The End of Chiraq: A Literary Mixtape (Second to None: Chicago Stories) - Softcover

Javon Johnson (editor) Et Al

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810137186 ISBN 13: 9780810137189

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 2018

Synopsis

The End of Chiraq: A Literary Mixtape is a collection of poems, rap lyrics, short stories, essays, interviews, and artwork about Chicago, the city that came to be known as "Chiraq" ("Chicago" "Iraq"), and the people who live in its vibrant and occasionally violent neighborhoods. Tuned to the work of Chicago’s youth, especially the emerging artists and activists surrounding Young Chicago Authors, this literary mixtape unpacks the meanings of “Chiraq” as both a vexed term and a space of possibility.

"Chiraq" has come to connote the violence—interpersonal and structural—that many Chicago youth regularly experience. But the contributors to The End of Chiraq show that Chicago is much more than Chiraq. Instead, they demonstrate how young people are thinking and mobilizing, engaged in a process of creating a new and safer world for themselves, their communities, and their city.

In true mixtape fashion, the book is an exercise in "low end theory" that does not just include so-called underground and marginal voices, but foregrounds them. Edited by award-winning poets, writers, and teachers Javon Johnson and Kevin Coval, The End of Chiraq addresses head-on the troublesome relationship between Chicago and Chiraq and envisions a future in which both might be transformed.

About this title

About the Author

Javon Johnson is an assistant professor of African American Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the director of African American and African diaspora studies. He is the author of Killing Poetry: Blackness and the Making of Slam and Spoken Word Communities (2017) and is an award-winning spoken word poet who has appeared on HBO, BET, and TVOne.

Kevin Coval is the founder of Louder Than a Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival and artistic director of Young Chicago Authors. He is the coeditor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (2015); author of A People’s History of Chicago, Schtick, L-vis Lives!, and Slingshots (A Hip-Hop Poetica); and author (with Idris Goodwin) of This Is Modern Art.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The End of Chiraq

A Literary Mixtape

By Javon Johnson, Kevin Coval

Northwestern University Press

Copyright © 2018 Northwestern University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8101-3718-9

CHAPTER 1

on hearing King Louie

Andrew Barber

I don't remember when I first heard the term Chiraq, but I do remember what made me never forget it. April 21, 2011. King Louie, who was just starting to bubble up in the Chicago scene, dropped one of (in this writer's opinion) his best projects to date. It was titled Chiraq, Drillinois. A clever play on words, which further spiked my interest in the Chicago rapper. At the time, I wrote in my post, "Greatest. Mixtape. Title. Ever."

In 2011, Drill wasn't yet a bad word. Neither was Chiraq. The world hadn't had time to digest either of them. Drill was a verb before it became a genre of music. Did it have negative connotations? Sometimes. But it wasn't always a negative term. That is, until the press got hold of it.

The term Drill was coined by King Louie's good friend and fellow rapper Pacman, who was affiliated with the L.E.P. Bogus Boys. Sadly, Pacman never got the chance to see his term go global or turn into a genre of music, as he was tragically murdered in June of 2010 — two full years before the Drill craze swept the music business.

By 2012, Drill had taken the world by storm. Fans, press, and publications became obsessed with artists such as Chief Keef, King Louie, and Lil Durk, who would go on to define the genre. This is when the term Chiraq took off as well.

The word Chiraq became polarizing. Some used it to describe the city they called home — wearing it as a badge of honor, while others called it a disgrace to their beautiful city. Sure, Chicago had its fair share of problems, but what big city doesn't?

Pro- and anti-Chiraq campaigns both took flight, and the city became divided — much like its hip-hop scene. Chiraq quickly became a cool buzzword for out-of-towners looking to cash in on the tumultuous scene. A half-dozen documentaries were made using the title, and Spike Lee even had the balls to come here and film a motion picture under the name (I still can't believe that didn't get shut down).

