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ACT Roxbury News |
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Writers Read Work at RCC |
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Writers who call Roxbury home can be thankful for how Candelaria Silva runs the ACT Roxbury Consortium, a program of the Madison Park Development Corporation. What other community has an organization devoted to authors of color like this one? With Silva at the helm, Act Roxbury annually runs a film festival with its emphasis on independent films made from scripts written here. The consortium also offers a playwrights workshop led by the internationally acclaimed dramatist Ed Bullins who assists writers to pull a play out of themselves that ACT Roxbury then puts on in readings open to the public and in some instances gives full productions to. Finally, the consortium publishes a quality literary magazine that looks as smart as anything else on the news stand. This year’s Roxbury Literary Annual boasts the poems, essays and short stories of youth in the Boston public and charter schools. With a publication for the youth of Roxbury, Silva writes in the introduction to the magazine, “I wanted to give young people the thrill of seeing themselves in print; to encourage aspiring professional writers out there to become published; and to share the ideas and creativity of these young voices.” A sizeable audience happily settles into the seats of the Media Arts Center at Roxbury Community College recently to hear students read some of the prose and poetry in “Roxbury Annual 2004.” Earlier at a reception, the teens along with some of their teachers, parents, and peers had celebrated the publication with servings of a cake splendidly decorated with a facsimile of the Faces of Dudley mural on the magazine cover. Paula Ribeiro designed the magazine. “Nobody thought a little black girl could have being a writer as a goal,” noted ACT Roxbury director Silva from the stage about her teen years in St. Louis. Not so the teachers of the Boston public school system. As project
manager for the magazine project, Celia Grant noted, “the teachers
were absolutely amazing” in their helpfulness toward the project
of putting together a literary magazine. The schools represented in
the publication are Boston Evening Academy, Madison Park High School,
Boston Latin Academy, Hyde Park High School, Latin Academy, Fenway High
School, George E. Lewis Middle School, Odyssey High School, Jeremiah
E. Burke High School, and Mission High School. There are also pieces
from students attending Wellesley High School and Belmont High School.
Another friend to the artists, Jeanne Pinado, the president of Madison Park Development Corp, pointed out to young people that while she has business degrees that enable her to do the executive work required to run the large agency, “I’ve learned that the most important ability I possess is the ability to write.” Then it was the young writers’ turn. One by one the 15 teens came forward to the mike placed center stage to read or recite the work you can read in the annual. Some wrote of despondency, others of role models. There were poems about making a difference in the world and being different than the media sponsored stereotypes of who a black teen is. The importance of family and friendship were subjects. True feelings were on the page. The audience cheered what the writers had to say with the enthusiasm of a crowd for points made at a basketball game. “The Roxbury Literary Annual 2002” was underwritten in part by the Mabel Louise Riley Foundation and The Boston Foundation. For more information about the publication you can visit the website www.actroxbury.org. The Feb. 26 early evening program was emceed by Marshall Hughes, director of fine and performing arts at RCC. The student readers included Jackeline Barbosa, Darnette Desvallons, Kramin DeSilva, Jewel Cash, Devon Jordan, and Shanita Williams. Also reading were Denise Wilkins, Evelyne Fernandes, Kimberley-Ann
Jones, Eric Holloman, Tyeesha Mendez, Shelvia English, Joseph Hartford,
Alison Campbell, and Christina Sofia Tilghman.
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