Angeli Rasbury leads two workshops with NYWC, one at the New Lots branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, and one at the Eastern Parkway branch. Both workshops are for young people. A former Criminal Defense attorney, Angeli is a writer, poet, educator, cultural activist, community activist and artist. She won the Doris Jean Austin Award for African American Fiction Writers from the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center and has been awarded grants for her work with youth.

Below is a poem by Angeli, followed by an interview with her:

A Song
By Angeli R. Rasbury

May 7, 2006

I hear the waves and music we listened to
driving South on the Garden State Parkway to Belmar
Bob Marley’s Legend, Marvin Gaye, Car Wash
songs from the 70’s on WDAS
In late afternoon Indian-summer heat
our first end-of-summer date
in cold water suds at ocean’s edge
he’s strolling looking down
He is so handsome like my father and brother
I am tanned from lying on soft granules of white sand on trip to
Caribbean sea
I smile and get giggly
I see his back arch
He bends down and lifts something
his palm with his life story
under the shell facing the bright sun
He calls out, “I found one,”
and smiles his seductive, innocent smile that makes me
weak to my knees

I am glad I am sitting on cool sand
next to dark rocks that conjure thoughts of black African miners
away from him and seagulls that attacked unattended brown bags
I blow him a kiss
see him climb short natural incline with eyes saying so much
Wind blows his shirt, my hair, over water
Changes its surface
Behind his body becoming taller in my eyes I see rhythmically rolling
waves
interfering with each other
getting taller, pushed onto shore
children running away from them as they
slow down, break on shore
riders determined to exhaust the summer in them

He has kneeled in front of me
smiles, holding his find
He leans over
I mimic him until our lips meet
We stay like that till I feel
cold water on my toes painted blood red
“Let’s move up,” I say, “and lay in the sand.
Let me see your shell.”
It’s chipped
Atlantic sand is packed inside like love in a heart with no one to receive
it
“It has a feather in it,” he says
“It’s beautiful,” I say
“Like the day.”
I comb out the moist earth and bring the shell up to my ear
He kisses me again

The waves I hear crashing
are like the real ones in front of me
only softer
“Are you happy?”
He nods, smiles
says nothing, running his long fingers through
my nappy hair like he’s hearing a song.


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Interview with Angeli Rasbury

Where were you born and raised?

In a small town called Kingston, in North Carolina. I lived there until I was about to enter 9th grade and then I moved to Philadelphia.

For how long have you lived in New York?

Since 1988.

What part of New York do you live in now?

Brooklyn. I’ve lived in Brooklyn since 1989.

When and how did writing become part of your life?

I was practicing law as a Criminal Defense attorney in downtown Brooklyn and it was a very difficult thing to do, because on a daily basis I would see young black people and older black people going in and out of the system, being sent to jail and prison, and quite often I felt like they should not be going to jail or prison. I felt that if they had been white, they would not be going to jail or prison—they would be getting a probationary sentence or they wouldn’t have even been arrested in the first place. I felt that very strongly. So, in order to remind myself of the beauty and resilience of black people, I started reading lots and lots of books by black authors. In reading, I somehow just moved to the next thing—to writing stories that had a more beautiful ending to what I was seeing in court on a daily basis. It really was a coping mechanism, so that I could construct other realities about what was happening because it was very, very difficult to watch a white judge on a daily basis send a black person to jail or prison. And I shouldn’t say person, because I would sometimes have a number of cases, and it wasn’t even just my clients, it was the other lawyers’ clients, too: I would sit in a courtroom for half an hour to an hour, and in that hour I might see ten, twelve people going to jail or prison. And in another courtroom I might sit for half an hour to an hour, so within the course of a day I saw a lot of people going before the judge, some of them going home, but most often going to jail or prison. So it was very difficult. Reading and writing really helped as a coping mechanism. It helped me to put things into perspective: to see that there were some things terribly wrong with the criminal justice system and that a lot of the clients just had not been given the opportunity that they needed to not be where they were. At some point I realized that I needed to do something else because I was getting very angry and depressed. It was really awful to actually be told in some way that the people you come from deserve to be in jail or prison, that it doesn’t matter that this young white woman who has been arrested three times for a knife point robbery is going to get a drug program, your client who is black and been arrested three times for a knife point robbery is going to go to prison. So I had done it for almost eight years, and I just said something is very, very wrong with this picture. I started doing more research and reading and realized that a lot of the people who come into contact with the criminal justice system do not have grade-level literacy skills. So I thought, okay, if I did something to improve literacy, I might in some way or another prevent somebody from going to jail or prison. So I left to do work in the community around literacy. And in doing that I, at the same time, said, let me explore my interest in writing, which I had developed and nurtured sitting in the courtroom, and at home, at night, when I was trying to cope with the depression of what I was seeing every day in court.

What kind of writing do you do?

I write everything. I’ve written a lot of articles about different topics, from culture, to women’s and girls’ issues. In fact, I won an award recently for an article I wrote about women who get out of prison and have to fight for custody of their children.  I’ve also written fiction and I’ve co-edited a book called Sacred Fire.