In 2016, the term Chiraq lives in purgatory. Many still use it. Most still hate it. But it's never going away. It's become synonymous with Chicago — and will be forever. Other cities have even jumped on the trend of naming their city after a war-torn Middle Eastern country (see Napganistan, a.k.a. Indianapolis). So yes, Chicago continues to push trends, even if it's a trend we don't necessarily like. Word to Keith Cozart.

Chiraq is dead. Long live Chiraq.

CHAPTER 2

when King Louie first heard the word chiraq

Kevin Coval


2010

it was so hot
freezers became furnaces.
all the cheese
melted from spicy chips.
everybody's hands were red.
the air
a sleeping bag
of blood.
shoes dangled on telephone wires
like missiles
toes
tigers. pick one
block everybody
know somebody
who not
a body
anymore.
King Louie
must've been coming out the bag
of a crown royal, purple velour wrapped
round his hand, bands, knots, a split
swisher, sweet about his mane of wool.
eyes a flame, feet dipped in Bronze
nikes like the ville, the fire. this time
a kid might've said it slick.
a little cousin, cuzo
making a geo-political assessment,
a vernacular ingenuitious flip
& critical pronouncement
when addressing the amount
of violence & bodies
& occupying forces
responsible for the bodies
& violence & militarization
of the block. desert eagles
food deserts. countering
the myth of intervention:
the war on drugs, enduring
freedom, weapons of mass
desecration. some little son,
some little body dropped
this Chiraq
out the mouth
like a screwdriver,
running from forces far
greater & better
funded, more insidious
& sadistic.
& King Louie
mighta waited on the block
to clear, for the heat to dissipate
like october, the lights to chill
like dusk, as this shiny gem
layed in the street like someone
lost a dead
president but didn't know it.
he scooped it in his pocket.
touched its smooth Black earth
like obsidian, this history & death
he held close, anticipating the right
moment to share, to say it like a spell,
a whisper he plucked from air & was keeping
for the fall
to come

CHAPTER 3

To Live and Die in "Chiraq"

Mariame Kaba

"Michael's been shot," the voice on the phone says.

"He's alive. He'll recover."

I breathe ... easier;

temporarily relieved.

Michael is eighteen and on borrowed time. He reminds me regularly that he's not long for this world. I've heard the words (in some variation) so often that they now pour off me like water from a showerhead. What is the antidote to this certainty about one's impending death? I've lost my tongue. I want to break my silence to say that I love him and would be devastated if he didn't live until he is (at least) one hundred. But I don't respond. I pretend that I don't hear the words. I am numb and I can't guarantee that he will live to become an old man. He's young, black, poor, and living on the West Side of Chicago. I steel myself for bad news every morning, and this time it arrives.

Michael belongs to the tribe of the young and the unmoored. His body is passing through and he has no expectations of staying. We rode on the L together once. Michael's voice boomed throughout the trip. I asked him to lower it. He looked at me for a moment and kept loud-talking. I was embarrassed at his display and felt disrespected that he ignored my request. As soon as we got off the L, his voice returned to its normal decibel level. I asked why he spoke so loudly on the train. His response: "I want them uncomfortable and they need to know that I was here." My anger dissipated, and I've never forgotten his words. They are seared in my mind: "They need to know that I was here." We've never spoken of what it's like to feel "not here."

It's part of a now-familiar ritual for those who live or have lived in Chicago. The press reports on shootings and homicides with almost no context (historical or otherwise). Faceless and sometimes nameless numbers are tallied like baseball box scores. And this is fitting in its own way. The prurient voyeuristic sensational coverage is its own sport. Seven shots fired. The boy was hit five times. Fifteen other people riddled with bullets today. Four dead. It's not yet midnight.

