MemeWars by Aldon Lynn Nielsen With E. Ethelbert Miller

Aldon Lynn Nielsen was born and spent his childhood in Grand Island, Nebraska, the place where The West begins, its outskirts the forward edge of The Big Empty. This extended series of written interviews with E. Ethelbert Miller begins with a vivid recollection of that space, tumbleweeds and all, then moves on to Nielsen’s formative years in Washington, DC. Miller’s questions lead to considerations of Nielsen’s development as a poet, musician and scholar. As you would expect, these reflections treat his engagement with African-American literature from the Black Arts Movement to the growth of university departments of Black Studies and his role as an anthologist and critic in offering us both the texts of innovative Black writing and critical ways to approach it. The detail here is engaging and important, but this is most fascinating and instructive as the account of the evolution of a sensibility and how it moved from “empty” to open and inclusive.

—Michael Anania

As you begin Memewars, think of Ethelbert Miller’s leading questions as melodies, recognizable tunes, and Nielsen’s responses as harmolodic extensions, waxing nostalgic, and just as moving, just as important, playing all the changes on a prolific career and life in music and writing.

—Tyrone Williams

Nielsen layers reminiscences of a Nebraska childhood and observations about contemporary family life with a cultural commentary that doesn’t tell us what to think, but instead causes us to question what we thought we already knew.

—Kathy Lou Schultz

Aldon Lynn Nielsen’s MemeWars reveals a world where deep listening, reading, and rumination place us on a journey that traverses the fertile ground of Black creativity. With the right questions being asked by the incomparable E. Ethelbert Miller, Nielsen gifts us with the life of the intellect that facilitates our understanding of the work and brings us to the point where we are made aware of the power of the lived literary experience that is informed by writing and teaching. Through his recollections of an astonishing group of legendary intellectuals/artists like Russell Atkins, C.L.R. James, Lorenzo Thomas, Jayne Cortez, Amiri Baraka, Ahmos Zu-Bolton, and several others, Nielsen is privy to what the poet M. B. Tolson called the “artistry of circumstance.” How grateful we are that Nielsen has been listening, remembering, and responding with his astute critical eye! This interview/memoir weaves through the physical and cultural landscape where a young boy can spend his early days dreaming of comic book heroes, range riders, and scientists, finding his way from Nebraska all the way to Chocolate City, Pennsylvania, California, and further. Nielsen’s life is marked by movement, Black ones. Within the pages of the crucial book, he astutely comments on the rich texts and lives of those innovators he encountered. He delivers us to a place where we can hear the lament and celebration of the blues, the electric/eclectic jazz riff improvisatory bop and weave, p/laying it all out like a ring dance in the cooking fires of resistance and liberation. Importantly, it is also a story of Nielsen’s origins and how he fashioned his critical and poetic acumen to give us observations that speak from his commitment to championing and documenting the breath, breadth, and depth of a rich legacy. This book ignites us and returns us to the launch pads of our own strivings. Here is a place where ideas resonate and can be savored. Read and digest these interviews. Be reminded how important it is to witness and remember!

— T. J. Anderson III, author of Devonte Travels the Sorry Route (Omnidawn, 2019)

His bicycle firmly attached to his Toyota Corolla, Aldon Nielsen set out across America, eventually parking himself for a decade in San Jose, California. Over the decades he has taught at Howard University, San Jose State, UCLA, Loyola Marymount, Pennsylvania State University, and the Central China Normal University in Wuhan. His most recent books are Back Pages: Selected Poems, Sufferhead, Spidercone and The Inside Songs of Amiri Baraka. When not haunting the lounges of Dulles Airport, he makes his home in Santa Barbara, with his wife, Anna Everett, who has heard all of this . . . twice.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 180 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-416-1

$22

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