Thursday, July 26, 2012

Young Witness Bearers - Day 14

Dear Brother Authors,

I want to thank you for being "witness bearers" with your pens. I enjoyed our time together, and I have learned a great deal from each of you. In short, you were simply impressive. I am rooting for your success as you move beyond this institute. I have radical love for each of you. I will never forget your fearless voices. I look forward to your final pieces today. Because of your pens our people will be in Chip Chop Shape. See the two poems at the end of this post.

I wrote the following poem to call all Brother Authors:

Brother Author
Are you out there?
Are you out there?
Putting your thoughts together for me

I want to situate myself comfortably in your pages
As you write about uncomfortable truths
You don’t have to be nice to me
Just be fair
I can handle it


Are you out there?
Are you out there?

I woke up this morning expecting something good to happen
I knew I was going to find your words
Words that lift me up without tearing me down
I am waiting for you
Maybe you are already hidden in the stacks
Finish this for me www…
So that I can Google you

Are you out there?
Are you out there?

Are you keeping up with what’s happen to me
 Making sense of my actions so that I can act differently


Brother Author
Brother Author

Where are you?
My ears and hearts are open
I know you know that I cry on my pillow at night
This is when my humanity comes to light – in my own personal darkness
I need to find you before my personal darkness becomes the world’s darkness

I need to find you, Brother Author, so that I can find myself
I showed up again today and again nothing
I stared at the pages and I did not hear you speaking to me
You were not there to tell me who I am and what I can become

Tomorrow, Brother Author, I hope I find you
I am still looking, waiting, praying, crying

Here is my final piece of writing for this summer. It is from my novel, Chip Chop, that I am still hoping to have published.
 
Chip Chop Shape
This is my last journal entry this year. Graduation is two days away. Can you believe Mr. Tillman worked us from the roota to the toota.  He used this expression instead of the beginning to the end. We had our first lesson on the first day of class and here I am writing with just two days to go. He told us that he would work us through tomorrow if the end of the year assembly had not interrupted the schedule. I am glad for him. He needs to take a break too. I cannot believe he is going to start all over again with students who may not believe in themselves the same way I did not believe in myself. This year’s word wall has been taken down. We all agreed that Hank should have it. After all, he wrote a manual for building vocabulary. Mr. Tillman has to start a new wall again next year. I hope that resilient is the first word. It was one of my favorites. I also like reciprocity because I read it as re sip pro city when I first met the tag. I have to find words to tag on my own. I even like Mr. T’s cologne now. He’s even beginning to grow a beard that looks sort of strange on him. I think I am going to turn over copies of all of my journal entries over to Mr. T. so that he will always remember me. I have to keep the originals for myself. An aspiring writer never turns over all his masterpieces.  I got to have my archives for my grandchildren who will never believe how great a writer I was in eighth grade. This genius is something I had to work towards. To tell the truth, I think Mr. Tillman read some of our journal entries throughout the school year. He knew when to push us, pull us in, listen to us, talk to us, or leave us alone. I don’t think he is that much of an emotional reader. I wonder if he knows how much he really means to us.  If I had to tell Mr. Tillman one thing, I would tell him that I love him. He made me believe in a black boy’s dream even when the black boy’s sister was killed, even when the black boy did not get in the school of his choice, even when the black boy was suspended, even when the black boy felt like America’s darkest son. I will always remember the poetry, the magazine articles, the books, the speeches, and the read alouds. He introduced me to a lot of brother and sister authors, people I did not know existed. I sorted of feel sorry for Mr. Tillman at the same time. He really believes that he can change kid’s worlds with reading. For some kids, I believe it will be too little too late because of what they go through. I sometimes wonder if Tiff would still be alive if she heard all those wise man statements. I wonder if Mr. Tillman could have saved Tiff or the boys who killed Tiff. It just seems like it is too much for one man to do. I know he will keep trying. He always told us that the world needs a little more naivety. Sometimes we have to be naïve to believe in ourselves when the rest of the world does not. I believe him now. By the way, I got into University High. Mr. Tillman made phone calls every day to tell the admission counselor about me. He also shared my essay with them that I left printing in Mrs. Terrell’s office. He also found a sponsor to provide a scholarship. Alex is stuck with me for the next four years. I think we need each other. I think God heard the prayer I wrote. Mr. Tillman is saying time is up. So I am.  Until next time, peace to Mr. Tillman and peace to my posterity.
                                                Jamal Taylor
                                                Writer (Nobel winner J)
                                                University of Chicago Graduate (one day)
For the past two days, Sheila and I have been practicing our annual manual speeches for graduation. When I volunteered to read part of my annual manual first, Alex said that we should have a girl to read from her manual. The class thought this was fair. Being in this class was like being with the family you always wanted to have. Everybody selected interesting manual topics for manuals that I will never get to read because they will all be sealed and passed on to next year’s graduating class. Everybody shared their titles:
Manual for Humanity
Manual for Moving On
Manual for Understanding Dr. King
Manual for Walking through Doors
Manual for Dealing with Racism
Manual for Building Vocabulary
Manual for Moving Beyond Mediocrity
Manual for Dealing with the Alex (es) of the World
Manual for Supporting Each Other
Manual for Happiness
Manual for Assigning Yourself
Manual for Creating Wise Woman Statements
Manual for Circling Up in the Time of Need
Manual for Getting Ready for High School
Manual for Being Young Gifted and black
Manual for Writing Manuals
Manual for Finding Good Books
Manual for Dealing with The Lost of Someone You Love
Sheila wrote a Manual for Being a Strong Black Girl in Chicago. She identified ten tips and wrote a page about each tip. The part she shared in class was about feeling black and beautiful in the world without long hair or blue eyes. She talked about how sister author Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eyes was a must-read for all black girls. I liked when she talked about black girls and coffee. She asked, “If the whole world loves coffee and it is brown, why can’t the whole world love me. I am brown too.” She talked about how she loved her hair and loved her complexion. “There’s nothing wrong with being covered with skin of brass,” she read. “And there’s nothing wrong with being the color of chocolate,” she added. She then asked us if we could imagine world without chocolate bars, or chocolate chips cookies, or chocolate shakes, or chocolate cake, or chocolate ???? – that’s right chocolate girls. We bring color to the world with our chocolate sons and daughters? Then she started saying that Oprah Winfrey is chocolate, and Fannie Lou Hammer was chocolate, and Maya Angelou is chocolate, and Rosa Parks was chocolate and Queen Latifah is chocolate, and, and she then ended by asking a question, “Who am I not to feel beautiful with all this beautiful sister chocolate in the world?”
            Then it was my turn to read my Manual for…
            Well look at the next page. I secretly wrote my manual twice because Mr. Tillman did not allow anyone to make a copy. You get a chance to read my whole manual.


