Roundtable Wednesday is back and this time we are starting it off with someone I have known on Prose a few years. She originally hails from Zambia, Africa and now a student here in the states.

For those of you who know her, you know the type of Proser she is; constantly on your doorstep awaiting what you write with a seemingly endless hunger to read what is put forth.

For those of you who know of her, then you know (or should know) she has a huge heart and is very supportive to new writer’s and also to the seasoned veterans on Prose.

For those who do not know her, this is your opportunity, and take this advice—get to know her, you cannot find a better friend, mentor, or supporter anywhere else on Prose.

With that said … I introduce to you: Mnezz.

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Can you shed some light about yourself that other people here can get a feel for who you are?

I am an international student, from Zambia, currently studying at the University of Arkansas. I am studying TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). My Dad works in the family timber industry, and my Mother is a pharmacist. I have two younger siblings. My young sister (who is two years younger than me) is an accountant and our little brother, who is not so little any more, will be in the tenth grade this year. I love singing karaoke virtually with my sis. My brother loves sharing his stunts like video clips with me. Yeah, he’s quite an athletic Zambian Avenger.

Writer’s write, it’s what we do, but what do you see as your strong point, or motivation to write?

Hmm, let’s see. Ah, the way that stories can go. In my mind, the creator/writer is the director and producer of the work. So, you get to play around with different styles/techniques and create something that is kind of new, or share a part of your own story with others. This can also be worked with by introducing characters that are from various places, and cultures, too. My motivation when writing a story is the call for something that is full of magic, adventure, mystery, and some action. I guess for me my strong point in writing covers a mix of ingredients...almost like baking in a way… haha. You got to enjoy it, and have fun with storytelling!

The very first thing you ever wrote, if you remember it, how did it come about?

Eh, I went over this one with my sister. I believe it was at Kasamu school in fifth grade where I started to really tell and write stories. The one that still sits in my mind today is the story of a group of men storming in our home, and my Dad had to use his own guns to protect us from the bad men. This story was probably based on a dream I had. I always wonder if I need to keep a dream journal, but later forget. Maybe, I’ll have to start a dream blog or site instead—hehe.

Who are your favorite authors and please; give us a few names?

Ooooh, My Favorite Authors are (so many great authors for sure, including some phenomenal illustrators who have written works, too). They are Chinua Achebe, Octavia E. Butler, Stephanie Powell Watts, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Mukuka Chipanta, Rupi Kaur, J.R.R.Tolkien, Stephen Edwin King, R.L.Stine, Bram Stoker, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Junot Diaz, Andrea Davis Pinkney, Edgar Allan Poe, John Rocco, Roald Dahl, Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, Brandon Sanderson, Neil Gaiman, and Lewis Carroll.

Any favorite songs/artists you listen to that set a tone for you when writing?

Yes. Music is in my soul—it beats like a drum. Okay, here are my favorite songs/artists that I listen to. They do set the tone for when I start writing a poem, or write a tale.

My Top Favorites are:

Pompi (The African Eagle) and Magg44

Chef187

Macky2

The Score (Rock band)

Jonathan David Bellion

Enrique Iglesias

Celine Dion

Hans Zimmer

Andrea Bocelli

Ed Sheeran

Towela Kaira

Harry Styles

Rihanna

Avicii

Leon Bridges

Elijah Blake

Kanye West

SixTones

Victoria Wezi (HeartSound) Mhone

Zendaya

Sona Jobarteh

Do you have any literary work on tap for publication, or have you been published?

I connected and started writing in a Color Culture Writing Community (not too long ago).

In this community, most of the creative artists are young Zambian and African poets, writers, and creatives. There are some members from other countries, and also located on another continent. Thanks to this group, I worked on a little blog project to share some of my stories. (https://lskwst.blogspot.com/)

I have written a story on Prose—The Monster Hunter. (https://theprose.com/book/1754/monster-hunter)

Then my latest long and still in the works story project is The Shadow Man.

(https://theprose.com/book/2851/do-you-know-the-shadow-man)

Is there any one particular book you have read you would recommend others to read?

The Cutting Season, by Attica Locke. :)

When you aren’t writing, what do you do that pays the bills?

I teach, tutor, babysit, and also just started working on doing voice recordings for African stories (currently working on a project for this season).

Why did you join Prose and how long have you been a Proser?

I joined Prose to learn more about creative writing, and to be part of an international/global writing community. It is awesome to get to read stories from so many diverse and awesome writers here on Prose. Eh, if my memory is right, I have been a Proser for more than three years.

When you hear the term “less is more” … what is the first thing that comes to mind?

