Heads of the Colored People: Journal 1 Directions:You should write about the first story in your book “Heads of the Colored People: Four Fancy Sketches, Tw
Heads of the Colored People: Journal 1 Directions:You should write about the first story in your book “Heads of the Colored People: Four Fancy Sketches, Two Chalk Outlines, and No Apology.”Journals are 1-2 pages double spaced.Please make sure you put your name and journal number at the top of your journal entry.What should be in your journal? A journal entry should contain 4 items about each piece of literature you read. A brief synopsis of what the piece was about [think characters, conflict, resolution] Any lines or phrases that have particular significance [think important themes, climactic moments] A short explanation of what you liked or found most valuable about this section. Any questions you have about the section. [Then ask those questions in your group to ensure you understand the piece better] HEADS OF THE COLORED PEOPLE 15
have made a wish before the end of that day, it would have been that
he, too, had worn a costume to soften the effects of his image.
When he put his hand on Riley’s shoulder, it was only because
he disliked the sight of someone, especially one of his own, turn-
ing his back to him without hearing him out. It was also because
he needed to promote Brother’s Spawn and had thus far convinced
a meager four passersby to buy a $4 copy that day, and because
Brother Man felt, unapologetically, that black people should stick
together and that the blue-eyed, wig-wearing brother in the pur-
ple suit should have at least acknowledged him with a nod, if not
a handshake or a howyoudoin.
Though in the aftermath, people would call his papers reli-
gious tracts, indoctrination materials, and “some kind of gang
documents,” Brother’s Spawn was Brother Man’s self-published
dystopian comic series set at Pasadena City College, where he first
learned of Octavia Butler and her work. The comics were hand-
drawn with the dimensions of a postcard, though he also hoped
to sell broadsides featuring a poem he had written.
Brother Man-aliases Kyle Barker, Cole Brown, Overton Wake-
field Jones, Tommy Strawn, and pen name Brother Hotep-was
selling the postcard comics illegally (he preferred the term “without
official city permits”) between a food truck and a juice cart that
day. On other days he sold them near the Century City Mall, in
Ladera Heights, in Little Ethiopia, and as far as Inglewood.
That day, he banked on the convention center’s Comic-Love traf-
fic and the potential readers it might attract, boasting to his girl-
friend earlier in the morning that he would probably sell out, “even
without one of those official tables in the convention center, watch.”
And though he would say he was not usually the type to call
Riley a sellout or an Uncle Tom, that day, Brother Man (real
6 | NAFISSA THOMPSON-SPIRES
name Richard Simmons, yes, Richard Simmons) could not han-
dle Riley’s refusal to acknowledge him or his art. He could find
reasons to dismiss the hundred or so people in costumes, some
speaking English, some other languages, who shook their hands
no at the laminated mock-ups he tried to show them, but he
could not abide a black refusal, especially one from a black guy
in a Japanese prep-schoolboy costume, the very kind of audience
Brother Man hoped to cultivate.
Thus, when he put his hand on Riley’s shoulder, he never
meant to hit him, and if he could, Brother Man, hereafter Rich-
ard, would have imagined that Riley didn’t plan to fight him
either. And neither man ever would have thought that amateur
karate (pronounced in the authentic Japanese accent) would be
involved, their arms flailing and legs kicking out in poorly choreo-
graphed mortal combat.
3.
On his way to a meeting, Kevan stopped at the SweetArt Bake-
shop in Saint Louis to purchase a vegan brownie for himself and
a purple cupcake with tiny candy hearts for his daughter Penny,
who was with him for the weekend. The whole shop was lined
with canvases of varying sizes, painted by the owners and sold
from the bakery, which served as a gallery and community meet-
ing space. Tiny vases holding local flowers adorned each table.
Kevan wore a black T-shirt that said in white letters, “Eff Your
Respectability Politics.” He liked the irony of the word “eff” in-
stead of the F-word, but he still del
or it w
change “your” to “yo,” He wasr
etter to
HEADS OF THE COLORED PEOPLE:
FOUR FANCY SKETCHES, TWO CHALK
OUTLINES, AND NO APOLOGY
1.
Riley wore blue contact lenses and bleached his hair–which he
worked with gel and a blow-dryer and a flatiron some mornings
into Sonic the Hedgehog spikes so stiff you could prick your finger
on them, and sometimes into a wispy side-swooped bob with long
bangs—and he was black. But this wasn’t any kind of self-hatred
thing. He’d read The Bluest Eye and Invisible Man in school and
even picked up Disgruntled at a book fair, and yes, they were
good and there was some resonance in those books for him, but
this story isn’t about race or “the shame of being alive” or any
of those things. He was not self-hating; he was even listening to
Drake-though you could make it Fetty Wap if his appreciation
for trap music changes something for you, because all that’s rel-
evant here is that he wasn’t against the music of “his people” or
anything like that—as he walked down Figueroa with his earbuds
pushed in just far enough so as not feel itchy.
Riley was wearing the wispy swooped version of his bangs and
listening to Drake or Fetty, and he was black with blue contacts
and bleached-blond hair. And, yes, there are black people who
41 NAFISSR THOMPSON-SPIRES
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Riley was more than surprised—and did not need to borrow
Tamaki’s affectations to feel slighted—that Brother Man had
touched him, and by that point, even though he might have been
just the kind of buyer for what Brother Man was selling, his pride
wouldn’t let him concede.
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