Manual for Future Writers
By Jamal Taylor

            If you are reading this manual you are probably getting ready to graduate from Mr. Tillman’s class. You probably just finished writing your own manual to pass on to your posterity. I hope you learned this word this year. It was on our word wall. What is your favorite word from the wall? Was it indefatigable or sagacious? What statements did the wise man use this year. I believe Mr. Tillman was the wise man, what about you? Did he tell you to protect your reputation everyday, protect your reputation in every way? What about keep your head about you when all others doubt you. My favorite wise man statement was “read with great passion and authority.”
            Well my name is Jamal. You may have seen me walking through the halls or sitting in the cafeteria last year. I was the young man who lost his sister. Eighth grade was a little rough for me. I hope your year was not as bad. I am sure if you had any bad times Mr. Tillman had your class circle up. Out of all the things he did last year, I loved the journal writing the most because I want to be a writer. I do not want to be any type of writer, I want to write to tell our stories so that the rest of the world knows that black kids on the south side of Chicago matter. I want them to know that we are different, but that we are also the same. I believe the world needs to hear our voices. They need to know that Alex wants to become a doctor. Alex is the kid I hated at the beginning of last year. Well, I did not really hate him, but he irritated me because he thought he was “so smart.”  I started to really like him at the end of the school year because he kept telling us that we all need to be “so smart” because that was the only way we could change things for ourselves. Do you think what he said makes a lot of sense? I hope so. We all need each other to make it in this world. Sometimes the world can still be cruel and unfair to the people who live in our neighborhood. Sometimes we are cruel and unfair to ourselves. Nobody told us not to learn how to write the pledge. Did Mr. Tillman have you write the pledge on the second day of class? How many words did you spell correctly?  Enough of the small talk (oops, I mean small writing). Now I want to talk about becoming a writer, becoming a brother or sister author. I want someone to call me brother author Jamal Taylor.
Mr. Tillman told us it is better if we give clear tips in our manual and then use examples to explain our tips. I have five tips for you and then I am going to share two poems to explain my tips. I will also leave you the words from my eighth-grade word wall and all the wise man statements that I can remember.
TIP # 1: If you want to be a good writer you must read a lot
I feel like my writing changed when I started reading about all those brother and sister authors. I remember we read this book, Handbook for Boys by brother author Walter Dean Myers. I liked his style and how he wrote about the life of boys like me living in Harlem. It made me want to write about my own neighborhood. So, I started thinking about all the things I can write about like White Shoe Willie and a guy named, Tunes, who whistle all the time because it is something to call his own. I got a lot of ideas like Handbook for Protecting Sisters or Handbook to Stopping Gun Violence. When I was reading last year, I found out about the Scottsboro Boys, I would never found out about them if I did not read. Now, I believe that if I do not write people ten years from now may never find out about a group of six boys who spent time in jail in Jena Louisiana. I am not sure if you ever heard about the Jena Six, but they were talked about on the news a lot last year. You may want to search for information about them on the Internet. You see reading will give you a whole lot of ideas for writing. You can find an author you like and emulate his style. Do you have a favorite brother or sister author from this year?
TIP # 2: You have to love words if you want to be a writer:
            I hope you read brother author James Baldwin who used words like I never heard words used before. I still have this strip of paper in my wallet with his words that talks about not making peace with mediocrity. He also uses words that talk about how someone can die twice.
Words are a writer’s best friend. Without words a writer is like a loner at sea without anyway to come ashore. Words are his raft.
