For Posterity

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is it that we see?  With public debate booming about a young girl's right to wear her hair in dreadlocks at school, one wonders if any of us are ready to take a long look at ourselves in the mirror of history. Are we yet ready to be independent? My guest for episode two is my friend LA Wanliss. She is a poet, writer, editor, teacher, and dramaturg here in Kingston, Jamaica.  She joins me to discuss the performance of the national via representations of the personal and vice versa, as the two are always linked. As you listen, you may find fragments of yourself in this conversation; but more than that, I hope that you find a desire to look more critically at the idea of independence and identity. Suggested Reading: Una Marson's "Kinky Hair Blues" (1937), Roger Mais' "Now we Know" (1944) and "Where the Roots Lie" (1940), and Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John (1983). <>

Welcome to Season Two! This first episode looks at being Black in educational settings, not just in the U.S., but also in Jamaica, a predominantly African-descent nation, but a country that subscribes to and abides by a white, British colonial system of inequality. My esteemed guest is someone who's been schooling me since birth: my big sis Njeri Semaj. As an expert Black woman and as an expert educator with two decades of professional experience across multiple educational models, I turn to her for perspective as we prepare for a new academic year in the midst of COVID-19 and racism. Spoiler alert: Njeri proposes that we decolonize everything.  I recommend that you get in touch with her if you're interested in balancing for better: www.njerisemaj.com.  (Additional Credits: Big up to @josh2funny for the viral #dontleavemechallenge and to my Ace Aminah for taking part. 

Recommended reading: Frederick Douglass' 1845 text Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave and Frantz Fanon's 1952 text Black Skin, White Masks. Recommending screening: Darrel Roodt's 1992 adaptation of Mbongeni Ngema's 1987 musical Sarafina! and the 2019 YAK Films short film based on the spoken word poetry of Marc Bamuthi Joseph titled About Face.)

This episode is about the collision of past and future and the making of an uncomfortable present.  In this conversation with my friends John and Valerie, they talked to me about 1970s Jamaica. During the Manley years, the country was sent into a kind of lockdown, but this was also a time of innovative opportunity and identity building. Together we discussed how race and access impact everything from fashion to employment to the uneven hand of the law. This episode is the Season 1 closer and it clarifies just what is meant by posterity. Big up to Future, Kendrick Lamar, Jah9, and Lila Ike for their musical expression.

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Stitched together under self-isolation, this episode of For Posterity sits curiously between science and science fiction, somewhere between literary escape and writing reality.  As I consider the possibility that we are living in a kind of "end of days", I realize that it's all about the word and how words will, ultimately, save us all.  Well, words and washing our hands.  In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, these are the remotely gathered voices of a few dear writer friends, sharing their own words in their own voices.  You'll hear from Jamaican writer and Renaissance man Roland Watson-Grant, Dominican American scholar-poet-painter Ines P. Rivera Prosdocimi, and Trinidadian artist-activist-attorney Caroline Mair-Toby.  Press play and escape into words with me.