Ebony

Well, a bit more than half. :)

After getting some emails after my last entry, I know there's some friends who haven't made it to the netherworld of Facebook, so I thought I should update everyone. This morning, I received word that my fifth and final committee member has approved my dissertation prospectus. :) With all preliminary exams and oral defenses completed, that means that I am finally ABD (all but dissertation) -- a doctoral candidate.

I've got the rough draft of one of the main chapters finished. My co-chairs and I have a schedule in mind:

--finish writing the dissertation by August 2009
--go on the academic job market, September 2009
--defend during the 2009-2010 school year
--graduate w/ PhD, April 2010
--finish final revisions, Spring/Summer 2010

(Of course, "the best laid plans of mice and men...")

Even better news -- all four of the remaining members of my cohort passed. We're the first in a while to make that milestone on schedule, and will be celebrating accordingly.

Finally, my first three chapters/articles are coming out between July 2008 and March 2009. I've got a co-authored English ed article that will be in the July 2008 issue of English Journal (NCTE). In September 2008, my first YA lit-crit will be in a journal of African diaspora children's lit. And in the spring of 2009, the anthology with my essay on Lucy Maud Montgomery will finally be out from the University of Illinois Press. I'll post pertinent links once I get them. Needless to say, it feels nice to have something under the "publications" section of my CV.

In the works for this summer: two other articles, and the umpteenth revision of Ms. Thomas' Opus (!!!).

Lots of other things going on, but I've got some transcription to do (ick). Will post major milestone updates here as always, for any friends & random passers-by. Hope you're all well... my thoughts and prayers are with you.

So I was hanging out with abstract_truth a couple weekends ago. The conversation turned to LJ. She said that she missed my postings.

I thought about it and realized why I haven't blogged here or anywhere else. It's not only because I've been busy with other things. People make time for the things that they really want to do. I have missed the people I used to interact with here who aren't on Facebook, which I love and do check a few times a week. (The thing I like most about Facebook is the use of real details. I've found old friends from elementary school there!)

For the past couple of years, I've been learning to listen for a living. And the more I listen to others, the more context I have for my opinions. I blogged quite a bit when I was teaching because I felt powerless and voiceless during that time in my life. It was a time when I felt the need to share, commune, and release my frustrations. This LJ was my place for that.

Things have changed.

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So abstract_truth, when I think about it, I guess that's why I don't blog any longer. I just haven't had much to say.

(Note to passersby -- probably best to reach me at my U-M or AOL addresses, if anything's up. I'm not on LJ enough to keep up with comments. I check Yahoo! maybe twice a year, and now there's 3000 spam messages in my inbox. Oy.)

"Most people have a very hard time forgiving those whom they have deeply wronged."

--Molly Ivins

Wow, it's been a long time since I've been here. :) I just wanted to let all my old friends know that I'm on Facebook. A few LJ people have found me over there, so I thought I should probably say something about it. It's much easier and quicker to update and stay updated on what others are up to. It's also nicer because it connects people from every facet of your life, past and present, RL and online.

Degree progress update: Submitted my final prelim August 1st; revisions due mid-September, 3 forthcoming publications next year. I hope to defend my dissertation prospectus sometime this winter, and collect data this spring. So all is well in Dr. Ebonyland.

To all those starting classes again: have a great school year!

Prelim #2?

Passed. :)

Just want to mark the death yesterday of presiding bishop G.E. Patterson of the Church of God in Christ. I was COGIC through college, and I thank God for the life of this man, who "taught us how to wash, fight and pray." Never was his life touched by scandal, so of course, the secular media was uninterested in him. He practiced what he preached.

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Bishop, we'll see you on that "great gettin' up mornin'"... and yes, I will be careful.

Dear old friends:

I'm in the middle of prelims. So if you've tried to IM me or leave a phone message over the past couple of weeks, just know that my head is buried in... oh, if I told you, you'd fall asleep. Also, there's some other stuff going on. So no, I'm not ignoring you on purpose.

All systems should be back to normal around the end of April.

Hugs,

Eb

This made me cry:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc

"There is a skeleton in the Mattatuck Museum in Connecticut. It has been in the town for over 200 years. In 1996, community members decided to find out what they could about it. Historians discovered that the bones were those of a slave named Fortune, who was owned by a doctor. After Fortune's death, the doctor rendered the bones. Further research revealed that Fortune had married, had fathered four children, and had been baptized late in life. His bones suggest that after a life of ardurous labor, he died in 1798 at the age of 60."

I met author Marilyn Nelson at NCTE/ALAN in Nashville this November. Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem is one of the best books for young adults I've read in a long time. With spare poetry and prose, she reconstructs the haunting implications of our national -- not ethnic, not African American, but national--past.

A wonderful website that I'm using with my student teachers this evening in class: http://www.fortunestory.org/ -- all of them are white, upper middle class young adults teaching African American literature in diverse contexts. Contextualization is everything.

Marilyn Nelson, in the beginning:

Fortune's legacy was his inheritance: the hopeless hope of a people valued for their labor, not for their ability to watch and dream as vees of geese define fall evening skies. Was Fortune bitter? Was he good or bad? Did he sometimes throw back his head and laugh? His bones say only that he served and died, that he was useful, even into death, stripped of his name, his story, and his flesh.

And, at the end, Marilyn speaks for Fortune:

Well, I woke up this morning just so glad to be free,
glad to be free, glad to be free.
I woke up this morning in restful peace.
For I am not my body.
I am not my bones.
I am not my body,
glory hallelujah, not my bones.
I am not my bones.

So I'm thinking of Virginia Hamilton's story "The People Could Fly"... and of course, the old slave spiritual, "Know someday we'll all be free"... on down to Ethel Waters' sad lament, "Darkies never dream"... to Donny Hathaway's swan song, "Take it from me, someday we'll all be free..."

And I think to myself, I am so proud of my people. Crushed down, but not destroyed... so, so very proud.

Gotta go -- time to teach. All of you remain, as always very close to my heart, my hopes, and my thoughts.

Today, my Dad would have been 60.

Wow.

So much to tell him, and it's only been 9 years... at this rate, if I live a regular lifespan, we're gonna have to take a century up there to catch up.

Or will there be time at all?