Callaloo’s Legacy of Connection

At the panel “The History of Callaloo: An Interview with Charles Henry Rowell,” Jonathan Howard presented these remarks.

It is a real honor, and not a little humbling, to be a part of this conversation about the history of Callaloo. For me, one of the most striking aspects of Dr. Rowell’s remarks was the recurrence of the theme of “connection.” In the first instance, how the journal was created and developed with the idea of facilitating connections throughout the African Diaspora. But secondly how, in this way, the journal also carries forward a legacy of connection intrinsic to the very predicament of diaspora. Consider all of the encounters and exchanges precipitated by the diaspora’s many constitutional migrations, both coerced and volitional, from the ships of the Middle Passage to the trans-Atlantic flights that have convened many of us here today. Given the journal’s explicit desire to connect, I think it fitting to begin my response by briefly narrating the circumstances which led to my own connection to the journal and my participation in this conference as I believe it exemplifies a special genius for connection on the part of Dr. Rowell and his work with Callaloo.

Just this past August, I was in Los Angeles visiting my advisor, Fred Moten, who had invited me out there for a writing retreat to workshop my dissertation and to discuss going on the job market. One evening, after a long day of writing, Fred tells me that he has just got off the phone with Charles Rowell. I recognized the name from one of my very first conversations with Fred, when, after mentioning my interest in the Guyanese writer Wilson Harris, he handed me a special issue of Callaloo dedicated entirely to Harris’s work. Poring over the pages of that special issue years ago was my very first introduction to the journal, and consequently, the work of Charles Rowell. Now, Fred was telling me that the very same Charles was not only interested in an essay I had written on Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow, but was also extending me an invitation to attend the upcoming Callaloo Conference here at Oxford. So I am here today having had no formal connection to the journal previously, having never been to the UK, and having only personally met Charles yesterday, all due to a single phone call. But belied by the slight of a single phone call is the not at all slight labor of black study that something like a phone call can link up across the generations of its kindred practitioners.

Forgive the basketball analogy, the prowess for making connections exemplified by the phone call is reminiscent of the passing ability of a seasoned point guard. And with each new edition of Callaloo, Charles continues to pass the rock. And his passing is not only transnational, but transgenerational in its scope. Professor Spillers joked earlier about being the oldest person in the room. As one of the youngest, I can’t express how humbling it is to be in the company of so many esteemed artists, writers, and scholars, all gathered in the name of Callaloo. Nothing beyond my earnest participation in the shared and ongoing labor of black study grants me a seat at so prestigious a table, which is why I’m all the more proud to be present here with you all participating in this conference. It has felt like an initiation of sorts into the life, history, and tradition of a journal that contains much more than its bounded pages, and which continues to enfold new generations of artists and thinkers into its diasporic orbit. I recognize a special genius for connection in all of this, for which I am thankful and to which I am indebted.

Another thing which struck me during yesterday’s panel (and which I found reiterated in Dr. Rowell’s discussion of his motivation for creating the journal) was how various people reflected yesterday on the needfulness of a space like Callaloo, on the fact that the journal was created some forty years ago...