Art

Book Review: Oakland Poet Tureeda Mikell’s New Book of Poetry Gets Readers to Rethink Religion, War and Fairy Tales

Published

4 years ago

August 20, 2020

Tureeda Mikell, author of Synchronicity The Oracle of Sun Medicine. Photo by Asual Aswad.

In her first full-length book of poetry, “Synchronicity The Oracle of Sun Medicine,” published by Oakland’s own Nomadic Press in February of this year, Oakland native Tureeda Mikell is almost as playful as she is critical.

I read the poems as liberatory spells against the damage and coercive power certain myths embedded in American culture can have.

“Why alter earth’s altar?” Mikell asks in her poem “Spell’s Labyrinths: Double Talk,” then soon after asks “Why did the son of the sun worship with warship?”

Like much of the book, wordplay and inquiry saturate language while commonly accepted meaning of words are never taken for granted.

She critiques war and seeking dominion over nature but instead of telling the reader what to think, she prods them with loaded questions, and we are forced to deal with both the loads and the questions.

For me, reading Mikell’s loaded questions sparked my own questions, like: What is earth’s altar? and, Who is the son of the sun? and How does he worship with warship?

Since Christianity is referenced so much in the book, I found myself seeing Christ as the “son of the sun.” In a poem just pages earlier called “The Sun,” Mikell uses an often overlooked quote from the Book of Matthew that rubs against the typical peaceful image many have of him. “Think not that I come to bring peace!,” Mikell quotes. “I come not to bring peace but a sword.”

Through her questions and quotes, Mikell builds a framework for the reader to consider the final line of “Spell’s Labyrinths: Double Talk,” which reads “Whose good is sacrificed for concepts of god?” The poem does not, however, provide any answers. It asks us to keep questioning.

What do the myths really mean? Mikell asks again and again but never answers. At times she digs to the bare bones of words to push that question, exploring their origins. In her poem “Worship Warship” she points out how the biblical word for “sin” is a “Greek word meaning ‘to miss the mark.’”

She revisits this commonly overlooked definition of sin in several other poems. In “Worship Warship” she asks “Why would god give his only son to / Die for us missing a mark?,” but never answers that question.

Besides religion, she also examines secular stories that shape how we see the world. In her humorous prose poem “BWYB News: The Goldilocks Cover Up,” she paints Goldilocks not as an innocent, curious little girl in but as a thief and a house intruder in the house of the three bears, naming her the “Golden Bandit.”

“Investigators confirmed strands of blonde hair found in baby bear’s bed did match that of the Golden Bandit,” reads the poem in the tone of a modern day news report. And yet, in the poem, the Golden Bandit is set free, claiming the bears made her fear for her life.

I think the poem asks why the Goldilocks fairytale is told in a way that paints her as a curious cute girl instead of a person causing harm. As the bears end up facing arrest in the poem after doing nothing wrong it becomes clear the Goldilocks story is racialized, that whiteness has a lot to do with our general view of Goldilocks’s, or the Golden Bandit’s, innocence.

Mikell also addresses Oakland history in the book, and questions the limited scope that many remember of the city’s radical history. Her poem “Life Light Remembered” critiques a reporter who called in 1994, over two decades after the narrator of the poem, who I’m assuming is Mikell, volunteered with the Black Panther Party, to ask “How many guns did you have at the / Black Panther Clinic.” The poem then lists the questions not asked: “Not how many services were provided? / Not how many programs were implemented? / Not how many doctors or healthcare workers volunteered?”

Like other poems in the book, “Life Light Remembered” critiques how many of us hesitate to explore myths, stories, or histories with a true sense of inquiry and imagination.

It’s a fun book. If you are the type of person who enjoys persistently asking and exploring questions about the myths and preconceived notions that shape American culture, I think you will enjoy it.

Michelle Snider

Associate Editor for The Post News Group. Writer, Photographer, Videographer, Copy Editor, and website editor documenting local events in the Oakland-Bay Area California area.

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Related Topics:Nomadic Press Synchronicity The Oracle of Sun Medicine Tureeda Mikell

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Michelle Snider

Associate Editor for The Post News Group. Writer, Photographer, Videographer, Copy Editor, and website editor documenting local events in the Oakland-Bay Area California area.

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Art

Marin County: A Snapshot of California’s Black History Is on Display

The Marin County Office of Education, located at 1111 Las Gallinas Ave in San Rafael, will host the extraordinary exhibit, “The Legacy of Marin City: A California Black History Story (1942-1960),” from Feb. 1 to May 31, 2024. The interactive, historical, and immersive exhibit featuring memorabilia from Black shipyard workers who migrated from the South to the West Coast to work at the Marinship shipyard will provide an enriching experience for students and school staff. Community organizations will also be invited to tour the exhibit.

Published

3 days ago

April 16, 2024

Oakland Post

Early photo of Marin City in the exhibit showing the first department store, barber shop, and liquor store. (Photo by Godfrey Lee)

By Post Staff

The interactive, historical, and immersive exhibit featuring memorabilia from Black shipyard workers who migrated from the South to the West Coast to work at the Marinship shipyard will provide an enriching experience for students and school staff. Community organizations will also be invited to tour the exhibit.

All will have the opportunity to visit and be guided by its curator Felecia Gaston.

The exhibit will include photographs, articles and artifacts about the Black experience in Marin City from 1942 to 1960 from the Felecia Gaston Collection, the Anne T. Kent California Room Collection, The Ruth Marion and Pirkle Jones Collection, The Bancroft Library, and the Daniel Ruark Collection.

