13 Chicchan
Red Cosmic Serpent
Rejecting conscious Ecstasy
We descend into Purgatory –
A Culture of Affliction
With ritualized Addiction
Our divine and potent Destiny
Lies dazed – degraded
Drunk – inflated – drugged and sated
With consumer Goods and Services
Hierarchies mete and measure
Top to Bottom
Left to Hard Right –
Defending the indefensible
Imagination dies in Projection
Fundamentalism breeds Ignorance
Perfectionism precludes Creation
Capitalism kills Compassion
But coiled among and between
Straight Lines – Laws, Rules and Regulations –
Curves a Serpent like a Smile
Oblivious and full of Wild Life
The ineffable Arc of a rising Breast
Breaks through this Madness in the west
Awaken!
Silent silver One
Slide in and out from under
Patriarchy finally
Patriarchy finally
Dead and torn asunder.
©Kleomichele Leeds
Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting
Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting (born 1967) is a feminist scholar and Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor of French in the Department of French and Italian at the Vanderbilt University College of Arts and Science. She is also the Director of African American and Diaspora Studies as well as the W. T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies. She is editor of The Speech: Race and Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union", and editor of the academic journal Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International.
Michael Eric Dyson has described her as "a rising star among black public intellectuals" and "one of the country's most brilliant and prolific racial theorists". Sharpley-Whiting was named one of the top 100 young leaders of the African American community by The Root, an online magazine founded by scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. She received the 2006 Horace Mann Medal from Brown University. The award is given annually by the Brown Graduate School to an alumnus or alumna who has made significant contributions in his or her field, inside or outside of academia. Sharpley-Whiting received the Ph.D. in French Studies from Brown in 1994. Her book, Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip Hop's Hold on Young Black Women, received the Emily Toth Award for the Best Single Work by One or More Authors in Women's Issues in Popular and American Culture in a specific year from the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. In September 2007, Sharpley-Whiting testified before Congress at the hearing, From Imus to Industry: The Business of Stereotypes and Degrading Images. She serves on the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association.
Single authored books
Sharpley-Whiting, Tracy Denean (1998). Frantz Fanon conflicts and feminisms. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780847686391.
Sharpley-Whiting, Tracy Denean (1999). Black Venus: sexualized savages, primal fears, and primitive narratives in French. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822323402.
Sharpley-Whiting, Tracy Denean (2002). Negritude women. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9780816636808.
Sharpley-Whiting, Tracy Denean (2007). Pimps up, ho's down: hip hop's hold on young Black women. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 9780814740644.
Edited and co-edited books
Sharpley-Whiting, Tracy Denean; Leitch, Vincent B; Cain, William E; Finke, Laurie A; Johnson, Barbara E; McGowan, John; Williams, Jeffrey J (2010). The Norton anthology of theory and criticism. New York London: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 9780393932928.
Sharpley-Whiting, Tracy Denean (2009). The speech: race and Barack Obama's "A more perfect union". New York: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781596916678.
Sharpley-Whiting, Tracy Denean (Translator); Nardal, Paulette (Author) (2009). Beyond negritude : essays from Woman in the city. Albany: SUNY Press. ISBN 9781438429465.
Sharpley-Whiting, Tracy Denean; James, Joy (2000). The Black feminist reader. Oxford, UK Malden, Mass: Blackwell. ISBN 9780631210078.
Sharpley-Whiting, Tracy Denean (Editor); White, Renée T (Editor); Sandoval, Chela (Foreword) (1997). Spoils of war: women of color, cultures, and revolutions. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780847686056.
Sharpley-Whiting, Tracy Denean; Gordon, Lewis; White, Renée T (1996). Fanon: a critical reader. Oxford Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 9781557868961.*
CHICCHAN
Kin 65: Red Cosmic Serpent
I endure in order to survive
Transcending instinct
I seal the store of life force
With the cosmic tone of presence
I am guided by the power of universal water.
Obstructions are self-created impediments of the mind: if it seems as if something is stopping you, then step back and shift focus.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2018-2019.
The Sacred Tzolk'in
Ajna Chakra (Gamma Plasma)
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