“Less is more” that makes me think of cooking, mmmm. In terms of creating a meal, any meal, the less ingredients you use than adding so much more, the better. This can be used in telling a story. With young students/learners, “less is more” in terms of teaching that reminds me of making the lessons not too long- my mentor teacher advised me it’s best to keep the content short, and sweet- that way you get much more bang for your buck.

Are there places as far as social media accounts, perhaps your own website you would like Proser’s to be aware of where you can be found?

Yes, here is the link- (https://www.instagram.com/versestudy/)

Favorite hobbies?

My favorite hobbies are drawing, painting, singing, writing, reading, and traveling.

What is the single most thing you like?

Learning a new dance.

What one thing do you really dislike?

Applying for a job posting and not being offered the position.

(One closed door is not going to stop me from trying the window...or chimney ….bahaha).

With Covid surrounding us, what advice would you want to share with people?

Do not lose hope, keep in touch with family, and friends. Find time to do things you love, with others, even through a virtual gathering/meet, and share more fun activities to do together, say dancing, karaoke, write poetry or stories as a group, DIY crafts, like making soap, or candles, etc.

If you could offer up one piece of advice for other writer’s, what would it be?

Let your own adventures be a guide in your story, or poetry. Share an experience you had with others, and do not let submission rejections for publications make you stop writing. Use that as a fuel to keep your stories going on, and remember to also do research and if you do not know something—ask (a piece of amazing wisdom I have learned from Danceinsilence heheh).

Lastly, your favorite quote?

“Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded

than encouraging people who have not”—Neal DeGrasse Tyson.

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Thank ye kindly for being Roundtable’s featured guest. It was a great pleasure to have you be a part of this.

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Here now is something Mnezz has written. And like all those chosen for this, they, nor Mnezz knew which piece I would choose.

Doux Rêve

Fingers bending golden sand

Being stares at the card in his hand

Someone’s ready to hit the hay

They bend on their knees to pray

He sighs, and shakes his head

This one would soon be dead

But as the lad heads to dreamland

He would send a wave of golden sand

That will give the lad pleasant dreams

And not a time filled with screams!

** Doux Rêve is French for Sweet Dream

As a high school sophomore taking my first steps beyond children’s literature, two writers woke me up to adult thoughts and language: e.e. cummings and John Berryman. Poetry was it for me after that. I typed out my favorite poems—crazy, surprising, modern poems—on my father’s typewriter, then used the school copy machine and made stapled booklets to hand out in the parking lot. My classmates threw them away at home, probably. No one tracked me down later to discuss which poem was their favorite.

It didn’t matter. In college my main interests were writing poetry and finding a boyfriend who read poetry. I won both my college’s poetry prizes and by senior year was the biggest fish in a very small pond.

Just for kicks in my final semester I took a short story course with a first-time teacher, James Robison. His first book had just come out so I bought it. All his stories were pared down and packed a weirdly efficient punch, which appealed to my poet-brain. My favorite was “The Line.” Robison told us that he’d tried to write it without climax or resolution, just a long straight line exploring a character’s day. I loved it. A story, like haiku, could succeed even if nothing happened.

I graduated and was released into the world thinking: You can write any way you want!

It took ten years to work all the poems out of my system and turn back to prose. I was working for a small New Age-y health and travel magazine when a friend of a friend who edited fiction at a big-time magazine agreed to read one of my stories. She praised its humor and concision, but had to pass. “Nothing happens in it,” she said.

Embarrassed, I returned to writing articles about hot-stone massage, losing weight with good fats, and how to photograph your aura. I had a baby, lost my job, and started a blog. I published a book of nonfiction, became a widow, and moved with my son to a small apartment. Unpacking, I came across James Robison and sat down to reread “The Line.”

A man’s wife has left him. She won’t let him call, but he can write as long as he confines his letters to ordinary things. He describes his commute into Boston, the shoulder blades of a woman on the ferry; the back-and-forth between two men at a cafe, who are possibly lovers; waiting in the pharmacy and trying to confess his almost-infidelity to the village mayor, who brusquely changes the subject.

So much, it turns out, happens in this story. Like a haiku, its slight shifts in perspective hint at a deeper emotional landscape, and there’s a little twist-tie at the end that bags it all up. At 22, I’d admired the technique and tried to copy it. At 57, I knew this guy. I’d been this guy. Everything he noticed in the world mirrored back a piece of himself that still could be healed.

Maybe it’s me and in some ways it is, but I don’t recall a single post dealing with this month regarding February being Black History Month. With that said, there are two people I would like to share with you.

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has called her "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement.”

