Imani All Mine Read online

  Amen, Preacher! Amen!

  We a people, see. We a people. I tell you about Moses. I tell you about the Israelites. In bondage. In Egypt. In the wilderness. Them folk wandered. Forty years. And I can hear what some of ya’ll be thinking. You don’t think I do, but I do. Ya’ll be thinking, Ha! That couldn’t have been me. Them folks. They had to be crazy. Them folks. Well, they must’ve been white. Them folks. They must’ve ain’t had nothing else to do. Waiting out in the wilderness. You thinking, I wouldn’t have waited forty minutes. Because, well, you know. I got some money waiting on me. I got a man waiting on me. I got woman waiting on me. I ain’t got time to be waiting on the Lord. The Lord should be waiting on me.

  And you want the Lord to wait on you. To serve you. To give you what you need. What you want. And if he don’t, then watch this. This here what you do, he say.

  The preacher turned around. Turned his eyes away. Turned his face away from the church. I was fenna get up to leave then. Without him seeing me. Duck down and walk quick up the aisle. Because I’d heard enough. But before I could move, he spun back around.

  I know ya’ll sometimes. Lord. More than I know myself. I know your minds. Lord. More than I know my own. I know what you thinking when you think. Lord. My father done let me down. My mama. She done let me down. My children. Done let me down. My husband. He ain’t no good. My wife. She ain’t no good. My life. It’s done let me down. My life. Is not the life I want. This life. Is not the life I asked for. And you say, Lord. Lord, I’m weary. Lord, I’m worn. Lord, I’m tired. And the Lord say, Wait!

  Just wait on me. Not on some money. Lord say, Wait! But not on some man. Lord say, Wait! And I will lift you up. I will mount you up with wings as eagles. How many of you need to be lifted up this morning?

  All around me voices called out. They answered him. Lift me up, Lord. Yes, Jesus. Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. The music slipped in under they voice with its own voice. Deep. Worrying.

  How many of you this morning need the Lord to renew you? So you can keep on walking through that wilderness?

  I need you, Lord. I need you. I need you, Jesus.

  How many of you need the strength to run and not get weary? To walk and not faint? To go into the wilderness in these streets? In your neighborhood. Round your block. And have the strength to walk. To run forty years if you have to without doubting how. Without doubting. Why. Them Israelites done it.

  They did it because they knew. They knew. I say, they knew. What Paul knew. They knew. What Paul say. They knew. Before he said it. They knew. Before he was born. They knew. What he told the Corinthians. When he say For we walk by faith, not by sight.

  I’m not talking about the walking you do with your feet, the preacher say. He walked halfway up the aisle and back to the front of the church.

  That’s ordinary walking. The walking a baby can do. A child can do. I’m talking about the walking you do in yourself. The walking you do all deep down in your soul. By yourself and with yourself. And if you not walking by faith this morning, then maybe you don’t know the Lord. You don’t know. What he can do for you. You don’t know. What he has done for you.

  I stood up then. Not caring who seen me. I stood right up in front the preacher. With tears running down my face. I wasn’t crying, but tears was coming from me. I ain’t care what the preacher say. I ain’t care what the music say. The Lord ain’t know me, and I ain’t want to know him.

  I went to turn my back on him. To turn my back on God. But my feet ain’t take nam other step. They kept me standing in front of him. While the preacher say right to my face. While he say looking me right in the center of my eyes. Be still, and know that I am God. That’s all you got to do. Be still.

  But I wanted to move, because I could feel that music rising. I could feel it worrying me deep inside. Where there was a stillness in me. Deep in the dark of me. While them tears kept coming.

  Somebody started singing, It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer. It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.

  Everybody started singing. They voices filling the church. Filling up all the spaces that wasn’t filled by the benches. That wasn’t filled by they bodies. They wasn’t filled by the music.

  Not my brother, not my sister, not the preacher,

  not the deacon, not my father, not my mother,

  not a stranger, not my neighbor

  But it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.

  They just kept on. Clapping. It’s me. Singing. It’s me. Clapping. It’s me. It’s me. It’s me. It’s me. It’s me. It’s me. Until they words made they way deep inside me and I started crying. Out loud. My mouth wide open. The old woman standing next to me touched me and I tried to pull away. I ain’t see Eboni or Miss Lovey. I wanted them to come to me. To save me from what I was feeling. Like I was being carried off from myself, and I wanted Mama next to me. Because I couldn’t pull away from this old lady who ain’t know me. From these people who ain’t know me. People who I was shame in front of. Crying. Screaming. With my mouth all open. With my tongue saying words I could hear but didn’t know.

  That old woman ain’t let me loose, and I was starting to feel like I ain’t want her to. I could smell in her a sweetness. Stronger than any promise before rain. I wanted her there. Wanted her to hold me right where I was. I needed her hands on me. Needed that circle of people that had formed around me. Laying they hands on me. Standing all around me. Thick and dark. Strong like trees. Strong like the dark. Closing me up in they arms. I needed them watching over me.

