Review: "Still Hanging: Using Performance Text to Deconstruct Racism"

Thank you to Cavanna Faithwalker's response to the work by Dr. Mary E. Weems and Dr. Bryant Keith Alexander, "Still Hanging: Using Performance Text to Deconstruct Racism." Faithwalker is a Community and Personal Empowerment Strategist and Facilitator with Left Thumbprint Solutions.

This is not a jacket on the book. Look it up and read what the jacket says. This is my knee jerk on it.

Here’s how much I loved this joint- I read it twice in a couple months and still dive into it. Yep, I loved this book; it is intimate, relevant, insightful, and often, and oh so painfully familiar history. If you talk to yourself, like I do, it becomes a path into your own remembrances and artistic coping decisions concerning the cultures in which we live. My running conversation: “Hmm, really? Wow, I remember that from my parents' generation... Hmm, that's an interesting choice... Oh sh*t!”

One of my favorite pieces is "Three Meditations on Prayer and Particularity." You’ll have to read it.

This book is a creative record, log, and diary of two artists living through--analyzing--race, the zeitgeist; and emoting on racism in America from back in the day, 'til today.

Interlude 6 "Bamboozled," Chapter 9 "Eat Fresh," and Chapter 10 "Not a Fan Letter" are full of pain, anger, and betrayal and God forgive me, made me laugh a bit. It was hard not to keep abreast of this event covered in these pages though I laughed, shook my head and endeavored not to follow it over the past years in the “news.” Well, now I don't know what to do with all these JUSSIE INNOCENCE PROJECT t-shirts. Half price sale?

Unfortunately racism is still a thing. LGBTQ+safety is still an issue.

In Still Hanging, there are scripts and personal insights not only about "isms" but about cultural outcomes because of isms. Poems, scripts, notes, haikus, and personal correspondences blend together wonderfully and it’s seamlessly poignant.

This book is like the Blues. Ya like the Blues? The Blues records, laughs at, mourns, is freeing in its expressing and shines a light on and exists because--racism.

Still Hanging: Using Performance Texts to Deconstruct Racism, is available at Cleveland Heights indie bookstore Mac's Backs online.