A Personal Prayer of Cuba

Posted on February 10, 2026 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

The following below that is written in italics is partially a meditation on Cuba. It is a response I wrote to a piece about Cuba’s current crisis exacerbated by American neglect and cruelty that was written by Arturo Dominguez. A link to his exceptional article is at the very end of this essay. What’s in italics is a rumination I wrote to Arturo:

“I still remember reading that when Afro-Cuban musical artists came to perform in the United States that they had to perform in the U.S. for free. When asked why they were willing to perform for nothing, the answer was always the same: “We want to see where Dizzy Gillespie was born.”

Thanks for this report Arturo Dominguez because every time there is a sanction, a deprivation, I am reminded that no one suffers in Cuba but the people themselves. I still remember the heinous and wretched Helms-Burton Act which banned ships who docked in Cuba’s ports from docking in the United States for several months.

I remember my professors having to fly out of Atlanta to Canada and then taking a flight from some airport in Canada to Havana to do whatever research they were performing on their visits.

The United States has done nothing but made an example of Cuba as a message to other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that says “This is how far we’ll go; this is how bad we’ll treat you, if you don’t fall in line.”

I might just turn this comment into a meditation.”

A few moments after reading Arturo’s essay I stumbled on one of my favorite thinkers Vijay Prashad who also was offering his thoughts on the viciousness of the United States government against the Cuban people because it is the people that suffer—No one else. (A link to Vijay’s essay is at the end.)

I don’t have the strength to comment on Prashad’s piece right now except that it is brilliant and accurate. I will leave it to you dear reader to examine both his and Arturo’s essays at your leisure. I have only one thing to say.

One line of my paternal family was sold as slaves from Santiago de Cuba to the mainland United States during the period of slavery in this Western hemisphere. My paternal great grandmother was born a slave named Mollie Laws. Her previous family surname was Layende.

Like most people during the 1700s and 1800s, when one moved (or was sold) some place else the last name was changed to adapt to the new culture one was inhabiting. In the United States, it was typically expected that you Anglicize your name to something that English speakers could pronounce. So “Layende” became “Laws.”

Anyhow I used to relay my personal history to my History students in an effort to make sure that they understood that Chattel slavery took place throughout the Western world. Importantly, what we now call the United States received less than 6 percent of all the Africans transported to this hemisphere during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The majority of Africans (around 95 percent) landed in what is now named Latin America and the Caribbean.

I don’t have any deep analysis here about how difficult Afro-American genealogy can be. I don’t have any deep commentary about the many cultures and cultural differences that exist between all of the descendants of Africa who occupy this hemisphere except I have always known that for better or worse I belong to them.

Right after I read Arturo’s essay and then Vijay’s essay, I recalled a favorite memory from the classroom. A student whose name escapes me now came to class after Spring Break with a faded photograph he took while out on the Atlantic ocean.

He learned that I had roots in Cuba and so did he. He pulled out this faded photo taken on the water. Far off in the distance I saw something that looked like a line stretched across the water.

“What is that long line in the water that I see in the distance?,” I asked.

“That line across the water in the distance is Cuba, Ms. Allen. I hope you get there someday.”

©️Leslye Joy Allen

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(from Why is the United States Afraid of Cuba?)

Privilege Can Make You Really Dumb

Posted on July 28, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

A few years ago, I received an email from a Black male performance artist that I know who is now retired. He dogged out another Black male performance artist after having attended a function. Don’t ask. I am not naming any names.

In this particular email he had nothing but vitriol for the other artist. I read his jealousy in every line because there was a time when the writer of this email was a hot topic of conversations. Yet, that ship had long since passed.

The performance artist that criticized the other performance artist did not know that who he was criticizing was loved by one of my most beloved and righteous late cousins. She was a cousin who helped damned near every Black performer who ever entered her orbit. You have seen her acting mentees, because they are everywhere. My cousin was one of the founders of The League of Professional Theatre Women.

The man doing all of this unnecessary critiquing did not know that the artist he criticized spoke at my cousin’s memorial services. For him to not know that simple fact basically meant he never listened to me. Men do that quite often. He never realized how completely offensive he was because I never bothered to respond to his unnecessary email. He never did any research before he opened his mouth. Or maybe he did know everything and just didn’t care.

An intelligent, well-educated Black woman not only does her background work but she also assesses what is best left unsaid as well as said. If she is in the process of cutting a good business deal with your Uncle, and she knows that you are on the outs with your Uncle, she will never mention you in any conversation with him.

Male privilege in any man of any color or race or ethnicity teaches men that they don’t really have to be all that concerned with the ideas or issues that women are interested in. Male privilege teaches that it is not really necessary for men to pay that much attention to the ideas or issues important to women in order to function. One of the men who did not succumb to the effects of male-centricity was the late tennis champion Arthur Ashe.

Ashe (above) was the only Black male athlete I ever heard who said things like, “The average man who talks about how many women he has bedded can’t even explain the hormonal changes that occur when a woman is menstruating.” I never forgot that because when he said it I knew that he could explain a woman’s menstrual cycle. He was a scholar, and an athlete that thought further than the head of his dick or the size of it.

