Reactions to reading Red Clay Suite by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers and Jon Tribble

“Tall trees catch wind.” Grandpa Charlie 

After reading this one of the main points that keeps bouncing around in my thoughts and within my conciseness is the importance of real story telling.  The importance of the truth of one’s lived experience having the space to be told and heard by others.  Every single person in the world has a unique set of experiences as they travel on the different roads, that their journey through life provide them. The very first quote I saw when I started reading this book spoke directly to my life, “Tall trees catch wind.” Grandpa Charlie.  When I look at trees I see and experiences so many different things, first I think of my mother who’s ashes were spread in the Redwood forest in Santa Cruz, then I begin to wonder all of the many years on this planet the trees have had, what have they seen and what sort of tragedy’s they have been forced to endure.  Trees have been here long before me and will be here long after I go, much like red clay and the ocean.  

The importance of hearing and reading truth in lived experiences, allows the severity of connectivity to have air.  Wounds do not heal without air and grief does not just disappear because we are ready for it to leave.  In the poem, Let Blood GoHonoree Fanonne Jeffers writes; through rough, wild. Brightness peaking/ between trees, a pair of coy eyes. /Should I feel afraid driving hereI immediately realize how often that is not a familiar one for me, my white skin does not hold the same kinds of experiences, the same kinds of historical trauma that Honoree Fanonne Jeffers does.  I breathe deeply opening up space for the seriousness of what I am reading and continue, coldness in the eyes of some whites, / resignation in the eyes of others. / Black folk rolling, surviving-/some angry, but most just let blood go.  wish I was a brother committing a crime, /reckless eyeballing, / maybe whistling for Emmett Till, / but this child wants to please- Yes, ma’am. / Born about sixteen years ago/with a guiltless, bare soul. /a woman like Emmett’s mother. / Blues eyes, this land-O Mamie, Mama, Mississippi My daughter pops into my mind my blue eye could stare into her beautiful brown eyes all day and night, and yet she still asked me why her eyes are not blue.  I want her to know who she is, I want her to know the world looks at her differently, tears rolling down my cheeks.  I need more stories like this to be told to her now, why she has to wait to learn the truth is something that infuriates me.  I refuse to force her to wait, we read this book together and I do a google search.

We listen together as Honoree Fanonne Jeffers says I was five when I journeyed to the land of red clay, / that place of my grandmother-she was destroyed by the red clay. (https://youtu.be/gYQoGvAqdYk) My daughters ears perked up a bit as we watched and listened to the most important truths I had heard all day.