My Two White Sisters

Posted on March 14, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

One day, when we were kids, Mommy made a Pronouncement: “Today, you are going to meet your white relatives.”  I don’t recall meeting our white relatives (maybe I was traumatized), but I remember this pronouncement.  I was still innocent, and, therefore, had no sense of the evil white folk had done and were continuing to perpetuate against Black folk in America during the Decisive Decade that I was born into.  To think that white folk were in our family tree. . .

At this time, and throughout my life, I started having this dream, of a tree.  As a kid, I found myself in this Garden, and there’s a tree, the biggest tree I’ve ever seen, and people, Black and Brown, Red and White, and Yellow, are leaves on the biggest tree I’ve ever seen.

This was before the Day of the Rope.

The tree seems to grow even bigger over time, and the Black and Brown leaves jerk up and down.

During the Decisive Decade, when I was a Black Boy, I saw the Black and Brown “leaves” falling from the biggest tree I’ve ever seen.  The Red leaves were practically gone.

This dream has not gone away.  I still dream this dream, but I can now interpret it, with my understanding of history, psychology, and the science behind DNA.  Of course, the leaves on the biggest tree I’ve ever seen are people, the whole of humanity, all the races.

One of the most beautiful passages I’ve ever read about race, which explains something else, uses a tree and leaves as its metaphor:

Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,

Now green in youth, now withering on the ground:

Another race the following spring supplies,

They fall successive, and successive rise. . .

  • Homer, The Iliad

One day I was invited to give a “race talk” at a predominantly white church.  I wanted to shake things up a bit, so I went to the biggest tree I’ve ever seen, although it’s only in my dreams.  Later, I imagine this tree of my dreams in Mississippi, so far from the Garden of Eden.

My race talk began with my family tree.  I told the white folk that I was shaking it, and shaking it, and shaking it, as hard as I could, until a white person fell out.  I then went on to say that if they shook their family trees hard enough, then a Black person was bound to fall out.  (I confess, I enjoyed making them turn red, but it turned into a teachable moment, to have a courageous conversation about race.)

Eleven percent of my DNA has European roots.  I have second cousins whose percentage of DNA is eleven percent African, and 79 percent European. Perhaps they are the “white relatives” Mommy mentioned during her Pronouncement when we were kids.

My two white sisters, Joyce Penfield and Anjahni Davi, though, are not bound to me by blood or DNA, but we share something special, including we were all born on October 1st, in different years.

When our baby brother Whitney, not Houston, passed away less than a year ago, I learned from the people who love him, that family not only includes the people we share parents, but also with people we share our lives.  With my two white sisters, we have shared important moments in our lives, where our journeys intersected.  They are just as much a part of me as my biological sisters.

Posted in being a teenager, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Family, Genealogy, Lest We Forget, Politics, race, raising black boys, Relationships | Tagged | Leave a comment

Fiat justitia ruat caelum

Posted on March 13, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Today I get to uplift an advocate and an author, Claudette Nurse.

I have not met a person more passionate about justice than Claudette. (She causes “good trouble.”) She is an attorney. She worked for the Legal Aid Society, in its Prisoner Rights division. She is also an author, of two books, Memoirs of a Prison Lawyer, Prison Wife, and a novel, All Tapped Out.

To use a wrestling metaphor, Claudette never taps out. Anyone wrestling with the legal system would want her on his or her team. She is the zealous advocate people charged with crime expect and hope for but often do not receive. If I ever need an attorney, I would first call Claudette. In fact, in my experience, I would take a woman lawyer over most men. Whenever someone reaches out to me about a legal issue, before I pass judgment or give legal information, I call one of my women lawyer friends, and Claudette is at the top of the list. Perhaps this is solely my experience, but women attorneys bring something to court most male attorneys do not because, I think, men lack a certain sensibility.

Claudette jokes that I am her “work husband.” For more than ten years we did work for the Coalition for Parole Restoration (CPR), a grassroots nonprofit organization, which Claudette cofounded. CPR was tackling the issue of parole reform long before it became “sexy” and “fundable.” In fact, any progress made on parole reform in New York State has CPR and the work of Claudette to thank, this includes the Parole Preparation Project. On a similar note, Claudette stayed in contact with many people she represented when she worked for Legal Aid, long after the cases were over. In fact, we visited people in prison, because we never forget, we never forgot them. Claudette and I also started a law firm, Spencer Waters Legal Associates, LLC. Today, we are doing work together through the New York State Prison Crisis Response Coalition (NYSPCRC). NYSPCRC formed two years ago to respond to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in prison. And even though that issue brought us, a group of advocates with various ties to the criminal legal system, together, we have not confined ourselves to the pandemic alone. Currently, we are pushing for New York State to fully reinstate the Temporary Release Programs (TRP) for all people in the NYS prison system. (For a copy of our white paper on TRP, please message me.)

