We’re excited to chat with Aaron Allen about The Big Sea. Check out our conversation below.
Aaron, thanks for joining us again, we really appreciate you sharing your thoughts and insights about The Big Sea. Let’s start with a quick summary to bring everyone up to speed.
The title of “The Big Sea” is the core idea to say the least; the book and story is a poetic and perfect reference to his life and story. Within this book if his life he navigates. James Langston Hughes life was very vast with activity and importance for all walks of life no matter what part of the “big sea or big world you come from he seems to get you covered. furthering this idea of the perfect title for his work, this book is filled with a very busy life of traveling the big sea as he opens up his story with a melodramatic scene of him on the docks leaving Harlem, New York, and traveling to first countries in Africa and later Paris all the while working on the ship to pay for his travels. All in all, the “big sea” is nothing less than that in such a metaphorical way that his life and story has plenty of things that he experienced on the world stage during the world’s biggest events, like from the Harlem Renaissance to the world wars, different races, and cultures.
Awesome, so let’s dive a bit more into why this book matters to you.
I am Aaron Allen, a black African American actor, author, and poet. But what I came into first as a public figure was being a poet as my first launch into society as an author would be my first published book as a published poet just like Langston Hughes. Most black authors in the past came into their popularity unlike Langston Hughes as novelist of black books in the early 90s but didn’t write poetry until their later years.
What would you say were some of the most eye-opening or thought-provoking topics in the book?
Poetry, race, and his view on America being not the America he and minorities had hoped it to be. His story is the direct reflection of his work, whether that is known or unknown by all. Furthermore, the poetry he wrote like “Make America America Again” (which later was changed by President Donald Trump “Make America Great Again”). Lastly, “The Big Sea” is full of the poetry that directly reflects what he lived and experienced whether its racism or unfair pay are all poems he adds into this book of his life in what he writes here as his first autobiography written by his hands inspired by others around him to write it when he didn’t want to talk about it initially but was all in his works.
How did you discover this book?
I discovered this book while personally studying and reading his poems and works outside of classes during my college days back at Western Michigan University years ago. I also have found interest in his story through a couple of outside projects for him in the past that I have been trying to pursue like raising the awareness of his work to help the issues of today. Even before I became a published poet myself back in 2015 with “My Mind: The Journey through Love and the Rest” I still wrote countless poems that are still in my old notebooks like a lost anthology of my work, which soon I will publish as such. but nevertheless, I started my own poetry writing journey and discovered this book while discovering my own will to write poetry and publish as another African American myself.
- Website: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/poetic-justice-poetic-mumma-x-aaron-allen/1144182245?ean=9798861987141
- Instagram: iamaaronallen
- Twitter: aariesallen
