America-Cry FREEDOM Culture Shock Essays II by I.C. Moore 88 pages Audio CD ISBN: 1-59453-397-0 Available now: $14.95

From the Introduction to
America-Cry FREEDOM: Culture Shock Essays II

Come back!
We never left the silence of tomorrows.
Come back!
The yesteryears bounce forward
Always striding, bullying the future.

It was on a gray, drizzly London morning that the "CultureShock" took its first bite of my consciousness. Spiteful and depressed I squeezed out of the rain and came face to face with my lost past.

It was here, in the crumbling ruins of Strawberry Hill. A name that conjures up a time of indulgent privilege and noblesse oblige, where the good citizens interviewed prospective homeowners into their select band of bigots.

Here, among the overgrown moss, layering the once petite nearby railway station, that I heard my first "CultureShock," a return journey, years later, to my school of yesteryear. Looking down the track I realized that no longer would guilt-ridden parents be riding this route to see their little abandoned children detained by the pleasure of Lord Shaftsbury's benevolence. This endowment of charity, spewed from the loins of culpable nineteenth century politicians.

The haunt from which my emotions of early manhood had rebelled, Fled, cursed, despised and battled hard to forget.

This curse of impregnated cultural denial that formed a steel net of fear and self-doubt around my bursting aspirations. It all looked so small now. It's difficult to conceive how these same bricks, mortar and pathways could have held me in such awe, such trepidation! I felt now I could crush the whole place in my hand, like some discarded pulp mail.

The elegant Georgian mansion stood aloof. The center clock still kept its immaculate time. The broad sweep of the giant fir tree still dominated a beautifully manicured lawn mowed with military precision.

But the school buildings had gone. The sounds and smells of trenchant orders and burnt oatmeal were squashed between new housing tracts, displacing the old soccer field. On this field I had led soccer teams, blending blood and sweat together through ice and snow, heat and rains. Bringing back on many occasions respect for this school of lost souls. All the hopes of my youth had been turned under the sod, like the desecration of Cartage. Nothing remained of the spirit but the salt in the wounds. Yet the maturity of my consciousness was still hidden in shadows and the limbo of aloneness.

I hungered to be born again on that gray morning of purpose. That insipid drizzle outside was my Baptism to a new faith!

A faith, in myself as a worthy human being--wrapped in the skin of many cultures. A faith, that reconciled color with history and the pursuit of happiness. A faith, that taught the discipline of the reed, silently observing the waters of life, unfolding its ebbing rhythms of human understanding.

The CultureShock spirit was a Vibrating rhythm of resonating Sensation, that preached the Message of Sankofa-the faith that one can only go forward if one has understood the past!

Contents

• Foreward: The Color of Jazz
• Introduction: Culture Shocked
• Coming to America
• The Arrival
• Observations From Foreign Visitors
• The Culture of History
• Democracy in America
• The Culture of Language
• Ebonic Plague
• Culture Shock News Interviews
• The Culture of the Market
• The Culture of Ignorance
• The Culture of Waste
• The Culture of War
• The Culture of Acceptance
• The Culture of the Future
• America-Cry Freedom
• Let America be America Again

88 pages
Audio CD
ISBN: 1-59453-397-0
Available now: $14.95