Assignement 3- Tyrice Deane

Jacob Sanchez

 Yesterday I went to  see the movie “I am Not Your Negro”- a bio flick featuring the work of James Baldwin, who proclaimed himself a “witness”, and deemed the act of witnessing and documenting to be his artist role in the “the movement(s).” When I read Jacob Sanchez I thought of how he is writing his individual  experiences of place and manhood as a witness. His documentation of his block from his perspective is translatable  to the narratives others who may have lost their voice their lives their selves to the streets- he writes of the struggle for the struggle-. The role of the witness is to make it out, to tell the story, to move through the chaos and observe in order to tell the tale to those who pretended to not hear the fight. Sanchez is writing of what he witnessed as a child who was “too small to war with, too brown to be down for the block”. He writes of  “ the pawns” who sprayed la corona graffiti on garage doors, the crooks “fighting for a plot”. The craft of his work was so personable right down to the w/ in place of the with, I felt like he was reminiscing at a family kick back or lecturing in a room of thousands, all at the same time.  His titles also held weight. Evolution of my profile made me think of the mug shots of all the famous “criminals”, but really they were Black and brown leaders who as Baldwin and many other activist remark “were only criminals because they were not white”, when a white man bears arm to fight for liberty and justice he is a hero, but if a Black man uses the same freedom fighting rhetoric and exerts the same will to fight, he is a criminal. Sanchez use poetry to deliver this same message, he is brown, bald, and bearded with a bulging bag of books that warrants suspect looks from a bomb sniffing dog.  A bag full of books in the hands of man of color is just as dangerous as a bag of bombs would be to the ideology of whiteness. Sanchez then reminds the reader that like the canine, until he has been muzzled, taught how to obey, and learns not to “ bite back & snap my jaw  at the hands that pet me I will never be set free.” Obedience to white America  is the only way the nation will recognize blackness/brownness, or anything other than euro. It is too powerful, and to escape feelings of inferiority they, who prescribe to whiteness. must muzzle and leash their animals in order to train them into servility, or else the bomb of books, the explosion of knowledge will challenge their lie and they will be forced to give up power to emancipation.

Murillo’s use of rap/ MC/ break dancing to embody not only physical movement, but spiritual elevation of a people, is an inspiring medium to explore. His references to artist like Frankie Beverley made me feel connected to the setting, like a throwback jam just came on the radio and I had to turn it up. His poems made me bob my head in the memory of the music I know from my mother’s womb. Murillo is speaking to a culture that pays respects to “forgotten renegades like “Kuriaki, Pun, and PAC”. Murillo signs these names in throughout his works ,as a means of praise. He  resurrects the feeling of being young and learning how to fly with a community of artist who took lemons and made lemonade, right there on side walks covered in flatten boxes, and in egg carton grey rooms made studios. Murillo re-envisions the quality of sound and soul that is found in the beat of a people who break dance through the break downs, and beat box through the beat ups, all as a means of creating art through lived experience. Art was and is an integral part of survival in communities of color and Murillo brought that to life through his wor.