Guest Editor
MIKAEL AWAKE
Mikael Awake is a culture worker and professor based in New York. His narrative history of Rucker Park, the streetbasketball mecca, is forthcoming from Pantheon.
A.J. Verdelle’s Editor’s Choice Featured Writer
“I chose Mikael Awake because he reported that he was working on flash fiction. Mikael is a writer who is moving forward with his career, showing both determination and range. Mikael completed an MFA in fiction at Syracuse University, and he turned to nonfiction while he continued to work on his fiction writing. Last year, Awake published a co-authored the memoir of Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem. On this book project, Awake devoted himself to constructing narrative, even while he had not yet found a home for his fiction. The biography of Dapper Dan has attracted the attention of many New Yorkers and Harlemites, where Dapper Dan has made a sartorial splash for decades. Awake shows that we can ply our trade in multiple genres, while we continue to sharpen our sentences, and refine our writerly dreams. Mikael Awake was my colleague in 2022-23, at the Schomburg Library fellowship in Harlem.
Dedication with No Book
by, Mikael Awake
My fourth-grade teacher was a cooky middle-aged white woman with a honking Georgia drawl. One of my elementary school’s most beloved educators, she was the first teacher to ever encourage my writing. She made me promise to dedicate my first book to her. A teacher’s encouragement, especially so unexpected, can go a long way for a black child growing up in a white place.
She was big on manners and etiquette. In her class, we learned how to set a table, how to pull out a chair and push it back in, like good Southern gentlemen. But we were nine. The chair lesson only set the stage for hijinks. We little gentlemen jerked chairs out from under one another, detonating disruption and loud laughter. It got to the point that if someone offered you a seat, you had to fake-sit to see if they were gonna pull it out on you. The one time I got caught lacking, I probably stayed on the floor and laughed along with everyone else. No one got in trouble.
When I finally pulled the prank on someone, pointing and laughing at this confused white boy on the floor, I felt a hard hand yank my arm roughly. And there you were, snarling in my face. Demanding I straighten up and apologize. I think your fury shocked everyone, maybe even you.
The class fell silent, except for the boy’s scared little I’m sorry. That was the end of the chair prank. I never spoke of the incident, but I’d never seen you lay hands on anyone. No one got in trouble.
And then you became a fan of my writing. You’re a poet and didn’t know it, you’d say to me. He’s a poet and didn’t know it, you’d say to my parents. You taught me the meaning of cliché.
Even after I was well into adulthood, they would utter your name in their pretty Habesha accents as a talisman against American failure. For years, filtered through their pride, I took your encouragement to heart—and I vowed to myself that I would dedicate my first book to you.
I love the boy too much for that. In an apartment Uptown, I lower my body slowly into a desk chair, letting him fall through me, listening to him cackle on the classroom carpet. I dedicate my future to him.