suit. What right do you have to be wearing a three-button suit and striped tie? Your grandfather was a slave, he didn't go to Harvard. CLAY My grandfather was a night watchman. LULA And you went to a colored college where everybody thought they were Averell Harriman. CLAY All except me. LULA And who did you think you were? Who do you think you are now? CLAY [Laughs as if to make light of the whole trend of the conversation] Well, in college I thought I was Baudelaire. But I've slowed down since. LULA I bet you never once thought you were a black nigger. [Mock serious, then she howls with laughter. CLAY is stunned but after initial reaction, he quickly tries to appreciate the humor. LULA almost shrieks] A black Baudelaire.

“Cultural Strangulation”byAddison Gayle

Cultural Strangulation“There is no White aesthetic” • The Agenda: • To Defend the Positing of a Black Aesthetic • The Argument: • The failure to recognize a separate black aesthetic is not only out of step with current leftist moves forward in the field of race relations, but is also the outgrowth of a failure to come to terms with what might constitute a White Aesthetic. • This White Aesthetic is as older than the “race problem,” but its privileging of light over dark was mapped onto race relations. • Given the legacy of racism in America and that Occidental aesthetic are tainted by racism, the black aesthetic must be defined oppositionally. This opposition can be embodied in the phrase “Black is Beautiful” a slogan during the Black Power Movement. Let us proposes Greece as the logical starting point, bearing in mind Will Durrant’s observation that “all of Western Civilization is but a footnote to Plato,” and take Plato as the first writer to attempt a systematic aesthetic [….] However, Plato defines beauty in ambiguous terms leaving the problem of more secular, circumscribred, secular definition to philosophers, poets, and critics […] these aestheticians have been white, there, it is not surprising that, symbolically and literally, the have defined beauty in terms of whiteness,

The Ironic and Oppositional Position of Black Aesthetics • Hence, in the American realm, the entire realm of aesthetics is poisoned by a racism that comes to the fore every time it evaluates an object of Black Art. • And, the Black artist is forced into a corner. To answer to the demands of traditional aesthetics is to allow white critics to dictate the expression of Black experience (which can result in a re-instantiation of racism) • Hence, the only option other than assimilation, calls for an iconoclastic set of principles embodied in the phrase “Black is Beautiful”