I highly recommend reading Claudette’s memoir. It’s an improbable love story that, surprisingly, does not read like a legal brief. It also speaks to her passion for justice.

I know Latin is a dead language, but when you live in the legal system, you pick up a host of Latin phrases. So I’ll roughly translate the title of this post: “I care not if even the heavens fall, let justice be done!” That could be Claudette’s motto.

Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, Lest We Forget, Life Sentences, Murder, Parole, Politics, Reentry, remorse | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Pearl Comes to Brooklyn

Posted on March 12, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

The past month and nearly two weeks I’ve been writing a blog post every day.  When I am in writing mode my overly active imagination goes into overdrive.  I have eureka moments, and even an epiphany or two!

This morning my mind messaged me what to write.  As I awakened, it dawned on me that the first twenty years of my life, and the last twenty years, I have been profoundly influenced by the leadership of women.  So, today, I want to uplift a transformational leader, Carol Faye Burton.

I met Carol in 2002 when she relocated from Michigan to work for the Osborne Association.  Carol had been made an offer she couldn’t refuse.  The work she was doing with children impacted by the criminal legal system in Michigan she brought to New York.  We both worked out of Osborne’s downtown Brooklyn office in Brooklyn Heights, and Carol settled in Brooklyn.  In fact, I was the first person Carol hired when she came to Osborne as a leader.  Later I would joke that it took five interviews over a couple of months before she hired me, probably a record.

Core Staff: Prison, Reentry & Family Services

For the record, Carol and I built a division at Osborne, Prison, Reentry, and Family Services (PR&FS), that endures to this day.  We hired and worked with some remarkable and passionate people, some still at Osborne after nearly twenty years.  We can take pride in and credit for hiring people who stayed for the long haul.

PR&FS ran a number of “programs” at various prisons, including Sing Sing, the historic and (in)famous prison.  One day, during a snow storm, Carol and I went up the River by way of Metro North during a snow storm.  We were the only registered volunteers that made it to the prison that evening, because we had promised the men that we would be there for a closing ceremony for those who had completed a parenting class.  This spoke to the passion Carol brought to the work.  It was probably this passion that kept us from freezing at the rail station.  We could have easily stayed in Brooklyn, had the perfect excuse not to go up the River during a perfect storm.

Carol would relocate to California after about five years at Osborne, not because of New York Storms – she hailed from Michigan!  She was given another offer she couldn’t refuse.  She left me at Osborne, brought me out to participate in a conference in San Franciso a number of years ago.

My work with Carol took me all across these United States.  I remember going to a leadership seminar at Gap International in Pennsylvania.  There were six of us from Osborne, and I was the only male.  It was at the Gap where I came up with my stand: “I am a change agent for a just society.”

Carol remains in California, with the Jeweld Legacy Group, casting pearls where they are most needed.

Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Family, Fathers, Justice Chronicles, Osborne Association, raising black boys, Reentry | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Let There Be Light!

Posted on March 11, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Prison is a place where there is an absence of light.  The little bit of light that exists is generated from and emanates from the people imprisoned there.

The Panopticon

There is a strange architecture around the design of prisons, beginning with the Panopticon, the brainchild of the 18th century theoretical jurist and expounder of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham.  The architectural design of the Panopticon consisted of a rotunda structure, constructed with glass windows, and facing the center.  In this design, every prison cell was occupied by a single individual, and each cell faced the center where the guards were positioned in a tower.  The thinking of the day thought this design “genius,” for a number of reasons, including the psychological pressure on people in prison not knowing when or how they were being observed.  The real beauty though, was that often a light was shone towards the people in cells, practically blinding them, and they could not see the guards in the tower.

As society became just a wee bit more “humane” in how it treated people in prisons, the bright light of the Panopticon was dimmed, thus creating a place where there is an absence of light.

Donna Hylton, in her book, A Little Piece of Light: A Memoir of Hope, Prison, and a Life Unbound, demonstrates how light emanates from people who have “reentered” society from prison.

