Barron's Interviews Baltimore Poet Kondwani Fidel

Michael Kaminer introduces Barron's readers to Baltimore-based poet Kondwani Fidel, whose newest book, The Antiracist (Hot Books/Skyhorse Publishing) is scheduled for release this month. "One of the book’s points," explains Kaminer, "is that self-expression, not self-censorship, is key to rooting out racism." Picking up from there: 

“If you really care about living in an anti-racist society, you have to create a space where people can say how they really feel, so we can figure out what’s wrong,” Fidel says.  

“We need to be more open to people’s ignorance so we can help them. The discourse right now is all about their mistakes, as if they’re supposed to read a politically correct handbook every day.We have to open it up for the people who are ignorant and don’t know,” he says. 

Fidel’s road to literary activism started with a childhood that saw “people lost to drugs and violence, myself getting locked up for things I didn’t do, my parents getting incarcerated,” he says. After enrolling in a sports management program at Virginia State University—“I hated writing”, he says—Fidel took a class with Professor Arnold Westbrook, whose class highlighted African-American literature.

“It was Langston Hughes, rap lyrics, the documentary ‘Good Hair,’ episodes of ‘The Boondocks’,” Fidel says. “I fell in love with reading. I would read the dictionary.”  

Continue at Barron's.