Language and Voice.

When is it distinctively Black?

We speak in magical voices whether we are from Harlem or Senegal, Nigeria or Detroit, Los Angeles or Kenya, Jamaica or London, Rio de Janeiro or Panama. Blacks in America sing or speak an African American or Black English. Our language carries our history. It is our memory vocalized.

Many African Americans of my generation received their intellectual substance, beauty, memories and bonding traditions from the language of black writers and poets. Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston they are in each of us. They reached into the souls of black folks and humanized our pain, joy, suffering, achievements, incompetences, goodness, short and long comings for the world to hear and read. It is what our mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends understand and taught us. It is how we share our laughter. It is with language that we bring in our newborns and bury those who have joined our ancestors.

Languages that works is creative sounds and moving feet, are voices in different colors, are mixed rhythms and newly created words and language structures. Language is a code. Learn to use it, or be used by it.

--Haki R. Madhubuti is a poet, publisher and professor of English and Founder & Director Emeritus of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago State University. His latest books are HeartLove: Wedding and Love Poems and Tough Notes: Messages to Young Black Men and Memoirs of a Poet-Activist. E-mail: [e-mail]