This Is Us
I could tell you he was a bully, but that wouldn’t be the whole story
“Friends depart, and memory takes them to her caverns, pure and deep.”
— Thomas Haynes Bayly
1
The last time I visited my father, I said goodbye to him at the airport in the town where he lived. We hugged, he said I love you, and I walked toward the departure gates with my sister to go back to New York.
Halfway up the ramp in the small Southern airport, small by New York standards anyway, I turned back to look at him because I had a moment when I thought: What if this is the last time I see him…
By Max S. Gordon
Look down, look down that lonesome road,
Before you travel on.
–That Lonesome Road, Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915–1973)
This is America.
— Childish Gambino
1
I suppose it was inevitable that one day it would come to this, that racism would meet itself traveling down that lonesome road.
Witnessing it has been both ugly and delicious, new — yet hauntingly familiar. Lindsey Graham gets off a plane and walks through an airport in Virginia after recently acknowledging on the Senate floor that Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States. He is greeted by a mob of enraged…
Past Is Prologue
White America may be meeting Donald Trump for the first time, but Black people have known him for centuries
“Wade in the water, wade in the water, Children. God’s gonna trouble the water.” — Traditional
“My soul looks back and wonders, how I got over.” — Mahalia Jackson
1
Months ago, I turned on the TV and saw a white mom at a protest in Portland dragged across the pavement and abused by the cops who surrounded her, her white flesh handled with no more care than Black flesh is usually afforded in this country. For a moment, my mind flinched from a lifetime of conditioning. I thought, “You can’t do that to a middle-class white woman!” But under a…
This Is Us
On Mary Trump’s ‘Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man’
1.Several years ago, after a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, I took a walk in Central Park with a woman I’d met only a few weeks before. We were mourning a mutual friend who had recently died of alcoholism.
She and Alan had been friends since childhood; I’d only known him for a year. We both knew that he’d tried several times to stop drinking and despite being very distinguished in his career had somehow “failed” at sobriety.
We were also aware of a section in the AA literature that states in plain terms: Some people are simply unable to get…
By Max S. Gordon
(This essay was originally published on September 10, 2004 as
“An Open Letter to Paul Wellstone”. It was written in response to the arrests made during the Republican National Convention in New York City)
1
Senator Wellstone: I will not go on about the curious timing of your death. People are very impatient with conspiracy theories these days, even when past theories have revealed conspiracies. Still, I read with weary cynicism that you spoke to a meeting of war veterans in Willmar, Minnesota in October 2002 and told them that Dick Cheney said to you, “If…
by Max S. Gordon
Messin’ round with the best of them
Digressing with the rest of them,
He’s a stranger.
But his mama still knows his name.
“Sylvester”, Sly & The Family Stone
1
The day after it was announced that the president of the United States had been impeached, I awoke to an image of Kim Kardashian West dressed in blackface.
Already a backlash had started against her on social media. Some people were mad, while others defended her. It’s hard to create a real backlash against The Kardashian Wests, of course, because even when you are angry at them, or critical — or…
As a gay man, I can appreciate what it means for an out gay man to be a real Democratic contender — but as a black man, things are much more complicated.
This essay contains spoilers from James Baldwin’s 1962 novel, Another Country.
1. For months I’ve hesitated to write about Pete Buttigieg because I wasn’t sure how to articulate exactly what I felt. My ambivalence toward him is based on my own racial and sexual identities. I asked myself at one point: Could I, as a gay man, admire Buttigieg and, at the same time, as a black man, feel exasperated and angered by his choices? …
by Max S. Gordon
(The piece premiered at the First Person Plural Reading Series: What Just Happened? Writers Respond to Our American Crises — 2019 Edition, Harlem, New York, November 10, 2019.)
FOR AN AUDIO VERSION OF THIS ESSAY, CLICK HERE:
1
Before you can decide where you are going, you have to know where you are. Here’s where we are:
White supremacists recently desecrated the grave of Emmett Till. You may remember Emmett Till was a black child from Chicago, a 14-year-old boy, who was visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1955 when he was accused of disrespecting a white…
By Max S. Gordon
(This piece was derived from interview questions prior to the event “What Just Happened? Writers Respond to Our American Crises — 2019 Edition”, First Person Plural Reading Series, Harlem, New York, November 10, 2019)
Several years ago, I found myself in a car with a drunk driver.
I should be careful with my language - “found myself” isn’t the right phrase; I made the decision to get into that car. There were three of us passengers, two in the back and one up front. I was in the back. …
by Max S. Gordon
“Whole lot of things you’ve yet to understand. But instead of measuring the distance between your little-boy understanding and big-boy wisdom, you standing there plotting how to get past me. You so scarce in understanding, you think you can get past your own flesh and blood.”
— Toni Cade Bambara, These Bones Are Not My Child
1
What I was looking for was a way to quiet my mind, a reason to laugh in these troubled times. So, I turned on Netflix to watch Dave Chappelle’s Sticks and Stones. While I’ll admit I haven’t seen everything Chappelle has done, I consider…
Max S. Gordon
Max S. Gordon is a writer and activist. His work has appeared in on-line and print magazines in the U.S. and internationally. Follow Max on twitter:@maxgordon19
