Having our own kids growing up around a relatively diverse group of kids was an important factor for us when we left the Bronx nearly four years ago, and while we technically found what we were looking for, what we didn't account for was the overwhelmingly white staff that would be teaching them.
In light of Marvel and DC's continued inability to introduce new superheroes with diverse backgrounds, a full generation after everyone wanted to "be like Mike" and Will Smith became a bankable leading man, what does the furor over Morales say about the state of comics and their place within pop culture?
"He does not know that with all his lies, promises, and ravings, he has still fallen short. The supreme admiral of the ocean sea still believes he has reached Asia from the rear."
NOTE: This article was originally published in POETRY IN AMERICA, Poets & Writers Magazine Special Issue, April 1999, and republished in The Spoken Word Revolution, Redux (Sourcebooks MediaFusion, 2007). It was posted to my old GeoCities site in 1999 and was recovered from the Wayback Machine on 10/29/21. Links to Amazon were replaced, everything else is as originally published. the Academics have much to fear and they will not die without a dirty fight. -Charles Bukowski Faced with the surging popularity of spoken-word and the poetry slam, The Academy of American Poets, long known for its gala reading series, was forced…