Los Angeles, CA : February is Black History Month, an annual celebration to honor African-Americans, their history, achievements and what the people before them fought for. With the Black Lives Matter movement and Kamala Harris becoming our first ever Black woman Vice President, now more than ever is a time to celebrate Black History.
In a 2016 speech, President Barack Obama said Black History Month is “about taking an unvarnished look at the past so we can create a better future. It’s a reminder of where we as a country have been so that we know where we need to go.”
In celebration of Black History Month, Award Winning Poet and Best Selling Author Katerina Canyon has announced the upcoming release of her book, “Surviving Home,” a reflection on African American heritage and up-bringing.
Concisely arresting and challenging the beliefs of family and the fantasies of tradition, the poems in “Surviving Home” show that home is a place that you endure rather than a place where you are nurtured. With unyielding cadence and unparalleled sadness and warmth, Katerina Canyon contemplates the prejudice and limitations buried in a person’s African American heritage: parents that seem to care for you with one hand and slap you with the other, the secret desires to be released from the daily burdens of life, as well as the surprising ways a child chooses to amuse herself. Finding resilience in the unexpected, this collection tears down the delicate facades of family.
Here is an excerpt from “Surviving Home”:
Sojourner
Truth is where I found you
In the cusp high over ultraviolet waves
Between your time as a slave and mine
Fighting off the results of bondage.
You were a woman who accepted no
Excuses for the lack of rights
For our mothers and daughters,
Demanded more for those who followed.
I am a woman who accepts that most
White men are fixed on one idea
As to how the world should be,
And it is on me to change their minds
Through words, or actions, but never
Through guns or swords, white bonnet
Wrapped on my head as I push
Away racial insults and profanity.
You never forgot to say who a woman
Could be, what a Black woman could do
When we eschewed weakness and misogyny.
No one helped you. You just carved the trail.
No one helps me either. That’s what I learned
It means to be a Black woman.
To be strong, to plough, to plant, to raise barns.
That’s what you did. I do that metaphorically.
Now, I raise children, plough through journals
With my pen. I always remember to never
Pin my tongue for fear of other’s thoughts
This is the way you walked.
I try to get my half measure full,
But I think it is a little less
Difficult for me as it was
For you. Thank you for the
Quarter you earned.
It took us a long way, but
Today, the world is still
Turned upside down
And we are working
Hand by hand to
Flip it
Right side up