PUSH   NEVAHDA

I was born and raised in Detroit (the greatest city in America) on the eastside, not far from Belle Isle, up the street from Thornetta’nem, across the street from the Hight family, four doors down from Margaret and Lele Barrett’nem, up the block from Tookie and Farley, ‘round the corner from Den’s Dean, right in between Mrs. Halloway and the Ivery family, ‘round the corner from Southeastern High School. My father, a mechanic, was a good father and a courageous man (given the fact that he had 12 kids....and stuck around to raise them). During my childhood we moved around quite a bit, from 1255 East Grand Boulevard to 2187 Harding, the home where I have my most fond memories.

I graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in History, and started subbing in various school districts in Michigan . But, I quickly grew weary at the possibility that I could be an agent for any kind of positive change within the school district because parents simply don't care about their child's education anymore. As a result, most teachers are nothing more than babysitters with benefits and 401k plans. But college did satisfy my fascination with history, religion, people, places, culture, ideas, and race. After a brief and rocky experiment with graduate school (which mostly meant an arduous teaching assistantship grading undergraduate papers from students that made plagiarism an art form), I thought I'd put school on hold to finish my book.  

I eagerly exiled myself from academia, threw away my belongings, packed up my books and headed for Utah. I took a deep breath of relief as I drove through the mountains and entered into the quiet calm of Northern Arizona. The robotic and mechanical world had taken a backseat to my urgent desire to seek peaceful refuge and begin work on my first novel. My cellphone was traded for a laptop, and nights of paper-grading traded for quiet re-reads of Baldwin in the open-air freedom of truckstops and coffee shops. I knew this brave act would certainly make me poorer and destitute, leaving me unsure of where my next meal would come from, but I was perhaps at the happiest point of my life.

I wrote plays and poems as a child, and by the time I got to high school my graduate class had voted me ‘Most Likely To Become A Writer.’ I began my first experiment with serious writing during my second year of college. Most black students were imitating the characters of the 60's black power movement; regurgitating the muslim rhetoric (rhetoric because none of it ever moved black folks anywhere, to do anything of real and tangible significance about our social plight); quoting West, reading Dyson, ignoring Baldwin, discussing Asante and Diop vigorously; listening to what they thought was "conscious" music, yet, unaware of the Watts Prophets, but lionizing Tupac. The issue of black reparations for slave descendants was a hot-bedded issue and David Horowitz was talkin' big shyt. I cranked out enough "controversial" material to convince my editor – a young Jewish gal - to give me my own column, Coffee Talk. Readership increased significantly and I, for the first time in my life, felt like a bona fide writer.

Later, in my junior year of college, I began to think seriously about writing a book. I had since been introduced to all of the usual suspects - the so-called  "Great American Classics" (including the European writers) - Tolstoy, Kafka, Shakespeare, Faulkner, Twain, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Thomas Dixon, D.W. Griffith, and Hitler, as well as the 'other' good, relevant, useful, yet, underrated readings (which mostly means the black authors - Ellison's "invisible" people): Baraka, Kunjufu, Neale-Hurston, Baldwin, West, Sanchez, Robeson, hooks, Woodson, Forman, Madhubuti, Davis, Jessie Fauset, Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes and other Harlem Renaissance writers, Cleaver, Gates, McKay, Freire, Douglass, and many other formidable readings. But, those who have influenced my thinking and writing the most are Cornel West, James Baldwin, Paulo Friere, bell hooks, Chinua Achebe, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, and Truman Capote.

By my junior year of college, I was surely convinced that the time had come for me to write a book. By that time I'd collected the various articles, thoughts, ruminations, and random pieces of prose carefully stored on floppy disc and tried to edit them into a readable and coherent order. Alas, I realized that my egotism had gotten the best of me, and my ideas for a book of criticism went to the shelf for a later date and time. But I continued to read and write.

Nearly ten years (and several articles and essays) later, Push Nevahda and the Vicious Circle: scenes from a random life, was finally published. More ‘Push’ series books will follow.

I've recently completed a manuscript titled A Tunica Sunset, and I’m currently working on three books: A Tunica Sunset, Notes From Oakwood Terrace and an historical book titled Detroit's Black Bottom Community. In my spare time I write a column at www.readersrooms.com