Tag: Troy L. Wiggins

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Book Features Books

Good Reads: Trouble the Waters

The Bluff City’s fans of speculative fiction have a new reason to rejoice in the recently released Trouble the Waters: Tales From the Deep Blue (Third Man Books) edited by Pan Morigan and Memphians Sheree Renée Thomas and Troy L. Wiggins. The anthology is mesmerizing, a collection sparkling with a myriad of voices, some plumbing the depths of the mystic while others cast their gaze on the far-off future.

Thomas and Wiggins are no strangers to sci-fi and speculative fiction. Both writers contributed to last year’s Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda prose anthology, and Thomas is the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science-Fiction. In this newest work, water is the unifying motif. Like water itself — freezing, fogging, fluidly expanding to fill any space — the stories within take many shapes.

“The Water Creatures in my own story,” writes Thomas in the collection’s introduction, “remind us that while the earth is round, her waters are vast and deep. We may never know all the strange, wondrous life-forms teeming below.”

In Thomas’ “Love Hangover,” the protagonist, Frankie, fawns over a siren-like singer. “Like Delilah Divine’s voice, the music was sweet water finding its own way home,” Thomas writes. “The challenge was finding a way to listen and not get drenched. With Delilah you drowned.” In the short story, as in much of Thomas’ work, music is tied to the life force; drum beats are like heartbeats (check out her collection Nine Bar Blues, which is populated by dancers, DJs, and other musical magic). The story culminates with the 1979 fire at the Infinity disco, as the author deftly balances the forces of water and fire.

Memphian Danian Darrell Jerry’s “A City Called Heaven” conjures images of epidemic in Memphis. It begins with Sibyl walking west along Beale Street, trodding familiar ground. Beneath the specter of disease, a desire for life takes root, but the question is how to hold on to that life. Music and religion, two of the city’s driving forces, figure prominently in the story.

In “Seven Generations Algorithm” by Andrea Hairston, though the future may be bleak, with the gulf between the haves and have-nots as apparent as it is today, song and story still offer a saving grace. “Refugees, squatters, and former desperadoes were pitching tents in dead big-box stores, hoping for miracles: jobs, food, electricity, a plan, a vision — maybe just cheap cell service,” Hairston writes. Meanwhile, the author and playwright continues, “Folks who could were locked up tight down in the valley behind a flood wall and megawatt gates. Electric Paradise was on the other side of the Mall — a waste of power and good river valley soil.”

Speaking over the phone, Memphian Jamey Hatley tells me about her story, “Spirits Don’t Cross Over ’Til They Do,” which follows a veteran of the Vietnam War, Rabbit, as he tries to find a place for himself. Rabbit has seen too much death, too little reason for hope. He was in Memphis when Otis Redding died, when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

“How do survivors return?” Hatley asks. “There used to be rights of passage if you were a warrior. You would go through this process to be reacclimated into the community. Even now we’re having all these talks about how our veterans are not being taken care of, how the waiting lists for mental healthcare are incredibly long. … How do you try to make yourself whole?”

Featuring authors from familiar environs such as Memphis and New Orleans, but as far away as Northern Ireland and Copenhagen, and casting a net into the world of myth and memory, of foresight and prophecy for inspiration, Trouble the Waters is as beautiful and frightening and changing as the sea itself. Poetry, magic, and Afrofuturism inform the stories within, bidding the reader to drift away, borne aloft on a sea of story, to awake on a strange and wondrous shore.

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Cover Feature News

2021: Here’s Looking at You

If 2020 was the year of despair, 2021 appears to be the year of hope.

Wanna see what that could look like? Cast your gaze to Wuhan, China, birthplace of COVID-19.

News footage from Business Insider shows hundreds of carefree young people gathered in a massive swimming pool, dancing and splashing at a rock concert. They are effortlessly close together and there’s not a mask in sight. Bars and restaurants are packed with maskless revelers. Night markets are jammed. Business owners smile, remember the bleak times, and say the worst is behind them. How far behind? There’s already a COVID-19 museum in Wuhan.

That could be Memphis (once again) one day. But that day is still likely months off. Vaccines arrived here in mid-December. Early doses rightfully went to frontline healthcare workers. Doses for the masses won’t likely come until April or May, according to health experts.

While we still cannot predict exactly “what” Memphians will be (can be?) doing next year, we can tell you “where” they might be doing it. New places will open their doors next year, and Memphis is set for some pretty big upgrades.

But it doesn’t stop there. “Memphis has momentum” was Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s catchphrase as he won a second term for the office last October. It did. New building projects bloomed like the Agricenter’s sunflowers. And it still does. Believe it or not, not even COVID-19 could douse developers’ multi-million-dollar optimism on the city.

Here are few big projects slated to open in 2021:

Renasant Convention Center

Throughout 2020, crews have been hard at work inside and outside the building once called the Cook Convention Center.

City officials and Memphis Tourism broke ground on a $200-million renovation project for the building in January 2020. The project will bring natural light and color to the once dark and drab convention center built in 1974. The first events are planned for the Renasant Convention Center in the new year.

Memphis International Airport

Memphis International Airport

Expect the ribbon to be cut on Memphis International Airport’s $245-million concourse modernization project in 2021. The project was launched in 2014 in an effort to upgrade the airport’s concourse to modern standards and to right-size the space after Delta de-hubbed the airport.

Once finished, all gates, restaurants, shops, and more will be located in a single concourse. The space will have higher ceilings, more natural light, wider corridors, moving walkways, children’s play areas, a stage for live music, and more.

Collage Dance Collective

The beautiful new building on the corner of Tillman and Sam Cooper is set to open next year in an $11-million move for the Collage Dance Collective.

The 22,000-square-foot performing arts school will feature five studios, office space, a dressing room, a study lounge, 70 parking spaces, and a physical therapy area.

The Memphian Hotel

The Memphian Hotel

A Facebook post by The Memphian Hotel reads, “Who is ready for 2021?” The hotel is, apparently. Developers told the Daily Memphian recently that the 106-room, $24-million hotel is slated to open in April.

“Walking the line between offbeat and elevated, The Memphian will give guests a genuine taste of Midtown’s unconventional personality, truly capturing the free spirit of the storied art district in which the property sits,” reads a news release.

Watch for work to begin next year on big projects in Cooper-Young, the Snuff District, Liberty Park, Tom Lee Park, and The Walk. — Toby Sells

Book ‘Em

After the Spanish flu epidemic and World War I came a flood of convention-defying fiction as authors wrestled with the trauma they had lived through. E.M. Forster confronted colonialism and rigid gender norms in A Passage to India. Virginia Woolf published Mrs. Dalloway. James Joyce gave readers Ulysses. Langston Hughes’ first collection, The Weary Blues, was released.

It’s too early to tell what authors and poets will make of 2020, a year in which America failed to contain the coronavirus. This reader, though, is eager to see what comes.

