The film explores Charlotte O’Neal’s, aka Mama C’s, decade’s long project of coming to terms with who she is an African American raised in Kansas City, KS, the “jazz-capital of the world,” who has lived most of her life in Africa, the place from where her ancestors were forced to make the “middle-passage.”
When she first arrived in Tanzania she tried as hard as she could to “fit in,” wearing khangas, carrying my babies on my back, basket on my head, chewing sugar cane sticks.” As she writes in one of her published poems, “In my freshly-landed, just-got-off-the-boat enthusiasm of living in Africa, I tried to blend, to melt, homogenize, disappear, erase, the essence of what made me who I am, an African, who grew up in and was molded by the ‘hoods’ of America, and I almost lost myself, self.”
Saturday, April 11th, 7:00pm
Q&A with Charlotte O’Neal, aka Mama C, followed a spoken word poetry performance from Mama C, Mahina Movement, LC The Poet and Intikana.
Music By The Zulu Nation’s Own: DJ Dr. Shaka Zulu
Maysles Cinema, 343 Lenox Ave, New York, New York 10027, cinema@maysles.org
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