T. Mychael Rambo is enjoying the fruits of a long and successful career. With 40 years of experience as an educator and theater professional, he currently does motivational speaking, works on staff development in schools, and helps organizations create conversations for mediation and conflict resolution.
When he was younger, the accolades were very important. But at this stage in his life, Rambo knows his worth and is not waiting for others to acknowledge his talents.
“I’m very clear that I am worthy and deserving,” he says. “What I have to offer is an asset, a benefit, and value additive to any organization, entity or collaboration.”
He has been a professor of theater and dance at the University of Minnesota for more than 20 years. He shares his learned and lived experiences on college campuses across the nation.
“I was at Georgetown University…helping them see the importance of using theater as a tool for social justice,” he says.
Rambo’s longtime acquaintance, Resmaa Menakem, wrote the New York Times best-seller “My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.” He approached Rambo to collaborate with him to create a children’s version of the book.
Rambo had been writing for years, including stage writing and poetry. Menakem’s offer was “an invitation I gladly accepted,” he says.
The origin book focuses on racialized trauma and how African Americans use music and movement for healing. “Whether it be a time when our grandmothers would shuck peas and hum and rock back and forth, or [in] sanctified churches where people would shout or get captured by the holy ghost… We learned to deal with trauma and to deal with stress.”
The children’s book, “The Stories from My Grandmother’s Hands,” contains a downloadable soundtrack that complements the text. The book is written by Rambo derived from conversations he had with Menakem.
“The music is basically soundscapes. So, you’ll hear the first couple of tracks that are just a group of women from our community,” he says. The sounds of humming and sometimes guttural utterances “harken back to the sound that our ancestors would have heard,” Rambo says.
In the call-and-response tradition of African American music, repeated phrases serve the purpose of written language. “An offshoot of the singer saying, ‘This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.’
“People don’t realize that’s a 400-year-old Negro spiritual. And people don’t realize that the enslaved people created it,” says Rambo.
“[Repetitive phrasing] was done because we understood that we didn’t have a written language,” he continues. “So, you had to repeat things so [listeners] got the message.”
In the children’s book, each page celebrates how grandmothers soothe and heal us with words, music and touch. Each name for grandmother is in a different language or dialect.
Children may say things like, “Oh, abuela, that’s my grandmother… She’s Spanish, from Cuba,” Rambo says. This is to affirm each child’s origin and promote intergenerational learning.
For adults, each name for grandmother has a deeper meaning. “These words are those from the oppressors that oppressed Black bodies,” says Rambo. “We can be reminded that we still wear the visage of those people because of those languages that they put on us when they took ours away.”
With the book, the author intends to encourage families to provide human rather than electronic stimulation for children. It captures the experiences of the African ancestry of telling and reading stories.
“How do we intergenerationally ask and invite elders to not give a 2-year-old a tablet? Put a book in front of them and have the two of you have a relationship,” he says.
“[It’s] not to say that the tablet is not technology that we can use,” he continues. “But how do we use it with intention and sparingly as opposed to as our primary mode?”
The illustrations by Leroy Campbell are bright, brilliant and vibrant.” Interestingly, “they are all paintings.” Rambo says. “Everything that appears to be an illustration is an actual photo of a painting.
“The great blessing of being in this stage in my life is that I have found out and discovered that doing me is a virtue,” he says. “I’m at a space where I think I have done well, and I don’t have to celebrate that part of me. I have to celebrate what I call my greater yet-to-be.”
“The Stories from My Grandmother’s Hands” is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble Books, and at local independent bookstores. Rambo makes himself available to do readings in schools and other organizations.
Besides the book, he will perform on Dec. 27 at Crooner’s Super Club in Fridley with Charmin Michelle, a Twin Cities-based jazz artist.
Vickie Evans-Nash welcomes reader responses to [email protected].
This post was originally published on here