Though I’ve been a bit too nervous to look very far into 2021 (I don’t want to jinx it, you know?), there are a few books already on my to-read list. First up, I’m excited for MLK50 founding managing editor Deborah Douglas’ U.S. Civil Rights Trail, due in January. Douglas lives in Chicago now, but there’s sure to be some Memphis in that tome.

Next, Ed Tarkington’s The Fortunate Ones, also due in January, examines privilege and corruption on Nashville’s Capitol Hill. Early reviews have compared Tarkington to a young Pat Conroy. For anyone disappointed in Tennessee’s response to any of this year’s crises, The Fortunate Ones is not to be missed.

Most exciting, perhaps, is the forthcoming Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda prose anthology, expected February 2nd. The anthology is edited by Memphis-born journalist Jesse J. Holland, and also features a story by him, as well as Memphians Sheree Renée Thomas, Troy L. Wiggins, and Danian Darrell Jerry.

“To be in pages with so many Memphis writers just feels wonderful,” Thomas told me when I called her to chat about the good news. “It’s a little surreal, but it’s fun,” Jerry adds, explaining that he’s been a Marvel comics fan since childhood. “I get to mix some of those childhood imaginings with some of the skills I’ve worked to acquire over the years.”

Though these books give just a glimpse at the literary landscape of the coming year, if they’re any indication of what’s to come, then, if nothing else, Memphians will have more great stories to look forward to. — Jesse Davis

Courtesy Memphis Redbirds

AutoZone Park

Take Me Out With the Crowd

Near the end of my father’s life, we attended a Redbirds game together at AutoZone Park. A few innings into the game, Dad turned to me and said, “I like seeing you at a ballpark. I can tell your worries ease.”

Then along came 2020, the first year in at least four decades that I didn’t either play in a baseball game or watch one live, at a ballpark, peanuts and Cracker Jack a soft toss away. The pandemic damaged most sports over the last 12 months, but it all but killed minor-league baseball, the small-business version of our national pastime, one that can’t lean on television and sponsorship revenue to offset the loss of ticket-buying fans on game day. AutoZone Park going a year without baseball is the saddest absence I’ve felt in Memphis culture since moving to this remarkable town in 1991. And I’m hoping today — still 2020, dammit — that 2021 marks a revival, even if it’s gradual. In baseball terms, we fans will take a base on balls to get things going before we again swing for the fences.

All indications are that vaccines will make 2021 a better year for gathering, be it at your favorite watering hole or your favorite ballpark. Indications also suggest that restrictions will remain in place well into the spring and summer (baseball season). How many fans can a ballpark host and remain safe? How many fans will enjoy the “extras” of an evening at AutoZone Park — that sunset over the Peabody, that last beer in the seventh inning — if a mask must be worn as part of the experience? And what kind of operation will we see when the gates again open? Remember, these are small businesses. Redbirds president Craig Unger can be seen helping roll out the tarp when a July thunderstorm interrupts the Redbirds and Iowa Cubs. What will “business as usual” mean for Triple-A baseball as we emerge from the pandemic?

I wrote down three words and taped them up on my home-office wall last March: patience, determination, and empathy. With a few more doses of each — and yes, millions of doses of one vaccine or another — the sports world will regain crowd-thrilling normalcy. For me, it will start when I take a seat again in my happy place. It’s been a long, long time, Dad, since my worries properly eased.— Frank Murtaugh

Film in 2021: Don’t Give up Hope

“Nobody knows anything.” Never has William Goldman’s immortal statement about Hollywood been more true. Simply put, 2020 was a disaster for the industry. The pandemic closed theaters and called Hollywood’s entire business model into question. Warner Brothers’ announcement that it would stream all of its 2021 offerings on HBO Max sent shock waves through the industry. Some said it was the death knell for theaters.

I don’t buy it. Warner Brothers, owned by AT&T and locked in a streaming war with Netflix and Disney, are chasing the favor of Wall Street investors, who love the rent-seeking streaming model. But there’s just too much money on the table to abandon theaters. 2019 was a record year at the box office, with $42 billion in worldwide take, $11.4 billion of which was from North America. Theatrical distribution is a proven business model that has worked for 120 years. Netflix, on the other hand, is $12 billion in debt.

Will audiences return to theaters once we’ve vaccinated our way out of the coronavirus-shaped hole we’re in? Prediction at this point is a mug’s game, but signs point to yes. Tenet, which will be the year’s biggest film, grossed $303 million in overseas markets where the virus was reasonably under control. In China, where the pandemic started, a film called My People, My Homeland has brought in $422 million since October 1st. I don’t know about y’all, but once I get my jab, they’re going to have to drag me out of the movie theater.

There will be quite a bit to watch. With the exception of Wonder Woman 1984, the 2020 blockbusters were pushed to 2021, including Dune, Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, the latest James Bond installment No Time to Die, Marvel’s much-anticipated Black Widow, Top Gun: Maverick, and Godzilla vs. Kong. Memphis director Craig Brewer’s second film with Eddie Murphy, the long-awaited Coming 2 America, will bow on Amazon March 5th, with the possibility of a theatrical run still in the cards.

There’s no shortage of smaller, excellent films on tap. Regina King’s directorial debut One Night in Miami, about a meeting between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown, premieres January 15th. Minari, the stunning story of Korean immigrants in rural Arkansas, which was Indie Memphis 2020’s centerpiece film, lands February 12th. The Bob’s Burgers movie starts cooking April 9th. And coolest of all, next month Indie Memphis will partner with Sundance to bring the latest in cutting-edge cinema to the Malco Summer Drive-In. There’s plenty to be hopeful for in the new year. — Chris McCoy

Looking Ahead: Music

We usually highlight the upcoming hot concerts in this space, but those are still on the back burner. Instead, get a load of these stacks of hot wax (and streams) dropping next year. Remember, the artists get a better share when you purchase rather than stream, especially physical product like vinyl.

Alysse Gafkjen

Julien Baker

One of the biggest-profile releases will be Julien Baker’s Little Oblivians, due out on Matador in February. Her single “Faith Healer” gives us a taste of what to expect. Watch the Flyer for more on that soon. As for other drops from larger indie labels, Merge will offer up A Little More Time with Reigning Sound in May (full disclosure: this all-Memphis version of the band includes yours truly).

Closer to home, John Paul Keith’s The Rhythm of the City also drops in February, co-released by hometown label Madjack and Italian imprint Wild Honey. Madjack will also offer up albums by Mark Edgar Stuart and Jed Zimmerman, the latter having been produced by Stuart. Matt Ross-Spang is mixing Zimmerman’s record, and there’s much buzz surrounding it (but don’t worry, it’s properly grounded).

Jeremy Stanfill mines similar Americana territory, and he’ll release new work on the Blue Barrel imprint. Meanwhile, look for more off-kilter sounds from Los Psychosis and Alicja Trout’s Alicja-Pop project, both on Black & Wyatt. That label will also be honored with a compilation of their best releases so far, by Head Perfume out of Dresden. On the quieter side of off-kilter, look for Aquarian Blood’s Sending the Golden Hour on Goner in May.