When Donna was in prison, she wrote a letter that made its way to me.  At that time, I was working at a nonprofit organization, coordinating what we called the Family Resource Center (FRC).  The FRC worked with and for people impacted by the criminal legal system.  We ran a popular support group for families with incarcerated loved ones.  We also received letters from almost every prison in New York State.  My staff and I prided ourselves on individual responses to letters.  Often, my staff would flag a letter for me that they thought I should respond to.

In Donna’s letter to the FRC, we learned that she was putting together a “pitch” for executive clemency.  I responded to the letter, giving suggestions on her pitch.  One of the tragedies of long-term imprisonment, is that, perhaps because of the absence of light, people in prison have a hard time “seeing” or even imagining what the world looks like from the other side of prison walls.

When Donna was finally released, she found her way to my office in Brooklyn, asked the people she was meeting if “Eric” was around.  I met Donna, and I saw her light, so it is fitting that the word “light” is in her book.

We should all want a little piece of light in our world, in our lives.  Read this book and get some.

Donna & Eric – 3-15-2022 at The Grace Center in East Harlem
Posted in crime, Education, ezwwaters, Growing Up, Justice Chronicles, Life Sentences, Osborne Association, Reentry | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

An American Odyssey

Posted on March 10, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

I like a good story, one reason why I like Greek comedies and tragedies, and I fancy myself a storyteller.  So, I’ll tell you a story. . .

Once upon a time (1973), Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York State signed off on a draconian “drug” law that bears his name.  At the time, it was the harshest drug law in the nation, with many states, and the Federal government, following suit.

The Rockefeller Drug Law was like a fast-moving brush fire, devastating urban areas inhabited by Black people and people of color.  There were so many casualties in this War on Drugs, which escalated President Nixon’s War on Crime, declared in 1968 when he was running for the U.S. presidency.  These drug laws, in large part, fueled “mass incarceration” (I only use that term here because people have not yet wrapped their thinking around the accurate term, “hyperincarceration”).

Often, when we think about hyperincarceration, we think of Black and Brown men.  The prison-industrial complex, though, also disproportionately imprisons Black and Brown women.  Black and Brown women are the connective tissue that keeps our families together.  When a woman is locked up, a family is also locked up, and the consequences are different and far more devastating than locking up men.  In fact, the whole family structure is impacted.  Liz Gaynes, the outgoing President of the Osborne Association, where I once worked, for 11 years, once stated that mass incarceration created the largest separation of families since chattel slavery.  This is sad, but true, and not hyperbole. . .

Today, I uplift a woman, Elaine Baretlett, impacted by the criminal legal system.

Elaine’s story, in part, is told in her book, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett, by Jennifer Gonnerman.  Elaine is just one of many women who have experienced the trauma and the tragedy of imprisonment because of the Rockefeller Drug Law.  As in the classic story told by Homer, The Odyssey, after a war, it is hard to make one’s way home.

During my odyssey I have met many amazing women impacted by the criminal legal system. They are not tragic figures. They are heroines.

Read this American story, which gives you a glimpse inside the tragedy, but also the triumph, of a woman who experienced an odyssey of her own after the Drug War.

Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Family, Justice Chronicles, Lest We Forget, Life Sentences, Mother's Messages, Osborne Association, Politics, race, Reentry, Relationships, urban decay, Urban Impact | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Little Giant Comes to Harlem

Posted on March 9, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Yesterday I uplifted my sister, Jeanette, on International Women’s Day during this Women’s History Month.  Today I uplift three women I work with.

More than 15 years ago I met Dawn Ravella.  She was doing amazing social justice work at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church.  At the time, although I was working at a secular nonprofit organization, my work and Dawn’s intersected.  (In fact, since religious thought was instrumental in creating the modern prison [penitentiary] in America, I believe that it is a moral imperative that faith-based groups work hand in hand with community-based organizations addressing various issues within the criminal legal system.)  So interested was Dawn in my work, one day she “shadowed” me when I went to Rikers Island, not as a voyeur or visitor at a zoo, but as a person keenly aware of fundamental injustice and racism in our institutions, most blatantly evident in the criminal legal and punishment system.  This punishment system in particular. . .

Prisons and jails are nothing like people think they are.  Prisons and jails are nothing like they are portrayed on the large and small screens.  And people in prisons and jails are nothing like they are portrayed in print and on TV “news.”

