Currently catching up with Sharon Bridgforth's Love Conjure/Blues which is just as good, so far, as The Bull-Jean Stories. Bridgforth's work connects to something in me spiritually. I don't know how she does it or what kind of queer desire is connecting me to this work, but it's there.
I am only about twenty pages into Love Conjure/Blues, but I already have something I want to share. If you're like me you'll need to read this aloud. I have read almost the whole book aloud so far. The words just don't seem to me to want to stay on the page...
we is peoples borned to violence. not our making and
not our choosing. just the world we came to. fighting
like animals leashed in a pen. maimed if we don't
win. killed if we don't fight. so we been
perfecting/fighting to win
the whole of our time here. and though violence is
not our first nature - sometimes
violence boils the blood/explodes in the veins.
sometimes violence
shows up unexpected
and just claims a nigga.
In the preface to the book, Joni Jones says that "To tell a story is to construct a history, to assert a vision of reality. A history links the living with ancestors and divinities across spatial and temporal dimensions, moving back to retrieve lineage lessons and forward to cast a vision of what might be."
Thinking, as I have been, about writing histories and telling stories, this section just hit me as a way of approaching history. History always moves both ways. I write for the future and I write for the past. And the question is about affect. Why do I want to reach what I am trying to reach. And who is this writing for?
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