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake's order to vacate a row of four seats in the "colored" section in favor of a white passenger, once the "white" section was filled.[2] Parks wasn't the first person to resist bus segregation, but the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) believed that she was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws, and she helped inspire the black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year.

The case became bogged down in the state courts, but the federal Montgomery bus lawsuit resulted in a November 1956 decision that bus segregation is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Over a period of time, she became involved with both Malcom X and Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, and like so many other people, made the march from Selma to Montgomery. For a number of years she remained an activist to promote the well-being of Black Americans.

Rosa Parks played an important part in raising international awareness of the plight of African Americans and the civil rights struggle. King wrote in his 1958 book Stride Toward Freedom that Parks' arrest was the catalyst rather than the cause of the protest: "The cause lay deep in the record of similar injustices." He wrote, "Actually, no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.'

Shirley Chisholm

You can tout and applaud the election of the first Black Man, Obama as president all you want, but in retrospect, it palls in comparison regarding Shirley Chisholm.

Shirley Anita Chisholm was an American politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she became the first black woman elected to the United States Congress, representing New York's 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In the 1972 United States presidential election, she became the first African-American candidate for a major party's nomination for President of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

She led expansion of food and nutrition programs for the poor and rose to party leadership. She retired from Congress in 1983 and taught at Mt Holyoke College, while continuing her political organizing.

Her campaign was underfunded, only spending $300,000 in total. She also struggled to be regarded as a serious candidate instead of as a symbolic political figure; she was ignored by much of the Democratic political establishment and received little support from her black male colleagues. She later said, "When I ran for Congress, when I ran for president, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men."

In particular, she expressed frustration about the "black matriarch thing", saying, "They think I am trying to take power from them. The black man must step forward, but that doesn't mean the black woman must step back." Her husband, however, was fully supportive of her candidacy and said, "I have no hang-ups about a woman running for president." Security was also a concern, as during the campaign three confirmed threats were made against her life; Conrad Chisholm served as her bodyguard until U.S. Secret Service protection was given to her in May 1972.

Altogether during the primary season, she received 430,703 votes, which was 2.7 percent of the total of nearly 16 million cast and represented seventh place among the Democratic contenders. And when it came to the actual election itself, she garnered just over a million votes, and six electoral votes, hardly enough to make a dent, but she set a precedent for African-Americans that anything is possible.

And, surprisingly enough, Rosa Parks supported Chisholm's congressional and presidential campaigns.

(In the photo, Rosa Parks is on the left, Shirley Chisholm is on the right.)

Knowing we have had a similar background, I am wondering if you have gone to therapy and if so what did you discover about yourself. If you have not, I will fill you in on an aha moment I had in therapy.

After pointing out how a dysfunctional family (abusive parents) will damage us in immeasurable ways, he explained how we often develop ourselves in other areas as compensation. He asked me questions like,

Are you a good friend?

How have you helped your friends?

Do you like animals?

Are you a good employee?

Are you a good mother/sibling?

And when he kept asking me questions, I answered them realizing I had been feeling so bad about myself, I forgot how much I have to offer. So if sharing motivation about your personal life experiences is not coming, ask yourself some questions.

Maybe you are selling yourself short, blocked because you don't feel your self worth.

What about all the people you motivate here on Prose with your writing and kind comments? I know you are a good person, so sell yourself with your words. You got this.

In “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” there’s that scene in which Huck and Jim become separated in the fog on the river one night, and when Huck finally makes his way back to the raft the next morning Jim is asleep. Huck wakes Jim up and tricks him into thinking he has dreamt the whole ordeal. When I first read this in high school more than 50 years ago my teen-age self thought that was some pretty funny stuff from Mark Twain, humorist. But then Jim, who has been beside himself with worry, catches on. All Huck was thinking about was “how [he] could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie,” that kind of behavior is “trash,” and “trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head of dey fren’s en makes ’em ashamed.” Whoa, not funny at all. And as the teacher pointed out to us, that’s a black man in the antebellum South standing up for himself to a white, asserting his dignity and demanding the respect he deserves, and there was never a moment like that in American literature before (and for my money, not many since). So then I have to locate the top of my head and reattach it and I’m just about done with that when Huck goes to apologize, which I kind of expect, but then Huck says that to do that it took him fifteen minutes to “work myself up to go and humble my self to a [n-word]” and I’m whip-sawed in another direction because there’s something not okay about Huck’s attitude. But wait, Huck’s just a kid, in a certain time and place. He can’t be expected to have a flash of moral insight and throw off everything he’s been taught in his world. What he did, if not the way he thought about it, was right. So I cut him some slack.