William Eric Waters

The good news though is that people like Dawn are doing amazing work addressing various systems failures, a case on point is Coming Home at Emmaus House-Harlem.  Coming Home is Dawn’s brainchild, her dissertation project at New York Theological Seminary.  Dr. Dawn rolled this “program” out at the Reformed Church of Bronxville, where she stayed for a little more than ten years before relocating Coming Home to Harlem, bringing with her two amazing members of her Leadership Team, Sally Baker, and Theresa Colyar. Sally is a nonprofit leader, consultant, coach, and founder and Executive Director of Girls Inc. Westchester.  Theresa is a psychiatric nurse, community organizer, and Coming Home Facilitator Extraordinaire.

Growing up with three sisters, I like to believe that I have a different and more nuanced understanding of women and power than men who do not have sisters.  I’ve seen amazing displays of power, and empathy, from these women I work with, which makes it a singular honor to be part of this Leadership Team.

As to the title of this post, those who know Dawn know that she barely stands 5’ tall, but she is a giant in many respects.  She hails from Long Island, though I joke that she’s from Lilliput (the Land of Little People in Gulliver’s Travels).  If you know the story, the “little people” subdue the “giant.”

Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, race, Reentry, Religion, remorse, Shawshank Redemption, Streets of Rage, urban decay, Urban Impact | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Triumphing Through Levels of Grief

Posted on March 8, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters
My Sisters in White, my Bother, and our Cousin, the Day of our Mother’s Funeral

Today is International Women’s Day.  During Black History Month and these first couple of days in Women’s History Month, I have uplifted women, mostly women authors.  Today, though, I want to uplift a woman near and dear to my heart, the heart of our family, my sister Jeanette.

At 19, when our mother died, Jeanette became the Matriarch of our family, the connective tissue that held us together – at this time, we said, “We only have each other.”  And although our father was alive – he would die almost four years later – and was always there for us, he was an old school Native Southern Son who limited his role to Provider.  We don’t argue about that.  His role didn’t change when our mother died, but Jeanette’s role dramatically changed, including deferring her dreams.

At 19, Jeanette became the “mother” to our younger siblings, my “Irish” twin, Cheryl (17), Wanda (13), and our baby brother Whitney, “not Houston” (10).  Whitney, more than our other siblings, in part because he was the youngest, truly became Jeanette’s child.

I don’t believe that life is a Tragedy, but that there are tragic events in our lives.  Less than a year ago, Whitney passed away, the greatest tragic event in our lives, and twice as tragic for Jeanette, because not only was Whitney her brother, but also her “son.”

Less than a year ago I didn’t know there are levels of grief.  Losing a parent when you are a teenager is a deep and profound form of grief, although parents do not expect to outlive their children, and children do not expect their parents to die.  Still, there’s no preparation, no playbook, for dealing with this grief, not as a teenager, and not as an adult.  On another level of grief, losing a sibling is like losing a body part – one hears those stories of people who have lost a limb “feeling” it (muscle memory?) long after it is gone –  a member of the family.  It cuts even deeper than the loss of a parent.  Losing a sibling, the youngest in your family tree, produces a grief far more profound than losing a parent.  I cried more in the week after our baby brother’s death than I had in my 60 years of life.  (My childhood friends have said they never saw me cry.)  Tears form in my eyes as I write this. . . .

Tears are still forming and falling from Jeanette’s eyes.  There is nothing that can assuage her grief.  Her grief is double our siblings, in that she not only lost a bother, but also a son.

But this post is not about tears.  It is about fortitude and strength in the face of tragedy.

My sister, Jeanette, is the strongest woman I know, and if there is life after death, then I hope that she and Whitney are reunited.

Posted in being a teenager, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Family, Fatherhood, Fathers, Growing Up, juveniles, Lest We Forget, Mother's Messages, raising black boys, Relationships, Religion, Urban Impact | Tagged | Leave a comment

The “new” Jim Crow is as old as the Union

Posted on March 7, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Ever have a “Eureka!” moment?  During my legal research in the early 1980’s, I came across something that, beyond a reasonable doubt, confirmed what people had been talking about without much evidence, beyond the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to wit: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” (emphasis added).  (See the chart below, “A Comparison of New York State Laws and Regulations and Slave Codes.”)

Call the Thirteenth Amendment the Exception to the Emancipation Proclamation Clause.  Herein lies the origins of hyperincarceration, not “mass incarceration,” because people formerly enslaved (Africans and their descendants) were the targets of this “Constitutional” Amendment.