Bruce Watson’s Delta-Sonic Sound studio has been busy, and affiliated label Bible & Tire Recording Co. will release a big haul of old-school gospel, some new, some archival, including artists Elizabeth King and Pastor Jack Ward, and compilations from the old J.C.R. and D-Vine Spiritual labels. Meanwhile, Big Legal Mess will drop new work from singer/songwriter Alexa Rose and, in March, Luna 68 — the first new album from the City Champs in 10 years. Expect more groovy organ and guitar boogaloo jazz from the trio, with a heaping spoonful of science-fiction exotica to boot.

Many more artists will surely be releasing Bandcamp singles, EPs, and more, but for web-based content that’s thinking outside of the stream, look for the January premiere of Unapologetic’s UNDRGRNDAF RADIO, to be unveiled on weareunapologetic.com and their dedicated app. — Alex Greene

Chewing Over a Tough Year

Beware the biohazard.

Samuel X. Cicci

The Beauty Shop

Perhaps a bit hyperbolic, but the image that pops into my head when thinking about restaurants in 2020 are the contagion-esque geo-domes that Karen Carrier set up on the back patio of the Beauty Shop. A clever conceit, but also a necessary one — a move designed to keep diners safe and separated when going out to eat. If it all seems a little bizarre, well, that’s what 2020 was thanks to COVID-19.

We saw openings, closings, restrictions, restrictions lifted, restrictions then put back in place; the Memphis Restaurant Association and Shelby County Health Department arguing back and forth over COVID guidelines, with both safety and survival at stake; and establishments scrambling to find creative ways to drum up business. The Beauty Shop domes were one such example. The Reilly’s Downtown Majestic Grille, on the other hand, transformed into Cocozza, an Italian ghost concept restaurant put into place until it was safe to reopen Majestic in its entirety. Other places, like Global Café, put efforts in place to help provide meals to healthcare professionals or those who had fallen into financial hardship during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, not every restaurant was able to survive the pandemic. The popular Lucky Cat Ramen on Broad Ave. closed its doors, as did places like Puck Food Hall, 3rd & Court, Avenue Coffee, Midtown Crossing Grill, and many others.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Working in the hospitality business requires a certain kind of resilience, and that showed up in spades. Many restaurants adapted to new regulations quickly, and with aplomb, doing their best to create a safe environment for hungry Memphians all while churning out takeout and delivery orders.

And even amid a pandemic backdrop, many aspiring restaurateurs tried their hand at opening their own places. Chip and Amanda Dunham branched out from the now-closed Grove Grill to open Magnolia & May, a country brasserie in East Memphis. Just a few blocks away, a new breakfast joint popped up in Southall Café. Downtown, the Memphis Chess Club opened its doors, complete with a full-service café and restaurant. Down in Whitehaven, Ken and Mary Olds created Muggin Coffeehouse, the first locally owned coffee shop in the neighborhood. And entrepreneurial-minded folks started up their own delivery-only ventures, like Brittney Adu’s Furloaved Breads + Bakery.

So what will next year bring? With everything thrown out of whack, I’m loath to make predictions, but with a vaccine on the horizon, I’m hoping (fingers crossed) that it becomes safer to eat out soon, and the restaurant industry can begin a long-overdue recovery. And to leave you with what will hopefully be a metaphor for restaurants in 2021: By next summer, Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman’s Hog & Hominy will complete its Phoenician rebirth from the ashes of a disastrous fire and open its doors once again.

In the meantime, keep supporting your local restaurants! — Samuel X. Cicci

“Your Tickets Will be at Will Call”

Oh, to hear those words again, and plenty of arts organizations are eager to say them. The pandemic wrecked the seasons for performing arts groups and did plenty of damage to museums and galleries.

Not that they haven’t made valiant and innovative efforts to entertain from afar with virtual programming.

But they’re all hoping to mount physical, not virtual, seasons in the coming year.

Playhouse on the Square suspended scheduled in-person stage productions until June 2021. This includes the 52nd season lineup of performances that were to be on the stages of Playhouse on the Square, The Circuit Playhouse, and TheatreWorks at the Square. It continues to offer the Playhouse at Home Series, digital content via its website and social media.

Theatre Memphis celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2021 and is eager to show off its new facility, a major renovation that was going to shut it down most of 2020 anyway while it expanded common spaces and added restrooms and production space while updating dressing rooms and administrative offices. But the hoped-for August opening was pushed back, and it plans to reschedule the programming for this season to next.

Hattiloo Theatre will continue to offer free online programming in youth acting and technical theater, and it has brought a five-week playwright’s workshop and free Zoom panel discussions with national figures in Black theater. Like the other institutions, it is eager to get back to the performing stage when conditions allow.

Ballet Memphis has relied on media and platforms that don’t require contact, either among audience members or dancers. But if there are fewer partnerings among dancers, there are more solos, and group movement is well-distanced. The organization has put several short pieces on video, releasing some and holding the rest for early next year. It typically doesn’t start a season until late summer or early fall, so the hope is to get back into it without missing a step.

Opera Memphis is active with its live Sing2Me program of mobile opera concerts and programming on social media. Its typical season starts with 30 Days of Opera in August that usually leads to its first big production of the season, so, COVID willing, that may emerge.

Courtesy Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Dana Claxton, Headdress at the Brooks earlier this year.

Museums and galleries, such as the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, National Civil Rights Museum, and the Metal Museum are functioning at limited capacity, but people can go and enjoy the offerings. The scope of the shows is limited, as coronavirus has put the kibosh on blockbuster shows for now. Look for easing of protocols as the situation allows in the coming year. — Jon W. Sparks

Politics

Oyez. Oyez. Oh yes, there is one year out of every four in which regularly scheduled elections are not held in Shelby County, and 2021 is such a year. But decisions will be made during the year by the Republican super-majority of the state legislature in Nashville that will have a significant bearing on the elections that will occur in the three-year cycle of 2022-2024 and, in fact, on those occurring through 2030.

This would be in the course of the constitutionally required ritual during which district lines are redefined every 10 years for the decade to come, in the case of legislative seats and Congressional districts. The U.S. Congress, on the basis of population figures provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, will have allocated to each state its appropriate share of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. And the state legislature will determine how that number is apportioned statewide. The current number of Tennessee’s Congressional seats is nine. The state’s legislative ratio is fixed at 99 state House members and 33 members of the state Senate.

Tennessee is one of 37 states in which, as indicated, the state legislature calls the shots for both Congressional and state redistricting. The resultant redistricting undergoes an approval process like any other measure, requiring a positive vote in both the state Senate and the state House, with the Governor empowered to consent or veto.

No one anticipates any disagreements between any branches of government. Any friction in the redistricting process will likely involve arguments over turf between neighboring GOP legislators. Disputes emanating from the minority Democrats will no doubt be at the mercy of the courts.

