To say that the last four years in American politics is unlike any other is not incorrect. It's simply incomplete. As pundits and confused citizens wait for President Donald J. Trump to formally accept the results of the recent presidential election (a loss to rival Joe Biden), the country's artistic class is choosing instead to look to art and literature from the past for clarity about its one-term whiplash and uncertain future.

In Dispatches From the Vanguard, author and poet Patrick A. Howell formalises the search for truth in art through candid discussions with writers, poets, artists, and political activists from the Global International African Arts Movement, a multigenerational group that includes Nikki Giovanni, Ishmael Reed, Tyehimba Jess, Rich Fresh, Nnedi Okorafor, Nana and Essie Brew Hammond and several other creatives both black and not.

Known for her ability to deliver raw, stinging takes on the topics of the day, Giovanni offers the following:

He is — he is evil. My hope for the future — I am a big, big fan of Black Lives Matter. I think that the kids, the young people, have done a wonderful job. I wish that I could sit around some of the tables at dinner time and hear the grandmothers talk to their granddaughters. I bet you there were granddaughters who said, "I am not going to let my grandmother die seeing her grandson shot down." I think all of that had to do with Black Lives Matter. And, of course, the prisons are just incredibly stupid. They are bad. We know that prisons are the new Klansmen. They no longer lynch Black men and women — and you have to remember that Black women were lynched. America has more people in prison than anybody else [in the world]."

The 400+ page work is a rebuke of the authoritarianism and white supremacy Howell accuses President Trump of reviving, as well as an examination of the role anti-blackness has played in shaping the mythology of America. Aware of the power and reach of American culture and media, he makes the case that recontextualising the country's best art and literature is not only therapeutic, it's critical to helping the public communicate what they believe to the world at large, beyond the controls of its elected leaders.

"The vanguard of American and world culture is held in the metaphysical and genuine hands of two American mythic figures," adds Howell in his opening chapter. "The first literally underwrite American society, a society that really only exists in the imagination, and is responsible for governing the lives of 320 million citizens drawn from around the world in a heretofore successful social, cultural and political experiment called The United States of America."

Through long winding sentences, Howell invites readers to look at the current moment as steps in a never-ending dance between the government and the people, progress and stagnation, democracy and authoritarianism, rather than an aberration. The dance, made bearable thanks to those visual and spiritual expressions that help move the country's spirit higher or lower, like call and response.

For the conservatism of Ronald Regan, there was Michael Jackson and the birth of hip hop; for the interventionism of Richard Nixon, Aretha Franklin, and James Baldwin. As the U.S. grapples with Trump's legacy and the national truths it has exposed, the need to identify new and recycle old expressions that have helped the public find clarity is made urgent.

Abiodun Oyewole, a founding member of the Last Poets (the group credited with bridging the Harlem Renaissance and hip hop), adds context to the conflict:

Yes, we are at war in America. It's a spiritual war, and it's been going on for a long time. It has picked up steam recently, but we have always been at war. That war will continue until we realise we are one race — the human race. There is a war spiritually — we have to use our spirits to fight. We are getting shot in the streets, but we have to fight. We are still under attack by a very evil character who does not respect life. But I still have faith in people. But it's going to take a moment.

I honestly believe that something good is going to come out of Trump. You have to have a balance. I do believe there will be a balance. I don't know what angle it will come in. I do see us coming together as a people. We actually come together and make it possible for some change by galvanising. We have power. I do expect us to have that fortitude. Our strength is unquestionable.

The book's greatest success is its ability to pair subjects whom Howell, through his own admission, agrees with others whose perspectives he's more hostile to. The arguments Howell has within the text directly reflect the conversations the nation has been having with itself since Trump took office and prove that arriving at clear answers, even by speaking to people who have been here before, is no easy task.

Dispatches from the Vanguard: The Global International African Arts Movement Versus Donald Trump by Patrick A Howell is published by Repeater and available now

Published on 23/11/2020