by calling themselves to remember africa and/or the racial past, black americans are actually re-membering, as in repopulating broad continuities within the african diaspora. This movement is non-linear, and it disrupts our notions of chronology. . . . an investigation of Harlem as a northern urban community reveals direct-deliberate, crafted ties-to the american south and then to africa. and these are not places but stages or sites on which the drama of self-acquisition is played. -melvin dixon, "The black Writer's Use of memory" 1