All this gave my teen-age self an inkling that the world was more complicated than I had thought. Things were connected in ways I had missed. And those connections could appear to be contradictory (humor could be serious) and have a kind of whip-saw effect. (This is funny- no it’s not funny. Huck’s an okay guy. No, not really. Well, yes really, but … it’s complicated.) And what’s more, amazingly, it all happens because one person made up some characters and a story in which those made-up people move through the world, and did it through language (those dialects!) (And I have to add here that other people, like my high school English teacher, can help (and have helped) me have these reactions/realizations.) It’s dizzying and exhilarating. And when it happens I’m opened up, open to these contradictions-not-contradictions, permanently opened up, and I keep that realization with me all the time …. Well, that last part, not exactly. It fades. But my best self remembers to try to be open. And I learned that from reading.

I’m a coder, and I like video games. One writer person did change my life, though. Some guy named George Eliot?

I couldn’t get a date, so I decided to do something about it. I found an app called “The George Eliot Conversational Etiquette Game: Correcting Your Ability to Converse with Little Reminders,” designed by “STEMinEnglish.” I downloaded it onto my AR glasses.

Later, my bud Tommy was talking about different Spidermans, and he kept saying “dude” this and “dude” that. I was like “why do you have to say ‘dude’ all the time?”

Then suddenly a black and white photo of a woman with droopy eyes, a bulbous nose, and hair like a travel neck pillow wrapped over the top of her head appeared in my field of vision through the internet glasses. As she spoke, her pupils moved and the mouth dropped like a ventriloquist doll.

No, no, my dear! One mustn’t be Mr. Aristocrat, assessing another’s speech in lieu of listening to what they say. Are you sure you’re not just distressed? -10 points

She kept popping up.

When the trainer explained to a group of us coders how workouts are more mental than physical and I mentioned listening to ABBA while on the treadmill, the lady popped up (Mr. All-About-Me, -17). At the Afternoon Ideation meeting, when I corrected a slight inaccuracy in someone’s comment about HTML, she popped up (Mr. Nitpicker, -14).

There was no reason to these rules. My etiquette score was -87, a rank in the “lesser arthropod” category.

Then I got a notification for an expansion pack, designed by “MeatCleaverXXX”: Improve your training with Pavlovian negative reinforcement. This app would like to access the heat coils in your thermoregulated clothes. Do you give permission?

I did.

Tommy said something dumb again, and she popped up (Not-so-honorable Mr. Judge, -30). This time, I detected the seams in the coding where the expansion pack picked up.

The woman’s eyes glowed red.

Time to burn, hombre!

Ten milliamperes of alternating current jolted my torso. I shrieked and jerked forward.

“Whoa, you ok?” Tommy said.

Apologize! The hologram said, nostrils flared.

“Yes! I’m sorry for being rude!” I gasped. The shock stopped.

It hurt, but I kept trying. She kept popping up. A lace collar never induced so much terror. But I NEVER quit a video game.

Just when I was concerned my speech would be permanently slurred, I got a call about an Extended Warranty for my car. The dude talking to me sounded stale. I couldn’t hang up or I’d be shocked. I just kept saying “Ok. It’s ok. I understand.” My back started to sweat, which would make the shock worse.

“Wow, I never got through this whole script,” he said. Then he started crying. He said he hated this. I said it’s ok. I understood. Then I started getting good scores. We talked three hours. He--Daryl--apologized. I forgave Daryl (+500). Daryl said I saved his life (+10,00).

I taught tenth graders once. I survived one year. Of the six classes in my charge, the one I enjoyed sometimes was the smallest: eleven kids. One tired Friday, they asked for a story, and I told them to gather around on the carpet like kindergarteners and listen to one of my favorites, J.D. Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.”

And everything was fine as I read about Muriel Glass on the phone with her mother, and Seymour Glass on the beach with the little girl, Sybil. Everything was fine until I approached that final paragraph, when my heart rate jumped, and sweat poured out, as it occurred to me that I might be about to traumatize eleven kids. But I kept reading, and when Seymour put the bullet in his head, one girl, Elizabeth, crumpled on the floor.

It’s a story that gets under your skin because, in retrospect, you should have seen it coming. People who’ve lost loved ones to suicide will say the same: I should have seen it coming. Why didn’t I?

I wish I could absolve that guilt from anyone who feels it, but it strikes me as one form of a universal worry: I have not paid sufficient heed. I haven’t paid attention.

Salinger is a master of the multivalent, koan-like, almost mythic symbol: kings kept on the back row in a checkers game, an ocean full of bowling balls, a teenage boy catching children before they run off a ledge. In this story, of course, the symbol is a bananafish, which eats so many bananas it gets stuck in its feeding hole, and dies.