The forthcoming legislative session is expected to be lively, including holdover issues relating to constitutional carry (the scrapping of permits for firearms), private school vouchers (currently awaiting a verdict by the state Supreme Court), and, as always, abortion. Measures relating to the ongoing COVID crisis and vaccine distribution are expected, as is a proposal to give elected county executives primacy over health departments in counties where the latter exist.

There is no discernible disharmony between those two entities in Shelby County, whose government has devoted considerable attention over the last year to efforts to control the pandemic and offset its effects. Those will continue, as well as efforts to broaden the general inclusiveness of county government vis-à-vis ethnic and gender groups.

It is still a bit premature to speculate on future shifts of political ambition, except to say that numerous personalities, in both city and county government, are eyeing the prospects of succeeding Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland in 2023. And several Democrats are looking at a potential race against District Attorney General Amy Weirich in 2022.

There are strong rumors that, after a false start or two, Memphis will follow the lead of several East Tennessee co-ops and finally depart from TVA.

And meanwhile, in March, the aforesaid Tennessee Democrats will select a new chair from numerous applicants. — Jackson Baker

Categories
Book Features Books

Wakanda Forever: Bluff City Writers Contribute to Black Panther Anthology

Memphis looms large in the just-announced Marvel Black Panther prose anthology, Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda, due next February. Not that T’Challa is hanging out on Beale Street, taking in a view of the Mississippi, or attending art shows at the CMPLX. No, it’s that so many Memphis authors have contributed to the collection.

Memphians all, poet/editor/author Sheree Renée Thomas, teacher/author Danian Darrell Jerry, and FIYAH magazine publisher and Memphis Flyer contributor Troy L. Wiggins are all featured in the anthology, which is edited by Memphis/Holly Springs native Jesse J. Holland.

“I was like, ‘This is a dream that I wouldn’t have said aloud.’ I was thrilled. Can this year get any crazier?” says Thomas, who is having something of a banner year. Her short story collection, Nine Bar Blues, was published in spring (and many stories are eligible for awards), she contributed to the Slay vampire anthology, and was named the new editor of long-running The Magazine of Fantasy & Science-Fiction. “It’s a 20-plus year overnight success. I spent years quietly just working, publishing, of course, but not getting huge fanfare beyond the anthologies,” Thomas says. “That’s how it is for everyone, but we focus on the exceptions.

“Writing is a long game. You’ve got to be a long distance runner. It’s one thing my mentor Arthur Flowers has always said,” she continues. “It may be a while before you’re published in something your family recognizes.”

But if there’s a list of high-profile recognizable characters, Black Panther is indisputably on it. Though Thomas is a longtime reader of sci-fi and fantasy, she says she’s newer to the world of comics. “I wasn’t able to read comics regularly as a child. [It was], ‘Here’s your library card, go to the library.’” But, the author says, she is a fan of the character. In fact, she dressed up to attend the 2018 screening of Black Panther and even made it onto some news clips about the night. “They show me in my Wakanda outfit with a huge afro. I was ready for Wakanda,” Thomas says with a laugh. And anyone who’s read her work can attest that Thomas will be right at home in the Afrofuturism of Wakanda.

“When Chadwick Boseman passed, that was a big blow to everyone,” she continues, remembering the charismatic Black Panther star who passed away in August of this year. “I had to take a moment to kind of regroup from that. I think it had an effect on us. We were so hoping that he would be able to enjoy the book. So it put new passion into the writing to honor his amazing performance. He embodied the Black Panther.”

Of course, writing for Marvel means digging into decades of history. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby debuted the character of T’Challa in 1966. “When I was writing my story I had to do a lot of research,” Thomas says. “You’re not using the Marvel Universe; you’re using the canon. And of course, the new story threads that are being written out by Ta-Nehisi Coates and others.” (Note: Coates’ The Water Dancer was my favorite novel of 2019, and his ongoing run on Black Panther makes for some of the most exciting and challenging comics I’ve ever read.)

“I’ve always been a big Marvel fan,” says Danian Darrell Jerry. “Not just Black Panther, but anything they’ve put out — X-Men, Spider-Man, Avengers, Doctor Strange. So this is a great opportunity for me to get in there and tap into some of the things I imagined as a child. It’s a little surreal, but it’s fun.”

Jerry is a native Memphian with deep roots in the city’s creative scenes. He’s a hip-hop artist who works with the Iron Mic Coalition. “I’ve always been interested in reading and books and comics, but I’ve always been interested in the arts in general,” he says. What’s more, Jerry works here to help promote literacy and an appreciation for literature — from childhood on to adulthood.

He has his MFA from the University of Memphis, where he now works as an adjunct English instructor teaching composition and literature classes. “This last semester I got a chance to teach Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me in my lit classes. [It was great] taking my literature class and adding a BIPOC focus and lens to it, examining hard questions on race relations in class, which was very productive.”


As founder of Neighborhood Heroes, a community outreach program, Jerry has used comic books as a tool to foster an appreciation of reading. Now he’s writing some of those same characters. “We use comics and fantasy to promote literacy to kids, teaching kids how to read through comics,” he says. “Last year, we threw an event on Mud Island, and it’s funny because we had ‘Black Panther’ come out and greet the kids and take pictures. We had cosplayers, and they loved it. Last year I was doing that, and this year I got the chance to actually write in the Black Panther book.”

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Long Way

CREDIT: Edward Olive | Dreamstime

I’m going to take the long way around to my point here, so please bear with me:

When I was younger, my parents were really, really hard on me.

Find any black person of an age with me, they’ll tell you the same thing. Their parents valued excellence in everything they did. They were held to a high standard for academic and social performance, and if they did not achieve like their parents knew they needed to achieve, they would face consequences.

The reasoning for this was simple enough: The world that their children were about to enter would be hypercritical, emotionally violent, and unforgiving. Their work, effort, and labor would be undervalued and dismissed. In the worst-case scenario, they would end up a victim of violence with no real chance at justice.

Edward Olive | Dreamstime

Most folks know this as the whole “twice as good” mantra that was once standard kitchen table conversation between black parents and their children and that has now become part of public empathizing in the wake of the police state’s brutalization of black children and communities.

I had no excuses. I showed my hand early by excelling academically and following the rules laid down by power structures, which my parents appreciated but did not accept as my best. Of course, I could do better, they reasoned, because only an unrealistic standard of perfection would keep me from being lynched, tear-gassed, executed, or put in jail. So they pushed me further, harder, with methods that would seem inhumane to outsiders not familiar with the intricacies of black parenting and the nuanced position that comes with being responsible for a black child whose life holds so little value to the rest of the world.

I am not making excuses for my parents or for any other black parents out there. Many of our parents’ strategies for keeping us safe traumatized us, created deep insecurities in us, and made us mentally unhealthy in ways that we are still trying to unravel. But for so many of us, this was how they ensured that they loved us and that they wanted us to be safe. And those of us who are able to appreciate our parents’ efforts do so, because we realize on an existential level that these structures we live in are designed to disenfranchise and destroy us and that our parents were using the resources and methods they had available to save our souls.

