[Item #4212] Nations and Peoples. Judson Crews.
Nations and Peoples
Nations and Peoples
Nations and Peoples

Nations and Peoples

Cherry Valley, NY: Cherry Valley Editions, 1976. First Edition. Stapled Wrappers. Judson Crews (1917-2010) was a poet, a bookseller, and small press publisher born and raised in Waco, Texas. It was in Waco that Judson first opened his Motive Bookshop and from the Waco location issued his first Motive Press publications. It is Taos, New Mexico, though that scholars of mid-century countercultural literature associate most closely with Crews; as his activities there took on new dimensions, and his circle of creatives broadened widely. He edited many poetry magazines over the years, including “The Naked Ear” which published poems by Charles Bukowski, Robert Creeley, Stuart Z. Perkoff, Diane di Prima and others. Perhaps an interesting prelude to the subject matter of this Crews title is that Crews published under pseudonyms frequently, and his own poet-friends believed that “Mason Jordan Mason”—a frequently-published and anthologized African-American poet of the 1950s and 60s recognized by not only LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka but Langston Hughes himself—was actually yet another of Crews’ crafted literary hijinks. Crews’ politics took a radical turn in the 1970s, in which academia saw the rise of what is known as “Postcolonial Theory,” which drew heavily from the work of Marxist philosopher-&-psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. Fanon’s 1952 book, “Black Skin, White Masks” employs—like the Frankfurt School Critical Theorists before him—a Freudian psychoanalytical lens coupled with Marxian Conflict Theory. Fanon makes the claim (among many others) that a black person is perceived to be a lesser creature in the “white” world they live in. This idea of Fanon’s from 1952 ties directly into the contemporary identity-political insistence on “decolonization;” for ex: a library is deemed “white” by default (say, because there isn’t a perfectly equal amount of books by authors of differing races, sexes, and gender identities). To address this, many activists and academics today cite Fanon (who, unlike the activists and academics, actually did live in the French colony on Martinique) and posit that the only way to “decolonize” a library, or “decolonize” a curriculum is to seek “equity:” an even placement of voices based on the immutable characteristics of a person that, as is claimed, prevented them from attaining that placement in the library, canon, or curriculum. Thus, to “decolonize” is actually “to colonize,” and to do so for an expressly identity-political purpose. Crews dedicates “Nations and Peoples” “…IN HOMAGE TO FRANTZ FANON,” and it is from this heady hookah of revolutionary sentiment that Crews’ was huffing. On the copyright page, Crews writes: “This poem is a free poem. It may be reproduced in any form, in part or in whole by any underground, women’s liberation, or third world group anywhere in the world.” It isn’t wild to conjecture that he was deeply immersed in this worldview as a result of his 1974-1978 post as a lecturer at the University of Zambia (remember, this book was published in 1976—right in the middle of his tenure there). This is only one interlude in the curious life of Crews, international man of mystery, poet-publisher-provocateur. Printed and published by Crews’ friend and associate, the legendary literary outlaw Charles Plymell and his Cherry Valley Editions. [ISBN: 0-916156-19-2]. Book in near fine condition with slight shelf-wear to fine-edges; minor bumps to top right, bottom right-hand corners of front and back cover; minute bumps to top left, bottom left-hand corners of same; minute vertical crease to leftmost fine-edge of same at center-middle; slight rubbing to back cover; minute rusting to top staple at exterior and interior, though no bleed present at interior. Near Fine. [Item #4212]

Price: $25.00