my litany for survival

But there’s a deeper, even more critical element here , because it’s the same old story: Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller– writer, musician, filmmaker. Being black is like serving as Hoke, the driver in “Driving Miss Daisy,” except it’s a kind of TV series lasts the rest of your life: You get to drive the well-meaning boss to and fro, you love that boss, your lives are stitched together, but only when the boss decides your story intersects with his or her life is your story valid. Because you’re a kind of cultural maid. You serve up the music, the life, the pain, the spirituality. You clean house. Take the kids to school. You serve the eggs and pour the coffee. And for your efforts the white folks thank you. They pay you a little. They ask about your kids. Then they jump into the swimming pool and you go home to your life on the outside, whatever it is. And if lucky you get to be the wise old black sage that drops pearls of wisdom, the wise old poet or bluesman who says ‘I been buked and scorned,’ and you heal the white folks, when in fact you can’t heal anybody.

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James McBride, screenwriter of Red Hook Summer and Miracle @ St. Anna on the politics of being a Black Story teller. #peaceto @afrolicious. #ownMYownShit.

#ProfessionalBlackStoryteller/Historian…I add historians because storytellers are historians…at least that’s what the feminists I rock with say.

(via newmodelminority)

(Source: blogs.indiewire.com, via irinaf)

my dear talented soul-mate friend Jocelyn Ellis

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

—Henry David Thoreau (via johnniesimpson)

(via irinaf)