Even before the “end” of “legal slavery,” in the 1820’s, Black people in America were disproportionately imprisoned.  Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville – the very same De Tocqueville who is famous for Democracy in America – came to America to study her penitentiary system.  They found the disproportionate imprisonment of “Negros” in the Southern states.  Their findings were documented in On the PENITENTIARY SYSTEM in the UNITED STATES and its APPLICATION to FRANCE (1833).  Even before the Thirteen Amendment, when the peculiar institution was a powerful source of social control and punishment of Black people, white Southerners still found use for the penitentiary, which provided absolutely no penance for those in it.

One hundred and seventy-seven years later, Michelle Alexander picks up this thread from De Beaumont and De Tocqueville, in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.  One could argue that this book is the most important book in the last 50 years about the criminal legal system and its byproduct: “mass incarceration” (read hyperincarceration).

Alexander puts this age-old American problem in a context people seem to readily understand, that is, legal segregation, also known as Jim Crow.  There is no official “end” date for segregation in America.  Even legally speaking, it’s hard to argue that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 ended legal segregation. When the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, 14 years after the Brown decision, he was fighting this protracted Civil Rights War against both legal (de jure) and de facto segregation.  In the 1980’s, a Harvard University study found that New York City had one of the most segregated public school systems in the United States.  Nonetheless, The New Jim Crow got masses of people to look at the criminal legal system in ways it had never been looked, through a lens that provided some clarity.

I would like to think that it’s clear that “mass incarceration” is not the new Jim Crow, but slavery reimagined, with bars.

A Comparison of New York State Laws and Regulations and Slave Codes

New York State Laws and RegulationsSlave Codes*
Correction Law ⸹170(1).  Contracts prohibited.  The commissioner of correction shall not, nor shall any other authority whatsoever, make any contract by which the labor or time of any prisoner in any state prison, reformatory, penitentiary of jail in this state, or the product or profit of his work, shall be contracted, let, farmed out, given or sold to any person, firm, association or corporation; except that the convicts in said penal institutions may work for, and the products of their labor may be disposed of to, the state or any political division thereof or for or to any public institution owned or managed and controlled by the state or an political division thereof.Art. 174.  The slave is incapable of making any kind of contract, except those which relate to his own emancipation.  (LA)   Art. I, ⸹1005.  No master, overseer, or other person having the charge of a slave, must permit such slave to hire himself to another person, or to hire his own time, or to go at large, unless in a corporate town, by consent of the authorities thereof, evidenced by an ordinance of the corporation.  (AL)   XXXIII.  [N]o owner, master or mistress of any slave…shall permit or suffer any of his, her or their slaves to go and work out of their respective houses or families, without a ticket in writing under pain of forfeiting the sum of current money, for every such offence.  (SC)
  
Civil Rights Law ⸹79(1).  Forfeiture of office and suspension of civil rights.  Except as provided in subdivision two a sentence of imprisonment in a state correctional institution for any term less than for life or a sentence of imprisonment in a state correctional institution for an indeterminate term, having a minimum of one day and a maximum of natural life, forfeits all the public offices, and suspends, during the term of the sentence, all the civil rights, and all private trusts, authority, or powers of, or held by, the person sentenced.Art. 177.  The slave is in capable of exercising any public office or private trust.  (LA)
  
Department of Correctional Services Directive #4201.  The inmate shall write to the Superintendent expressing an intent to marry.Art. 182.  Slaves cannot marry without the consent of their masters, and their marriages do not produce any of the civil effects which result from such contract.  (LA)
  
Standards of Inmate Behavior, 104.10.  Inmates shall not conspire or take any action which is intended to or results in the takeover of any area of the facility, or, acting in a group, engage in any violent conduct involving threat of violence.   Standards of Inmate Behavior, 104.11.  Inmates shall not engage in any violent conduct or conduct involving the threat of violence.   Standards of Inmate Behavior, 104.12.  Inmates shall not lead, organize, participate, or urge other inmates to participate in work-stoppages, sit-ins, lock-ins, or other action which may be detrimental to the order of the facility.   Standards of Inmate Behavior, 104.13.  Inmates shall not engage in conduct which disturbs the order of the facility.Art. I, ⸹1015.  Riots, routs, unlawful assemblies, trespasses, and seditious speeches by a slave, are punished, by the direction of any justice before whom he may be carried.  (AL)
  
