'Take A Stand: Art Against Hate' (Review)

There's no word for it so far, the word

for what it means to be in love with you

in our sinking world. . . 

The world that means we've loved

through the avalanches of our time, 

loved while the wars raged, . . .

The word that means we're not alone. . . .

~ Edward Harkness

"Union Creek in Winter"

Cover Art

The Raven Chronicles, an independent, nonprofit press in Shoreline, Washington, earlier this year published a new anthology: Take a Stand: Art Against Hate. Offering work by 117 writers and poets and 53 artists and illustrators, it is a highly welcome addition to our creative and cultural literature, documenting as only artists can, the too-common experience of racism, discrimination, and hate throughout the history of the United States.

Organized in five sections — Legacies, We Are Here, Why?, Evidence, Resistance — the 368-page collection features poems, stories, essays, and images, many of which could be placed in multiple sections—an illustration of the complexity of the topics and subjects, of the many forms of hate itself, which no one generation in any period of time can lay claim to. Browsing the Table of Contents, we recognize names we know well and names that may be or are entirely new to us. Among the former are Jericho Brown, Lucille Clifton, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Ilya Kaminsky, Dunya Mikhail, Marge Piercy, Susan Rich, and Danez Smith.  Among the latter are Sara Beckman, who experienced more than a half-dozen years of homelessness because of mental illness and addiction; Sharon M. Carter, a retired physician; high school student Brynn McCall of Denver, Colorado; and Penna Ava Taesali, a Samoan poet, educator, and cultural arts activist. That the publication's editors selected so demographically diverse a group of writers and artists — all age groups, those at the beginning, middle, or peak of their career, the famous and the un-celebrated, those comfortably self-identifying as, for example, Native American, Iraqi, Chilean-Puerto Rican, Ukrainian-American, black Muslim, butch-trans, Thai, or poz and queer — is a testament to their determinedly democratic approach to inclusivity, their defiance of current political divisions, and the power of art not only to speak for those denied voice or not heard but also to make equals of us all.

As the voices raised in this volume make clear, prejudice, intolerance, cruelty, and violence — in a word, hatred — dislocate, cause division, bring war; they leave us broken, in sorrow, without acceptable explanation, and all too often even dead: Attesting to the unrecognizable body of Emmett Till, Jericho Brown calls out the "[w]e [who] "do not know / The boy's name nor the sound / Of his mother wailing" and asks, "What are we? What? / What on Earth are we? What?" ("Riddle") Lawrence Matsuda, born to parents who were forced into an American concentration camp in World War II, knows first-hand how "[d]oors slam and hands / of kindness withdraw. / You are not among the privileged / huddled masses." ("Just a Short Note to Say Something You Already Know")

The perpetuation of hate, generation after generation, Marge Piercy declaims, "is official and encouraged: anyone / not just like you is a danger. Fences, / walls, no trespassing, neighborhoods / gated, built into a maze, so those not / rich and white enough are kept out." ("Dread, Not Envy") The truth, Ryan Roberts acknowledges, is that "[o]ur history" is the legacy of "monsters we cannot hide". "From the time of Cain, he acknowledges, "billions have died, / Jewish Gypsy Native Black / Mexican Dykes and Fags thrown / from buildings, burnt at stakes / just for breathing the air—I must say, / God puts a new spin on the word Queer."  ("After the Pulse Murders, 2016") In another of her several poems in Take A Stand, Marge Piercy asserts, "We're considered white now but not / by all" and warns, of "[t]hese years we tend to be out, even proud" but the "Little Hitlers abound." ("They were praying")

Even aware, as Faiza Sultan is, that "[it] may be good to form new laws" ("I Have Plenty of Things"), creating the "new story & history" of which Danez Smith writes ("dear white america") requires more than thoughts and prayers. "We march lest we leave our children / a fractured sphere", explains Susana Praver-Perez. ("Just Breathe") Nevertheless, Risa Dennenberg points out, "We who say never forget / also know that it could happen again / to us / and we do not know more now / than we did then / how to make it stop." ("Yellow Star")