  With no shame in me, I fell down to my knees. And I ain’t care who saw me. Who heard me cry. I wanted them to hear me. To listen to all I had to say. Even if my mind was confused. If my tongue was confused. And I couldn’t understand myself. The sounds coming from me like cries of a bird. I let them come out of me, and the more they came out, the more I knew what I knew. Somewhere inside me.

  I knew Imani wasn’t killed because of me. I seen that clear in the stillness inside of me. Black like night as I felt myself being pulled clear out of myself and pulled back in. I seen a bird. White like snow. Rise up out the dark. Fly up in the air and disappear.

  And I made up my mind right then. Down on that floor with them people around me. With they hands touching me. With they hands loving me. With the music flowing over me like water. I made up my mind that I want the baby inside me.

  The baby calling me. Calling me into the stillness in me. The dark in me. Loving me right then. And I loved it right then.

  I’m not keeping this baby a secret from nobody. I’m not keeping it a secret from myself, hid away from myself. It’s growing right where Imani did.

  I ain’t told Peanut about the baby yet. I want to tell him to his face. I am going to look him right in his eyes. Direct. And I want to see if that’s the way he’ll look at me. If he will conceive of this baby with me. If he will love both of us. If he will hold us in the center of his eyes. Or slide us to the far corner, where we slip out of his sight altogether.

  I don’t care what Mama say about this baby and me. I’m having this baby. This baby being in me is bringing me back to Imani a step at a time. A minute at a time.

  One day I’m going to feel this baby heart beating inside me. Just like with Imani. And a sweetness will come to my mouth. Fill my mouth. Like it do when I say Imani. When I say her name. Like I did today in that church when I was done down on that floor. When I was empty and I was filled. And them people helped me up. Helped me rise and walk. Like I was walking on water. Like Jesus touched my hand. Like I have a faith that’s all mine.

  Readers’ Guide

  All-Bright Court and Imani All Mine

  by Connie Porter

  All-Bright Court

  In the upstate New York mill town of Lackawanna, the company-built housing project known as All-Bright Court represents everything its residents have dreamed of—jobs, freedom, and a future. The outcome of those dreams is the stuff of Conni
e Porter’s acclaimed debut novel. Through twenty years, as the promises of the 1960s give way to hardship and upheaval, Porter chronicles the loves, hopes, troubles, triumphs, and ambitions of Mississippi-born Sam and Mary Kate Taylor and their neighbors. As the late 1970s fade the Court’s bright colors and a people’s optimism, young Mikey Taylor—gifted, ambitious, and proud—comes to embody an entire community’s dreams and disappointments.

  FOR DISCUSSION

  Porter has said that in this novel “the reader can see the impact of the political life of this country on a group of people.” What impact do the major events and issues in American “political life” have on the people of All-Bright Court? How are some of these political and social issues still important?

  What arguments do the characters present for and against playing by the white man’s rules—for example: getting an education, paying taxes, working hard? In what circumstances are those arguments voiced? What are the desired and actual results of each way of acting? In what ways do the same arguments apply today for black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans?

  In chapter 8, Porter writes that Moses “hid within the shell of his words. They were a way of protecting him from the truth.” How and why do various characters use words both to hide from the truth and to express or expose the truth? How is it that language may be used for both purposes?

  Porter writes, “It was Samuel who challenged” what Mary Kate knew and thought she knew; he “challenged who she thought she was.” In what ways does Sam challenge his wife’s view of herself? What are the consequences of Sam’s challenge? What additional challenges—emotional, intellectual, and social, for example—are presented to the characters by one another? What are the outcomes of those challenges?

  What southern country ways, habits, and beliefs do the people of All-Bright Court retain? Why? How do these habits and beliefs help these people cope with the demands and circumstances of their lives in the North?

  What are the effects on Mikey of his privileged education? In what ways is Mikey both a personal success and a personal failure? “His parents could both see the learning was changing him, but so was the unlearning,” Porter writes. What does Mikey learn and what does he unlearn, and how do the “learning” and the “unlearning” change him?

  At the union meeting in chapter 25, the union representative quotes the union president as saying that “democracy in the labor movement, as in various segments of life, can be carried too far.” What is your reaction to this statement? In what ways, if at all, can democracy—in any “segment” of American life—be carried too far? What expressions of this attitude have there been in recent American history?

  What are the implications of the novel’s final scene, in which—in the midst of a blizzard—Sam looms over his fallen son, “no more than a ghost,” and in which Mikey cannot hear a word that Sam is saying? What are the implications—for Mikey’s future, for the future of all young black people, and for the future of all young Americans—of the novel’s final sentence: “The wind was reaching into his father’s mouth, snatching his words away, sending them flying into oblivion”?

  Imani All Mine

  Connie Porter’s eagerly anticipated, intensely affecting story of Tasha Dawson, fifteen years old and the mother of a baby girl, brings together her keen insight into childhood and her firsthand knowledge of life in the ghetto that is Tasha’s home. In her own pitch-perfect voice, Tasha recounts her days of diapers and schoolwork, of jumping rope and dodging bullets. Her daughter’s name, Imani—which means “faith”—is a sign of her fundamental trust and self-determination. Tasha herself, a child mothering a child, and the memorably singular characters who surround her reveal the pains of poverty and the unconquerable power of the human spirit.

