Precisely as the humble title implies, the thirty-three lyrically-styled poems that comprise Going Home, by Savannah poet and historian “Sista V” (a.k.a. Vaughnette Goode-Walker) demonstrate one of the most powerful kind of journeys that an individual can take. It is the journey from childhood beginnings in the poet’s ancestral homeland of the American Southeast to travels and discoveries in the larger national and international community.
In the twelve-stanza title poem, the author recalls days spent “crabbing from Miss Mary’s dock” with her grandmother:
It’s low tide and that sandbar
is showing itself again.
Grandmama says that’s why we crab
from the dock, instead of taking
the little boat out.
She says the boat got stuck
on the sandbar once.
I think the real reason is--
she can’t swim and I can’t either
and those crab[s]can swim
up to the dock just the same.”
--© Sista V
Her moving word images provide lasting portraits of the kind of heritage that Gulf Coast residents are referring to when they speak of “the way of life” endangered by the BP oil spill. It isn’t only about the harm inflicted upon the natural environment but that done to human traditions which allowed one generation to pass on values and customs and love to the next.
Memories and culture throb like living breathing things, or their very insistent spirits, throughout the pages of Going Home. Poems such as “The Mulberry Trees,” “Miss Melissa’s Grandson,” and “A Coffeehouse Memory” escort readers deep into the shared ancestral consciousness of the people and the land.
The journey recorded by Sista V also takes readers beyond the people and neighborhoods of the Southeast to the mango-scented streets of Jamaica, where the poet observes the following:
Missed traditions,
like family, brothers in control
with no one to interfere.
Had all this as I grew up
in the segregated South.
Now, here it is again…--Sista V
Readers travel as well when “An Ex-Reporter Goes to the Audubon Ballroom, Harlem, USA, 1996.” There, she recalls with quiet pain and horror of the day when, “A little past three, Malcolm [X] came out and gave the ‘greeting’” just before losing his life to the bullets of assassins.
Perhaps the ultimate journey that any individual must undertake is that which leads to a definitive realization of self. Sista V illustrates the significance of such a journey for her in the boldly titled “Black Giantess,” in which she stakes claim to personal empowerment “with all the strength from within her breasts.”
The journey to self is also evident in “Good Morning Life…,” a poem which many who attended the Gallery Espresso open mic readings might recognize as the poet’s signature piece. In it, she acknowledges a hard-won lesson: “in order to live life and love life/ one must have the patience/ to learn life.” The rewards of such patience are celebrated on page after page of Going Home in the form of rare community snapshots, timeless folk wisdom, and a deep passion for life as the poet knows it.
by Aberjhani, National African American Art Examiner
author of The River of Winged Dreams
and co-author of ELEMENTAL The Power of Illuminated Love
Discover More about Savannah, Georgia
- City of Savannah expands rich literary culture (part 1): Flannery O’Connor and Company
- 5 Notable Women of the Past and Present (part 5): Savannah’s Dr. Abigail Jordan
- Parisian Surrealism Comes to the City of Savannah
- City of Savannah Hosts First Black Expo (part 1)
- The Painted World of Savannah Artist Luther E. Vann
- Harlem Renaissance Dialogues (Part 2): Savannah and the Harlem Renaissance
- The Unique Genius of Gullah Artist Allen Fireall (Part 1)
- SAVANNAH TALKS TROY DAVIS NO. 1: The Inmate on Death Row
- The Rise of Gullah Diva Sallie Ann Robinson
- Artists of the U.S. Southeast
- Expanding Legacies of Savannah’s Diaspora Marketplace Part 1
Comments