It is necessary, Stuart Gunter maintains, that "when I speak about gun control / I wear my son's shoes." ("When I Speak About Gun Control I Wear My Son's Shoes"). "It is good," argues Ellery Akers, "to stop machines—giant needles that drill into the earth— / because what they are stitching is The End." ("Taking Action") It is acceptable, suggests Keanu Jones, "to reclaim our identity as the warriors and chiefs we once were." ("Identity") Mothers, offers Jennifer DeBie, must teach their daughters how "[t]o unwrite the legends scripted / by chisel and stone." ("Lessons") And, declares Gail Tremblay, "Each one of us / needs to remember to give back to earth more than we take, / [. . .] / and work ceaselessly to transform everyone's consciousness, / so we can celebrate together the shift to a new way of living in harmony". ("Strategies for Outlasting Trumplandia")

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One of the many attributes of this collection is that it is both linear and not. Though the volume begins with what we've been left — the legacies of colonialism, the sin of slave-owning, the "border of stories" of physical violation and dislocation — and impels us forward through the history of our own making to today's crises of climate change, environmental degradation, and ongoing wars, it also looks back, asking us to assess, reevaluate, understand, work together. It shows us that when we forget, we fall back; when we recall and suit up and speak out, we progress. The revolution isn't down the street; it's where each of us lives. And if we look both ways, back and ahead, we may find the common ground, make the "swerve in a different direction" (Ellery Ackers, "At Any Moment, There Could be a Swerve in a Different Direction"), and, in the words of Rajiv Mohabir, "Behold the miracle: // what was once lost / now leaps before" us. ("Why Whales Are Back in New York City")

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Style, presentation, choice of words, subject matter, tone: they are in full array in Take A Stand: Art Against Hate. Though every reader will discover his or her own favorites, two poems I found notable and beautifully illustrated follow. Both use un-embellished words and are brief in length, the first, the moving "Threat", which is complemented by Tom Kiefer's sensitively photographed Wrist Rosary #1 from his series El Sueno Americano ("The American Dream"); the second, just three matter-of-fact lines complemented by the thought-provoking photograph Beyond Walls, View from an historic School for African Americans, Maryland, 2017, by Sarah E.N. Kohrs.

Threat

Somewhere
in a detention center
along the southern border
a janitor removes rosaries
from the trash,
photographs them
so they will not be forgotten.

Discarded, it was said,
for the safety of the officers.

~ by Kathleen Stancik for Tom Kiefer (p. 178)

*

Migration

Raise the wall higher
Monarch butterflies cross the border
every winter without work visas

~ by Mary Ellen Talley (p. 281)

I wholeheartedly recommend this collection. It will reward with slow reading, perhaps refresh, if not open your eyes, to the ways artists and writers capture lives as they are lived and experiences as they occur. It surely will leave you thinking, and perhaps even resolving to commit to some action, including a change in attitude or behavior, that could change your own or others' lives, one person at a time. As a tool to be shared and discussed with teens and taught in social history, communications, and writing classes in high school and college, I think it would be superlative.

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The anthology was edited by poet and fiction writer Anna Balint, founder and host of Seattle's Safe Place Writing Circle at Recovery Cafe; cultural activist and book designer Phoebe Bosche, managing editor of The Raven Chronicles; and retired writing instructor and spoken word performer Thomas Hubbard, whose book reviews and short stories have appeared in such publications as New Pages, Florida Review, and Red Ink.

Back matter includes publication credits and biographical notes for all the artists, illustrators, photographers, writers, and editors, as well as the contributor of the anthology's Foreword, Diane Glancy, a poet and writer in many genres. Poet Carolyne Wright, co-editor of Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workplace (see my review) contributed the Preface; each of the editors includes a statement in the Introduction to the collection.

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The anthology is available from The Raven Chronicles and online booksellers.

The Raven Chronicles Website

The Raven Chronicles on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Note: I received a copy of the anthology for review purposes.