Speak and Speak Again

By Ruth Feiertag

Pact Press brings you Speak and Speak Again, the first anthology in a series designed to spark conversation and protest. Contained within are thoughtful, thought-provoking essays on immigration, women's rights, race relations, and concerns for American society by Jaynie Royal, Eugene Gregory, Nora Shychuk, Rob Waters, Laurie Ann Doyle, Stephen D. Gutierrez, Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, Martha Haakmat, and Mikhal Weiner. The anthology also includes a short story by Raymond Luczak and poems by Rose Knapp, Lily Iona MacKenzie, Cheryl A. Ossola, Sandy Roffey, and Daniel A. Olivas.We are honored to provide a medium in which these authors can Speak and Speak Again. Pact Press is immensely proud, in the sale of this anthology, to support the fine work of the Southern Poverty Law Center in their battle against discrimination.All net proceeds from the sale of this anthology are donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center to help fund their battle against discrimination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Regal House Publishing
• Release date: May 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780991261277

Book preview

Protest

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

To sin by silence, when we should protest,

Makes cowards out of men. The human race

Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised

Against injustice, ignorance, and lust,

The inquisition yet would serve the law,

And guillotines decide our least disputes.

The few who dare, must speak and speak again

To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,

No vested power in this great day and land

Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry

Loud disapproval of existing ills;

May criticise oppression and condemn

The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws

That let the children and childbearers toil

To purchase ease for idle millionaires.

Therefore I do protest against the boast

Of independence in this mighty land.

Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.

Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.

Until the manacled slim wrists of babes

Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,

Until the mother bears no burden, save

The precious one beneath her heart, until

God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed

And given back to labor, let no man

Call this the land of freedom.

Anthology Copyright © 2017 Regal House Publishing

Edited by Ruth Feiertag, Michelle Rosquillo, and

Jaynie Royal

Published by Pact Press, an imprint of

Regal House Publishing, LLC,

Raleigh, NC 27612

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN -13 (paperback): 978-0-9912612-6-0

ISBN -13 (paperback): 978-0-9912612-7-7

Interior design by Lafayette & Greene

Cover design by Lafayette & Greene

lafayetteandgreene.com

Cover photography by Ollyy/Shutterstock

www.pactpress.com

https://regalhousepublishing.com

This anthology draws its title from Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s poem entitled Protest, published in Poems of Problems (W. B. Conkey Company, 1914).

All net proceeds from the sale of this anthology, without a maximum cap, are donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center for the duration of time that this work is in print.

This nonprofit organization was selected due to their dedication to fostering unity. As their mission stipulates:

The Southern Poverty Law Center is dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society. Using litigation, education and other forms of advocacy, we work toward the day when the ideals of equal justice and equal opportunity will be a reality.

The Southern Poverty Law Center

www.splcenter.org

Additional donations can be sent directly to the Southern Poverty Law Center at:

Southern Poverty Law Center

400 Washington Ave

Montgomery, AL 36104

Introduction

¹

Ruth E. Feiertag

After the election of Donald Trump and the divisive, bitter campaign season, Jaynie Royal and I were determined to find a way to amplify the voices of people calling out against prejudice and hatred, of those raised in support of people whose realities were negated and dismissed, of those asking to engage in conversation and debate with others of opposing opinions to find common ground. And so we launched Pact Press, an imprint dedicated to finding and publishing those voices and their stories.

The signature of the press is our anthology series, the first volume of which you hold in your hand. Its title comes from a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Protest, a poem that Michelle Rosquillo, one of the anthology’s editors and contributors, brought to our attention. Protest fronts this collection and enjoins our Loud disapproval of existing ills. If we get loud in this volume, it’s because we’ve learned that’s what it takes to be heard. The selections are often raw and unedited in order to preserve the voices of the authors.