Like I said, I’m taking the long way around to my point, but I’m getting there.

Our country, and yes, our city is at a tipping point. Nationally, the publicizing of the grand racist political experiment has been a success. Racists and Nazis feel emboldened to demonstrate their commitment to ethno-nationalism and genocide on a massive level, and the recently woke resistance isn’t always the best breakwater in which to stand in the face of this fundamental, sweeping tide of hatred. We’re creeping up on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, a big black mark on our city’s legacy, and our city seems content to continue devoting more of our community resources to those groups that we consider inherently more deserving of our political goodwill and policy assistance, widening the gaps in achievement and possibility for disenfranchised Memphians.

I am often accused of being overly critical of our city, of the systems at play here, of the political and economic actors who traffic in discrimination and marginalization in order to pad their pockets and secure their power. But my criticism comes from love for this city that has nurtured me and allowed me to create myself within its bounds. I am talking of the Agape love that Dr. King himself envisioned and championed for deep and lasting community change. This is the kind of love that allows us to look honestly at our community and recognize how it fails at being equitable and democratic. To people who benefit from these deep divisions, this push for love-based systemization of equity is threatening, feels discriminatory. But that’s how we know that our cause is the right one. If people who traditionally hold power are comfortable with our opposing actions, we need to rethink our strategy.

Our community is at a crux. The forces of hatred are emboldened. Public interest and development are in the hands of people who do not always have the community’s day-to-day concerns at heart. Disenfranchised and marginalized Memphians are yet crying out for justice and are showing a dedication to achieving it by any means necessary. This is not the time for half-measures, nor half-stepping. This is the time for our community and our leaders to be revolutionary in their policies, actions, and thoughts. This is the time to make existing power structures and the people that benefit from them quiver in their boots. Our city and this country are poised for dramatic change, and it will be the people themselves who determine our direction. We must be hard on ourselves, on our leaders, and exacting in our vision of justice if we want to prevent our communities from being hollowed out by the parties of hatred.

Troy L. Wiggins is a Memphis writer whose work has appeared in the Memphis Noir anthology, Make Memphis, and The Memphis Flyer.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Howdy, Neighbor!

I can see your little beady eyes through the blinds, neighbor. I was minding my own business, walking down the street and listening to my podcast — ironically, the episode is about the complexity of gentrification, the fact that there aren’t always clear-cut reasons for why urban displacement happens the way it does outside of those forces we already know are at play.

Why are you watching me so closely? Is it because my body and my skin make me a walking violation of the unspoken rules here? Are you worried that I’m going to rob you? Don’t. You don’t have anything I want. I love my life. I don’t want to have what you have or be a part of you or drive your car or eat your food. And I’m certainly not going to jeopardize my future over you and your insecurities.

But I’m irritated. Despite my innate status as a habitual line-stepper, I do follow the rules. Obsessively, even. I have created my own internal taxonomy of the unwritten rules, research spearheaded by my decades of necessary study of how you move through the world and the hateful current you leave in your wake. I clean up my trash; I leash my dogs; I don’t make too much noise. I am loud sometimes sure, but that’s just how I am sometimes. You’ll be all right. I hold the door and smile and stand up straight and don’t walk toward you too fast and jingle my keys or cough when it’s dark outside so that you know I’m coming and don’t accidentally call the police to have me arrested for the crime of breathing too close to where you’ve decided you want to be. All of this in 2017, a time when I’m more than justified in cursing you out for slights old and new. But I’m trying to be nice, stupid me.

And what’s really screwed up is that I don’t have time to worry about you. I have to worry about my city being the “bankruptcy capital of the U.S.” I have to worry about the Tennessee Historical Commission blocking us from removing the honorable racist general and his horse from our public parks. I have to wonder how my little brother is getting home from work and whether or not my dog can go another week without a bath and whether I’ve wasted $30 because I didn’t freeze the three pounds of catfish still sitting on the bottom shelf of my refrigerator. I have to worry about whether or not Amazon or “public improvement projects” or any number of contentious developments are going to once again extract labor and time and pain from poor people here and use it to pad their pockets. I have a lot of worries, you see.

You’d think that black neighborhoods were cesspools of savagery, with broken-down cars and untended yards and robberies — all reasons why they deserve to be kept in disinvestment purgatory. But the folks in my previous neighborhood were calm and kind. They let my dogs run in their yard and pulled my trash can to the street if I forgot and let me borrow their jumper cables. They gave me spare change when I needed it and brought me back bags of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos from the corner store even when I didn’t ask them to. The way they looked at the space that we shared included me, saw me and my family for what I was in truth, not for what I represented based on their silly biases and lack of empathy.

You’re not good at sharing, which is what you’re supposed to do in spaces like this. You’re not good at sharing because you’ve been centered in everything since the beginning of this grand experiment, and this centering, all this attention paid to you is so deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness and in our operation that you feel truly justified in the disgusting ways that you behave toward me in this space that we’ve both paid for access to. I don’t have room to be a bad neighbor, which sucks, because if I could I’d invite my thuggish rapper friends over and I’d pay them to jump up and down and spit fire verses over those dank beats y’all like to play in your Prius. But this would be in the middle of our shared street, and all of the other black people over here would dance around the glow of my rapper friends’ gold chains like it was a bonfire and we were casting a dark magic spell to banish you from our space.

But I’m not a bad neighbor, so I won’t do that. Instead I’ll continue to find joy in being better than you and making you so uncomfortable that you’d rather disappear than chance a meeting with me in the hallway. Oh, and my address has finally been confirmed on NextDoor.com, so be careful, because I’m lurking. The next time you make a frantic post about how scared you are because there are strange black men walking down the street like crazed gorillas, I’m gonna spam your posts with that picture where somebody photoshopped buttholes over Donald Trump’s eyeballs and mouth. In the meantime, I’m going to get to work on having my rapper friends come over to our part of town. It’s gonna take us a while to get this dark magic spell cast, and I want to make sure it’s done just right.
Troy L. Wiggins is a Memphis writer whose work has appeared in the Memphis Noir anthology, Make Memphis, and The Memphis Flyer.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Letter to My City

There are dead and dying black people everywhere.

I haven’t logged on to Facebook in two weeks, partly because people talk too damn much, partly because I don’t want to watch endlessly looped videos of black and brown people’s slaughter and share sadface emojis because I don’t have any more meaningful words about their deaths.

Words are data-mined and used in targeted ads: Quality proofreading services, Marvel’s Defenders series, black and brown people vomiting blood from gunshot wounds in 4k resolution on your screen — aren’t these new phones amazing? Look at that quality; you can see each individual shudder in that death rattle. Check out these suggested videos. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Cry.

I love Memphis, but does Memphis love me?

