blackgirl on mars: notes on a life in copenhagen (or how my alienation brings me closer to people).

Last night I went to Danmark Sociale Forum to hear a talk on Pan-Africanism by Lee C. Robinson of African Awareness Association, Inc. He flew all the way in from Richmond, Va., and it was great to sit somewhere in Denmark and hear names like Kwame Toure, Assata Shakur, Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. De Bois... On the desk were copies of Tony Martin's The Pan African Connection (I once drove from NYC to Boston with Prof. Martin listening to Billy Holiday...years ago and when we drove up to his house there was a notice on his door about the passing of his mother. I was on my way to work at a farm and Prof. Martin's books have been in my life since I was about twelve. His work introduced me to the teachings and accomplishments of Marcus Garvey); Eric Williams' Capitalism and Slavery and Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Mr. Robinson spoke about the importance of understanding African history, the origins and platform of the Pan-African Movement, the significance of ...

My sister, Karen R. Good sent this quote to me the other day: "Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish in the crowd." Hugs, lab

After a week of eating curry (it is the best anti-depressive: It transports me not only back to my childhood, but to Trinidad, as well) I am happy to say I have survived yet another week! Yeah! I wrote my previous post YEARS ago, so I've actually moved beyond this "mourning"--this loss of a life past. I was on the train yesterday and had a real eye-to-eye with myself, "Well, Lesley, what did you expect moving to Denmark?" But truth is, I hadn't expected the cultural shock, along with the new-mother shock, unemployment shock and let's not forget the just being far away from home shock. But anyway, I do enjoy my life here in Denmark. It is the only life I have and I have gotten better at being in the present. Enjoying the beauty that I find in the most unlikely of places: In faces foreign to me but in the end, a potential brother or sister. Last night the unfamiliar sound of my phone ringing pierced the silence of my apartment. "I'm baaaack!"...

I had left everything to come to Denmark. I had left my job as an associate at Marie Brown Associates, a literary agency that nestled itself between the West Village and Soho. Marie Brown was not just my boss. She came from a tradition, a very Black tradition of overextending oneself. A tradition of raising other people’s children cause if you didn’t do it, nobody else would. She came from a tradition that most Christians ought to take note—Marie constantly got involved personally. There were no barriers between business and personal life. As a result she was not just my boss, but my mentor and spiritual mother. We took it as fate that we shared the same last name, and I had the exact initials as her daughter as well. Marie fed me when I didn’t have any lunch money, she wrote me checks when my rent was due, and she picked up little blouses she found at little sales. She introduced me to Balthazars and chic cocktail bars with no names. She took me to lunch at Noho restaurants owne...

Sometimes I feel like I'm the biggest geek ever and no one will ever understand me. But I guess this is a universal feeling and I'm not so special in feeling that. Damn, I can't even have that! One of my horoscopes wrote that I am to do nothing and it will all come to me. So I sit here and wait. I love life. I really do. Love, lab

Birthday party in the garden. Joyce had it right, "write to capture the collage of life. We are all composites-intricate parts of the whole."

This is the view from my bedroom/living room window and this apartment has so much to do with my level of openness to inspiration. It's true I can write anywhere--I remember Willie Perdomo being like, "How can you do that?" In utter disbelief when we'd be hanging out in some bar or something and I'd whip out my composition notebook and just let loose. When it comes, I can't stop it. I've been known to stop dancing in the middle of some club and open my notebook up to scrawl in the dark--but it is true that in some places the writing muses abound. Such is my apartment. The ironic thing is, I used to make fun of the neighborhood I now live in. First I lived in Vesterbro, in a cold-water flat, with no shower and on the fifth floor (with no elevator!). That's where Ben & I brought our son when he was first born, and it may have been modest, but it had a lot of soul. It was a drag not having some of the modern amenities that every one else around me se...

What makes a black girl a black girl? Is it the color of her skin? Her lover? Is it the amazing sunshine that glows insider her? What makes a black girl a black girl, the hands on the hips the sassy lips? Hmmm... What makes a black girl a black girl the aching in her soul making her feel so grown? All too soon, perhaps, as she sits back with a good book on her lap. What makes a black girl a black girl?

First Memorial to Black Victims of Nazi Genocide

Let Me Be Your Angel by Staci Ladislaw. Do you remember who you danced with to this song?

There's a picture of my father in one of his bands that I keep close to me, on my desk. It's a group of 8 young men, and the band includes conga drums, a guitar, drum set, bass and keyboard. My father is the keyboardist. It is an old picture, he must have been around 17. My mother told me that my father started playing professionally by the time he was 15 or 16, hanging out in Port-of-Spain in a time when it was really a port. It was full of rum shops, prostitutes and music-- commodities engendered by the frequent visit of foreign ships and its crew. My father is the son of a musician. His father, my great-grandfather is from St. Vincent and played what is called the box guitar. He was a carpenter by trade, but walked the streets the streets of Port-of-Spain, playing his guitar in his free time. My father is from a part of Trinidad referred to as "behind-the-bridge", I believe the bridge is the East Dry River bridge, and it is a place that my Grandfather always ref...

