Journalist, publisher, and blogger Eskinder Nega. (World News photo) “ I am Eskinder Nega. Like my hero Nelson Mandela, my soul is unconquered, my spirit unbroken, my head unbowed, and my heart unafraid.”—Eskinder Nega from I Am Eskinder Nega Change is one of the scariest things in the world and yet it is also one of those variables of human existence that no one can avoid. One may literally find the lessons of that simple observation all over the map at this halfway point in the year 2012–– and only a few months before Americans take their collective political fate into their own hands during one of the most intense presidential elections on historical record.  From such a perspective, it matters less whether you look at the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions to skillfully dissect Arizona’s (and by extension similar states’) Illegal Immigration Law, and then largely uphold President Barack Ob...

Cover of the forthcoming Visions of a Skyalrk Dressed in Black eBook . The story behind the annual Juneteenth celebration is now fairly well known. The event commemorates June 19, 1865, the day slaves in Galveston, Texas, and other parts of the state learned for the first time they had actually been freed via the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier. There is not much with which to compare such an event to in the year 2012 . But try this: imagine how a group of prisoners might feel if they learned their innocence had been proven years ago and orders for their release signed but left forgotten in someone’s desk drawer. At this point in time, just three years before the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth, the holiday has come to represent a great deal more than recognition of delayed freedom. A statement from the Juneteenth Worldwide Celebration website founded by Clifford Robinson put it as follows: "Juneteenth is a day of reflection, a day of renewal, a p...

President Barack Obama toasting Queen Elizabeth II with actor Tom Hanks at 2011 celebration for the Queen . (photo by White House photographer Pete Souza) The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II reportedly quoted the great Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay’s poem “If We Must Die” when he addressed the joint houses of the U.S. Congress on the eve of America’s entry into the war. South African President Nelson Mandela recited “Invictus,” by William Ernest Henley, to fellow inmates while imprisoned on Robben Island and “The Child” by Ingrid Jonker when South Africa’s first democratic parliament opened in 1994. American presidents , governors, and mayors have often presented samples of some of the most luminous talents in modern literary history to provide moral and intellectual frameworks for their stated, even if not their actual, political intentions. Inauguration poets James Dickey, Maya Angelou, and Elizabeth Alexander are a few examples. H...

"Interpretation of Harlem Jazz" a.k.a. "Drawing in Two Colors" art by German artist of the Harlem Renaissance Winold Reiss. (circa 1917, public domain) “Life calls the tune, we dance.”   ―   John Galsworthy , from Five Tales It was almost enough for me to simply join PEN American Center and set up a profile page without doing much else to qualify its existence. Such a page alone could allow me to relax inside the satisfaction of knowing I had remained true enough to my literary calling to place my name beside that of authors whose lives and craftsmanship had so often empowered my own. That idea, of course, faded very quickly as I further allowed myself to acknowledge something I have long known: you do not claim rights to an honored tradition just because a few books allowed you to bring them into the world or because you managed to cough up the obligatory dues. One claims a right to such traditions very much the way runners on a winning Olympic relay ...