News: What's up with writers and the book biz |
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News: What's up with writers and the book biz |
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There is a story that could be told of many African-American neighborhoods in the 1970s, and it could be told as well of African communities like the one in which I was born: A strong community had its own character, yet it did not fit the current fashion in political, economic, and land-use system. The community was undermined from within and from without. When it ultimately broke apart, some residents suffered terribly. Most, however, found that they had "joined the modern world"—that they had improved materially. Yet they longed for the intangible qualities of closeness and brotherhood that was lacking in their more anonymous and fragmented modern lives. I was born in Somaliland, a territory in the horn of Africa composed of hard-working and peaceful people. Unfortunately, in the late 1970s, we suffered and our values and life were undermined by rival clans from the south, in what is now the separate country of Somalia. I have lived in the United States for many years, but I thought again of my homeland when I read The World of Patience Gromes: Making and Unmaking a Black Community by Scott C. Davis. In the Fulton neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia, Davis illustrates the point that good values in a community are its life. He chronicles the ways in which these values are developed and, ultimately, eroded. His book traces the life of Patience Gromes, a woman whose family had been torn from its African roots some time in the distant past and brought to the New World as slaves. Ultimately, a few years before the Civil War, the grandfather of Patience Gromes escaped from slavery. At the close of the war, he established himself as an independent farmer and businessman in James City County, Virginia. Patience was the third generation since slavery. She and other young, aspiring country folk moved to the city, married, took steady jobs, purchased houses, raised families, and established churches and social clubs. They created solid urban communities to match the solid farming operations established by their parents and grandparents. This record of success reached its climax in the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement, when those who lived lives of hard work and thrift led voting drives and protest marches that reached deep into the African-American community. Fulton, for example, had lower incomes than any other neighborhood of Richmond. Yet it had the highest percentage of registered voters. And its record of success in propelling the children of modest families into the professions was unmatched. Admiral Nathanael Gravely, our nation's first black admiral, came from Fulton. Unfortunately, by the late 1960s Fulton's houses were dilapidated. And city land-use planners saw that this site on the riverfront and near the airport was ideal for industry. Fulton residents fought a political battle to preserve their community. Yet even when that battle was won, they were unable to overcome the ideology of urban renewal planners who sincerely felt that Fulton residents were better served by being relocated to the suburbs while their community with its narrow streets, mixed uses, and close-built houses was razed. It's ironic that now, thirty years after Fulton was demolished, urban front-porch communities like Fulton have become a dominant model for urban development. And what of my homeland? Somaliland has broken loose from the oppressive regime in the south. Unlike the Fulton neighborhood of Davis's story, Somaliland is still standing free. Yet its citizens are fearful of the current perversion in the thinking of the international community. I'm speaking of efforts to merge Somaliland and Somalia. In other words, the aim is to revive a failed state, Somalia, at the expense of a successful, self-reliant culture in Somaliland to the north. The Fulton neighborhood, in Davis's book, was unable to resist such overwhelming pressure from the wider culture. I trust that my homeland will fare better.
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| Jamal Gabobe is the author
of Love & Memory |
