Cesi Davidson's Laterals

 

 I'm pleased to announce the release of Cesi Davidson's Laterals, in both print and ebook editions, from Aqueduct Press. Laterals is the 102nd volume in the Conversation Pieces series and is available now from Aqueduct Press at https://www.aqueductpress.com/books/978-1-61976-292-3.

 Cesi Davidson is positioned as a master of brevity among American playwrights. The Laterals collection is beautifully crafted and remarkable. Davidson is much admired for her contribution of hundreds of plays to the theatre landscape that are dense with unpredictable impact. The stories are satisfying to read or view on stage. The hearing and seeing audiences are absorbed into her unique styles of magical realism. The characters speak for us revealing unimagined truths of the past and present. The characters provide us with rehearsal time for navigating a world often confused. You’ll find joyous relief and thoughtful entertainment here. The plays in the Laterals anthology are fantastic adventures. These works of literary art champion her mission to demonstrate through storytelling her core belief, “We are one human family.” 

You can read a sample from the book here:  https://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-292-3.pdf.

“In Laterals, Cesi Davidson brings together an imaginative collection of short plays and poems that traverse the landscapes of memory, identity, resilience, and belonging. Historical figures share the stage with invented characters in worlds that stretch from a sperm bank to the rural Tennessee of 1890. Moving seamlessly between realism, absurdity, and magic, Davidson reveals the surprising ways lives intersect across time and circumstance. Thoughtful, witty, and deeply humane, Laterals is a memorable collection that resonates long after the final page.”
 — Anna Steegman, Staff Writer for the New York City Jazz Record

“Laterals, a mix of jaw dropping tunes. Cesi Davidson orchestrates a play the way a masterful band leader refines musicians to create a brilliant ensemble composition. Her pen is her conductor’s baton. Every character in each play has opportunity to shine; a solo rocking out, chilling out, or energetic stillness. And when the characters come together with dialogue there is no question—there is one story unfolding and that story is captivating. With magical realism this author brings us in and out of historical- based possibilities, imagined worlds, and ideas seldom considered. The reader, the audience, joins in the fiction creating the music with the humanity we all share.”
 —Tonya Pinkins, Actor, Producer, Director, Screenwriter

 

Celeste Rita Baker: sunrise to sundown with an everlasting rainbow sprinkled with orange

 

Celeste Rita Baker

7/28/1958-10/30/2025

sunrise to sundown with an everlasting rainbow sprinkled with orange

by Cesi Davidson

 

 

FOR THE RECORD

Celeste Rita Baker was a Virgin Islander living in Charlotte, North Carolina. Baker's genres include fantasy, speculative fiction, and magical realism in which she writes in Caribbean dialect and standard English. Her first short story, The Dreamprice” a humorous piece and dialect about gossip and favors was published by the Caribbean writer. It gave her the courage to continue submitting her short stories for publication. She won the world fantasy short story award in 2021 for “Glass Bottle Dancer” a lighthearted story about finding that thing that puts a smile on your face. It was published in dialect by Lightspeed and landed her on the front page of the Virgin Islands Daily News. It was translated into Mandarin by the Chinese publisher, Science Fiction World. “Single Entry,” about Earth participating in a Carnival parade and Rock Feather Shell, about a little boy who was turned into a turtle, were very proud accomplishments given their publication in the Virgin Islands’ Moko Magazine. Celeste would say, “It was always nice to be recognized by your own.”

The short story “Dip and Roll” about seaside rocks experiencing an earthquake was narrated with eight different voices by voice actor, Derrick O’Neal for the publishers, Podcastle. Two versions of her story “Name Calling” were published by Abyss & Apex, one in full dialect, and one edited for “easy reading.” The story raised controversy in the science fiction community centered around authenticity versus clarity. Celeste called it watering down. She likened it to putting ice in her rum. Tobias Bucknell and Amal El-Mohar publicly came to her defense, further enhancing her determination not to limit herself to standard American English. She was proud to write as the story dictated. One of her most absurd satiric stories was written in standard English American English, “Pedestals, Proclivities and Perpetuities” and published in Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her work has been published by African Voices, NYU’s Calabash, Strange Horizons, Khoreo, Instant Noodles, Tree and Stone and Margins Magical Realism. Her work has also been included in the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021, People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy, An Alphabet of Book of World Sci-fi 4. She was a graduate of Clarion West Science Fiction Writers Workshop and a proud member of Harlem Writers United. Back, Belly and Side, her book of short stories, is published by Aqueduct Press.

