A Discourse of Historical Triangularity in

Reginald Martin’s Everybody Knows What Time It Is

by *C. Liegh McInnis

Reginald Martin’s Everybody Knows What Time It Is articulates a powerful message of the importance of history on both our present and our future, taking its place among some of the finest works of “Neo-HooDooism.” “Neo-HooDooism” is both an aesthetic and a technique. It is an aesthetic because it represents the dynamic African notion of time as a continuous and analogous continuum where the past the present and the future converge at one point called truth. It is where the metaphysical concepts of history and ancestors have a physical manifestation and impact on the present and future. It is a technique in that this aesthetic is used by writers to reclaim a sense of the (T)rue African self by reclaiming the (T)rue African history--a self and history that has been perverted by European scholarship and white supremacy. Everybody Knows What Time It Is clearly shows the importance of this aesthetic and technique. Rather than put time in a linear continuum, Martin has put time in a circular continuum in the form of a triangle. History, in Everybody Knows What Time It Is, is not just a record of the past. It is a continuous acting agent in the lives of man, an agent or an aspect that will continue to have its way with man if man refuses to recognize and embrace history as a constant instead of as a dead artifact. The many triangular relationships of the book represent the form of the Egyptian pyramids and the message those pyramids give us about culture, history and place. As the first ambassadors to writing and history, the ancient Africans attempted desperately to leave a legacy of knowledge for their descendants, which has been co-opted if not destroyed by European colonization. Martin’s work shows us what happens when the circle is broken and what has to happen to reseal the circle.

Martin’s discourse is firmly rooted in what Ishmael Reed calls “Neo-HooDooism.” In his essay, “Revisioning History: Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada,” Matthew Henry asserts that “Reed is primarily concerned with reinterpretations of history as a means of understanding and representing black cultural experience, in addition to re-examining the more collective cultural past. Clearly, much of the African-American literary tradition can be read as successive attempts to create new narrative space for representing the black experience. Reed continues the struggle—believing this narrative space has yet to be fully formed within the predominantly white, European-based culture—by taking a highly revisionist approach, one that is both antagonistic and emancipatory.” A writer working in the Neo-HooDoo aesthetic “is primarily concerned with reinterpretations of history as a means of understanding and representing black cultural experience.” The tension of the work are the two perceptions or interpretations (the European versus the African) of history and how that certain history has affected the present. The goal of a writer working in the Neo-HooDoo aesthetic is to juxtapose, exploit and show the inconsistencies of European truth as it relates to who we are and why we are. Martin’s work stands firmly on this in that his three primary characters--Zip, Siedah, and Dennis--are trying to change their existence by uncovering the lies of their personal and collective pasts. Thus, they become empowered when they are able to know the truth of history. This is the magic of Neo-HooDooism, the ability of the author to change reality by reworking the magic/lies/literature of European colonialism and white supremacy.

There are three running plots: The story of Tarharka--a Egyptian King, the story of Winchester--a European slave trader, and the story of the three major protagonists of the book--Zip, Siedah, and Dennis. Although these plots seem to run parallel throughout the book, they are actually perpendicular. This is the secret of the book and the secret of human survival and evolution--realizing the physical and philosophical relation of history to the present and future. The reader must realize that Zip, Siedah, and Dennis are our future and Tarharka and Winchester are our past. Our job, as readers, is to use the text to contextualize our present condition by connecting our past to our future. Tarharka’s historical struggle directly relates to, informs and influences Winchester’s story. Winchester’s story relates to, informs and influences the story of the three major protagonist. Within in each of these three plots lies a triangle. Tarharka is in a triangular relationship with the Egyptian people and the white cultures trying to colonize Egypt. Winchester is in a triangular relationship with the white ruling class and the African slave class. The three protagonist are in a triangular relationship with each other and also have their own triangular relationship with the concepts of humanity, economics and the choices we make to reconcile the two.

At the heart of our protagonists’ triangular plot are their geographic locations: Memphis, Atlanta and New Orleans. All three of these areas are the new Negro havens. Just like the great migrations of African Americans from South to North and back South, our three protagonists travel the three urban Meccas of the South in search of buried treasure. Just as Dante creates a geographic locale and metaphor of Purgatory, Earth and Hell for the Christian odyssey in Divine Comedy, Martin creates a geographic locale and metaphor for the African-American identity odyssey. His commentary in this is two fold: the search for identity through the search for land and the odyssey that each individual and group must make to find oneself by finding one’s home. African Americans have remained a transient people because of limited economic opportunities in a particular place or locale.