Ok, this is serious: A while ago I learned about a case of segregation-era oppression happening today in Jena, Louisiana. I signed onto ColorOfChange.org's campaign for justice in Jena, and wanted to invite you to do the same. http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=1774-352669 Last fall in Jena, the day after two Black high school students sat beneath the "white tree" on their campus, nooses were hung from the tree. When the superintendent dismissed the nooses as a "prank," more Black students sat under the tree in protest. The District Attorney then came to the school accompanied by the town's police and demanded that the students end their protest, telling them, "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy... I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen." A series of white-on-black incidents of violence followed, and the DA did nothing. But when a white student was beaten up in a schoolyard fight, the DA responded by charging six black st...

BaSheBa Earth

The Party I'm probably the person who went to the most number of Danish schools in Denmark. I went to a total of three, and the last one, KISS, is where I met a bunch of other expats who all had something I hadn't: A positive attitude about being here. It helped to meet others who were away from home and struggling with the language. It inspired to meet others who were learning Danish not necessarily because the Danish Government said they had to, but because they wanted to. While there I met Gunay, who hails from Turkey; Brent & Jay, fellow Americans; Roxanna, from Romania; Andreas, a Swiss among others. We'd go to Temple Bar on Fridays and punctuate our conversations with what seemed like endless beer. I met these guys at a very important juncture in my life where I really needed to have my own network, not just Benjamin's and I definitely lucked out. Being the well-organized, go-getters that this bunch tends to be, they decided to organize a party celebrating ...

Kulturhuset Islands Brygge 18 København S 21. - 23. september 2007 Kl. 12.00 - 20.00 Fri Entre Underholdningen præsenteres af Desarts Fredag 13.00 - 14.00 Traditionel musik fra Sverige Violin og viola Maja Linde Christensen Eva Thestrup Jensen 14.30 - 14.45 Digte Niels Hav 15.00 - 15.15 Falling in love with Seasons (& people) Clarice Scott 15.30 - 16.00 Autopoet - Acoustic Morten Jæger Back2Basics: Nyt sensitivt materiale fra debutalbummet ‘Covered all my Tracks’ Marts 2007  The Organist’s Daughter Lesley-Ann Brown Poesi fra ‘Homeground’ (kommende CD) med musik af Darlington Brown Folk/Pop/Rock Munck/Bjørn/Kodal http://www.myspace.com/munckbjoernkodal The sick rose Fremført af El Tsyd Absinti Beautiful music Shine Justin Moses Gunn, Claudius, Laura Diestel, Eske Nørrelykke, Jan Andersen, Mathias Klein

Paradise first met Keith when she was eight years old and went with her girl to the Coney Island Projects. Her friend’s grandmother lived there and while the grown-ups talked and listened to Donna Summer’s On the Radio the kids ran around the iron-encased building. She always thought it funny that you could see the Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone through the iron mesh of the windows. The night she met Keith the night was denim blue and the street lamps that lit up the compound had a Narnia kind of magic to it. They hung out in front of the building and Keith practiced balancing on his friend’s bike as Paradise sat between her friends shiny black knees and subjected herself to getting her hair corn-rowed. Although it was summer the trees seemed anemic and the kids could smell the rich smell of collard greens wafting out of someone’s encaged windows. He’d try to balance, succeed and then bike away. “He likes you.” Yolanda said as she combed out a row of Paradise’s hair to braid. “H...

The thing is, there are some days where you have accepted inside your heart that writing is your calling and finally, your soul is at rest. It's like suddenly, you can finally feel the immediate strength of each breath straight into your heart. It is like basking under the strengthening shine of the sun and everything just shifts from it's usual out-of-focus blur to being all shiny, clear and consistent. You see your place in the world and realize that it all makes sense: from your son who is half white and half black, to your living in another country among strangers. Strangers who seem to make it easy for you to alienate yourself from. You realize how easy it is to go through life thinking you are better off than every one else either through your color, your wealth or talent, and how cowardly and sinful such an act would be. So you resolve to give life your 100% engagement and realize that in that very act of being present, you are in the process of creating the most amazi...

i am on the plane and i just finished your book. i am so proud of you lesley. i am so proud, not only that you have a book published. but that you have spoken. that you have opened up your mouth and released your truth. i know that we never really got down to some of the specifics of what went down with your family, i always felt like there was a place i was not welcome to go in your memories, and i always knew there was so much in your life that you had overcome, run from, run to, run around, stared at etc etc etc, and reading this piece made me sense that you were finally speaking. free. stepping towards free. and it is such a STRONG collection, i mean in the sense that it is saying I AM STRONG. i probably sound like a big dork, but i mean it. i am so happy for you. thanks for letting me know where to find it! i am so glad i happened to be in NY just now. xoxo Elisa Donovan

I am sitting here, in a hospital room, holding my dying father’s hand. There was a time when this hand, feminine-like almost, was so strong. There was a time when I feared it. It could, his hands, reign terror on any of his children or, when it’s fingers played across the keys of the Hammond, belt out the most profound array of molasses-like notes any person would dance to. His face is round like the moon, and sprinkled with the minutest moles across his face. His nose is round at the end, without a bridge in that space between his eyes and the tip of his nose. His eyes are small: chinky we called them and as he slept, with his hand in mine, I could not help but ponder, How did he conceive me when he could never, I think, in his wildest dreams ever conceive of me? His snoring becomes a bit more pronounced and I rub my thumb against the skin of his hand. He flinches a bit. When was the last time someone touched him with the taste of love on his or her fingertips? I try to envi...