Acting Black and Double ConsciousnessYou don’t know anything except what’s there for you to see. • Talking Points: • Intra-Group Knowledge in Cultural Production: Doubly Conscious Performing • Acting vs. Being Black and the Problem of Performing for Two Audiences • Artistic and Rational Revolution • History of Struggle and the History of Black Cultural Production CLAY [Pushing her against the seat] I'm not telling you again, Tallulah Bankhead! Luxury. In your face and your fingers. You telling me what I ought to do. [Sudden scream frightening the whole coach] Well, don't! Don't you tell me anything! If I'm a middle-class fake white man . . . let me be. And let me be in the way I want. [Through his teeth] I'll rip your lousy breasts off! Let me be who I feel like being. Uncle Tom. Thomas. Whoever. It's none of your business. You don't know anything except what's there for you to see. An act. Lies. Device. Not the pure heart, the pumping black heart. You don't ever know that. And I sit here, in this buttoned-up suit, to keep myself from cutting all your throats. I mean wantonly. You great liberated whore! You fuck some black man, and right away you're an expert on black people. What a lotta shit that is. The only thing you know is that you come if he bangs you hard enough. And that's all. The belly rub? You wanted to do the belly rub? Shit, you don't even know how. You don't know how. That ol' dipty-dip shit you do, rolling your ass like an elephant. That's not my kind of belly rub. Belly rub is not Queens. Belly rub is dark places, with big hats and overcoats held up with one arm. Belly rub hates you. Old bald-headed four-eyed ofays popping their fingers . . . and don't know yet what they're doing. They say, "I love Bessie Smith." And don't even understand that Bessie Smith is saying, "Kiss my ass, kiss my black unruly ass." Before love, suffering, desire, anything you can explain, she's saying, and very plainly, "Kiss my black ass." And if you don't know that, it's you that's doing the kissing. Charlie Parker? Charlie Parker. All the hip white boys scream for Bird. And Bird saying, "Up your ass, feebleminded ofay! Up your ass." And they sit there talking about the tortured genius of Charlie Parker. Bird would've played not a note of music if he just walked up to East Sixty-seventh Street and killed the first ten white people he saw. Not a note! And I'm the great would-be poet. Yes. That's right! Poet. Some kind of bastard literature . . . all it needs is a simple knife thrust. Just let me bleed you, you loud whore, and one poem vanished. A whole people of neurotics, struggling to keep from being sane. And the only thing that would cure the neurosis would be your murder. Simple as that. I mean if I murdered you, then other white people would begin to understand me. You understand? No. I guess not. If Bessie Smith had killed some white people she wouldn't have needed that music. She could have talked very straight and plain about the world. No metaphors. No grunts. No wiggles in the dark of her soul. Just straight two and two are four. Money. Power. Luxury. Like that. All of them. Crazy niggers turning their backs on sanity. When all it needs is that simple act. Murder. Just murder! Would make us all sane. [Suddenly weary] Ahhh. Shit. But who needs it? I'd rather be a fool. Insane. Safe with my words, and no deaths, and clean, hard thoughts, urging me to new conquests. My people's madness. Hah! That's a laugh. My people. They don't need me to claim them. They got legs and arms of their own. Personal insanities. Mirrors. They don't need all those words. They don't need any defense. But listen, though, one more thing. And you tell this to your father, who's probably the kind of man who needs to know at once. So he can plan ahead. Tell him not to preach so much rationalism and cold logic to these niggers. Let them alone. Let them sing curses at you in code and see your filth as simple lack of style. Don't make the mistake, through some irresponsible surge of Christian charity, of talking too much about the advantages of Western rationalism, or the great intellectual legacy of the white man, or maybe they'll begin to listen. And then, maybe one day, you'll find they actually do understand exactly what you are talking about, all these fantasy people. All these blues people. And on that day, as sure as shit, when you really believe you can "accept" them into your fold, as half-white trusties late of the subject peoples. With no more blues, except the very old ones, and not a watermelon in sight, the great missionary heart will have triumphed, and all of those ex-coons will be stand-up Western men, with eyes for clean hard useful lives, sober, pious and sane, and they'll murder you. They'll murder you, and have very rational explanations. Very much like your own. They'll cut your throats, and drag you out to the edge of your cities so the flesh can fall away from your bones, in sanitary isolation.

Exploding the RaisinA Cry for What Kind of Revolt-The Shuffle LULA [Her voice takes on a different, more businesslike quality] I've heard enough. CLAY [Reaching for his books] I bet you have. I guess I better collect my stuff and get off this train. Looks like we won't be acting out that little pageant you outlined before. LULA No. We won't. You're right about that, at least. [She turns to look quickly around the rest of the car] All right! [The others respond] CLAY [Bending across the girl to retrieve his belongings] Sorry, baby, I don't think we could make it. [As he is bending over her, the girl brings up a small knife and plunges it into CLAY's chest. Twice. He slumps across her knees, his mouth working stupidly] LULA Sorry is right. [Turning to the others in the car who have already gotten up from their seats] Sorry is the rightest thing you've said. Get this man off me! Hurry, now! [ The others come and drag CLAY's body down the aisle] Open the door and throw his body out. They throw him off] And all of you get off at the next stop. LULA busies herself straightening her things. Getting everything in order. She takes out a notebook and makes a quick scribbling note. Drops it in her bag. The train apparently stops and all the others get off, leaving her alone in the coach. Very soon a young Negro of about twenty comes into the coach, with a couple of books under his arm. He sits a few seats in back of LULA. When he is seated she turns and gives him a long slow look. He looks up from his book and drops the book on his lap. Then an old Negro conductor comes intothe car, doing a sort of restrained soft shoe, and half mumbling the words of some song. He looks at the young man, briefly, with a quick greeting] CONDUCTOR Hey, brother! YOUNG NEGRO Hey [The conductor continues down the aisle with his little dance and the mumbled song. LULA turns to stare at him and follows his movements down the aisle. The conductor tips his hat when he reaches her seat, and continues out the car] Curtain

the mastery of form Theoretical Approaches to Black Drama The deformation of mastery The History of Black Drama consists of innovative(infinite?) deformative (nation based discursive strategies of masking and sounding) discursive strategies that are always mixtures of the mastery of form and the deformation of mastery Houston Bakeresque