Standards of Inmate Behavior, 105.10.  Unauthorized Assembly or Activity.  The unauthorized assembly of inmates in groups is prohibited.  The size of the group is determined by local policy (generally five people).Art. I, ⸹1020.  Not more than five male slaves shall assemble together at any place off the plantation, or place to which they belong, with or without passes or permits to be there, unless attended by the master or overseer of such slave, or unless such slaves are attending the public worship of God, held by white persons.  (AL)
  
Standards of Inmate Behavior, 105.11.  Religious services, speeches or addresses by inmates other than those approved by the Superintendent or designee are prohibited.Art. I, ⸹1022.  Any slave who preaches, exhorts, or harangues any assembly of slaves, or of slaves and free persons of color, without a license to preach or exhort from some religious society of the neighborhood, and in the presence of five slave-holders, must – be punished.  (AL)
  
Standards of Inmate Behavior, 109.13.  Inmates who are on outside work assignments such as community service projects, or outside ground details shall not leave their assigned area.Art. I, ⸹1008.  No slave must go beyond the limits of the plantation on which he resides, without a pass, or some letter or token from his master or overseer, giving him authority to go and return from a certain place.  (AL)
  
Standards of Inmate Behavior, 113.10.  Inmates shall not make, possess, sell or exchange any item or contraband that may be classified as a weapon by description, use or appearance.   Standards of Inmate Behavior, 113.18.  Inmates shall not be in possession of tools without authorization.Art. I, ⸹1012.  No slave can keep or carry a gun, powder, shot, club or other weapon, except the tools given him to work with, unless ordered by his master or overseer to carry such weapon from one place to another.  (AL)

_________________________

*The Slave Codes are followed by their states’ abbreviation.  The Louisiana Slave Code of 1824; the Alabama Slave Code of 1852; and the South Carolina Slave Code of 1740.

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, crime, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, Martin Luther King, Politics, Slavery | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Spirit-Busting Patriarchy

Posted on March 6, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Have you ever read the translation of an author’s work and had a strong desire to read it in the original?  One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez, for me, was that book.  During a three-year period I read the book three times, listened to audio tapes in Spanish, and intensely studied the language, building on the years I learned basic Spanish in intermediate school and high school, for the sole purpose of reading this great book in the original language it was written.  In fact, when I was courting my wife, whose first language is Spanish, I gave her a copy of Cien años de soledad to read, since it’s my favorite book by a Latin American author.  With my understanding of the book (through three readings), I was able to read, follow, and appreciate the story in Spanish.  One may wonder why I am mentioning a male author in Women’s History Month.

I am mentioning Gabriel García Márquez today for two reasons: one, today, March 6th, is the anniversary of Márquez’ death; and two, the mere mention of his name in a New York Times book review, introduced me to this writer, Isabel Allende.

In the Times book review of her first book, The House of the Spirits (1982), there was a reference to Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude.  If an author is mentioned in the same sentence as Márquez, then I am going to read her.  So, my book recommendation today is Allende’s The House of the Spirits.  If the surname sounds familiar, her father was a first cousin of Salvador Allende, President of Chile from 1970 to 1973.

Isabel Allende is a great woman writer to uplift this Women’s History Month, in that, “Her history of oppression [as a woman] and liberation is thematically found in much of her fiction, where women contest the ideals of patriarch leaders.”

Having been mentioned in the same breath as Gabriel García Márquez, considered the most influential writer in Spanish since Cervantes, Isabel Allende has been called “the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author.”

During Black History Month, I mentioned a couple of Black women writers, storytellers in the tradition of Scheherazade.  Allende is also among that group of great storytellers.

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A Statue for the Unknown Slave Woman?

Posted on March 5, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Today, in honor of Women’s History Month, I’m going to do something slightly different: honor an unknown woman — in fact, unknown women — by sharing a poem from my third collection of poetry, The Black Feminine Mystique. It is entitled, “A Statue for the Unknown Slave Woman?”

Her broad hips had launched a thousand slave ships.

On the transatlantic “trip” her fate was sealed;

She was repeatedly raped, bore slaves for an alien race.

On the auction block she stood protuberantly pregnant,

While White men gathered around her, rubbed her belly,

And then fiercely bid to own her fertile body.

America harbors the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island,

A torch upraised in one of her hands, lighting the way,

For the tired, poor, huddled White masses yearning to be free.

Perhaps off the coast of the Carolinas, on Sullivan Island,

America should erect a statue, call it Lady Slavery,

For the stolen, shackled Black masses also yearning to be free.

Untold wealth had issued from Lady Slavery’s womb.

Why not a statue for this unknown woman, or a tomb?

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