Last night, I was driving home from dinner in my mom’s car. My neighborhood is belted by extreme affluence on one end and extreme poverty on the other. I live squarely in the middle, in the liminal space, which is lowkey my existence because I’m the kind of millennial that people aren’t talking about when they talk about millennials. Charleena Lyles was a millennial, too. I wonder if her love of avocado toast is to blame for our failing economy. I wonder how many degrees of separation there are between avocado toast and her murder. There are dead and dying black people everywhere.

I was driving my mom’s car last night to get dinner for my family. My route is always the same when I’m heading west toward home: turn on the rich people’s street to get to the street designated for the not-rich black people, most of whom are dying from incarceration, from poverty, from generations of advancing bare centimeters and you all should be grateful, we could just wall off your part of the neighborhood and leave you in Memphadishu, dude, but I’m cool, bro, so here, have a swig of my 201 Hoplar what do you mean you don’t like IPAs? I don’t even know who Duanna Johnson is, dude. Forget it, we’re building the wall, don’t say we never tried to give you anything.

The rich people’s street on my side of the ‘hood has 24-hour security patrols. The rich people’s street on the other side of the ‘hood has 24 hour security patrols and those police blue eyes in the sky that are possibly the blue eyes of the precogs rifling through our black minds for prethoughtcrimes against the white supremacist order, the better to justify our murders. Data-driven probable cause, but all the artificial intelligence is racist.

My route is always the same. I turn on the rich people’s street to get to my street. As I am sitting in the lane to turn on the rich people’s street, a blue eye — a blue life? — pulls up short, creeps behind me as I am sitting in my mom’s car, a bag of food in my wife’s lap. The other blue eye winks from across the street, as if to say to the blue life behind me, “Do what you gotta do. Fear for your life if you need to.”

Thankfully, my child hasn’t been born, so they won’t have to see my black life taken by this blue life. All I’ve done is buy dinner. I have guacamole in the bag. How many avocadoes is my black life worth? I contemplate having my wife turn on Facebook Live — if I go, I’m going out in 4k. But we’re working-class blacks and we can’t afford 4k tech on a writer’s salary, so I don’t bother. I haven’t committed a crime, but neither did Philando or Sandra or Tamir or Darrius or eight-year-old Aiyana or Laquan or anyone else on this charnel house list that started, really, in 1619. There are dead and dying black people everywhere. Listen to the high definition sound quality of those rattling chains.

That winking blue eye followed me through my dreams. On my way to work, I pass two signs: “I <3 Memphis” and “Memphis Loves Everybody.” Let’s do the math: One of those is true; the other is bullshit. Memphis don’t love me. Memphis loves those other millennials, the ones who think quality avocado toast goes well with craft IPAs. Memphis don’t love me. Memphis glares at me suspiciously in its tourist sandals while I’m going to pick up my slices from Memphis Pizza Cafe, even though I’ve been going there since I was 16 and the millennials Memphis loves just got here last year. Memphis loves grit and grind. Memphis loves urban displacement, platitudes, preserving historic standards, saving the Greensward. Memphis loves being number 3 on the Best New Mid-Sized Cities for Millennial Homebuyers list. Memphis loves progress as long as it comes with a shaggy surfer haircut, a pantsuit, a startup with a Grizzlies blue-and-gold material UI logo, a digital rendering of a pistol, and an insensitive ironic slogan because that’s the new Memphis, man. Memphis loves not loving me and people like me.

I finally log on to Facebook. People are still talking. Dana Loesch is in an NRA ad calling for people to take up arms and defend America in its noble struggle against its oppressed. City, county, and state politicians are still debating whether it’s more economically viable to smother us slowly or to bleed us out with a single bullet. The Commercial Appeal is “exploring” Memphis’ problem with gun violence. A blue life creeps by, armed and armored in the same kind of van that Freddie Gray was killed in. Memphis loves Everybody. There are dead and dying black people all over this city. I love Memphis.

Troy L. Wiggins is a Memphis writer whose work has appeared in the Memphis Noir anthology, Make Memphis, and The Memphis Flyer.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

On the Moon

CREDIT: Creative Commons | Adam Turner

I can’t pay no doctor bill.

(but Whitey’s on the moon)

Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still.

(while Whitey’s on the moon)

The man jus’ upped my rent las’ night.

(’cause Whitey’s on the moon)

No hot water, no toilets, no lights.

(but Whitey’s on the moon)

— “Whitey on the Moon,” Gil Scott-Heron, 1970

Imagine pledging allegiance to a nation that would rather you not exist, would gladly deny you the rights that you have earned for yourself 20 times over. Imagine being forced to watch from your hovels and tenements as the machine of progress trampled over any hope you had of an equitable future. Imagine being a citizen of a country or state or city that prioritized the feelings of some of its citizens over the realities of its majority. Imagine living in a “land of the free” that elected a national leader whose driving purpose seems to be to strip away the limited freedoms that exist for people unlike him and his family, all while fattening his pockets off the blood of the land. Imagine that this “land of the free” replicates these types of leaders at almost every level.

Gil Scott-Heron’s 1970 poem “Whitey on the Moon” was a symbolic questioning of American achievement in the face of the social crises listed above. At the time he wrote this poem, our country’s goal was to win the Space Race, in part to establish our military supremacy and deflect any threats against our nation’s greatness. We funneled billions of taxpayer dollars, thousands of hours of labor, and tons of resources toward low-orbit supremacy, an undertaking that ran side-by-side with anti-racist, anti-poverty social movements. Civil rights movement leaders and poor black people alike wondered how America could devote so much time and effort to sending astronauts to space but not make any attempt to do right by oppressed populations.

Well, the answer is simple. Whitey’s always been on the moon.

When I say this, I don’t mean that American whites are actually on the moon. I mean that they are detached from earthly reality, and every bit of progress or protest by nonwhites shoves them further into space, where logic doesn’t exist. This is especially true now, when the halls of power are populated by white men who feel comfortable pandering to the most bigoted of populations and creating policy that reflects their oppressive beliefs. For too long in America, too many white Americans have believed that white people are the vanguards of progress, technological information, culture, and freedom. Only the moon-addled can look at our world and continue to think like this.

Creative Commons | Adam Turner

Gil Scott-Heron

The number of white nationalist hate groups has spiked since November. The vast majority of hate crimes are now perpetrated against non-whites, immigrants, religious minorities, and members of the LGBT community. Every day it seems like there’s a video of a Muslim woman going to do her grocery shopping and being accosted by a soccer mom with the rage-flames of xenophobia in her eyes. People of color are being murdered by random, racist whites every other day in extremely violent ways. Bystanders and good samaritans are being slashed and stabbed by white men who armor themselves in the flag and see themselves as defenders of white American ideals. Corporations — many of them led by moon-addled white folks and enabled by white politicians — make it their policy to destroy access to wealth from workers, to keep them laboring and sick and fearful.

Other groups in this country — the groups who are often on the receiving end of white folks’ moon-borne oppression — are made to feel like they are the problem with American culture. If they didn’t practice their heathen religions, if they didn’t have those weird cultural traditions, if they would just be white, then these problems with oppression wouldn’t exist and everyone would be free.

