Life Imitates Art: 3rd Reflection Journal

Last weekend I had the outstanding honor of meeting Sokari Ekine who runs the Black Looks blog.  My friend is a long-time friend of Sokari's and months ago when I mentioned this assignment to her she suggested I look into Sokari's blog and start following her.  I spoke of Sokari's blog in my first reflection journal.  Sokari was in New York City for a conference where she was a guest speaker.  My friend came to NY to meet with Sokari and invited me to lunch with them.  In this way our dialogue was not internet based but live.  We spoke about our experiences abroad, my living in Vienna and Berlin and experiencing European racism; her living in Spain, the United Kingdom and Nigeria and the variety of differences regarding how race is constructed and processed within each of those geographic spaces.

I told her about my EDU 7666 class and she thanked me for sharing her work with my colleagues here at St. Johns.  Sokari writes for Pambazuka, an online Pan African community news magazine, among other media outlets and we discussed a series of pocketbooks that Pambazuka is looking to release.  She recommended me as an author and I followed up and might hopefully have a writing opportunity with the organization.  They are looking to publish small readers for teenagers on Pan-Africanist pioneers and areas of interest on individuals such as Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney and Thomas Sankara.

If there is any lesson to be learned from this experience for those blogging or participating in online discussions, it is that you never know how your shared interests with another will lead to pleasant connections with other like minded individuals.  Remain open and keep in touch.  A friend of mine, Emotion Brown, who is also a blogger, artist and educator, likes to say "stay familiar".  This can mean many things to different people but as an educator and artist, for me this means stay abreast of your ideas, goals, capabilities and world environment.