Thursday, April 30, 2015
When you are young, you share everything with your best friend including family.I was so fortunate to have been adopted by the family in my upbringing. My heart is tenderly with you in your time of sorrow. Her lifelong love affair with reading inspired me to discover the joy of being curled up with a good book.I like to share two poems one from the Black Renaissance Period and the other from the radical 70's.Mother to Son by Langston Hughes Well, son, I'll tell youLife for me ain't been no crystal stair.It's had tacks in it,And splinters,And boards torn up,And places with no carpet on the floorBare.But all the timeI'se been a-climbin' on,And reachin' landin's,And turnin' corners,And sometimes goin' in the darkWhere there ain't been no light.So, boy, don't you turn back.Don't you set down on the steps.'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.Don't you fall nowâFor I'se still goin', honey,I'se still climbin',And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.somebody anybodysing a black girl's songbring her outto know herselfto know youbut sing her rhythmscarin struggle hard timessing her song of lifeshe's been dead so longclosed in silence so longshe doesn't know the soundof her own voiceher infinite beautyshe's half-notes scatteredwithout rhythm no tunesing her sighssing the song of her possibilitiessing a righteous gospellet her be bornlet her be born& handled warmly.†― Ntozake Shange, for colored girls who have considered suicidewhen the rainbow is enuf
