Literary Activism or The Purge

In the dangerous cauldron of the drug game, nothing and no one are who they seem.

Don Winslow is taking me on a journey to the other end of the drug game. From the outskirts of to the inner sanctum, I am seeing, albeit fictitiously while based on facts, how drugs move around the world and end in the concrete jungle. From Callan to Keller, and all the characters in between, the drug game is a beast - a deadly beast.

I've always been enamored with the mind - from desire to addiction and greed. While powerful in its own right, the mind can also succumb to the free flowing nature of our feelings and desires. I digress, yet again.

It is interesting to read this story about the opposite end of local drug empires featured on The Wire and in the many Street Lit titles I read.

A few weeks ago, I watched the latest Purge movie, which took place place in an urban, low-income neighborhood.

While reading The Border, a few scenes from the movie flashed in my mind.

This got me thinking - rather than have a purge event, why not leverage the power of literary catharsis? You know, use words to inspire action.

Many former inmates, as well as journalists, law enforcement, and people like me who lived in crime-riddled locales, have taken to the pages. They detail their experiences, or in some cases, use their experiences as a foundation and build speculative tales. Either way, the stories speak to the issues.

Rather than use guns and knives to purge the world of those you don't want around, what if we wrote our stories and used them instead?

-Graphic novels can present vivid descriptions - think Hafrocentric, March Book 1, March Book 2, and March Book 3

-Verse for the lovers of poetry and young readers - think Kwame Alexander and Jacqueline Woodson

-Nonfiction for the elitists - think The Cook Up and Writing my Wrongs

-Fiction for the rest of us - think Kiki Swinson, Treasure Hernandez, K'Wan

Each of these can stop the poison from taking up residence in our minds (you know...accepting that crime will happen, which it will, and just moving away from it). Instead, the words can fill our minds with possibilities and courage to act.

Literary activism, is this a thing? I think it is!