The anthology is an amalgam of voices, viewpoints, and genres. It opens as Jaynie Royal steps forward to express her own disbelief at the exponentially increasing divisiveness that plagues our country in I Speak as an Immigrant: Embracing Diversity in a Nationalist-Leaning World. She contrasts her ideals with the attitudes and actions laboring to eradicate her cherished paradigms of America as a nation with the porch light on and the welcome mat out. Ms. Royal’s international upbringing gives her a broad perspective and a keenly honed sense of empathy with anyone marked as Other.

Laurie Doyle is an Outlier who finds herself in the hospital with a dangerous arrhythmia on the eve of the 2016 election. Ms. Doyle has a congenital condition that is coincident with rather than caused by the election, but the news of Mr. Trump’s ascension, the shock of the unexpected results, and the dismay over the harmful policies the new administration promised to enact (and has since enacted), almost stopped her heart again.

The extraordinary stresses of the recent election come home to roost in Our President-Elect Causes Chest Pains and an ER Visit on Thanksgiving, by Stephen D. Gutierrez. His chest pains, a reaction to our post-election world, were sparked by the rising flood of threats aimed at immigrants, threats that his grandparents would have found unfathomable. While Mr. Gutierrez’ grandparents had suffered from the ignorance of individuals, they always trusted the U.S. government to keep them safe.

Michelle Rosquillo’s They do not know that we are seeds is a paean to the strength of the seemingly down-trodden. While it speaks to the experience of being oppressed, it also rallies us to hope and determination in the face of the prejudice and exploitation we haven’t yet learned to escape.

In Beyond Cultural Taste Tests, Frances Kai-Hwa Wang tells us about listening to her children explain African-American spirituals to their grandfather. Like Mr. Gutierrez, Ms. Wang contrasts her world view with that of an earlier generation. Her children are much more aware of diversity issues than are her father and his friends from choir. Ms. Kai-Hwa Wang expands her discussion from the family scene to the lessons of Martin Luther King Jr., and to the experiences she herself has had that have strengthened her own determination to create the society in which she wants her children to live.

God Particles, Lily Iona MacKenzie’s questing poem, portrays the questions we ask even when there are no answers, and gives us a sense of the perpetual searching in which we all engage, of the uncertainty that is our common denominator.

Children, whether they are our own or we engage with them as teachers or caregivers, thrust this uncertainty in our faces. Children ask us questions and hope for answers that will help them make sense of the chaos they sense swirling around them. In The Curriculum I Created for My Children: Combating ‘Why is the Bad Guy Brown?’ Martha Haakmat gives us some guidelines for instilling in the next generations a sense of their own worth and that of others while making them aware of the prejudices and racism that swarm around us all.

Cheryl A. Ossola brings us the compassionate poem, Ordinary Agony. A sudden, empathetic epiphany sparks an awareness in the speaker that the burdens of any individual life may be more than one person can carry or another fully comprehend.

In a similar vein, Mikhal Weiner’s essay, Green, introduces us to one of New York City’s homeless population. Weiner discusses homelessness in its larger social and economic contexts and asks us to lift up our fellow people and stand against the crimes of eviction, gentrification, rising rents, and low wages.

The saturated echolalia of Rose Knapp’s poetry conveys the whip-lash switches in meaning that have come to pervade our national conversations. In Mass of Christina, the continual imbrication of alternative facts, festering biases, of growing confusion and consternation is paralleled in the structure and content of Ms. Knapp’s poem.

Justifiable fury informs I Have Every Right to Be Angry, Nora Shychuk’s powerful cry of outrage. The essay begins with a brief declaration: Last week, at a bar, a guy told me that I needed to calm down. As soon as I read her first line, I had a keen sense of what would follow. Women who speak up, who speak their minds, who speak with assurance and authority—sometimes women who speak at all—are likely to find men telling them to sit down and shut up. The familiarity of Ms. Shychuk’s experience (especially in light of the recent silencing of Senator Elizabeth Warren during the debate over the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be the U.S. Attorney General) makes the imperative to tell her story all the more crucial.

Cheryl A.