Blues for Mr. Charlie (1964)byJames Baldwin I of I

James Baldwin (1924-1987)Novelist, Essayist, Playwright, Civil Rights Activist An Absurd Impulse “Kazan asked me at the end of 1958 if I would be interested in working in the Theatre. It was a generous offer, but I did not react with great enthusiasm because I did not them, and don’t do now, have much respect for what goes on in American Theatre.I am not convinced that it is a Theatre; it seems to me a series, merely, of commercial speculations, stale repetitious and timed. I certainly didn’t see much future for me, and was profoundly unwilling to riskmy morale and talent—my life in endeavors which could only increase a level of frustration dangerously high.” (James Baldwin) • Go Tell It on the Mountain, 1953 • Notes of a Native Son, 1955 • Giovanni's Room, 1956 • Nobody Knows My Name, 1961 • Another Country, 1962 • The Fire Next Time, 1963 • Blues for Mister Charlie (play) • Nothing Personal (with Richard Avedon), 1964 • Going to Meet the Man, 1965 • The Amen Corner (play), 1968 • Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, 1968 • A Rap on Race (with Margaret Mead), 1971 • No Name in the Street, 1972 • A Dialogue (with poet Nikki Giovanni), 1973 • If Beale Street Could Talk, 1974 • The Devil Finds Work, 1976 • Just Above My Head, 1979 • The Evidence of Things Not Seen, 1985 Baldwin hints, here, as to the other Philosophical and Theatrical movements informing his play: EXISTENTIALISM, ABSURDISM, and Brecht’s notions of EPIC THEATRE AND ALIENATION. Here, in essence, Baldwin insinuates that he will write a Brechtian play about the absurdity of race in America.

“Plaguetown”: The setting. Existentialism and the Notion of the Absurd: The Absurdity of Non-Violent and Violent Protest The play then, for me, takes place in Plaguetown U.S.A., now, the plague is race, the plague is our concept of Christianity; and the raging plague has the power to destroy every human relationship. (James Baldwin) Camus Although the notion of the 'absurd' is pervasive in all of the literature of Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus is his most extensive work on the subject. In it, Camus considers absurdity as a confrontation, an opposition, a conflict or a "divorce" between two ideals. Specifically, he defines the human condition as absurd, as the confrontation between man's desire for significance, meaning and clarity on the one hand – and the silent, cold universe on the other. He continues that there are specific human experiences evoking notions of absurdity. Such a realization or encounter with the absurd leaves the individual with a choice: suicide is a leap of faith or recognition. He concludes that recognition is the only defensible option. A person can choose to embrace his or her own absurd condition. According to Camus, one's freedom – and the opportunity to give life meaning – lies in the recognition of absurdity. If the absurd experience is truly the realization that the universeis fundamentally devoid of absolutes, then we as individuals are truly free. "To live without appeal”, as he puts it, is a philosophical move to define absolutes and universals subjectively, rather than objectively. The freedom of humans is thus established in a human's natural ability and opportunity to create his own meaning and purpose; to decide (or think) for him- or herself. Camus states in The Myth of Sisyphus: "Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death, and I refuse suicide.”

From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his ‘’epic theatre’', to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas. and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. ] Epic theatre incorporates a mode of acting that utilizes what he calls gestus. The epic form describes both a type of written drama and a methodological approach to the production of plays: "Its qualities of clear description and reporting and its use of choruses and projections as a means of commentary earned it the name 'epic'."The audience should always be aware that it is watching a play: "It is most important that one of the main features of the ordinary theatre should be excluded from [epic theatre]: the engendering of illusion, producing the key (and perhaps paradoxically named effect of alientation). In epic theatre requires actors to play characters believably without convincing either the audience or themselves that they have "become" the characters. Actors frequently address the audience directly out of character ("breaking the fourth wall") and play multiple roles. Brecht thought it was important that the choices the characters made were explicit, and tried to develop a style of acting wherein it was evident that the characters were choosing one action over another. For example, a character could say, "I could have stayed at home, but instead I went to the shops." Baldwin, Brecht, and the Dialectics of Epic Theater "Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics (dialectical thought), is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature."Fredrick Engels But dialectical materialism insists on the approximate relative character of every scientific theory of the structure of matter and its properties; it insists on the absence of absolute boundaries in nature, on the transformation of moving matter from one state into another, that from our point of view [may be] apparently irreconcilable with it, and so forth. Vladimir Lenin  "For dialectical philosophy nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher.” Fredrick Engels  "Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics (dialectical thought), is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature." Fredrick Engels But dialectical materialism insists on the approximate relative character of every scientific theory of the structure of matter and its properties; it insists on the absence of absolute boundaries in nature, on the transformation of moving matter from one state into another, that from our point of view [may be] apparently irreconcilable with it, and so forth. Vladimir Lenin  "For dialectical philosophy nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher." Fredrick Engels 