After a couple of decades when overall shootings and homicides in Chicago were consistently decreasing, the last couple of years have seen a rise in shootings from a historically low base. If you ask people living in the most marginalized communities in Chicago, they will tell you that violence is at record levels and untenable. Their perceptions are (comparatively but not in the aggregate) accurate because there is a growing crime and violence (separate but overlapping issues) gap in Chicago. Researcher Daniel Hertz (2013) suggests a plausible explanation for the gap between actual numbers and perception: "Over the last twenty years, at the same time as overall crime has declined, the inequality of violence in Chicago has skyrocketed." Hertz was interviewed about the concept of inequality of violence, and he expounded on the idea:

It's always been unequal. Everybody who lives in Chicago or knows anything about Chicago knows that there's a big gap in many indicators of quality of life, broadly speaking between richer neighborhoods on the North Side and poorer neighborhoods on the South and West Side, and has been for a very long time. But that gap in terms of violent crime has gotten much, much worse. In the early '90s, the most dangerous part of the city had about six times as many homicides as the safest third of the city. Today that number is about 15 times.

Chicago is still one of the most segregated cities in the country, and patterns of violence reflect that segregation. How safe you feel in Chicago very much depends on your race and class positions. The violence experienced by young people of color in the city is multidimensional — both interpersonal and structural. So many of the young have to swallow their rage as they are surveilled in stores and on the streets, as they are targeted by cops for endless stops and frisks, as they are denied jobs, as their schools are closed, and as they are locked in cages by the thousands. For some, the violations and the deprivation turn outward. The instrumental use of violence by some young people becomes a rational adaptive strategy in response to racial and economic oppression. For some of the young people I've worked with, the specter of death is a constant companion. A young man who has been behind bars for most of his formative years has told me on more than one occasion that he was always certain his life only held two viable possibilities: "die in the streets or die in prison."

The failures of every Chicago institution (schools, government, law enforcement, and more) pile up and crush hope. The cops spin tall tales to distract and to justify more violence. New Chicago police superintendent Eddie Johnson recently told an assembled crowd: "When I started as a patrolman in 1988, the average age of our shooters [was] nineteen, twenty years old. ... Right now, the average is fifteen, sixteen years old." His words are deceptive; the average age of young people who sometimes commit violence with guns is between twenty-one and twenty-two. Eddie conjures baby "super-predators." What purpose does the lie serve? Is it to make children into enemy combatants whose deaths shouldn't be mourned? Isn't the truth dramatic enough?

In this city they've renamed "Chiraq," young black men live precariously. The act of renaming the stolen land upon which they live, considered to be agency by some, perversely seals their fate. "Chiraq" is a war zone that invites outsiders to offer their prescriptions for how to "solve" the problem of violence. In "Chiraq," community voices are drowned out. Community members become enemies or victims without agency or expertise on their own lives. "Chiraq" conditions how we think of ourselves and our neighbors. It traps us into considering solutions that are steeped in a punishment mindset. Adopting war zone metaphors puts a ceiling on our imaginations and constrains how we might address violence and harm. After all, you respond to tanks with more artillery and not with a peace circle. Restorative or transformative justice requires us to build trust and to establish relationships. This is difficult to do in "war zones," where suspicion and lack of trust are the order of the day.

"Chiraq" obliterates solidarity and invites (more) assaults. Politicians and other civic "leaders" unironically call for the National Guard to be deployed and martial law imposed to quell violence they've co-created. What the proponents of this so-called antiviolence strategy fail to appreciate is that the Chicago Police Department (CPD) is already one of the most militarized forces in the world. More police and martial law will not end violence. If anything, they exacerbate violence for far too many young people.

It's understandable why so many people rely on war metaphors. They hope that it will convey urgency and seriousness of purpose. It's an attempt to make violence against black people legible. But black people (in particular) are not seen as human — therefore the urgency sought is by definition unattainable. The government and its representatives will not be rushing any time soon to provide needed resources (living-wage jobs, good schools, free healthcare, recreational opportunities, and more). Without a mass movement, they won't implement the policies and programs that give young black people in Chicago the belief that they matter and will have a future. Black lives have been and are unfortunately seen as disposable. And by using war language, black people are further oppressed (if that's possible). They are only flesh to be acted upon, casualties of a profoundly antiblack world.