What really sucks about this condition of white moon-blindness is that you’re always prepared for it, but it can still catch you unawares even though it is innocuous, and any white person can simply decide to let it rip, leaving you either stuck wishing you had said the right thing, facing the judgmental stares of your peers, or even, sometimes, dead. And with one of the mooniest white men in the United States currently occupying the position of president, every moon-wild bigot in the country — and even some moon-wild non-bigots — will be in rare form. They’ll be invading your neighborhoods and communities, getting you arrested and moving their friends into your grandparents’ homes. They’ll be following you around, yelling racial slurs at you, and then trying to kill you when you fight back. They’ll be casually offensive toward you or pass laws to disenfranchise you or consume your culture until there’s nothing left, but you’ll be sure that you’re the problem and not them.

Troy L. Wiggins is a Memphis writer whose work has appeared in the Memphis Noir anthology, Make Memphis magazine, and The Memphis Flyer.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Black Women’s Work

At the end of last month, a bunch of people learned about something that black women already have a ton of expertise in: discrimination. Twice in the same day, two impressively qualified, prominent black women were subjected to the same kind of stupid gender-based racism that many black women have experienced at the hands of countless Annes, Susans, and Bills throughout the history of the modern workplace.
First winner of the “disrespected by a white man” lottery unceremoniously held at the end of March was Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who was the target of consistent dumbass Bill O’Reilly, a man most notable in my mind for getting trolled by Cam’ron on his own show. After Congresswoman Waters waxed oh so eloquently in defense of those whose political stance is resistance against the Cheeto-in-Chief, O’Reilly chose to respond by attacking her physical appearance, saying she looks like James Brown. A masterful rhetorical stroke from a man who looks like a Ziploc bag filled with half-eaten mayonnaise sandwiches. He even has the nerve to work at a job where he exposes his pasty face to the American public.

Bill O’Reilly

Later that same day, Sean Spicer, chief manbaby for the Cheeto administration, spoke to White House Correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks April Ryan as if she was a child. “Please stop shaking your head” Spicer said, as if this is something you can actually say to an actual adult human being possessing decades of professional expertise in their field of work. Of course, as is expected of people who are systemically wronged, Ms. Ryan remained composed and professional in the face of condescending disrespect by a man who knows better. Ryan, you’ll recall, was first publicly disrespected by the current president, who made the age-old white-people assumption that all black people know all other black people and have the ability to ask other black folks for favors on behalf of whiteness.

This kind of disrespect is old hat to black women, who, for some reason, are the recipients of about 70 percent of all the unmitigated gall in the country.

Because this disrespect and discrimination is so common, black women across the country held a day-long discussion about it using the #BlackWomenAtWork hashtag on Twitter and Facebook, which was started by Brittany Packnett, a black woman who works on behalf of marginalized and oppressed people all over the country. #BlackWomenAtWork allowed these women to highlight true stories of work-related ill treatment at the hands of colleagues, managers, and society at large. The women participating in the hashtag discussion shared experiences where they were assumed to be underqualified for their positions, asked to perform menial service tasks even when they occupied high positions (or, in many cases, were managers!), and, of course, subjected to racial comments and improper physical contact. It’s like Solange didn’t even make an entire song about not touching black women’s hair. Y’all don’t listen.

Those of us who are not black women need to get it together. There are a lot of things that black women are not. Black women are not your best friend (unless they have explicitly said so). Black women are not your “sista girl.” Black women are not your maid or your stool pigeon or your Nubian queen or pets for you to touch without permission. Black women are not possessed of some inhuman amount of willpower that somehow makes them better able to endure stupid microaggressions. This is a good general set of rules to keep in mind for black women who are your personal acquaintances, but they are very necessary for you to remember when you are encountering black women in a work setting.

Black women are human. They usually work exponentially harder than the rest of us do, thanks to the super delicious cocktail of racism and sexism that they face on the daily. So when you encounter a black woman at work, remember that she has probably worked a lot harder than you to reach the same position that you’ve reached. Remember that she’s had to run a gauntlet of stupid comments and assumptions about her ability and outright discrimination since childhood. Remember that the weight of that gauntlet never really goes away no matter how accomplished she is or how much of a hardass she appears to be. Remember that this black woman has license to react to any crap that we subject her to in any way that preserves her sanity, and she doesn’t have to be nice about it. Remember that none of us, not you or me or the president of the United States, is owed black women’s labor, their time, or their kindness.

Troy L. Wiggins is a Memphian and writer whose work has appeared in the Memphis Noir anthology, Make Memphis magazine, and The Memphis Flyer.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Three American Stories …

These, too, are American stories.

She must constantly remind people that she was born here, born in the same land that her ancestors had occupied centuries before, during the time when America’s forefathers were striding Westward. Her ancestors had remained standing in opposition to the divine mandate of the no-longer-quite European colonizers, but they were not a match for the systems arrayed against them.

Many years later, she was born where they’d once stood, but her parents realized that the Dream she’d been sold wasn’t for people like them. They’d retreated South, and she spent her days after school feeding chickens alongside her grandmother or watching music videos on an ancient TV, the screen and speakers distorting the words and images she consumed.

Something draws her back. Perhaps it is her ancestors, calling through time removed, imploring her to understand that borders are man-made but birthright is forever. She returns, the lyrics she’s learned from American pop stars serving as her language training. She is born to lead; in a fairer world she would be a freedom fighter or a business leader. Instead, she works tirelessly to better the lives of her neighbors, her community. She spends long days on the phone with unfriendly agency representatives, completes applications for schools and benefits, translates medical instructions that somehow manage to be utilitarian and gibberish. She meets a man whose smile sets her heart ablaze. They decide that the struggle is sweeter together than apart, and their destiny leads them away from the land of her ancestors. He was not born here. His forebearers do not call to him from America’s soil, but he is a hard worker. He loves her and wants the best for them, loves that she dedicates so much of herself to those who need her. Thirteen years pass, bringing with them two children and, now, a new reality that threatens to upend her family. Clarity: She has become her mother, with complete understanding. The Dream has withered; is reviving it worth the battle?

He carries fear alongside him always and wonders if the constant companion is just the burden of fatherhood. The fear bleeds through his skin, announces itself in the twitch of his fingers, makes itself apparent in the sprinkle of sweat across his forehead and his upper lip. He is allowing himself a rare moment of excited joy: His son is very close to arriving to the United States, the culmination of a series of plans that he set in motion nearly 30 years prior. He himself had landed on these very shores in the days leading up to his son’s birth, missing the sight of his firstborn son’s emergence into this world. A small price to pay. At least he could leave the boy a name, the same name as his grandfather. He hoped it would bring the boy good fortune.

