One of the greatest virtues in being a creator is sharing with other great minds of the time who born their own creations. It is like Che when he met different revolutionary leaders from the countries he visited or like Fidel, who til this day, maintains a close friendship with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, writer of the Latin American masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude. In my world of humble apartment living in New York City, creating as the True and Living Earth, it has been of great pleasure to meet and share with minds of my time. Whether it was the time I met Booker T. Coleman at Juice Bar and we discussed his lecture on how the Crusades was truly a violent race for the accumulation of sugar, the newly discovered drug of the white man, or seeing and briefly talking to Assata Shakur, while in Cuba, about life in exile and her revolutionary activities in the great island-country. Of most pleasure has been engaging in conversations and/or builds, whether virtually or in person, with the great Gods and Earths of this time. One such person is the DaGod Emblem. His builds and writings have truly added on to the realm of the known. This God is definitely one of the great conceptualists of this time. His latest novel is one that you cannot put down once you’ve started on its journey. It will make you crack up like you haven’t laughed in years, feel angry, frustrated, and it will teach you information that you have not learned before.
Written through the perspective of its two main characters: Tranquility and Infinite, the reader is introduced to an added element within the writing never before included into a creative project; that of the urban subculture of the Nation of God and Earth. It is through this framework that one sees how each character develops through the story, with its underlying theme of Love. The dialect of the teachings adds-on and enriches the cleverness in the writing. The many expressions from several of the characters indirectly teach the reader what the knowledge of self is about. It provides a general view of the teachings, how its members talk, and how it informs their lifestyles. It blends well in all the other layers, within the story, of so-called African-American culture beautifully captured in Emblem’s writing.
A Sketch of Tranquility provides a creative forum of expression that enables the reader to connect, at varying levels, to the situations and/or characters of the story. For women it can become a story not too foreign from their own lived experience. For its female main character, it is the battling between success in the white-minded world and its contradictions with what she’s been taught to be as a righteous Black woman. Is she embodying more of the white man’s nature by getting her law degree and living on her own, rather than living out her nature as the true and living Earth, who is the Mother of Civilization? It is this contradiction, as it is brought to her attention as a form of mental abuse by the male main character that becomes one of Tranquility’s battles with him. More than an independent woman, Tranquility is an expert in mastering both the grafted world (by extracting an expertise that will bring her financial security and serves as a way to help original peoples) and her world of truth embodied by her mother, sisters, and Infinite, whom she wants nothing more but his upliftment. She’s a woman that has it all together: a successful schooling career, a job in her field of study, a tight-knit family, knowledge of herself, and the ability to inspire. Infinite is the archetype of what most men in urban United States go through. Falling victim to savage passion and his inability to properly activate his talents were some of his struggles. Knowing the white man’s traps (i.e. more Black woman in college than Black men), he rather deal with his reality by attacking his black woman and trusting a female devil in providing him artistic guidance. His defeat and loss of power is felt all throughout this amazingly written novel.
This has been one of the most powerful stories I’ve read in quite sometime. Peace, Earth Izayaa Allat.
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