Well, white privilege operates the same way as male privilege. Many white people assumed that they knew/know all they needed to know about Black folks, Latinos, Native Americans, and other peoples of color. Yet, now many of the most honorable among them are groping in the dark as to how they arrived at this moment in time in the United States where democracy and their liberties are at stake.

Have you ever wondered why school shooters in the United States are 95 percent male (and roughly 52 percent white males) and damned near no one raises the question “Is there something wrong with young males?”? You hear or read the occasional commentary or the occasional essay raising this point, but the obvious problems affecting boys and young men are swept under the rug for the sake of the illusion of male supremacy while the malevolence these crazy bastards inflict on children and adolescents are treated like isolated incidents.

If you do a quick Google search about the American population you will learn that Americans of every color, race, gender, and ethnicity only make up roughly 4.2 to 5 percent of the world’s population.

Let me repeat it another way. Roughly 95 percent of the population of the entire world exists outside of US borders; and 85 percent of the world’s population are people of color. There’s a little chart in Consumption by the United States that compares our consumption to other countries. Although this analysis was conducted in 2008, it does paint a disturbing picture of American excess.

There is a severe penalty for not paying any real attention to the thoughts and circumstances of people of color, and of people who are not Americans. There’s a penalty for not paying attention to the thoughts and circumstances of women, and particularly of women of color. I have written about American-centricity before; and the perils that go along with it.

As I write this, Felon 47 is in Scotland trying to fend off every question from Scottish journalists who want to know why he will not release the Epstein Files. Americans of all stripes need not think this will not reflect badly on all of us.

News is not always reported American-style everywhere in the world. What is important to us here in the United States is not always a headline somewhere else. Add the fact that Americans are primarily unilingual, and you can be sure there will be those moments when we just don’t know how damaged and inept we appear to the rest of the world because for most of us, all we speak is English.

The penalty is that we automatically know less than the people who we believe are less important than us; and we don’t find out how in the dark we are until we’re all in trouble. It is not Felon 47 that we need to worry about, but rather the future he is designing for us long after he is gone.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

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Pawns and Queens: Analogies For a New Era

Posted on January 21, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

We historians often find data in some file in an obscure archive, in letters written by someone’s grandmother, in photos, newspaper clippings, legal records. Our discipline demands that we dig, analyze, rethink and revise, constantly. I liken our work to studying the function of each piece in a Chess game. We get different perspectives about the same set of circumstances depending on which Chess piece we examine.

I was a mediocre Chess player. I had a few friends who played like champions. So, I often just watched them play. I remain, however, fascinated by the game’s objectives and, specifically, the roles of Pawns and Queens.

Pawns are the most numerous pieces in Chess; they are the foot soldiers. Each player has eight Pawns. A Pawn can move one or two squares forward if that move is its first move. After the first move, a Pawn can only move one square forward unless the square is blocked by some other piece. A Pawn can capture or attack another piece, however, by moving diagonally to the left or right.

The Pawn is the only piece in a Chess game that can change ranks. Depending on the skill of a Chess player, a Pawn can become a Bishop, a Rook or a Queen. In spite of a Pawn’s ability to advance to a higher rank, it is still considered the lowest ranking piece in the game. It is only worth one point.

The objective of the game is to capture your opponent’s King where that King has no way out, which means Checkmate. While the King is considered the most important piece in the game, it is the Queen that is considered the most powerful piece.

Queens are the only pieces that can move across the board in any manner as long as they are not successfully blocked by other pieces. If you lose, it is highly likely that you lost because your opponent’s Queen checkmated your King. Chess players feel much more confident when they have successfully captured or blocked her.

You can still win the game without capturing the Queen, but you have to be extremely strategic and precise to do so. You can also win without making good moves with your Pawns, but it is highly unlikely.

Chess is now over 1,500 years old. While there is some skepticism about its precise origins, many Chess historians believe that the Indian board game called “Chaturanga” was the earliest predecessor of Chess. There were many other versions that followed, but are too numerous to mention here.

In early versions of Chess, there was a piece called “Vizier” or “Advisor” for centuries. In the 1500s, in the era of great and powerful Queens in Europe, like Spain’s Isabella and England’s Elizabeth, “Viziers” or “Advisors” were redesigned and renamed “Queens.” You can learn an awful lot of world history just by examining Chess.

So here’s the deal: There is no such thing as a Chess game where Queens/Women Heads of State/Women in general are not powerful and flexible while the Kings/Men Heads of State/Men in general are highly important but who have or exercise fewer tactical moves.

There is also no such thing as a Chess game where Pawns/Foot Soldiers/Laborers are not essential to success, even while they are considered less important.

Apply any and all of the above to what you see happening in the United States and the world right now. I refuse to tell you how to analyze and interpret this history because there are so many interpretations and analogies that can be extrapolated from this board game.

All I will say is that nothing is going to change or be corrected without the skill of devoted Pawns, and the power and daring of Queens.

Leslye Joy Allen

Social Commentary, History, Theatre, Jazz, and the Environment

Category Archives: 1700s