Did you like that sentence? I was playing with language. I have been doing this a lot lately. It is actually kind of fun. Words are like mashed potatoes. The way you use the words is like putting gravy on mashed potatoes. Look at the difference in the two sentences.
            I was sad. (mashed potatoes)
Sadness crept upon me from every angle; it was suffocating. I need to find a way to escape, to breathe again. (gravy)
Sometimes, you just want to write you are sad. Other times, you want to write about the effects of sadness. You have to play with different sentences. I want people to remember my sentences the way they remember lines they hear in movies. We were both lucky to have Mr. Tillman and his word wall because he gave us a lot of words to play with.
TIP # 3: Write all the time if you want to be a writer
Pick up your pen and write is a good way to become a writer. Last year, I wrote a poem about names. I wrote a prayer. I wrote in my journal. I wrote an essay for a contest. I wrote a letter to get into high school. I just kept on writing. After awhile, I started to like my own writing. My spelling even improved as I used some of the same words over and over again. I started using new words when I got tired of the old words. I started using words I saw in the newspaper. I started using words I heard on the news. I saved all of my writings from eighth grade. I hope they will be published posthumously (this means when I die). People always discover great works of art after people pass away. They are still finding old Tupac songs. I want to tell you a secret, but do not tell Mr. Tillman. I even kept a copy of my manual. I wrote it twice so that it will always be a part of my repository of writings.  I also wanted to remind myself of the tips I am giving you. Even future great writers like me need to keep a manual handy.
So, I want you to write something as soon as you finish reading this manual.  If you are having a hard time thinking about what to write, you can write about how great this manual is. Just kidding. The key to writing all the time is writing about the things you care about. This takes me to the next tip.
TIP # 4 If you want to be a writer you have to have a story you want to tell or create
I used my journal to write about how I felt when I smelled Mr. Tillman’s cologne. Did he still wear that strong cologne? I also wrote about how I felt when my friend, Russell, was killed. I wrote about how if felt not to be able to spell words. I wrote a poem for Tiff, my sister and how she was like the sun to me. I am telling you this because you have a life that you can uniquely call your own. I always think about being unique after hearing this from a guy named Tunes. I also think about being a link breaker and breaking the monotonous chain that we talked about in eighth grade. Every writer has his own life and his own story. You must tell your own story as a writer because no one can tell it the way you can.
A writer can also bring different stories together to create a new story. This is why it is important to read. You can read something about the past and make it work for the present. Just imagine writing a story called, Having Dinner with Dr. King and Jay Z or Having Dinner with Jackie Robinson and Tiger Woods. You can create a conversation between two people who never met based on what you know? As writers, we can create all type of stuff in our heads. Read the paragraph below:
As the night approached, the carnival goers became fearful because of what was about to happen in the small town. There was a rumor flying around that this would be the night that no one would ever forget. Finally, the time had come for John to appear. He was the great great grandson of the town’s first mayor. He was going to reveal the truth about the carnival’s construction and what was buried beneath the soil where the carnival was held for the past eighteen years.  We all knew something was wrong that caused so many people to become sick, but did not know exactly why this was happening. John then told the crowd of more than 150 people that…
This is the power you will have as a writer. I created a situation about a town and sickness that many people wanted to hear about. Do you have any idea what I was going write? It really does not matter, but you have the power as a writer to create the ending and create your own story. I want you to finish the story and pass it along to someone else. Remember, writers must write and play with words to be good writers.

