With brilliant and poignant revolutionary poetry and photography from
Georgia-based cultural worker, journalist, and organizer, D. Musa
Springer, Alive and Paranoid, the first book in Iskra's Red
Poetry Series, is available as both a low-cost, black and white,
softcover edition and as a full-color, resplendent hardcover.
"This book was
written in the hamster wheel, in the sense that D. Musa Springer
penned these poems not in leisure but in labor-in spite and because
of the sleepless hustle Amerika demands. Such hustle-against the
backdrop of a racist, capitalist society-was only survivable because
of the poet's own impulse for writing verse. [...] Springer's 'poetry
of purpose, ' is personal and incendiary, it gloats and it weeps,
and, most importantly, it is not neatly-trimmed to fit within the
borders of a sparkly billboard screen in Times Square. It is blunt
and unconcerned with platitudes. Alive and Paranoid journeys
through Atlanta, Cuba, dreamscapes of Palestine, and the sonic values
of hip-hop, offering a kaleidoscopic look, even a sense of liberty,
into Springer's life in the hamster wheel."
-Mohammed El-Kurd,
from the foreword
"For us, Alive
and Paranoid is more than the artistic ramblings of a friend.It
is hours and hours of ki kis, criticisms, and disagreements passed
back and forth on WhatsApp and in person. In these pages, you will
find many reflections that Musa wrote live and direct from Havana,
Cuba, where people have been struggling under the weight of
60-year-old economic sanctions placed on the county-with the intent
to kill."
-Erica and Salifu,
from the foreword
