Tag: Michael Brown

An Interview with Canaan Kennedy

During the 1989-1990 school year at Stanford University, I took Adrienne Kennedy’s playwriting class. We’ve been in touch ever since. Now, her grandson Canaan has written a book on his family, and I’m not only helping with the Kickstarter campaign, but I asked him a few questions about the project.

What’s the name of your book, and what is it about?

The title of my book is Struggles to Victory – Over Racism in America. This book is about my family’s experiences with being black in America and dealing with the racism that came with it. Ever since I was little, my family would tell me stories of the difficulties they faced in life because of the color of their skin. This book contains interviews from my father, my grandmother, and my grandfather. My father’s story explains his incident with the Arlington Police Department, when he was unlawfully beaten outside of his home in Arlington, Virginia. The interview explains this traumatic event and how he overcame this to write the play Sleep Deprivation Chamber, which went on to win the 1996 Obie Award for Best New American Play.

My grandmother’s interview tells her stories of attending Ohio State and traveling the world as she began her journey of becoming a playwright.

My grandfather’s interview explains his life and his co-founding of Africare, a non-profit organization committed to aiding people of Africa.

At 17 years old I wanted to record their lives into the form of a book so that people could gain insight into being black in America. What makes these stories so great is the fact that they were able to overcome racism and achieve their dreams. I’ve always been interested in how people overcome difficult obstacles and situations in life because ultimately overcoming obstacles, turning struggles into victories is what life is about. Understanding how people overcome adversity to achieve greatness is what I want to be able to mimic.

What was your process for creating it?

Well, I had this epiphany one day that made me want to sit down and write a book about my family. It was during the summer, it was a hot day, and this idea to write a book just came to me. I can remember writing about the process actually and on one occasion I wrote, “Well I’m writing a book and I have about seven pages.” It was a long process. I spent hours reading, researching, and conducting interviews and then transcribing them. Many hours were spent editing the transcriptions because they didn’t come out that well. I really immersed myself in the book because I really enjoyed doing it, and creating something of my own about something I care about was really wonderful. I can’t wait until it’s finished because then I can start to work on my next project.

Who’s the audience?

The audience is young adults who are trying to navigate life. The stories can teach me lessons about how to overcome difficult times.

What do you hope people take away from it?

With everything going on from Michael Brown to Eric Garner, I hope that people can get a better understanding of being black in America. I just want people to know about my family and what they had to go through. I was always proud of my family stories and found them very interesting, and I hope that people will be intrigued and fascinated too.

Who are some of your influences?

In my room I have posters of Malcolm X, Patrice Lumumba, Nelson Mandela, John F. Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi, Julius Caesar, Ramses, and Alexander the Great. My father taught me about these people who strived for greatness, who wanted to change the world. These are my icons because I too want to be great. These were all great men and their ability to command and lead people is why I respect them. All of these people understood that greatness is not built in a day, it is about the amount of everlasting effort you put into it.

Check out the Kickstarter project at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mbreauxsia/struggles-to-victory-a-book-by-canaan-kennedy, and share your own stories of victory on social media using the hashtag #StrugglesToVictory.

 

Let Us Now Praise
Michael Brown

Like so many others this week, I feel angered, saddened, and almost defeated by the non-indictment of Darren Wilson for his murder of Michael Brown. People are taking to the streets, to social media, to workplace and public debate.

At the same time, Bill Cosby shares race-fueled headlines. Party People—a play about the legacy of the Black Panthers and current questions of solidarity, the sociopolitical climate, and “armchair activism”—continues at Berkeley Rep to sold-out, mostly white audiences. I saw it with my wife last Friday night. I’m also in the middle of reading
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee’s 1936 poetic exploration of the lives of three poor, white Alabama sharecropper families that he conducted with FSA photographer Walker Evans. They never told their subjects their intentions or that they were media men; they didn’t provide them with a copy of the completed book, much less payment or royalties.

In sum, I’m a big mess. But if we’ve learned anything from suffragettes, the Civil Rights Movement, the Student Movement, and any movement geared toward leveling the playing field for the disenfranchised, it’s that we can never give up. If we do, “they” win.

As a parent of two who’s admittedly afraid of getting hurt and otherwise a big old large-crowd wuss, I’m not protesting in the streets. There is a vital need for loud, large-scale protest, even if I don’t and can’t participate. Activism comes in varied forms.

I can at times be that armchair activist, who, after spirited polemics on social media and carefully considered arguments with friends and co-workers, signs petitions and calls elected representatives. These efforts seem in vain after another brown life has been lost. What else, I ask myself, can I do?

Martin Luther King said, “I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for the minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.” So, I commit to working from the ground up, to greater action in the ways I best know how. Here’s my plan for trying to affect change in small ways, with the understanding that progress is often the sum of its parts.

  1. Create a documentary that examines the lives of three contemporary families living on the margins, but pay the participants, self-distribute, and have all proceeds go to the families. Hire people from the communities in which the three families live.
  2. Periodically go through my possessions and give them away instead of taking them to places like Goodwill or Salvation Army.
  3. Volunteer to read books to underserved kids.
  4. Hire an intern from an underserved community to work on my films, and pay them.
  5. Organize healthy food drives (see http://www.superfooddrive.org/resources/healthy-food-drive/).
  6. Donate to causes that provide food, educational opportunity, cultural engagement, and avenues of dignity to underserved youth.
  7. Subsidize a youth’s trip to go see a socially relevant play, movie, or art exhibit.
  8. Take a family in need out to a meal.
  9. Take another family in need clothes shopping.
  10. Stretch goal: Raise funds to sponsor someone’s health insurance premiums for a year, preferably a family.
  11. Other stretch goal: Go through the list again and again. Add to it, refine, and grow it into something that’s part of who I am and how I exist in the world.

I’ll quote Johnny Rotten: “Anger is an energy.” The powers that be may have riot gear, but we have the incessant and unwavering energy—and ability—to be in many, many places at once, whether it’s online, in the streets, or behind a camera. There aren’t enough tanks for that, are there?

I’ll report back.