Ever since first encountering the story in my own high school days, I have wondered what Seymour’s bananas were. His experiences as a soldier in World War II? The superficialities of his wife and mother-in-law? Sheer depression?

As a teacher, I was depressed. My bananas were fatigue, and the apathy of students, and loneliness. But rather than follow Seymour’s example, I followed his author’s. I put my sadness on the page, and made a screenplay of it.

Out of that screenplay came a film, which went nowhere, except that a connection from the film got me the job I’ve had for five years now, a much better job, for me, than teaching was. It brought me to Houston, where I met my wife, and now we have a son almost six months old.

“A Perfect Day for Bananafish” taught me that when you take art to the darkest place, it becomes a place of light. It taught me, and still teaches me, to pay attention, to give heed to the small things that add up to the one short span we get to live.

Elizabeth, crumpled on the carpet, eventually got up, and years later sent me a poem she’d written about pain, devastation, and growing up. She, too, was paying attention. I had done something right, or the story had.

Half-Magic by Edward Eager. I read it over 40 years ago, yet not a day goes by that I don’t scan the ground or beach looking for a coin that might allow me to make wishes, and see the magic of books come alive here on earth. One day, I found a 5 Franc coin on a beach in Brittany. I felt like I had found a gold doubloon. My boyfriend, a logical German, just shook his head at me as I explained my life-long wish to find a wishing coin. In San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico, while walking to the supermarket, I found 11 cents, American: a dime and a penny. I taped them into my journal, and now those 11 cents are in my jewelry box. I’ve found a quarter in a snowbank and probably at least a few dollars worth of pennies in New York City. The other day in Loveland, Colorado I found a nickel, corroded with salt.

That book has kept alive the idea that there is more to this world than a simple life of working, and eating, and loving, and cleaning. The continuous search for the magic coin has given me joy when I was seriously ill, when I was going through divorce, and on normal sunny days when nothing much was happening. Somewhere always in my mind and always in my heart is this knowledge that magic is out there and that magic will find me.

As I write this, I realize that the magic is already in me, simply a perspective on the world, that sees coincidence as a vaguely remembered wish. Without Edward Eager’s Half Magic, I would have lived the same life as I have lived: it did not direct me towards a career or an education. Instead, it made my life magical, because magic was always around the corner, lying head-side up on a sidewalk or a beach.

Yes, I love myself.

Plain and simple, straight to tbe point.

I am the hardest working person I know. I believe in myself and in other people. I’m realistic about life. I know I will die one day, one day soon if we keep letting adolescents in Politics. Yes, I know I have sinned, but haven’t we all? But it’s knowing what to say when you are asked that question is the key. There is only one person you have to give the answer to. Everyone else is irrelevant. Yes, I love myself, faithfully.

When I was seventeen, an exceptionally large surgical wound on my abdomen became infected and was reopened and then left open, like a mouth hanging in disbelief. It was almost the size that you could put most of your fist into, but you wouldn’t have wanted to, probably.

And of all the challenges of major surgery that also leaves a sort of Civil War-style maw right under your navel, the most striking was that I could just barely move my legs. When your stomach has a hole, you lie down a lot, and when you lie down, you need abdominal muscles to sit up again, and also to shift your legs to the floor, and to laugh at the realization that trying to do just about anything electrifies your body with pain so white brightly seering you cannot believe you will ever want to sit up again, for the gasping-choking brutality of the endeavor.

It was in between these moments of trying to move, with that pain so sudden violent that I was rendered prostrate again, that I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a text that had lain on our family hearth and invited me with a title so sneeringly, hopefully superior that I couldn’t be sure of its intended effect, which at seventeen I did not realize was exactly its intended effect.

But in this book, amid the unknowable tragedies of the author, offered to the reader for consideration, indifferent to judgment (but then really, really deferential to judgment, really, as any of us would be, as I am in writing this), Eggers offers The Lattice, the idea that we are all connected and must be to survive, that the more people to whom we are connected, the more the weight of our existence is spread across a surface, snowshoe-like, to prevent our falling through.

And I liked this idea and held onto it, because I am comforted that the more I push experiences out of myself, redistribute the weight of the maw and every other maw and also joy I have known, I am able to remain on the surface. And I have trusted the thought that in the same connection which keeps me above ground, others can also push outward from themselves, sharing and offering and sprawling, with the whole world of us waiting for the gentle addition of their weight, which to them is so impossibly great but to us is nothing, is manageable, is welcome. And then together, we remain, strong and ready, on the surface, in the light, connected and pushing and still alive.