has found a kindred spirit in the people of Taiwan
Afaa Weaver has much to say - about racism, poetry and how Taoist martial arts saved his life. But first he needs to eat. Ever the gentleman, he apologizes while sitting in the Leader Hotel's restaurant, though he's just finished four hours of Chinese class and looks beat.
Fu Jen University is housing Afaa Michael Weaver - Afaa is an Ibo name a Nigerian playwright gave him - in this relative luxury because he's one of the finest poets writing in the US today, a child prodigy from Baltimore who dropped out of college and worked in factories for 15 years before publishing his first book. Weaver, 55, has been nominated for a Pulitzer, and his editor, who handles a roster of Pulitzer nominees, calls him "the African American successor to Walt Whitman."
Weaver's poems have a visual, tactile style that shows the strong mind-body awareness of a lifelong taichi practitioner. In Charleston, penned after he toured a former plantation, he writes: On steps across from the slave mart,/ I peel an orange for the slow rip of its flesh/ in my thumb, the sweet dotting on my nose/ with its juice. I suck the threads of it,/ gaze at the wooden doors now closed,/ at the empty space inside with iron hooks ... I can smell/ the congregation of odors, humans fresh/ from slave ships or working in fields, and/ humans fresh from beds of fine linen,/ sleeping with fingers in Bibles and prayers.
PHOTO: Ron Brownlow, Taipei Times
Imagining Africans hung up like meat for auction made him feel sick, Weaver says between bites of fruit. "The memory of black people for slavery is one that gets re-experienced sometimes when you least expect it." This is what much of Weaver's poetry and teaching focus on - trauma and how trauma repeats itself in cultures and individuals' lives.
Taichi and mind-shape boxing (xingyiquan, 形意拳) have helped Weaver deal with personal traumas. His mother wouldn't let him play football so he turned to martial arts and later freelanced for Inside Kung Fu magazine. He believes in qi, the life force traditional Chinese culture holds exists in every living thing. "In xinyiquan we talk about unified qi, developing qi so it becomes an energetic body inside the physical body," he says. "It's good for people who think too much."
One summer night in 1995, when he was teaching at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey, and neglecting his taichi, Weaver found he had trouble walking, like he had a bad cold. The next day he checked into the hospital. The nurse said his lungs were full of fluid and his heart was failing. A doctor told him he needed medicine and a heart transplant. Weaver said no thank you - he was going back to his taichi master. "What's that?" the doctor said. Weaver shakes his head as he tells the story. "They don't believe in the qi. The qi is a real thing." Twelve years later no new heart, but Weaver's fine and just has to watch his blood pressure.
Trauma is in Weaver's intense eyes. He saw abuse in his family growing up, lost a son and has been divorced. His forehead seems permanently furrowed. Otherwise he looks like a big sweet guy. Chinese-American poet Marilyn Chin calls him "Buddhistic." Built like an offensive lineman, Weaver talks, walks, writes, even practices his xingyiquan slowly and deliberately. No doubt years of taichi and meditation played a role, building a calm persona around a sensitive core.
Weaver says the working-class part of him feels at home in Taiwan. "He just talks about loving being there and bringing the poets to the United States," says Camille Phillips, an artist and friend who taught ceramics in Kaohsiung two decades ago. "He found a soul mate among the people of Taiwan."
Last month at Weaver's graduate seminar, the topic was Passing, a novel whose main characters are light-skinned black women. One "passes" as white, deceiving even her white husband.
Weaver's always handing out extra readings. Among today's: "An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes and Slaves, South Carolina;" copies of laws prohibiting the teaching of slaves to read; an English traveler's account of a slave auction; a women's rights declaration. For his students, reading American literature without this context would be like an American tackling Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢) without understanding some Buddhism.
Also among the extra texts are two on how America's "model minority myth" - based on the successes of highly educated recent immigrants - obscures historical and ongoing discrimination against Asians. In one a Korean-American lawyer laments that he's treated like an alien despite his citizenship.
This comes as a surprise to his Taiwanese students, who thought racism was only a problem for blacks. Weaver tells them that in the US that they will have two choices: They can identify with whiteness and privilege, or they can identify with color and struggle. "I don't want my students to think that I don't like white people. My intent is to give information, to transmit knowledge," he says. "I have white colleagues who are anti-racism workers and they're very serious about their work. I want [my students] to know all of these things. It's complicated. I don't want them to be shocked when they go to America."
Weaver likes Taiwan because "people genuinely appreciate if you're a nice person" and "it's a break" from America's web of racial relationships. "I feel freer to talk about it without feeling the need to be overly critical. I don't feel like I have the black culture police on one shoulder and the white conservatives on the other. It's a chance to let go of some of that stuff, at least temporarily."
"I like the culture and I'm really grateful for the health benefits," he says. "When I come here to Taiwan I feel like I'm giving something back."
Afaa Weaver's 10th book, The Plum Flower Dance, will be published this fall by the University of Pittsburgh Press. He's currently organizing the second "Simmons International Chinese Poetry Conference," which will take place next year at the Boston-area women's college where he's a professor.
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