I’d go in a bar or a club, and I’d have to conduct a search for a black Georgian. Everybody was from NYC or D.C. Don’t nobody even live in Atlanta; they’re all outside I-285, except for the 35 crack babies left per day on the steps of Grady Hospital. But I understand, black Southerners runnin off; Memphians runnin to Atlanta, Atlanteans runnin off to Memphis, New Orleaneans runnin off to Atlanta, everybody runnin to Miami and runnin right back out again. How can you live your whole life and not believe that there’s somewhere in your own country where people who look like you are treated better? Nope, sometimes illusions, if you believem hard enough, are all that matters, and you can make it on the strength of your own self-deceit. (166)

This constant pursuit has caused them to lose themselves in their search for economic survival. Though their travels have allowed them the opportunity to pollinate America with their culture, it is a pollination that they, themselves, have not been able to germinate for their own benefit. They have not been afforded the opportunity to put down and nurture strong roots in one place, so their culture and connection to its historical importance has suffered. In fact, African Americans live in a society that forces them to reinvent themselves every time they move. Therefore, their culture has been scattered and fragmented across America because they easily discard older attributes of their culture to take on or invent new attributes for survival. Although Atlanta, Memphis and New Orleans are seen has reservoirs of black culture, many feel that their urbanization has made those cultures almost artificial. All three have a high number of black elected officials, yet the majority of the people suffer greatly under the heal of capitalism. Zip, Siedah and Dennis are attempting to find those pieces and fragments of lost culture and piece them back together.

So then, at the core of Martin’s book is a treasure hunt. In simple terms there is the daily treasure hunt for the American Dream. Martin’s discourse is our ability to get past that surface hunt and seek something more fulfilling. The treasure hunt for the three protagonists becomes a metaphor for reclaiming our humanity by reclaiming our history and culture. When Tarharka is attempting to protect, maintain and preserve Egypt’s riches, he is really attempting to protect, maintain and preserve Egypt’s history and culture. Even with all of the riches of the world, Tarharka is not satisfied. “I was feeling so good, everything goin so right...what’s buggin my ass? Why can’t I just relax like everybody else here and play in the sunshine?” (266) When Winchester becomes a slave trader, he does so not just for riches but for class status. He, as a poor white person, has no history or class status, which in a capitalistic society means that he has no human value or no humanity, so he exploits the predicament of the slaves to achieve a sense of history and culture to be accepted by the upper class whites who do have a sense of history and culture, which gives them a sense of humanity. Our three protagonists all want to find the riches so that they can achieve class status. Martin’s genius is to stagger each of the protagonist’s knowledge of history and self in order to show how complicated this search of self and status is. Also by making one of the protagonists a white college professor, Martin is driving home the notion that colonization, slavery and capitalism is as much a class (caste) system as it is a race system. Dennis is as much related to the struggle of Winchester as he is to the struggle of Siedah and Zip. Yet, unlike Winchester, Dennis is a poor white man who attempted to use his intellect and humanity to find place and status in a cash exchange system and found himself locked out and exploited like Winchester’s slaves. Thus, Dennis’ juxtaposition to Winchester is another attempt by Martin to show the complexity of finding humanity in a cash exchange system that equates humanity to money.

To drive his point home, Martin makes the historical figures, Tarharka and Winchester, more relevant or familiar by having them use the language of the present. This symbolically asserts that Tarharka and Winchester want and need the same things as our present-day protagonists, Zip, Siedah and Dennis. It is important that the reader is able to equate and relate the stories of Tarharka and Winchester to Zip, Siedah and Dennis so that Martin is able to show history as a current acting agent in the lives of mankind. By doing this, Martin is able to articulate that to understand ourselves we must understand our historical figures. This creates the triangular relationships that Martin wants to achieve. Both Tarharka and Winchester are at the beginning of transition periods. Tarharka is at the end of the Egyptian domination of civilization, and Winchester is at the beginning of the second wave of European domination and expansion. Both events and movements are hinged on the battle around culture and identity. Tarharka is attempting to protect African history and culture, and Winchester is trying to destroy African history and culture. This, of course, as Martin shows later, is the dividing line and battle front for world intellectualism. Thus, Martin is asserting that Egypt and all of Africa fell, not because of military might, but from losing its connection to its culture. What will redeem the main characters is being able to reclaim this lost culture through intellectualism, which is shown through their ability to read and interpret historical documents.