 

IN HER OWN WORDS

Inspirations

The first time I saw myself--A Black Caribbean Woman--in print was in Merle Collin’s novel Angel. I stood in the store holding the book to me chest, panting, tearing burning eyes me eyes. I was.

 I'm grateful for and loved the work of Octavia Butler. Ms. Butler brought me to a world of science where I was.

 

The Virgin Islands

My family is from the Virgin Islands, Saint Thomas and Saint John. I was born in New York City but “came to know meself” on Saint Thomas, learned to talk there and enjoyed my childhood. I returned to New York when I was twelve years old and that affected me and that I realized that I used to be and now I wasn't.

 

Harlem NYC

I moved back and forth from Saint Thomas to the States numerous times but lived in Harlem for almost 30 years. I loved it. I couldn't keep up with all the things to see, do, and learn. I especially learned that whatever you're into, you can find other people doing it too, and doing it in that trend-setting way that Harlem is known for. I found the incredible Sheree Renee Thomas, my writing teacher and mentor at Fred Hudson's Frederick Douglass Creative Art Center in Harlem.

 

FROM MY HEART

Everyone should be so fortunate to have at least one forever friend in their lifetime. Someone to walk down the street with as you talk and chat and chat and talk about everything and nothing. When Celeste and I did our walk talk chats across 125^th Street in Harlem she wore her favorite color orange. I wore my favorite color of the day. We took a breath and those steps. Me self you self is good.

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, part 14: Cesi Davidson

 

 

 

 

Morning with Sonia

by Cesi Davidson

 

These words are not from my memory. These words are from my despair.

There’s no shrapnel embedded in my side table. My hand isn’t filled with shards of glass from the broken window. There’s no smoke in the air or smells of gunpowder. The neighbor’s baby isn’t screaming from the relentless shooting that passed through the night. I’m uncomfortable because there are women in the world who fear for their life. I can’t feel cozy among the living. I reach for my companion, a copy of Sonia Sanchez Collected Poems. I read my morning seed thought from one woman

 

COME ride my birth, earth mother

tell me how i have become, became

this woman with razor blades between

her teeth.

 

In her collection of favorite poems (1969-2019), Dr. Sanchez shares her experiences of the world as a mother, professor, champion of the Black Arts Movement, and social activist. The tenderness, the love, the grit, and the turbulence of her work reminds me of our responsibility as writers. We have to turn this world right side up and remove the illusion that some of us are less than human.

 

I want to claim Sonia Sanchez as my fellow Harlem sister. My New York City village is a place she loved and mourned. I walk across 127^th Street towards Madison Avenue considering her guidance. Her lifetime contributions enrich the entire world. In the spirit of Dr. Sanchez, I give myself peace and comfort but a razor blade is correctly placed between my teeth.

 

 

Cesi (Cecelia) Davidson holds a doctorate degree in Speech Language Hearing Sciences from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. She’s provided therapeutic services for children with communication and learning challenges for over forty years. Since beginning playwriting in 2009, she’s written hundreds of plays and works of non-fiction. Critics praise her demonstrated broad range, fearless creativity, and cultural responsiveness. She’s founder and curator of Short Plays to Nourish the Mind & Soul, free public theatre in New York City. Dr. Davidson is the author of three anthologies of plays published by Aqueduct Press: Articulation, Fricatives, and Bilabials.www.cesiwrites.com; cesidavidson@gmail.com

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2022, pt. 25: Cesi Davidson

 

Not Pleasant but Necessary Reading

by Cesi Davidson

 

I was observing a junior high school class when the teacher posed this question, “Should Black people forget about slavery?” One student without hesitation replied, “No, because it could happen again.”

 Reading about the enslavement of Africans in the Americas (1526-1867) isn’t pleasant, but it’s necessary. We have to know where we’ve been to know where we are, and to know where we’re going. We have a problem. Despite the efforts of diversity, equity, and inclusion trending America we remain on a long journey to truth and reconciliation. It begins with our children and the glossing over of teaching of pre-civil war America to make the information palatable. This intentional filtering, results in a presentation of history that neglects the naming of slavery for what it was: a horrific, brutal institution that entrapped victims and perpetrators. Names, dates, and historical records can be disseminated like water running from a faucet. Turn it on. Turn it off. We need to read history with our mind, heart, and body. There isn’t a chronological age restricting when human beings can feel compassion.

 

Far More Terrible for Women: Personal Accounts of Women in Slavery, ed.  Patrick Minges is a collection of women’s stories about their experiences during slavery as retold by interviewers. It’s one book in the series Real Voices, Real History. In these stories you’ll read about resistance, love, defiance, courage, assault, deprivation, and the struggles of Black women in nineteenth-century America.

