Date: April 22nd 2008

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...about their lives and the world around them?

The Bandana Republic
A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and Their Affiliates
Edited by Louis Reyes Rivera and Bruce George
Foreword by Jim Brown

An intergenerational, multi-racial anthology edited by two gang members turned cultural workers, The Bandana Republic seeks to showcase the creative impulse that, along with violence, has always been a part of membership in urban gangs.

Urban youth gangs and street associations are viewed more often than not as training grounds for thugs and felons. Left out are their members' emotional sensitivities, their political consciousness, their individual and collective capacities to assess the social conditions that gave rise to the need for such associations.

Left out of the popular dialogue on gangs is the creative impulse that has continued to manifest in popular culture-from the birth of the Blues to Rag Time and Swing, to BeBop, Doo Wop and Hip Hop. From the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to the Black Panther Party, Brown Berets, Young Lords and Brownstone Rangers to the height of the Civil Rights Movement to our current Hip Hop culture, urban gang rhetoric and its symbolisms have informed almost every major social movement of this century. They have also played a role in protecting neighborhoods, initiating food and clothing drives and in taking on housing-related issues such as gentrification.

The Bandana Republic focuses on creative literature written by adolescents from such contemporary gangs as Crips and Bloods, Latin Kings and Mexican Mafia, Black Spades and Neta, Black Gangster Disciples and Hells Angels. It also includes work by former gang members who have entered the arena of social work or gone on to other careers. The anthology showcases writing by television and film actors Malik Yoba, Edward James Olmos, Ruby Dee, Mos' Def, and Jim Brown; performers and lyricists Oscar Brown Jr., Gil Scott-Heron, Dead Prez, and Snoop Doggie Dog; and journalists Felipe Luciano and Mumia Abu Jamal-all of whom have either come from urban gangs or were closely affiliated with street-based organizations.

Like many adolescents, they initially attached themselves to the available rough-n-tumble street role models, becoming active gang members and adopting "the ways of the street." Inside of this framework, and in spite of the stereotypical "conventional wisdom" concerning street gangs, they were also reared into the creative aspirations of their respective communities. Not just dancing and styling, but reading and studying, learning to develop the gall to give voice to the voice.

About the editors:

A former street gang member, having come from one of the more notorious New York urban gangs of the 1950s, the Chaplain Nation, which once comprised as many as 19 separate divisions throughout the borough of Brooklyn, poet/essayist Louis Reyes Rivera is now known as the Janitor of History. He has been studying the craft of poetry since 1960 and teaching it since 1969. The recipient of over 20 awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award (1995), a Special Congressional Recognition Award (1988), and the CCNY 125th Anniversary Medal (1973), Rivera has assisted in the publication of well over 200 books, including editing Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam (Crown Publishers, 2001) with Tony Medina. Considered by many as a necessary bridge between the African and Latino American communities, he is a professor of Pan-African, African-American, Caribbean and Puerto Rican literature and history whose essays and poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Areyto, Boletin
, The City Sun, African Voices, and in award-winning collection, including ALOUD: Live from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Of Sons And Lovers, and his own Scattered Scripture. Since 1996, Rivera continues to host a bi-monthly Jazzoetry & Open Mic @ Sistas' Place (where he also conducts his writing workshop), in Brooklyn. He appeared on C-SPAN, as part of the REPARATIONS NOW! rally held in Washington, D.C. and on Russell Simmons' Def Poetry on HBO. Currently, Louis Reyes Rivera can be heard every Thursday, at 2pm, on radio station WBAI (99.5 FM), hosting his show Perspective. He lives in New York City.

A former gang member, Bruce George has been writing poetry for over 25 years. He is co-founder of Russell Simmon's Def Poetry Jam, for which he received a Peabody Award, and executive producer of the spoken word documentary Bone Bristle, currently in post-production. Bruce George has served on panels for Harvard, The New School, Medger Evens and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and has judged hundreds of poetry contests. Bruce George is currently Executive Consultant for the Reverend Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Push Coalition. He was born, raised and currently lives in New York City.


From the Foreword by Jim Brown
"The Bandana Republic is the most provocative, researched, educational, opinionated piece of work that I've ever read . . . In its own provocative way, The Bandana Republic makes you think, reflect, cry. I recommend to all of you, and to all people who purchase this anthology: read it, learn from it, try to draw your own conclusions. What you have in front of you is a reflection of every revolutionary, every victim that ever lived in this country. Color, gender, race, religion . . . it does not matter. Only the individual dealing with correctness, fairness, love and caring, multiplied a billion times, will ever bring about the proper change in human behavior. __Read this anthology, and then check yourself."


Praise for Bum Rush the Page, also edited by Louis Reyes Rivera
"A remarkably democratic anthology . . . the topicality and directness of the poems make this an ideal textbook for introductory poetry classes, especially for urban high school students, and for anyone interested in poetry as a social art." -Publishers Weekly

"A solid volume of smart and exhilarating poetry by poets from diverse backgrounds . . . Medina and Rivera's contributors are passionate, witty, wise, socially conscious, and artistically adventurous."
-Booklist

978-1-59376-194-3
Trade Paper 6 x 9 288 pp
Literature/Sociology $16.95
June 15, 2008

Learn more at www.myspace.com/thebandanarepublic

soft skull press | 19 w 21 st, ste 1101 | new york, ny 10010 | 718.643.1599 | 866.881.4997






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