It is incumbent upon us as critical thinkers to piece together history in a manner that informs and enables us to evolve. Therefore, the form of the book is quite appropriate for the message. We can have no identity if we have not history. Those who embrace history are able to embrace an identity, which allows them to chart a course to where they want to be. Those who refuse to embrace history wander aimlessly. It is Tarharka’s understanding of history, of how his people came to greatness, that allows him to construct a plan of how to preserve his people’s greatness and culture. It is, however, his people’s misunderstanding of history that causes them to ignore Tarharka’s warnings and perish. Accordingly, it is Winchester’s understanding of history that allows him to fulfill the prophecy of Tarharka’s warnings and exploit the slave trade. It is not until Zip and Siedah understand Dennis’ embracing of the past that they are able to use the past as a light to a better future.

Martin is able to show that by forcing a people to relinquish their history and culture, capitalism can then perpetuate the deterioration of their humanity by making them fuel for the mercantile machine. Thus, Martin’s book is a discussion of the struggle of post European Renaissance peoples to achieve some sense of humanity under the umbrella of capitalism. With the European removal of God as the center of Man’s life, represented by Winchester’s blood thirst of fortune, humanity struggles with its mutated definitions of humanity, survival and success. Three hundred years after Winchester, Zip and Siedah are still struggling with the morally disruptive ramifications of slavery--what the economy of slavery has done to human morality. Thus, humanity, for Zip and Siedah, are almost illusive because they base their humanity on class status because humanity via what one owns is the blueprint that slavery gave them; ironically, such a social mistake is exactly what Tarharka had hoped to prevent with his actions 2800 years before. So, for much of their journey, Zip and Siedah are in the dark because their search for self-realization is with only their physical/capitalist eyes and not the eyes of their soul. It is only after they embrace historical indexes and artefacts as a part of their culture--giving them more meaning and value than an economic price tag--that they truly became whole human beings.

By constructing his play as a historical-allegorical triangle, Martin is able to show how the events of colonization and slavery continue to shape the warped mindset of the present. Years of capitalism have created the theater of the absurd. This is evident in that Dennis is fired for being a good teacher instead of producing more research and grants for the college. Human beings have been reduced to fuel and waste. This is Zip’s challenge--not to become waste. “Now, the system makes your lives wretched, but you hate yourselves and your own wretchedness, never the system that makes you into things rather than human being” (11). What Dennis and Zip come to realize is that the only way to survive is to permanently divorce oneself from the system. “Um clockin out permanently. And um gettin as far away as I can from this corporate cocksucker...” (14). Martin brings this notion to life by strategically placing Zip and Siedah at opposite ends of the spectrum. Zip has no cash and unfulfilled dreams. Siedah has cash and only unfulfilled dreams. By understanding both of their positions in life, we understand that the physical can not bring us the metaphysical.

“The hoops would be jumped through. The degrees finished. Respect granted. THE MONEY IN THE BANK. She could get on with the serious business of living and loving. Ha! But there was no stasis. The lioness jumped through one hoop only to see an endless line of them in front of her, with a last one only dimly sensed, not even seen, behind which immediately lay DEATH” (18).

This same notion holds true for Zip. Even as a singer, it is important to realize that Zip is not an “artist” in the sense of being creator, but he is an “artist” in the sense of being an entertainer. Although there is artistry in Zip’s entertainment, he is, first and foremost, an entertainer, which makes him, first and foremost, a capitalist. Zip is merely co-opting. He is a cover artist, not a singer/songwriter. Zip is not creating art that informs and enhances the world; he is performing for his own economic gain. “What coulda been better? Makin’ money at something you love, gets you women, and keeps you outta a lotta CS (Caucasian Shit) cause itsa artistic domain the Fans have conceded to the Afros--for the minute” (163). Thus, Siedah and Zip mirror each other. They are two people looking for the pot of golden metaphysical in the empty abyss of the capitalistic physical.

“Siedah was looking for a man of a slightly higher character...It’s so goodamed pointless to live for money at my age. First of all, you can never get enough of the stuff, and when you’re done compiling it, nobody sees your emptiness clearer than you do cause you know that nobody in this world ever made a lot of money honestly, and honesty was that thing you left on the shelf with your Easy Bake Oven” (54).