 

Perhaps the most well known of the “slave narratives” are those Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs. Sojourner Truth, a gifted orator, was unable to read and write. She dictated her story to Olive Gilbert who penned “The Narrative of Sojourner Truth” in 1850. Harriet Jacobs was the first known African woman in the English speaking Americas to author her own narrative, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” Black and White interviewers under the Federal Writer’s Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) collected first-person histories from 1936 to 1938. This was part of a series of programs to employ writers by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’ s New Deal. It was one response to the massive unemployment resulting from the Great Depression.

 

The slave narratives collected weren’t without flaws. The dynamics of former enslaved women interviewed most often by White interviewers cannot be estimated. How might an oppressed Black woman of that period adjust her comments to be acceptable by the listener? She may have been concerned that her comments could alter her fate. How much did the interviewer’s interest in transcribing “Negro dialect” result in linguistic fiction? Mingus made selections from the WPA collections that he personally found compelling for his book and that he could theme together in a modern day form. They represent a fraction of the stories of the millions of African women captured and imprisoned during the four hundred years of America’s shame.      

This collection assembled by Minges has limitations but still has value. We can never read a woman’s story so deeply that we fully experience her pain of sexual assault, daily fear, loss of children, malnutrition, or hopelessness. We can never read a woman’s story and completely feel her unrelenting drive to free herself and family from bondage. Dispel the myth of the slave woman. They were not generic human beings. They were individuals.

The junior high school student mentioned acknowledged the threat of slavery. We can force ourselves to recognize contemporary female bondage in all forms. We can call out all forms of modern day female enslavement. Atrocities against Black women historical and present day should not be denied.

 

Cesi (Cecelia) Davidson holds a doctorate degree in Speech Language Hearing Sciences from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. She’s provided therapeutic services for children with communication and learning challenges for over forty years. Since beginning playwriting in 2009, she’s written hundreds of plays and works of non-fiction. Critics praise her demonstrated broad range, fearless creativity, and cultural responsiveness. She’s founder and curator of Short Plays to Nourish the Mind & Soul, free public theatre in New York City. Dr. Davidson is the author of three anthologies of plays published by Aqueduct Press: Articulation, Fricatives, and Bilabials.www.cesiwrites.com; cesidavidson@gmail.com

 

 

Cesi Davidson's Bilabials

 

 

I'm pleased to announce the release of Cesi Davidson's Bilabials: Short Plays to Nourish the Mind and Soul. Aqueduct is publishing it as the eighty-fourth volume in our Conversation Pieces series in both print and e-book editions. You can purchase it now at www.aqueductpress.com. And you can read a sample from the book at http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-228-2.pdf.

 

 .Bilabials is the third volume in Cesi Davidson's series of Short Plays to Nourish the Mind & Soul. The three anthologies of plays, Articulation, Fricatives, and now Bilabials are eclectic mixes of stories with surprises, tragedies, delights, and wit. Bilabials departs from the earlier books by its concentration on plays with some theme of love. She also places prose between each play that may sting or please or some modicum of both. This collection isn’t a how to manual. It isn’t a for-women-only, “Aha.” This often laughable, often tear-jerking collection if a label is needed, is a rousing cheer for asking the question, “What is love anyway?” The answer lies somewhere on the horizon between the earth and the sky. This is where Cesi Davidson dwells. She offers her heart in her hands and releases her voice inviting us to travel into the depths of a mystifying unknown. Love is. 

“Cesi Davidson’s newest book of short plays is at the same time revolutionary and hilarious in its content and delivery. Appropriately, the first play is titled “Juicy,” and this book has so much sweet, liquid fun within. From the beginning, the reader experiences a trickle of exquisite sensuality running through each page. Cesi gives a gift to those of us with female bodies—and that gift is permission to feel good, whatever it looks like, and to research what could feel even better.” —Kim Chinh, actor, screenwriter, playwright, author of “Reclaiming Vietnam”

“Cesi Davidson has collected for us here a wondrous trip around, through, and within the heart. These short journeys into the emotions of those who love and those who do not add to our understanding of what love is and what love isn’t. When you laugh, cry, and sigh with recognition, you will be reminded that you are not only a witness to, but also a participant in the emotional life of all those around you.”—Celeste Rita Baker, World Fantasy Award Winner, author of Back, Belly and Side

“Once again I was entertained, moved, and shocked by Cesi’s expansive imagination in this third collection of inventive and delightful short plays. Give yourself to Cesi’s words, and you’ll experience the true essence of love with plenty of laughter inside the rich world in which all beings are sentient, intelligent, and funny.” —Rachel Lu (Actor, Elite Match)