Art

Book Review: Oakland Poet Tureeda Mikell’s New Book of Poetry Gets Readers to Rethink Religion, War and Fairy Tales

Published

5 years ago

August 20, 2020

Tureeda Mikell, author of Synchronicity The Oracle of Sun Medicine. Photo by Asual Aswad.

In her first full-length book of poetry, “Synchronicity The Oracle of Sun Medicine,” published by Oakland’s own Nomadic Press in February of this year, Oakland native Tureeda Mikell is almost as playful as she is critical.

I read the poems as liberatory spells against the damage and coercive power certain myths embedded in American culture can have.

“Why alter earth’s altar?” Mikell asks in her poem “Spell’s Labyrinths: Double Talk,” then soon after asks “Why did the son of the sun worship with warship?”

Like much of the book, wordplay and inquiry saturate language while commonly accepted meaning of words are never taken for granted.

She critiques war and seeking dominion over nature but instead of telling the reader what to think, she prods them with loaded questions, and we are forced to deal with both the loads and the questions.

For me, reading Mikell’s loaded questions sparked my own questions, like: What is earth’s altar? and, Who is the son of the sun? and How does he worship with warship?

Since Christianity is referenced so much in the book, I found myself seeing Christ as the “son of the sun.” In a poem just pages earlier called “The Sun,” Mikell uses an often overlooked quote from the Book of Matthew that rubs against the typical peaceful image many have of him. “Think not that I come to bring peace!,” Mikell quotes. “I come not to bring peace but a sword.”

Through her questions and quotes, Mikell builds a framework for the reader to consider the final line of “Spell’s Labyrinths: Double Talk,” which reads “Whose good is sacrificed for concepts of god?” The poem does not, however, provide any answers. It asks us to keep questioning.

What do the myths really mean? Mikell asks again and again but never answers. At times she digs to the bare bones of words to push that question, exploring their origins. In her poem “Worship Warship” she points out how the biblical word for “sin” is a “Greek word meaning ‘to miss the mark.’”

She revisits this commonly overlooked definition of sin in several other poems. In “Worship Warship” she asks “Why would god give his only son to / Die for us missing a mark?,” but never answers that question.

Besides religion, she also examines secular stories that shape how we see the world. In her humorous prose poem “BWYB News: The Goldilocks Cover Up,” she paints Goldilocks not as an innocent, curious little girl in but as a thief and a house intruder in the house of the three bears, naming her the “Golden Bandit.”

“Investigators confirmed strands of blonde hair found in baby bear’s bed did match that of the Golden Bandit,” reads the poem in the tone of a modern day news report. And yet, in the poem, the Golden Bandit is set free, claiming the bears made her fear for her life.

I think the poem asks why the Goldilocks fairytale is told in a way that paints her as a curious cute girl instead of a person causing harm. As the bears end up facing arrest in the poem after doing nothing wrong it becomes clear the Goldilocks story is racialized, that whiteness has a lot to do with our general view of Goldilocks’s, or the Golden Bandit’s, innocence.

Mikell also addresses Oakland history in the book, and questions the limited scope that many remember of the city’s radical history. Her poem “Life Light Remembered” critiques a reporter who called in 1994, over two decades after the narrator of the poem, who I’m assuming is Mikell, volunteered with the Black Panther Party, to ask “How many guns did you have at the / Black Panther Clinic.” The poem then lists the questions not asked: “Not how many services were provided? / Not how many programs were implemented? / Not how many doctors or healthcare workers volunteered?”

Like other poems in the book, “Life Light Remembered” critiques how many of us hesitate to explore myths, stories, or histories with a true sense of inquiry and imagination.

It’s a fun book. If you are the type of person who enjoys persistently asking and exploring questions about the myths and preconceived notions that shape American culture, I think you will enjoy it.

Michelle Snider

Associate Editor for The Post News Group. Writer, Photographer, Videographer, Copy Editor, and website editor documenting local events in the Oakland-Bay Area California area.

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Related Topics:Nomadic Press Synchronicity The Oracle of Sun Medicine Tureeda Mikell

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Michelle Snider

Associate Editor for The Post News Group. Writer, Photographer, Videographer, Copy Editor, and website editor documenting local events in the Oakland-Bay Area California area.

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Activism

Griot Theater Company Presents August Wilson’s Work at Annual Oratorical Featuring Black Authors

The performance explores the legacy of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson whose 10-play Century Cycle chronicles the African American experience across the 20th century, with each play set in a different decade. “Half a Century” journeys through the final five plays of this monumental cycle, bringing Wilson’s richly woven stories to life in a way that celebrates history, resilience, and the human spirit.

Published

4 months ago

February 17, 2025

Oakland Post

Late playwright August Wilson. Wikipedia photo.

By Godfrey Lee

Griot Theater Company will present their Fifth Annual Oratorical with August Wilson’s “Half a Century,” at the Belrose on 1415 Fifth Ave., in San Rafael near the San Rafael Public Library.