She had all the “things” that Zip wanted, but she did not have the happiness. Their saving grace becomes their humanity. They manage to hold on to some sense of their African roots through their connection to their families. This is what ultimately guides their lives and saves them from capitalism and perpetuating the trick of colonialism’s history. For example, it is Siedah’s family relation that teaches her to balance the physical with the metaphysical. “While her material interests pushed her to distraction trying to figure out ways to get more, she was enough of her father’s daughter to know that capital had to have something else to go along with it to make its luxury worth enjoying. She didn’t need anything from any man. But what she wanted was to be in love with one” (19).

It is this struggle between the physical and the metaphysical that creates schizod behavior within humanity. Within all of us, there is this constant battle of what life should be and what life is. This juxtaposition causes a schism in our psyches as we try to balance the two because we are entangled in the notion of satisfying simultaneously our physical and metaphysical needs. Added to this is the mix of the history of humanity as both a lie and the truth, which leads us back to the battle of what life is and what life should be. This is not only manifested in the classic battle of black versus white, both also in the classic struggle of black versus black, because it is the black body that is asked to deny itself more often to achieve Houston Baker’s notion “likeability” and place. This becomes one of the primary struggles for Zip and Siedah. African Americans loss of history and culture causes them to wander aimlessly through the neo-wilderness of capitalism in search of identity and place, as for example the schizod-epiphanic moments that occur to Zip as he tries to ensconce himself into black Atlanta culture:

“It wasn’t what I thought it would be...what all the ads in the black magazine say it is. Me, of all people, believing in heaven-on-earth. Nigger Heaven. Just stupid, naive, that’s all I am, at my age. Thinkin that from the hearts and minds of the Diasporic Original People here in the states would spring some kinda moral megalopolis with honorable people pushing the buttons and cuttin the checks....Of course blacks in the puppet-show convince themselves that they’re autonomous, when they’re really just automations...when they deceive themselves that they’re important, that’s when they can have their plugs pulled the easiest...All I know is the blacks downtown in the suits don’t want nothin to do with them blacks across the expressway in the hospital shirts and ShopMart sweats...And the farther up the ladder they go, the more bizarre they get. They laugh in the church basement at traditional religion and blow their noses at Vodun, but the shit they do believe in is like a caine addict’s DTs. This one here goes to the same psychic as the ‘best’ white millionaires in her town do before she makes a business decision; that one over there gets his leaves read before he’ll have sex with his wife; this other one combines Scientology with Jehovah’s Witnesscism and comes up with, I don’t know, I guess he’s a scientific witness for Jehovah before he jacks-off quietly in his law office and steals another poor black’s house for 20 g’s under market value” (164-165).

History, or our lack of it, will manifest itself in our physical present. It is significant that both Zip and Siedah keep referring to their age. They both make statements such as, “at my age” I should know better. They are referring to having a wisdom that comes with time and experience. They have lost their personal wisdom (critical memory) for the same reasons that African Americans have lost their collective wisdom (critical memory). If they do not realize it, they are doomed to disaster. “...‘Existential Angst’ That’s what buggin my ass! I got me some authentic, Afro-American angst crawling up my spine” (31) The struggle is being able to take one’s eyes off the physical world and refocus them on the metaphysical world, which includes both the soul and a reintroduction to history. This also means to affirm those notions in this overly capitalistic world. “But that’s what I deserve for getting a degree in the things I love, English and philosophy, and not loving the things I could have gotten degrees in, like BUSINESS” (43). Accordingly, this is what saves Zip--his knowledge that his mind and soul, the metaphysical, will save him, not the physical. “But his techno stuff left him cold this night. He was headed for the possessions that really mattered to him, kept him alive: His massive collection of books” (30). The physical world has been able to separate us from our metaphysical selves. This has caused African Americans, often, to turn against themselves since they have been tagged to be the permanent labor class.

“...we have to admit the impracticality of doing right and honorable things. The grandchildren of these maids and butlers sometimes figured out ways to turn their labors into profit, but it was almost always at the destructive expense of less profit-inclined and less worldly blacks...They were all smart enough to realize what they were doing to other blacks, but to make it economically in the society, at any price, was much better than not to make it” (95, 96).

What we want is humanity, but capitalism forces us to find humanity in a paycheck. Thus, those who do not have a paycheck or who have a low paycheck have no humanity or low humanity. This standard of value and worth based on capitalism causes the poor to change their “likability” in order to gain access into the mainstream, white world of large paychecks. This is what Zip means when he asserts that he needs a “white boy” to validate his talent and career as a entertainer.

