Book Review: Makeda by Randall Robinson

Makeda by Randall Robinson elucidates a history of African heritage often untold. 

Ever heard of an 'aleph'? According to a book by Paulo Coelho, an 'aleph' symbolizes a remembrance of past lives.  'Aleph' is also the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Significantly, the saying goes that one cannot move forward without knowing one's past. So, much like Paulo Coelho's remarkable novel Aleph (2011), another outstanding novel about remembering past lives has crossed my path.

Makeda (2011) by Randall Robinson embarks on a historical journey of one woman's past lives from Mali to North Carolina. The woman, Makeda, shares each vivid memory with her grandson, Gray, the believer and dreamer of all things possible.

Gray's parents' love for his brother causes him to feel like lesser of a person - less confident and self-reproaching. He visits his blind grandmother who lives alone almost every day as a young boy. She becomes his nurturer and he becomes her confidant. Makeda urges him to follow his dream of writing and to attend college.

Set primarily in the 1960s, Makeda links one African American man's coming of age to his father's. Gray learns that his father once had a fire for equality and justice that over time was doused with the need to protect and care for his family. Whereas Gray's own coming of age catapults him to an adulthood that supports and cultivates a viability of the African diaspora, its present and its historical contribution to societies.

Robinson brings up the idea of eternity within one person. Makeda literally has eternity within her. As historical fiction, this book imparts to readers one example of a strung together exploratory, often nomadic, and at times tumultuous route of the African diaspora. The route Makeda's soul has taken encompasses civilizations, religious periods, and great empires. From the Queen of Sheba to the Civil Rights Movement, Makeda makes connections with her rare ability of remembrance and leads Gray to dive deeper into his abyss of curiosity and knowledge.

Not only does Gray discover how Makeda's past lives left indelible marks since ancient civilization, he also discovers an African history lost through time and colonization. Gray's life soon becomes an adventure filled with love, loss, and understanding. The eternity that Gray finds seems to move through his family. He finds tumult through his enigmatic father, his dutiful mother, his accomplished brother and his closed-minded aunt; and he finds peace through the family that he creates for himself.

Strikingly, the book makes readers believe, dream, and explore just like Gray. It opens up a world that embraces a beginning - an origin and an 'aleph' - in a way that is not hidden or misinformed. Rather, it is an embrace that can light the way to optimally move forward.

"A Blues” Plants a Seed for the Most Fundamental Organic Growth

Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s “red, black & GREEN: a blues” is an enjoyable socio-cultural statement with many rings of fruitful growth.

Upon first walking into the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington, D.C., people formed a long line to await entrance into Marc Bamuthi Josesph’s new multimedia play. The interactive set of three rooms of a house on movable wheels played with the audience’s curiosity while walking around it in discovery. Singing and dancing with spiritual flair, the actors provided the audience with visual and audible pleasantries and occasionally a slice of fresh fruit to sample.

Watermelon seeds – said countless times in Joseph’s multimedia play, red, black & GREEN: a blues - stand out to me like little, black, unchewable seeds stand out against a bright red wedge of watery melon.

The rhythmic music made by the well-experienced artists’ feet, hands, mouths, and regular household items portrays one ring of the message. The interactive, multimedia set provides another ring of the message. Then, out of Joseph’s mouth in the likeness of a Sudanese woman came black unchewable seeds: the life of a loved one cut off unexpectedly by violence after she moves to the States to find viable opportunities.

An additional ring of thought in the play, the artists discuss ­Houston’s Third Ward Project Row Houses that provide multimedia art projects to the public and homes and gardens to residents. Another ring- DeFremery Park, aka Lil Bobby Hutton Park, in Oakland is the site for Joseph’s Life is Living Festival that becomes a stand for environmentalism. The root of affairs portrayed as organic, natural foods healing humans and the Earth, in part. When we let each story roll over our tongues and digest, we understand the watermelon seeds.

The green movement separates society because depending on your economic position, the only green movement for anything organic becomes the movement to sustain, nurture, and progress human life, specifically those who live in poverty. People in many neighborhoods are too busy fighting for their next meal to worry about being green.

Life is green too, as many forget. That small black, unchewable seed can be planted for its fruit or spit on the ground or thrown away, disregarded altogether. So is the green movement promoting food security and public health or is it promoting consumerism?

A company like Monsanto genetically alters its agriculture which may or may not affect our health in negative ways. Then a company like Coca-Cola sells sugar water and chemicals so cheaply that its consumers may or may not drink soda everyday because it’s the most economical option. Then a company like Public Health Institute works with the Let’s Move initiative to keep children active, fit, and making smart food choices by growing their own vegetables and learning the value of a vitamin and a carrot.

So as I watched the timely socio-cultural statement created by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, I knew that the Sudanese woman with the watermelon seeds metaphorically described the economic disregard for human life. The watermelon seed, the human being in poverty, required the most care, watering, and attention. Because at the heart of the matter is alleviating poverty, violence, miseducation, and other injustices to ensure that movement toward food security is organically, humanely green.