Staging Nationalism and Integration in Epic Theatre: The Set Talking Points 1) The use of Brecht’s epic mode to call attention to call attention to the construction and dimensions of segregation and a de facto Black Nationalist community. 2) The Use of the Skeleton Courtroom: Putting Non-Violent protest, segregation, and the race problem on trial in the absence of American justice. 3) The Church as a symbol of the black collective and the importance of its split staging vis-à-vis the issues of non-violent protest and militant Black nationalism. 4) Staging Plessy vs. Ferguson- Visually representing the absurdity of “separate but equal” 5) Using the technique of alienation to stage this aspect of the “Black experience”: that one must “play Black” 6) Using the Alienation of Epic Theater to Stage Black Nationalism: Forcing the Audience to contemplate its role at a distance

The Play’s Political ProblematicViolence, Non-Violence, Justice Talking Points Lorenzo as “fed-up.”: a militant black nationalist Meridian as Dr. King- Non-Violent Protest and the Possibility of Justice

Traumatic Testimony:Medgar Evers and Emitt Till What is ghastly and almost hopeless about our racial situation is that the crimes we have committed are so great and unspeakable that acceptance of this knowledge would lead literally to madness. The human being, in order to protect himself; closes his eyes, compulsively, repeats his crimes, and enters a spiritual darkness no one can describe. (James Baldwin) The accident, that is, as it emerges in Freud and is passed on through other trauma narratives, does not simply represent the violence of the collision but also conveys the impact of its very incomprehensibility. What returns to haunt the victim, these stories tell us, is […] the reality of the way that its violence has not yet been fully known. The story of the accident thus refers us, indirectly, to the unexpected reality—the locus of referentiality—of the traumatic story. (Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Explorations in Trauma and Memory ) May 28, 1963 The assassination of Medgar Evers (two white juries deadlock and do not convict De la Beckwith) The murder of Emitt Till (1958), (the trial results in two acquittals) Talking Points Traumatic Memory: The Mechanics of Repetitive Atrocity Religious Testimony The Call and Response of the Black Church Aesthetic RAPIST NEGRO JUNKIES: Epic Theatre and Cognitive Frames

Existentialism as Heroic Crisis of Faith:The Inadequacy and Inescapability of Racial Paradigms Talking Points B.C.- Moving Forward in the absence of meaning as embracing Existential heroism The harmful effects of pacifism on racial uplift and identity The race problem in light of the human race problem as posited by the Existentialists Meridians “B.C.” as a new form of Black Christianity The incompatibility of ideology and the complexity of lived experience

The Everyday Madness and Absurd Quality of the “Race Problem” in America: Meridian’s Existentialism Talking Points Meridian’s crisis as exemplary of man’s “struggle to overcome the absurd.” Aligning the race problem with a universal crises of meaning Meridian’s madness and the humanly impossible: the search for justice and the search for meaning. Non-Violence and Existential Acceptance

Differing Ideologies and Overlapping StrivingsBringing Things to a Cyclical Close Talking Points The Bible and Bullet and The Ballot or the Bullet (Malcolm X and Black Power). Existentialist Acceptance as the Race Problem The Compatibility of Incompatible Ideologies and Racial Uplift

