PORTFOLIO OF PSU | OSP BLACK STUDIES STUDENT WRITING
PSU BLACK STUDIES, WINTER 2024
Damn what I would do to eat my grandmother’s home cookin’
Hear the dogs ‘outside barkin’ or my pops
Telling me to keep hope alive n’ I still have time
Home is where my heart secretly yearns to be
In this moment home is right in front of me— from “Home” by Medero Moon
We are thrilled to publish a portfolio of writing by OSP students enrolled in a course taught by Portland State University’s Director of the Center for Black Studies, Professor Walidah Imarisha, and Professor Lisa Bates from PSU’s Toulon School of Urban Studies and Planning. This from the course description: “… students were encouraged to bring their own personal experiences forward in the class to illuminate connections to the past. One of the ways students engaged was through creative participatory activities of photovoice (writing narratives based on photos) and geopoems (writing poems about specific places), enabling them to literally and figuratively place their words on the map of Black Portland.”
This collection describes the home territory of Black Portland: corner stores and the community center, hoops in the park, Lloyd Center, and of the 8 bus … Robert Richardson asks: “Who thought a pulse with so much purpose,/ Could come in the form of a bus?” Together the narratives and poetry form memories tinged with the homesick itch for youth. We taste the Sour Patch candies and smell the popcorn at Dishman. Darius Brown writes: “Sneakers squeaking back and forth having a conversation / Sound means one of two things / It some hooping or some fighting going on.”
Portland photographs taken by students in PSU’s Project Rebound, a program that supports students returning to the community from incarceration, accompany the work by these writers:
MEDERO MOON
MANNY CID
STRESSLA LYNN JOHNSON
EARL DOUGLAS WILKINS
DWAYNE MCCLINTON
DEANGELO LEROY TURNER
WALLACE SIMPSON
JEFFREY SANDERS
ELIJAH M CRAIG
KEVIN FORD
XAVIER BOLDEN
RONDRAE JEFFERSON
TAMIR COLLIER
THERON HALL
ROBERT RICHARDSON
DARIUS BROWN
Portlanders, you are invited to a reading and reception to celebrate this work (see the flyer above for details.) Please download this chapbook we designed for family and friends attending the event. | TDS
