Omo Moses, an activist and educator, is the founder and chief executive of MathTalk, an education technology company aimed at inspiring kids and their families to discover and enjoy math anywhere – particularly families in economically distressed communities. Born in Tanzania in 1972, Moses grew up in Cambridge and attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. He’s the son of civil rights organizer Bob Moses, who directed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s voter registration project and was a lead organizer in the 1964 Mississippi “Freedom Summer” campaign. In “The White Peril: A Family Memoir,” Moses reflects on his upbringing and coming of age in the city, weaving his story with his father’s and his great-grandfather’s words. The result is a memoir in three generations about being Black in America, and in Cambridge. “The White Peril” was published last month, and Moses speaks at the Central Square branch of the Cambridge Public Library on Feb. 20. We interviewed him Thursday; his words have been edited for length and clarity.
What sparked your interest in personal writing?
I’ll never forget my first experience with creative writing, which was in 11th grade at CRLS. My teacher, Karen Hawthorne, was leading an intro to creative writing class and the first time we did a free-writing exercise, all these memories I had of growing up in Africa came flooding back. I was born in Tanzania and we moved back here when I was 4 years old. In that class, through reconnecting to all these memories that I guess had been buried, I felt like writing was something I was supposed to do. I didn’t really speak much at all throughout high school in classes, and it was the first time it felt like I could really share who I was. I remember showing what I wrote to my classmates and my mom. My classmates were moved and my mom, you know, she loves everything her kids and grandkids do, so naturally she was moved, but she really encouraged me to do more.
How did you decide on the book’s interwoven structure?
When I went to college my primary focus was on basketball, but I kept taking these creative writing classes, and my professors kept encouraging me to write and write more. Some of my favorite books and books that my mom read to me were “The Hobbit” and then “The Lord of the Rings,” so for a while I had in my mind that I was going to write some African version of “Lord of the Rings.” Then life took over; I began working in Mississippi with my dad with the Algebra Project, and it wasn’t until about 2009 or 2010 that I finally said, all right, I need to write, I’m ready to write a book. By that time, 20-plus years had passed. My dad is obviously a historical figure, but I actually started off trying to write my story from the perspective of my mother’s origins growing up in the South Bronx. I struggled to do that, probably because I was resisting the obvious, which was my relationship with my dad. I try to understand it from the perspective of a son, but also from the perspective of a Black man growing up in America and the work he’s done to enable Black people, and really all people, to participate fully in society. So I ended up deciding I wanted to write something that connects my story to my dad’s story, and then I also discovered that my dad has a backstory. My dad’s mother passed away before we were born, and his father passed away when we were still in Tanzania, so we didn’t really know much about where or who he came from. When I was in Mississippi, one of the Algebra Project parents gave me a book called “The White Peril” that had been written by my dad’s grandfather, my great-grandfather. All those things converged. I connected my great grandfather’s story, sermons and work to my dad’s work and my coming of age in Cambridge in the ’80s and ’90s.
Tell me about the role Cambridge plays in the memoir.
I think Cambridge, in the ’70s, ’80s – it felt like a kids’ town. You could roam the streets, your parents felt like you were safe. If you had a bike, the city was yours, you could get anywhere. The other important part of Cambridge is that it was a really diverse community of people. You had folks who were working in the factories, you had folks that were coming here to study at Harvard and MIT. It was just a rich tapestry of people from all walks of life, and it felt like you were in close proximity to all of them. I would go to the park and play basketball, for instance, and I would be interacting with so many people from so many different backgrounds. That was the beauty of Cambridge, being able to build those relationships across communities that are traditionally segregated in many ways. Part of what I wanted to convey in the book is exactly that, the range of different voices and people that I was able to connect to throughout my life, whether they were from Pakistan or the South. Cambridge thinks of itself as a utopian place to an extent, but it has a lot of the same challenges that most places have. I think many of America’s challenges and problems surface in Cambridge, and part of my motivation for writing the book was to uplift those things in a way that I hope will challenge us to confront them. Mostly, in writing the book I wanted to show how we were able to move through these different spaces and communities and also to show some of the challenges we still face in living up to our ideals.
What do you think your father and great-grandfather would appreciate about the memoir?
My dad would appreciate the ways in which I talk about the Algebra Project and all the work he did with that, especially because I connect it to his other work. I also tried to bring it forward and connect it to the reality of my childhood and the reality of children growing up today, and I think he would appreciate that too. As for my great grandfather, there’s this line that he says: “The past forever rolling up into the future.” That was interesting because my dad always talks about the Civil Rights Movement being a wave. He would say SNCC was a wave and an ocean of movement. I’m thinking about this continuity of struggle and a continuity of consciousness across generations. I hope my great-grandfather would see this as me channeling his voice and presenting his voice and his ideas in a way that is current and relevant.
And what do you hope other readers take from it?
One of my favorite experiences so far has been giving out copies to the brothers I grew up with in the neighborhood. One of them, Russell Harding, we called him Fats, he came by and he got copies for himself and his family, and I think he was proud and happy to see the ways in which I shared our experiences and the ways in which those experiences sit side by side with these other experiences and perspectives. That was the audience I was thinking about when I was writing. I want the kids in Mississippi who aren’t kids anymore to feel good about how I presented them in the book, and I want the brothers I grew up with to feel good about how I portrayed them too. As a kid, when I looked into history books and tried to get a sense of what my mom and dad did during the ’60s, what their perspective was about what they were experiencing, I always felt frustrated because I felt like I was never really able to get a sense of their voices. I tried to really create space for my dad’s perspective and his voice, and used that to communicate what the work he was doing was like, and I tried to do the same for my mom. I think that’s something people generally appreciate; I didn’t try to paraphrase or describe what people were saying and experiencing, but just allowed their point of view to come through in a way that hopefully helps the reader make some sense of it all.
Omo Moses reads from “The White Peril” at “Homecoming: Celebrating Black Voices” held from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Feb. 20 the Cambridge Public Library’s Central Square Branch, 45 Pearl St. Free, but register.
The feature image for this post (but not the image seen above) was added to in a digital retouching process. The far right and left of the frame are not real. The Omo Moses was photographed and was real.
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