The performance explores the legacy of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson whose 10-play Century Cycle chronicles the African American experience across the 20^th century, with each play set in a different decade. “Half a Century” journeys through the final five plays of this monumental cycle, bringing Wilson’s richly woven stories to life in a way that celebrates history, resilience, and the human spirit.

Previous performance highlighting essential Black American authors included Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Lorraine Hansberry with Langston Hughes.

The play will be performed at 3:00. p.m. on Feb. 20, 21, 22, 27, and 28 at 7:00 p.m., and on Feb. 23 at 3:00 p.m.

For more information, go to griottheatercompany.squarespace.com/productions-v2

Oakland Post

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Activism

MLK Day of Service Volunteers Make Blankets and Art for Locals in Need

“Everyone has an opportunity to participate,” said Glenda Roberts, kinship support care program manager at CCYSB. “Our nonprofit organization and participants recognize how important it is to give back to the community and this is serving. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, ‘Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve.’”

Published

5 months ago

January 18, 2025

Oakland Post

Photo courtesy of the nonprofit.

By Kathy Chouteau
The Richmond Standard

The Contra Costa Youth Service Bureau (CCYSB) and Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church (BMBC) are collaborating with a team of volunteers for a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, Monday, Jan. 20 that will wrap the community’s most vulnerable people in warm blankets and provide them with an uplifting gift of art.

Volunteers will kick off their activities at BMBC at 11 a.m., making blankets for the unhoused people served by the Greater Richmond Interfaith Program (GRIP) and art for those in convalescence in Richmond.

Others will get to work preparing a lunch of chili, salad, a veggie tray, and water for participants, offered courtesy of CCYSB, while supplies last.

“People of all ages are welcome to participate in the MLK Day of Service,” said Roberts. Volunteers can RSVP via phone to Glenda Roberts at 510-215-4670, ext. 125.

CCYSB Boardmember Jackie Marston and her friends donated the materials and supplies to make the blankets and art projects. The nonprofit is also providing the day’s complimentary lunch, as well as employees to volunteer, under the direction of CCYSB Executive Director Marena Brown.

BMBC, led by Rev. Dr. Carole McKindley-Alvarez, is providing the facility for the event and volunteers from the church, which is located at 684 Juliga Woods St. in Richmond.

Located in Richmond, CCYSB is a nonprofit youth advocacy organization that serves eligible children, youth, and low-income families with a variety of wraparound services so they can thrive. Programs include academic achievement, youth mentorship, truancy prevention and direct response.

Oakland Post

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Art

Vandalism at Richmond Ferry Terminal Saddens Residents

Residents have been lamenting the destruction online. Ellen Seskin posted photos of the vandalism to the Facebook group, Everybody’s Richmond, on Jan. 12, saying she encountered it while out on a walk. “It was on the sidewalk, the street, the doors to the ferry, even in the art installation and the ‘stone’ benches,” she said. “I reported it but knowing how slow they are about getting things done — I just know that the longer you leave graffiti, the more likely they are to spray it again.”

Published

5 months ago

January 18, 2025

Oakland Post

Graffiti mars the walkway at the Richmond Ferry Terminal. Photo by Kathy Chouteau, The Richmond Standard.

The Richmond Standard

“This is why we can’t have nice things,” stated the post on NextDoor.

The post referenced images of graffiti at the Richmond Ferry Terminal. Not just on the terminal, but also on public artwork, on trail signs, on public benches and the boardwalk.

On Wednesday, the Standard stopped by to see it for ourselves. The good news was that it appears the graffiti on the terminal and on the artwork, called Changing Tide, have been cleaned for the most part. But graffiti remained abundant in the area around the relatively new ferry terminal, which opened to the public just six years ago.

Graffiti artists tagged benches and the boardwalk. Cars that had done doughnuts in the street marked the cul-de-sac just outside the historic Craneway Pavilion.

A ferry worker told us the graffiti had been there since before he started working for the ferry service about a week ago.

A member of the Army Corps of Engineers who did not want to be named in this report called the scene “sad,” as “they’d done such a nice job fixing it up.”

“It’s sad that all this money has been spent and hoodlums just don’t care and are destroying stuff,” he said.

It wasn’t immediately clear how soon the graffiti would be removed. The Standard reported the graffiti to the city’s graffiti abatement hotline. We were prompted to leave a message reporting the address and location of the graffiti.

“It was on the sidewalk, the street, the doors to the ferry, even in the art installation and the ‘stone’ benches,” she said. “I reported it but knowing how slow they are about getting things done — I just know that the longer you leave graffiti, the more likely they are to spray it again.”

In the comment section responding to Seskin’s post, local attorney Daniel Butt questioned why there aren’t cameras in the area.

On Nextdoor, one resident suggested searching to see if the tags match any accounts on Instagram, hoping to identify the perpetrator.

On its website, the City of Richmond says residents should graffiti immediately call Public Works graffiti removal and/or Code Enforcement at 510-965-4905.

Kathy Chouteau contributed to this report.