This week, I am sharing a poem of my own. “Samuela’s Fufu” first appeared in November 2008 on the One Ghana, One Voice poetry website (www.oneghanaonevoice.com) and will be included in the anthology Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams, edited and introduced by M. L. Liebler (Coffee House Press, Fall 2010).

Samuella’s Fufu
For Rose Blankson-Austin

Maame Rose knows. She cuts
cassava in block chunks.
Splits plantains, opens
dark veins concealed
beneath pale, sweet meat.

Maame Rose does it this way, stokes a fire
with coal, tosses in skins.
They curl in on themselves like small hands
closing into fists. The iron pot sits there
like a hungry chief, swallowing

cassava and plantains into boil. Listen
to Maame Rose. She will not steer
you wrong. She says pound
that cooked fruit in a dahuoma mortar,
hard as your ancestor’s teeth.

Yes, the pestle is heavy, she says. Take this essan trunk,
thick as your arm, tall as your eyes.
Look at the way it mushrooms out
at its base, soft and pliant
like a good brush, like your tongue.

It must be that way, Maame Rose says, so it works
the fruit as you pound and pound.
You should smile because it is hard.
Everyone tires, she says, but it is the ones
who pound cassava and plantain

until their hearts’ ache, until they
have forgotten their children’s names,
until their ghosts show them
how to hold the stick with two hands.
Do it this way, Maame Rose says,

and you see she is right and pound
that cassava, that plantain until the tough fiber
is broken down, until the whole village
has pushed you up that coconut tree
and you never meet your grandmother’ s corpse.

Cape Coast, Ghana, 2008

Selected Works

3. Poetry

Dave the Potter
A picturebook poem describing the life of the slave potter Dave. Illustrated by Bryan Collier.

Contemporary Poetry of New England
“Contemporary Poetry of New England offers a vivid portrait of a region, its colors and smells, its physical and emotional textures, and the people…. It presents a range of poets, few of whom would call themselves a “region poet,” although each has taken to heart in a private way Frost’s haunting dictum: ‘Locality gives art.’”

--from the Introduction

1. Nonfiction

DJ Kool Herc
The first picturebook biography of the founder of rap and hip hop, DJ Kool Herc!

America Dreaming: How Youth Changed America in the 60s
"Phenomenal."–Howard Zinn "Excellent."–New York Times Book Review

Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance
“Harlem Stomp! is a wonderous new book: it celebrates a time, a place, an energy, and a people who refused to be held back and so they created a culture the entire world is still reeling from.”

--George C. Wolfe, writer, director, and producer of the Public Theater, NYC

2. Fiction

A Brush with Napoleon
A seventeen-year-old is plucked out of the Grande Armee to sit in place of Napoleon for a portrait of the Emperor by the artist David.

Casa Azul
"I felt like a kid reading every word on the page! I liked the strains of "magic realism" coming through in Frida's house! Children will relate to this very much! The story is charming and reads like a thriller." –Margarita Aguilar, Assisant Curator, El Museo del Barrio

4. Middle Grade Series

Xtreme Mysteries
These kids love extreme sports--snowboarding, skateboarding, rock climbing, wake boarding--and are ready to fight when the right to do their sport is threatened.