  To what extent does Connie Porter avoid presenting Tasha as a stereotypical unwed teenage mother? What makes Tasha the singular, sympathetic character that she is?

  Porter has said, “I see Imani All Mine as being a kind of bridge, a way for adult women and adolescent women to have some conversations about some issues women face.” What are some of those issues? Are the issues raised in this novel applicable only to women?

  In what ways does Tasha become “grown” and in what ways does she remain a child? What personal, familial, social, and cultural factors influence her in both respects? To what extent is her ceasing to be a child the result of an accumulation of experiences or of a single experience? To what extent is she a grown woman by the novel’s end?

  How would you describe the relationship between Tasha and her mother, past and present? What events and what personal traits cause changes in that relationship? Why cannot Earlene show more sympathy and understanding to a daughter whose situation is so similar to what hers once was?

  Imani reports that “Mrs. Poole say you want respect from your child, give respect to your child.” How does respect or lack of respect affect the lives of all the people in Tasha’s world? What kinds of respect are seen as important? What are the consequences of disrespect? What instances are there of respect and disrespect irrevocably changing the lives of the individuals involved?

  What lessons does Tasha learn about being a daughter, being a mother, being a friend, being a woman, and becoming a responsible adult? Where and how does she learn these lessons? How does what Tasha learns compare with what you learned as a teenager? To what extent is Tasha self-taught in this regard?

  Imani means faith, “in some African language.” In what ways does Imani embody faith for Tasha? The preacher of the New Light of the Covenant church says, “You need faith. In your life. In your heart.” What kinds of faith are present in the novel, and why are they important to those who profess or claim them? What is the “faith that’s all mine” with which the book closes?

  Describing the morning-after memorial to Stephan Richardson, Tasha tells us, “Seems like memorials be everywhere now. . . . I ain’t never seen a memorial where the person resting in peace was older than twenty-one.” What do these rites tell us about the world in which Tasha lives and the world in which we live? What is the future of a community where there are so many memorials for children? What special significance does the final memorial have?

  What is the importance of the single biblical quotation in the novel, the preacher’s reading of Isaiah 40:31 in chapter II? In what ways are the people of this book “a waiting people,” as the preacher claims? In what ways are we all “a waiting people”?

  FOR DISCUSSION

  How do the chapter headings help us to understand each novel’s characters, action, and principal themes? What purposes are served by the Imani All Mine chapter headings being drawn from childrens songs and games? Do the chapter headings in All-Bright Court have a similar coherence?

  What similarities and differences are there between the presentations of black families in the two novels? To what extent is family structure intact in both books, and to what extent are families in various states of disintegration? How do various forces—personal, social, economic, and cultural, for example—influence family cohesion and family disintegration?

  Porter has said, “I think God opens doors in people’s lives.” What doors open for the individuals of these two novels, and what or who opens those doors? What do the characters do with those open doors?

  What incidents of youth violence and crime occur in the two novels? How does Porter handle these incidents? How are the acts of violence in the 1960s and ’70s of All-Bright Court similar to or different from those in Tasha’s more contemporary world? What causes, consequences, and possible solutions does Porter attach to youth violence and crime?

  At one point, Tasha loses patience and shakes Imani, “Because I was feeling like I was some kind of prisoner to her and I can’t never get away.” What instances are there in the two novels of characters thinking of themselves as prisoners? In this regard, how are the two novels similar or different? To what extent do you think Porter views her characters as prisoners?


  What instances of overt and disguised racism occur in the novels? In what ways do the kinds and degree of racism change or remain the same between the time of All-Bright Court and the time of Imani All Mine? What are the effects on blacks, whites, and Puerto Ricans and on their communities? Do the characters’ reactions to racism reflect historical reality? Do they suggest ways of correcting or ending racism?

  In what ways are the personal, social, economic, and cultural issues faced by the teenagers and adults of the two books similar or different? Which of these issues may be encountered in any society at any time, and which are specific to the times and communities portrayed in the two novels?

  CONNIE PORTER grew up near Buffalo, New York, the second youngest of nine brothers and sisters. After graduating from SUNY-Albany in 1981, she earned an M.F.A. from Louisiana State University and later attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has taught English and creative writing at Milton Academy and Emerson College in Massachusetts and at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Her six Addy books have sold more than three million copies. Named a regional winner in Granta’s “Best Young American Novelists” contest for All-Bright Court, Porter lives in Virginia.

  A CONVERSATION WITH CONNIE PORTER

  What writers have influenced your work? Whom do you like to read?

  As a young girl I loved reading stories about girls and read a number of books by Lois Lenski and Beverly Cleary. But when I became a teen, I was more interested in reading stories about and by black writers. I read Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, Nikki Giovanni, Richard Wright, Louise Meriwether, Rosa Guy, and Maya Angelou. I very much admire all of their work and also the work of Toni Morrison, Jean Toomer, Ralph Ellison, Gabriel García Marquez, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Terry McMillan.