“I...think we might just be ready...but wait...Where’s the white boy? The white boy, we gotta get us one; we got to have one to say we’re good. I don’t care if we sound like a splice of Caruso and Aretha singin in heaven on a clear day with angels playing stereo-phonic harps, we ain’t goin nowhere until we get a white boy to say we sound good. Then we’re good. Ask Smokey Robinson, He’ll back me up.”

Zip is purposely changing his “likability,” which causes him to have little inner peace. Going on the journey for the Egyptian artifact causes Zip to reassess his likability by finding value in himself by finding value in his own history and culture--the history and culture of his parents’ porch stories. Becoming caught-up in capitalism has caused Zip and Siedah, momentarily, to devalue or forget themselves by forgetting their family stories. By losing those stories, they have lost Baker’s notion of critical memory and embraced another kind of memory--one that teaches that it is better to integrate and ingratiate instead of fighting or denying colonialism, especially the colonizing of memory. After having relinquished their critical memory--much like African Americans have relinquished their music--Zip and Siedah need Dennis, a white boy, to reclaim their stories by reclaiming their history and culture for all three of them. Only Dennis can get them into the rooms where the documents are being held. Zip and Siedah may have the stories and secrets to interpret the documents, but Dennis has the power (the white face of authority) to gain them access to it. And even though both Truider Harris and Jerry W. Ward, two black literary critics, have access to the documents, they have access only through their university associations. The academy is an institution or entity that has been validated by the white face of power, which allows African Americans almost unlimited access to their own documents. Unfortunately, as in Bakers’ criticism of Ralph Ellison in Critical Memory, far too many African American intellectuals have traded in their intellectual activism and critical memory for the riches and class status of America. Zip, Siedah and Dennis are reclaiming this critical memory in the same manner as Harris and Ward.

What makes Martin’s plot and message of triangularity work is that his characters are three dimensional, triangular, if you will. They are tiny prisms or microcosms of the larger society. Inside each of them is this battle of history, place and capitalism. Martin shows this as both linear and circular by creating historical figures as foundations for Zip, Siedah and Dennis and embedding these historical figures with the same internal triangular turmoil as Zip, Siedah and Dennis. So, not only do the two historical characters mirror Zip, Siedah and Dennis, but they also lay the foundation of their present struggle for place--a sense of self and self-worth. Martin then adds more weight to his tale by juxtaposing Dennis’ plight with Winchester’s plight. Both are poor white trash separated only by three hundred years and ethics. Martin is showing that ethics is the “thing” that truly separates the physical man from the metaphysical man. We know that Winchester is complicated because he can exist simultaneously as the exploiter and the exploited. He is the exploiter because he takes advantage of global colonization by becoming a slave trader. So even as poor white European trash, Winchester is able to improve his lot in life by exploiting Africans. At the same time, he is also exploited by the European ruling class because he loses his humanity by becoming a slave trader, which allows the ruling class to keep the illusion of its humanity. So, he trades his humanity for class status. Though Winchester is white, he is poor white trash, so, in effect, he is non-white, or at least not ruling-class-white. He needs to exploit Africans to achieve some sense of whiteness. “Then let’em see who Millbranch Winchester is. Then they’ll know that I’m as white as they. Then they’ll know that Millbranch Winchester knows what time it is” (161) Three hundred years later, Dennis confronts time, history, place and self-worth by refusing to gain status through exploitation. He is fired from his job because he teachers more than he produces profitable research. More importantly, he couples with Zip and Siedah in a journey for lost treasure, which becomes a journey for lost culture, which is ultimately a journey for lost humanity. Unlike Winchester, Dennis redeems his self-worth, not by exploiting but by helping. Consequently, Winchester dies a horrific death because of his actions, and Dennis lives a fuller, richer life with his friends, Zip and Siedah. The difference between Winchester and Dennis is the embracing of the metaphysical over the physical and where they seek to find self-worth and humanity. Winchester lives to steal--steal Africans for the slave trade and steal history and culture as a way to enslave and exploit Africans and reinvent the myth of himself.