I visit Michael in the hospital. I hate hospitals. He smiles wanly. I burst into tears. The temporary relief I feel is quickly replaced by dread that can't be dislodged from the pit of my stomach. I worry about retaliation. I worry about Michael. This is a young man living in exile in his own country. His humanity is unacknowledged. He languishes in a place that Richard Wright has called "No Man's Land." He is allowed no feelings. He is just a threat: all of our fears rest on and in him. I remember our ride on the L and his words to me: "They need to know that I was here." I realize that he is demanding to be "seen" by the larger world. Maybe the gun is his way of writing himself into our national story with a pen dipped in blood: an urgent message from a metaphorical war zone called Chiraq.

CHAPTER 4

Rome Wasn't Built in a Day

Malcolm London


Chicago has emerged
a duplication of Rome,
a colosseum
for worldwide spectators,
eyelashes stapled to eyebrows
corneas wide & waiting
on the next tribune article
on the latest
body count
millions
of viewers
anxious to hear the next
bang bang from the pistol
mouths of Black boys
the applause for more audio
an audience of jackals
cackling & cheering on the symphony
of corpse pile up
in chicago
every tongue is mimicking
the art of the barrel, barrels of blood
& burials of young
through youtube videos
hip hop blogs, radio play
glory chasing boys
singing songs of drug trade,
& gun range, of home.
they are gladiators
fighting on a battlefield
where the landmines
police news anchors schools
yet when the gladiator tells his own story
he blows up.
chief keef got signed to interscope
with a movie deal,
chiraq trended on twitter
as a joke
13 year rapper lil mouse
is on wayne's mixtape. this the dedication
we have for this music blasting
Black death, bullets & Chicago
we love to dance to it
we love to listen to it
it's so real, so hood
so real, surreal.
black death bullets & chicago
it is happening, it is urgent
more bodies being added to the list of #3hunna
there is no ignoring this.
and we don't. we turn up
this music louder than a mother's cry
for her funeral home children
we glorify.
but who benefit from this
no mother, no brother, no sister,
no son, no daughter, no aunt,
no uncle, no grandma, no granddad,
no father, no cousin, no homie
no rapper likes to write
eulogies.
who benefits from this
arena of black boys
with spears for hearts
armor skin
& crowds chanting for tombstones
south & west side
don't enjoy building new graveyards
while we dance on top
who benefit from this
who on top
who took our love and hip hop
and turned it into love and hip hop atlanta
we ratchet, we hood, we laugh
like we not wrapped in body bags
rap about body bags, gold
chains, and decked out chariots
who benefit from this
these gladiators don't
sleep on skeletons
just because they have a bone to pick.
our hoods cesspools
of blood and violence
but who
city planners,
who profit
from this colosseum
of black boy gladiators celebrated for their carnage
murdering for the world to watch.

CHAPTER 5

Memories

Aneko Jackson

Remember how Summer Time Chicago used to be?

As I walk down the street,

My childhood replays itself

In front of me.

Juke Parties.

The Bud Billiken.

And chips was fo' fo' a dolla.

Broken fire hydrants for those who didn't want to go to the pool

And courts was full of boys shootin hoops.

Parents teaching me to step at the family bbq.

And as I got older,

My childhood must have took a wrong turn at a corner

Cause it ain't like that no more

Chicago became Chiraq

And little boys be afraid to be Black.

The only gang they fear is the one who wears the badge.

Summer Time Chi ain't nothing but a distant memory of nostalgia & bliss

And things you miss.

Sometimes I want to live in my memories.

A sudden tap on my back snatches me out of my reverie

And instantly I'm back

To a War in Chiraq

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The End of Chiraq by Javon Johnson, Kevin Coval. Copyright © 2018 Northwestern University Press. Excerpted by permission of Northwestern University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810137186
• ISBN 13: 9780810137189
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200