TIP # 5 Write because it is important for people from our neighborhood to write
Last year in Mr. Tillman’s class, I learned that a lot of brother and sister authors wrote something because they thought I would enjoy reading it. There were others who wrote to give me direction for the future. There were others who wrote to teach me about my history and the history of other people. I would not know anything about other people’s history if I did not read, The Devil’s Arithmetic, in which I learned about the Holocaust.         One day other people might want to read about our neighborhood, our experience, our struggles, our pleasures, and our pain. We need to write about our lives so that people understand who we are and where we come from. They need to know what happened in 2007 and 2008. They need to know where Alex came from when he becomes a great doctor the same way we know where brother author Ben Carson came from. They need to know where I came from when I win the Nobel Prize in Literature as a writer from the University of Chicago. The world needs to know where you came from as you become a writer or whatever else you decided to become. We do not want our stories to become extinct. Our lives and our stories will become extinct if we do not write about them. We need to write jokes, comics, essays, books, and poetry. This brings me to the end of the manual. I want to end with two poems. I hope they inspire you to create your own poems. The names of the poems are Chop and Chip. Chop is about black boys who live in cities like the south side of Chicago. The eighth-grade boys wrote it last year. I wrote the poem, Chip. I will read both poems at my graduation. I hope you enjoy Chop and Chip. When they become the world’s favorite poems, remember you read them first.





Chop
Poem by the Eighth-Grade Boys

This is not about a pork chop or a lamb chop
This is about chop chop
You see when I extend my hand and you do not shake it
Chop chop
When I say something and you do not like the way it sounds
Chop chop
When I wear my pants a certain way and it causes you to frown
Chop chop
When I read like I need help and you blame it on me instead of helping me
Chop chop
When I make an adolescent mistake in your presence and you cast me away
Chop chop
When you start that anecdotal record that grants me entry into that special type of education without putting my voice on record
Chop chop
When you begin to dislike me and believe that I am dislikable
Chop chop
When you say that I do not love who I am because you have not found a way to love me
Chop chop
When you leave me alone and this cycle starts all over again
Chop chop
When you cage me up
Chop chop
When you lock me out
Chop chop
When you leave me out there on my own
Chop chop
When you bury me too early
Stop stop
There is no more chopping, because I have been chopped up.
I came into this world whole and looked what happened to me.
Chop Chop



CHIP
By Jamal Taylor

This is not about a potato chip or a computer chip
This is about chip chip
I recognize that things are not perfect
Chip chip
I do not live in the best community or go to the best school
Chip chip
I had teachers who did not understand me, therefore could not teach me
Chip chip
My own brothers sometimes approach with felonious ideas
Chip chip
But I met this one Brother named Ben who taught me how to think big
Chip chip
Then I met another Brother named Mosley who told me I was a tall blade of glass, not a short barrel. I am the same height but somehow feel differently
Chip chip
Then there was Brother Fanon who refused to accept that amputation and let his chest expand without limit. I realize I have a chest too.
Chip Chip
Then there was Brother Myers who helped me get that monkey off my back when others called me a monster
Chip Chip
Then there was the teacher who introduced me to all these brother and sister authors so I could chip away at the things I believed were holding me back.
Chip Chop
I no longer have a chip on my shoulder, but a chip in my mind
Chip Chip
And it is because of all that chipping that my life will turn out fine.
Chip Chip
All thanks to that teacher who gave me brother and sister authors who chipped away their pain, that chipping reached me just the same.
I am now in chip chop shape.

Until next time,

Peace

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