“...first, you must constantly keep the niggers down by un-writing ‘history’ (what was that Napoleon called history, ‘a set of lies agreed upon’?) or they will remember what they were once and that’ll be our asses...And secondly, it’s not enough to cut off the nuts, rip out the hymens, and cut off the feet of a people to keep’em down. You gotta get their minds. And the easiest way to do that is convince them that there ain’t no history but yours, and you gotta makeem learn your set-of-lies-agreed-upon. Pretty soon, you can convince them they ain’t got no minds. and then they’re yours” (155, 156).

Dennis lives to right Winchester’s wrongs by aiding in replacing the African back to his rightful place in the universe by uncovering the lies of history. Thus, Dennis becomes a scholar in every sense of the word.

At the center of all of this is the power of reading, scholarship and critical thinking. Martin is troping Earnest Gaines’ notion of group-memory-storytelling as a weapon against colonization as in A Gathering of Old Men. Now, Martin is showing that the greatest weapon we have is recorded history. It is no mistake that Martin has both Harris and Ward, two of top literary critics of our time, studying the documents that Zip, Siedah and Dennis need to find their “pot of gold.” Martin’s description of Ward’s care for the book is a symbol of the importance of literature and history on the present lives of man. “[Ward] holds and rubs that book like it’s mojo or something” (227). It is at this moment that Martin has fulfilled the principles of Reed’s “Neo-HooDooism.” Martin is implying that literature is mojo, and the literary scholar is the link to that powerful magic. The literary scholar is the medicine man, witch doctor and griot all at once. The literary scholar is the link to the stories told in Gaines’ A Gathering of Old Men and the documents leading Zip, Siedah and Dennis, which connect history to destiny. The biggest hurdle for Zip, Siedah and Dennis is their ability to interpret the texts in a manner that will allow them to understand both the literal and figurative meaning of the documents. This is the importance of the literary scholar, to interpret the text for us. Thus, Zip, Siedah and Dennis must become literary scholars to reclaim their past and build their future. This is the importance of the African American literary scholar. He must reclaim the history of black folks from the umbrella of whiteness and colonialism. The black literary scholar is on a treasure hunt in much the same manner as Zip, Siedah and Dennis. This is what the buried treasure represents--the need to uncover the truth about African and African American history and culture and their worth and value to humanity. The goal of the scholar is to show mankind what the real “gold” is. This is what Zip, Siedah and Dennis find. They begin looking for a physical gold and find a more valuable metaphysical gold--black history. Yet, Martin is clear that the literary scholar is not just the degreed person, but the person who is the keeper of the stories. Before it is Harris and Ward, it is Zip’s parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents who keep the stories. This the way--the only way--that the circle--the circle of life--remains unbroken until the stories are destroyed with lies. Black history has been tainted, if not destroyed, by white lies. The job of the scholar, or the keeper of the story, is to tell the truth. This is what Zip’s mother asserts about their family history and all of black history. The circle was broken by white lies. “Lucinda never knew why her cousins and uncles were murdered, or by whom, because those who passed the story down never knew the truth...Winchester knew.” (285) The job of the literary scholar is to piece together all of the stories in a manner that reveals the truth. This is what Zip, Siedah and Dennis are attempting to do on their journey--put all the stories together and find the truth.

Martin sets this work in the near future to show that Africans fell from grace and power due to a loss of history and culture and not a loss of military might. This was Tarharka’s greatest fear come to fruition. The future setting shows us that the struggle is not merely about how we got to where we are, but how we cannot get to where we need to be without remembering how we got to where we are. History is not just our foundation to the present, but it is also our blueprint to the future. Survival and well being means that we see history, not as an isolated event in the past, but as a continuous linear and circular agent in the development and evolution of our humanity. In fact, the only way that we can have “humanity” is to be a part of the continuum of history. We are no longer using our critical memory because we have given up history as a form of resistance.

“And how could the offspring of Asar have known sitting in the security of the Timeless Land

that the predominant number of the uniquest of their unique protracted line 2600 years later, the

African Americans, would not only not know that they were descended from gods, but would

also think that the only rock that could preserve them was crack? In the future time of such fair

weather, crackheads could see everything clearly except themselves. How far one can fall when

one doesn’t know oneself” (264).

When Zip, Siedah and Dennis reclaim history, they reclaim themselves. Zip affirms this. “The whole ugly script ain’t got nothing to do with hating white people. But it’s got everything to do with loving yourself” (286).

*C. Liegh McInnis is an author of seven books, the editor of Black Magnolias Literary Journal, and an instructor of English at Jackson State University. He can be contacted through Psychedelic Literature at www.psychedelicliterature.com or (601) 925-1281,