That’s wonderful about the award. Can you tell us more about it?

It’s called the PASS award and it’s given by The National Council on Crime and Delinquency. I was a recipient in journalism, and actually, HBO got an award for The Wire, so I felt really, really good, because I like The Wire!

From looking at your website, I noticed that you do a lot of exciting work with a variety of organizations. Would you like to speak about some of this work?

I’m a community-minded person and I believe that working with organizations in the community is key to breaking some of the cycles that lead to criminal behaviors because, first of all, I can’t do it by myself, and second of all, these organizations work with people who have different challenges in their lives. One of the challenges happens to be dealing with racism and oppression and unemployment, and so I like to work with organizations that try to build people’s skills so that they can obtain employment, obtain skills, and share that with their family and share that with their community so that we can somehow break the cycles. I also believe that literacy is key and that’s just not being able to read a novel or a book, but having the ability to comprehend and understand what you read, and understand what is going on in the world around you, whether it’s health information, financial information, nutrition, what you find in the newspaper, what you hear on the news, all of these things. I try to take a holistic approach and I try to connect myself with organizations that look at the whole picture. Or if not the whole picture, I look for an organization that does try to give some skills, some opportunities, that might help the person develop holistically.

What workshops do you lead through NYWC?

I lead workshops at both the New Lots branch and the Eastern Parkway branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

Can you tell us a little bit about your experience leading the NYWC workshops: triumphs, challenges, etc?

It has been a wonderful experience. I’ve developed relationships with the young people and their families. I guess that’s part of my mission and vision overall: I don’t just go over there and lead the workshop. I have the young people’s phone numbers and they have my phone numbers and I communicate with them during the week, and they call me if they need help with something, and I take them out and spend time with them and I guess in that way, I’m an Auntie in these young people’s lives. It’s been a very rewarding experience. So the triumphs, I guess, would include everything from having more nieces and more young people with whom to work and whom to inspire, and encourage, and to help grow into young women. (I say women because most of them are women.) I love hearing their poetry and their writing. Some of them edited an issue of the NYWC literary magazine, Plum Biscuit, and I think that was a great honor for them, and one of the young people from a year or so ago won the Brooklyn Book Festival student competition. That was really exciting. Some of the young people were asked to talk about the NYWC workshop at Major Owens’ retirement reception at the library—it was an honor to be asked to do that. And to watch the young people get along—that’s really a big triumph.

The challenge is getting more to come on a regular basis. But once somebody comes one time or two times, they tend to come back. So the challenge is getting them off the computer and into the workshop. And when it happens, it’s very rewarding. Once they come, and allow themselves that opportunity, they can run with it, but the challenge is getting them there so they can see how exciting and rewarding it can be for them.

I guess another challenge is that a lot of the young people do not have computers and they do not have internet access at home. Some of them won’t get off the computer at the library to join the workshop because it’s the only access they have to the computer. And unfortunately some of their homework requires them to do some kind of research online and they if they give up their thirty minutes on the library computer, they won’t be getting their homework done, or they won’t even get thirty minutes on the computer whether they’re doing their homework or not. So the challenge is dealing with societal things that really prevent the workshop from growing in participant size. Some people take having a computer and internet access for granted, but these young people cannot.

Are there certain writing exercises that you have found to be particularly successful or exciting?

When I had this idea for a brown paper bag exercise, it went places I didn’t think it was going to go. That was a great experience. The suggested exercise was to write about the bag, what the bag evokes or causes you to feel, or what the bag may feel or say. The second part of the exercise was to write something to put inside the paper bag, to write about what would make the brown paper bag special or more than a brown bag because of what is written and put inside it.

Another exercise that I thought went really well was when I suggested for them to start with “In 1977,” because none of them were even born then, and so they had to imagine. They did very well with that. Also, I use a lot of photos from the New York Times that have images of Africans who are in a state of poverty and have challenges and illnesses that really just make you think about what’s going on in the world. A couple of images really took the kids to different places.

Who are some of your favorite writers, or favorite books?

Some of my favorite writers are Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, Sonia Sanchez. Some of my favorite books, books I might read time and time again, are Go Tell It On The Mountain and Beloved—reading Beloved actually gave me the strength to resign from the Legal Aid Society after I decided that I might need to try something on the prevention side, because that book is about depending on your community to help you get through a difficult time and find the strength in oneself. So somehow or another it helped me to find the conclusion that I could think for myself and I could rely on my community to help me make that transition even though I didn’t have a job lined up. So I read that one time to time again.

I like Gwendolyn Brooks a lot, I like reading her poetry, I like to read June Jordan’s essays, I like Invisible Man. I go back to black classics that really tell the struggle of black people, just so I can remind myself of what we’ve been through, and that people survived, and find some hope somewhere. I like to read the young people’s stories, too. There’s hope in some of their stories, and there’s some reality in some of them too, which is pretty frightening. But it’s good to know that they have some really good writing skills and that with the right things in place, they’ll be future leaders and teachers and writers doctors and lawyers.

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To learn more about Angeli and read more of her writing, visit her website at www.angelirasbury.com