description: "Not Black and White" is a work of the heart. It is because we have a president who listened to his heart-wisdom that WritersCorps exists; it is the heart-wisdom of the participating writers that led us to this program in the Bronx; it is the heart of the Bronx that we tried to connect with and evoke. We, the writers, conceived this anthology to provide a forum for our heartfelt experience - our joys and frustrations - as co-creators of the first Bronx WritersCorps. The writer interviews, conducted by myself, Chris Belden and Steven Sapp, explore our choices as writers, and our visions of the role writing can play in community and culture. The interviews are followed by samples of each writer's participant work, and finally, the writer's own work. Among the voices of our participants are many whom not only have never written before, but never imagined they had anything to say. Our role in WritersCorps was not that of teachers, delineating the rules of writing; we were facilitators who tried to create a safe place for these "young" voices to emerge amid the rattle-screech of urban life that threatens to drown us all. Thus in putting our participant writing to the page, we felt it was crucial to the spirit of this project to leave their work intact, as much as possible. While this results in some inconsistencies throughout the text, it also allows the reader to experience first hand, as we did, the vitality of these unique voices. These stories and tellings and poems are written in the heart's language - the language of blood and air and gravity. This language is not black and white, but like our blood is all variations of blue and red. Despite constant pressure from all our "big brothers" in mass media and big business to polarize society and diminish the complex needs of human survival to issues of race, gender, age and class, the truth persists, and is evident in these we are not simply black and white, old and young, homeless and housed, we are the truth underneath that is all the colors of the human spirit.
language: English
title: Not Black and White: Inside Words from the Bronx Writers Corps
titlecomplete: Not Black and White: Inside Words from the Bronx Writers Corps
publisher: Plain View Pr