Signifying Signifying p. 60 “One example that demonstrates this clearly, especially if we recall that intertextuality represents a process of repletion and revision, by definition. A number of shared structural elements are repeated, with differences that suggest familiarity with other texts of the Monkey.” It is as if a received structure of crucial elements provides a base for poesis, and the narrator’s technique, his or her craft, is to be gauged by the creative (re)placement of these expected or anticipated formulaic phrases and formulaic events, rendered anew in unexpected ways. Precisely because the concepts represented in the poem are shared, repeated, familiar to the poet’s audience, meaning is devalued while the signifier is valorized. Value, in this art of poesis, lies in its foregrounding rather than in the invention of a novel signified. We shall see how the nature of rhyme scheme also stresses the materiality and the priority of the signifier. Let me add first, however, that all common structural elements are repeated with variations across the text that, together, comprise the text of the Monkey. In other words, there is no fixed text of these poems, they exist as a play of differences.” (or as Sussure would have it says, Ryan, as language exists) pg 85. Mitchell-Kernan’s summary of the defining characteristics of “Signifying as a Form of Verbal Art” helps to clarify the most difficult, and elusive, mode of rhetoric. We can outline these characteristics for convenience. The most important defining features of Signifyin(g) are “inndirect intent” and “metaphorical reference.” This aspect of indirection is a formal device, and appears to be purely stylistic; moreover, “its art characteristics remain in the forefront.”Signifyin(g), in other words, turns upon the foregrounding of the Signifier. By “indirection” Mitchell-Kernan means what the correct semantic (referential interpretation) or significance of the utterance cannot be arrive at by a consideration of the dictionary meaning of the lexical items involved and the syntactic rules for their combination alone. The apparent significance of the message differs from its real significance. The apparent meaning of the sentence signifies its actual meaning. The relationship between latent and manifest is a curious one, as determined by the formal properties of the Signifin(g) utterance, In one of several ways, manifested meaning directs attention away from itself to another, latent level of meaning. We might compare this relationship to that which obtains between the two parts of metaphor, tenor (the inner meaning) and vehicle (the outer meaning). Signifin(g), according to Mitchell-Kernan, operates so delightfully because “apparent meaning serves as a key which directs hearers to some shared knowledge, attitudes, and values or signals that reference must produced ‘metaphorically,’ The decoding of the figurative,’ she continues, “depends upon shared knowledge..and this shared knowledge operates on two levels.” One of these two levels is that the speaker and the audience realize that “the signifying is occurring and that the dictionary-syntactical meaning of the utterance is to be ignored.” In addition, a silent second text, as it were, which corresponds rightly to what Michell-Kernan is calling “shared knowledge,” must be brought to bear upon the manifest content of the speech act and employed in the reinterpretation of the utterance. Indeed, this is of the utmost importance in the esthetics of Signifyin(g), fo it is” the cleverness used in directing the attention of the hearer and the audience to the shared knowledge upon which a speaker’s artistic talent is judged.” Signifyin(g), in other words, depends upon the success of the signifier at invoking an absent meaning ambiguously “present” in a carefully wrought statement.

ToastingBlack Internationalism, Nationalism, Folklore, and the Signifying Monkey Way down in the jungle deep, The bad ass lion stepped on the signifyin monkey's feet. The monkey said, "Muthafucka, can't you see? Why, you standin on my goddamn feet!" The lion said, "I ain't heard a word you said." Said, "If you say three more I'll be steppin on yo muthafuckin head!" Now, the monkey lived in the jungle in an old oak tree. Bullshittin the lion everyday of the week. Why, everyday before the sun go down, The lion would kick his all through the jungle town. But the monkey got wise and started usin his wit. Said, "I'm gon' put a stop to this ole ass kickin shit!" So he ran up on the lion the very next day. Said, "Oh Mr. lion, there's a big, bad muthafucka comin your way. And when you meet, it's gonna be a goddamn sin, And wherever you meet some ass is bound to bend." Said, "he's somebody that you don't know, He just broke a-loose from the Ringlin Brother's show." Said, "Baby, he talked about your people in a helluva way! He talked about your people till my hair turned gray! He said your daddy's a freak and your momma's a whore. Said he spotted you running through the jungle sellin asshole from door to door! Said your sister did the damndest trick. She got down so low and sucked a earthworm's dick. Said he spotted yo niece behind the tree, Screwin a muthafuckin flea! He said he saw yo aunt sittin on the fence Givin a goddamn zebra a french. Then he talked about yo mammy and yo sister Lou, Then he start talkin about how good yo grandmaw screw.

Negritude and the Black Arts Movement