His life in pursuit of the Dream was work. Sweat was the great equalizer in the land of the free, and he was hearty, hale, and driven. Every day since his inauspicious arrival in New York City, he had worked. Long hours, thankless jobs. Sometimes he drove, contorting his lips and tongue to make jokes in English despite the distrustful stares and indifferent nonchalance of the corporate-styled passenger sprawled across the back seat. Money that he’d worked for but somehow wasn’t quite his to spend or save traveled across his palm, but he wrapped himself in the Dream. Work would see him through. He remained steadfast. He prayed. He skipped meals. He left New York because the rent was too damn high and the casual indifference had become outright hatred since The Attack. A friend had mentioned that the living was easier down South. Somehow he knew that this was best, knew that this move would bring him that much closer to his dream, to his son’s dream.

After 30 years of sweat, he finally embraces his son, who has become a man: He carries along with his luggage broad shoulders and a patchy beard. Twenty days after this embrace, chaos: a list, seven countries, a ban. His old burden — a gigantic wave of fear — slams into his chest as if to punish him for the audacity of joy; he feels as if he has been thrown into a freezing ocean. After a strained breath, he settles into the one thing that he knows will save him, save his son. He gets to Work.

© Les Cunliffe | Dreamstime.com

They tell her that she’s crazy to try for college when everything is falling apart around them. They say that it is not becoming for a woman to be so selfish, that she needs to dedicate herself to a family, that there are more pressing issues. That she doesn’t have what it takes. They say, they say, they say, but there is always a they and there is only one chance to follow your dreams, so she leaps and lands, all praise due to God, on her feet in a new country, the Dream in her sights.

She is 20, faithful, and unafraid. In this, she is not so different from the women who have made this leap before her. The theys are different when she arrives. They’re bowed beneath the impossible weight of the Dream: her brother, her cousin’s wife, a friend of a friend. Their message is more foreboding, their attitudes more urgent.

It is different here, they say. It has never been easy, but it has always been possible. Something wicked is in the air. They have only ever tolerated her family, but now they were whipped to hateful frenzy, removed from even the semblance of the love that they claimed to give to their neighbors. Had she heard about the man out West who had been shot and killed for simply existing near an ignorant and fearful man? Most of them think like the murderer, beloved.

She was not a black American (despite the incorrect assumptions of those who read her skin and lips), but she knew of their art. She had read their poets. She knew of Langston Hughes and his question that had been asked by the children of slaves well before he had articulated it clearly enough for all to understand. What happens to the Dream deferred?

She would not give up. There was nothing to do but try. She had been warned. They had explained. But she would persist.

These, too, are American stories. These, too, are Memphis stories.

Troy L. Wiggins is a Memphian and writer whose work has appeared in the Memphis Noir anthology, Make Memphis magazine, and The Memphis Flyer.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Living the Dream: Are We Really Working in Service to Dr. King’s Vision?

CREDIT: Phil Stanziola, NYWT&S staff photographer courtesy wikimedia commons

By the time you read this, we will have celebrated a national holiday commemorating the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King was a civil rights pioneer, a champion for nonviolent struggle toward equality and justice, and an outspoken critic of the United States of America. He was a visionary whose idea of the American future was radical during his time, and that vision remains radical today.

Many of us, even people reared on Memphis’ soil, even people old enough to remember the thunderclap of his assassination and the void that followed, have softened our view of Dr. King and his ideologies. We see his legacy of civil rights activism as something of the past, and the injustice that he opposed as a historical blot on the American tapestry that we are quickly rubbing away. After all, because of the efforts of Dr. King and other activists, we now live in a post-racial country. Our collective work to end racism has borne fruit, and discrimination no longer exists within these borders. The American dream has been realized.

Phil Stanziola, NYWT&S staff photographer courtesy wikimedia commons

Martin Luther King Jr.

Except it hasn’t. We owe both Dr. King and the day we observe in remembrance of him more respect than a blind sweep of his teachings and legacy beneath a sheet of self-congratulatory misinformation. This is just as true in Memphis as it is anywhere else.

Legislation in favor of a national holiday recognizing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was first introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) in 1968, four days after he was assassinated. Originally envisioned as a call to continue Dr. King’s unfinished work, the fledgling national holiday faced constant congressional roadblocks, and legislation supporting it was routinely defeated by officials who cited King’s possible communist ties, his extramarital affairs, and — unofficially — good old American racism as reason enough against any formal recognition of his life. After Herculean efforts from those who supported the holiday, including a multi-million-signature petition from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, endorsement from Chicago mayor Harold Washington, several congressional testimonies from Coretta Scott King herself, and a Stevie Wonder protest song, the first national King Holiday was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 and finally observed in January 1986. Only 17 states celebrated the first national King Holiday, and it wouldn’t be recognized as a federal holiday in all 50 states until 1999.

During the holiday, many citizens, including thousands in the Mid-South, participate in some form of volunteerism in the spirit of Dr. King’s statement that “everyone can be great because everybody can serve.” But Dr. King referred to a more lasting sort of service than we allow for in our decontextualized take on this quote. In “The Drum Major Instinct,” the sermon that this quote is lifted from, he discusses serving humanity as Jesus did, with love and with a heart turned toward complete justice for all humankind.

“Say that I was a drum major for justice,” Dr. King said, referencing in this sermon his commitment to transformative economic justice, to ending American imperialism, and to grounding his activism in a true and total love of all oppressed people and a desire for their well-being that dove deeper than the political. Dr. King died fighting for economic and social justice for workers and ending wars as well as for racial justice. He fought for a lasting state change for America, not for his image and philosophy to be warped in order to serve the liberal-guilt industrial complex. It is easy for us, on the national holiday and throughout the year, to pretend to act in service to Dr. King’s life and teachings, but if we are not truly committed to transforming the lives of others, to, as Dr. King said in the closing of his sermon, making “this old world a new world,” then what are we doing?

A commitment to transformative change in this city means a commitment far beyond a weekend volunteering spree. It means fighting day in and day out for those Memphians who find themselves economically and socially dispossessed. It means committing ourselves to an intentionality of vision that includes recognizing that our city faces a complex network of intersectional challenges. It means devoting ourselves to interracial and intercultural inclusivity in more than just our social network feeds. It means challenging ourselves on the very ideas that our country is built on, and determining for ourselves whether we are truly working toward the ideas and moral vision that Dr. King presented to us when we enable systemic ills like mass incarceration, economic injustice, and inequality in housing and transit access to disproportionately hinder certain members of our community.

Four days after we celebrate the legacy of Dr. King, we are swearing into the office of the president a temperamental toddler of a man whose every action sends many Americans sliding into deep depression and anxiety. Most of us assume that if we were to resurrect Dr. King in a post-Trump inauguration America, he would find himself appalled to the point of returning to his eternal slumber. But would he be less appalled by the America he would have found himself in four years ago, during the presidency of a man touted as the literal representation of his teachings? We must ask ourselves: Have we really been working in service to Dr. King’s dream of visionary, transformative equality, or are we just pretending?

Troy L. Wiggins is a Memphian and writer whose work has appeared in the Memphis Noir anthology, Make Memphis magazine, and The Memphis Flyer.