It also features contemporary original artwork by Chuck D of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame group Public Enemy, clay sculptures by San Francisco-based artist Kaytea Petro, and art pieces made by Marin City youth in collaboration with Lynn Sondag, Associate Professor of Art at Dominican University of California.

The exhibit explores how Marin City residents endured housing inequities over the years and captures the history of plans to remove Black residents from the area after World War II. Throughout, it embodies the spirit of survival and endurance that emboldened the people who made Marin City home.

Felecia Gaston is the author of the commemorative book, ‘A Brand New Start…This is Home: The Story of World War II Marinship and the Legacy of Marin City.’ Thanks to the generous contribution of benefactors, a set of Felecia’s book will be placed in every public elementary, middle, and high school library in Marin.

In addition, educators and librarians at each school will have the opportunity to engage with Felecia in a review of best practices for utilizing the valuable primary sources within the book.

“Our goal is to provide students with the opportunity to learn from these significant and historical contributions to Marin County, California, and the United States,” said John Carroll, Marin County Superintendent of Schools.

“By engaging with Felecia’s book and then visiting the exhibit, students will be able to further connect their knowledge and gain a deeper understanding of this significant historical period,” Carroll continued.

Felecia Gaston adds, “The Marin County Office of Education’s decision to bring the Marin City Historical Traveling Exhibit and publication, ‘A Brand New Start…This is Home’ to young students is intentional and plays a substantial role in the educational world. It is imperative that our community knows the contributions of Marin City Black residents to Marin County. Our youth are best placed to lead this transformation.”

The Marin County Office of Education will host an Open House Reception of the exhibit’s debut on Feb. 1 from 4 p.m. – 6 p.m.. All school staff, educators, librarians, and community members are encouraged to attend to preview the exhibit and connect with Felecia Gaston. To contact Gaston, email MarinCityLegacy@marinschools.org

Oakland Post

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Activism

Alternative Outcome to Slayings by Police Explored in One-Man Play

BLACK MEN EVERYWHERE! is the explosive new one man play written, directed, and performed by Jinho “Piper” Ferreira. Set against the backdrop of a presidential election, the play explores how political and cultural leaders wield the myth of the dangerous Black man to manipulate the masses for personal gain. Piper penned the follow-up to his ground-breaking solo play, “Cops and Robbers,” after an impromptu cross-country Black history tour.

Published

2 months ago

February 16, 2024

Oakland Post

BLACK MEN EVERYWHERE! is the explosive new one man play written, directed, and performed by Jinho “Piper” Ferreira.

Special to The Post

What would happen if police officers who have gotten off for killing unarmed Black people started turning up dead?

Piper penned the follow-up to his ground-breaking solo play, “Cops and Robbers,” after an impromptu cross-country Black history tour.

“My wife and I had been talking about it for years,” Ferreira said. They had taken their three children to Brazil several times and West Africa but had yet to explore their history as Black people in this country. “It was Juneteenth last year and I realized we had a few weeks to make it happen, so we just jumped in the car and left” Piper said.

Three weeks later the family had seen everything from the African American Museum of History and Culture in Wash., D.C., to the phenomenally preserved Whitney Plantation in Louisiana. They’d stood outside of the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., and paid their respects at the Africa Town cemetery – where the passengers of the Clotilda (the last known U.S. slave ship to smuggle captured Africans into this country) were buried near Mobile, Ala.

“We had the kids keep a journal of the trip and my wife and I took notes, but once we got back home, I knew I had to make the pen move,” he said.

Ferreira plays 21 characters in the 60-minute emotional roller coaster ride; personalities we all know. While brilliantly weaving in themes of revolution, treachery, and revenge, “Black Men Everywhere!” is surprisingly — more than anything else — a love story.

“I wrote the play for Black men and everyone who loves us,” Ferreira said. “The play is narrated by a sistah and performed in front of the deeply spiritual artwork of Nedra T. Williams, an Oakland priestess of Olokun. It’s called ‘Black Men Everywhere!’ but we don’t exist without the Black woman.”

For tickets, please go to: http://tinyurl.com/5dm3mhra

Oakland Post

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Art

City of Stockton Seeks Applications for Public Art Murals

The City of Stockton Arts Commission (SAC) has announced the opportunity for artist(s) and/or artist teams to apply to design and paint original artwork on City-owned property through a Public Art Mural Program. The deadline for applications is Friday, March 8, 2024, at 5 p.m. Applications and additional information are available online at www.stocktonca.gov/publicart.

Published

3 months ago

January 24, 2024

Oakland Post

The Public Art Mural Program incentivizes mural installations by providing city funding and the means of curating the City’s collection of murals.

City of Stockton

The deadline for applications is Friday, March 8, 2024, at 5 p.m. Applications and additional information are available online at www.stocktonca.gov/publicart.

The Public Art Mural Program incentivizes mural installations by providing city funding and the means of curating the City’s collection of murals.

This program has $50,000 in available funds for artist(s) and is also available for those who have already identified funds and would like to complete a mural project on city-owned property. Applications will be reviewed on a competitive basis and selected by the SAC.

To learn more about the Stockton Arts Commission (SAC) or qualifications and eligibility for Public Art Mural Program, please visit www.stocktonca.gov/publicart or call the Community Services Department at (209) 937-8206.