Stacy Davis Photo
A Philadelphia woman read her poetry Friday night and started a healing process in nearly 25 people at Union Temple Baptist Church on Platt Street.
“Beautiful!” “Yes!” Hallelujah!” and “Thank you God!” women shouted as Melodye Micere Van Putten recited her poems about healing from the pain of acknowledging the hurt in African-American history.
“Historically speaking, it’s been a brutal path, my people, oh my people. Kidnapped, raped, branded, forcibly transported, shackled down,” Van Putten read from her book, Healing History: Reflections on Race and Forgiveness in Prose and Poetry, to an audience of nearly 25 people, mostly adult African-American women.
“Death ships, stench-filled, carrying Africa’s best, the strongest of the strong, surviving the unsurvivable. A lesser people would have died out bowing to genocide, but they didn’t and we are still here.”
Van Putten, who has been writing poetry and lecturing for 25 years, wrote four books, and will share her poetry again Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. at Walk in Truth/BlackPrint Books and Gallery at 162 Edgewood Ave.
Van Putten received undergraduate and graduate degrees in African-American studies from Temple University and calls herself an Africalogist. A Philadelphia native, she resides in Bermuda with her husband. She also works as an educational consultant.
Part of her mission as a consultant is for African-Americans to also learn about the prideful parts of their history as well, she said. “I’m trying to tell our story,” she said. “We [African-Americans] are the only people who expect the people who treated us wrong to teach our babies right,” she said.
Friday night, she challenged her audience to think about and discuss ways to recover from the past — history, failed relationships. “This is a community discussion,” she said.
She also challenged audience members to be more selective about what they watch on television. “We give television too much power,” she said. Parents use it as a babysitter, a reward and a punishment with their children, she said.
She said her family had only one television in the house when she was growing up. Now, many children have their own televisions in their rooms and are watching shows without being monitored, and are being exposed to adult topics and sexual images they are probably not ready for. “We truncate their childhood,” she said. “How can we snatch that back?”