AI
Tuesday, December 04, 2018 6:17:35 PM
Black Male Writers for Our Time
"I compiled this for a church presentation, and decided to share it as a good summary overview of Black American history.
[...]
The first Black people brought to America came in 1619, a year before the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower. By 1860, 3.8 million slaves accounted for one third of the total population of the southern states. Contrary to popular belief, however, not all blacks in America were slaves. By the year 1860, well over 11% of the total black population in the U.S. was free."
These 32 American men, and their peers, are producing literature that is essential to how we understand our country and its place in the world right now.
By AYANA MATHIS Creative Direction by BOOTS RILEY Nov. 30, 2018
LAST APRIL, KENDRICK Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/arts/music/kendrick-lamar-pulitzer-prize-damn.html .. for music. That’s old news, but it’ll never get old to me: Black male rappers have been so maligned as to render his award almost unimaginable to those of us who have loved the music for decades. At the ceremony, the prize’s administrator, Dana Canedy, greeted Lamar on the steps of Columbia University. “We’re both making history right now,” she said. And so they were: Canedy is the first black woman to hold her post, and Lamar — or “Pulitzer Kenny,” as he now delightfully, and delightedly, calls himself — is the first hip-hop artist to win the award. On the same day, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins was nominated for the prize for drama (he was also nominated in 2016). Last spring, “Black Panther .. https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/black-panther-movie ,” with its nearly all-black cast, surpassed a billion dollars in worldwide ticket sales. In May, Sean “Diddy” Combs outbid a rival .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/arts/sean-combs-kerry-james-marshall.html .. to purchase a Kerry James Marshall .. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/t-magazine/kerry-james-marshall-artist.html .. painting for $21.1 million at Sotheby’s. The sale was a triumph: A black multimillionaire bought a black artist’s painting for the highest sum ever paid for the work of a living African-American artist.
[INSIDE]
The writers speak: My favorite work of literature by a black female American is...
And more favorite works from men not pictured here.
What matters here, what’s more striking than the sums exchanged or the awards received, is the intense focus on works by African-American men in America’s artistic landscape, even as the problems of race and racial violence continue to plague the nation.
The last decade has seen a burgeoning multiplicity in America’s literature, with gifted black men writing novels, poems and plays of great import. Some of them have even come to the attention of the literary establishment. Here follows a woefully incomplete roll call: Gregory Pardlo, Pulitzer .. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/books/gregory-pardlo-pulitzer-winner-for-poetry-on-his-sudden-fame.html , 2015. Colson Whitehead, National Book Award .. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/business/colson-whitehead-wins-national-book-award-for-the-underground-railroad.html , 2016; Pulitzer, 2017. Tyehimba Jess, Pulitzer, 2017. Terrance Hayes, National Book Award, 2010. James McBride, National Book Award .. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/books/james-mcbride-and-george-packer-receive-national-book-awards.html , 2013. Ross Gay, Danez Smith, Fred Moten and Yusef Komunyakaa, National Book Award finalists. The list goes on, and I have not touched on the writers who are not yet household names, whose arrival I await in the manner of James Baldwin’s loving anticipation of his nephew’s birth in his essay “A Letter to My Nephew .. https://progressive.org/magazine/letter-nephew/ ” (1962), in which he wrote: “Here you were to be loved. To be loved … hard at once and forever to strengthen you against the loveless world.”.
[IMAGE]
The writers speak: My favorite work of literature by a black female American is...
First row, from left: ROBERT JONES JR., novelist; NATHAN ALAN DAVIS, playwright; ROWAN RICARDO PHILLIPS, poet; JAMEL BRINKLEY, short story writer; GREGORY PARDLO, poet; DINAW MENGESTU, novelist; MAJOR JACKSON, poet. Second row: MICHAEL R. JACKSON, playwright; SHANE McCRAE, poet; JAMES HANNAHAM, novelist; BRONTEZ PURNELL, novelist; ISHMAEL REED, novelist, poet and playwright; BRIAN KEITH JACKSON, novelist; DANEZ SMITH, poet; CORNELIUS EADY, poet. Third row: JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN, novelist and poet; JAMES McBRIDE, novelist; DARRYL PINCKNEY, novelist and playwright; KEVIN YOUNG, poet; JAMES IJAMES, playwright; JERICHO BROWN, poet; NELSON GEORGE, novelist; GEORGE C. WOLFE, playwright and director; De’SHAWN CHARLES WINSLOW, novelist. Fourth row: REGINALD McKNIGHT, novelist; PHILLIP B. WILLIAMS, poet; RICKEY LAURENTIIS, poet; MARCUS BURKE, novelist; MITCHELL S. JACKSON, novelist; MAURICE CARLOS RUFFIN, novelist. Creative direction by Boots Riley. Styled by Carlos Nazario
In that same essay, Baldwin also wrote: “This is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.” Now, in 2018, blackness is as lethal to black people as it ever was. Four days before Lamar received his Pulitzer, a white man in a Michigan suburb opened fire on .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/14/us/michigan-teen-shot-directions.html .. a 14-year-old black boy when he knocked on his door to ask for directions after missing the school bus. Hysterical racism throughout the country has spawned an epidemic of police violence so unbearable, so ongoing, that if I listed the names of the dead today, it would likely be incomplete by next month. Even as African-American writing currently experiences unprecedented mainstream appeal and critical recognition, the focus on black expression has another, uglier face: a deadly obsession with black bodies. Thus, it is possible for the Sacramento police to murder a black man holding a cellphone in his grandmother’s backyard and for Whitehead to win the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award within a year. How are we to reconcile these truths? Is the attention to black male writing merely a fleeting moment, or is it a revolution?
To be sure, there is much to celebrate, but these recent developments are not without complication. “I can’t help but think this comes out of the eight years of Barack Obama … and the backlash against him,” says Farah Griffin, an author and scholar of black literature at Columbia University. “And also the way in which black males have been seen as targets; we know there were women, too, but the people we can name are men.” This raises a crucial question about black women and (in)visibility, but more on that later.
To the subject at hand: It is safe to say that Barack Obama may be the most famous African-American man who has ever lived. He represents an erudite, sophisticated blackness that mainstream culture has historically derided or dismissed. But that omnipresent image of a powerful, untouchable black man reinvigorated a rage and fear of blackness as old as the nation itself. Slavery-era fixations and caricatures still titillate and terrify: Black men are a threat to order and the status quo, physically imposing and possessed of exaggerated sexual ability. Therefore, they must be contained. The poet Jericho Brown says black people don’t have the luxury of being quiet: Every black behavior, no matter how banal — getting out of a car, walking down the street — draws attention or ire. Black bodies, by their very existence, are turned up to the highest volume at all times. All of this is exacerbated by the fact of maleness in our sexist society: Men, even vilified men, outrank women in the hierarchy of being; they are more seen. It is in this charged reality that the work of black male writers finds itself in the spotlight.
To there is shy of halfway - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/30/t-magazine/black-authors.html
See also:
Maya Angelou, Lyrical Witness of the Jim Crow South, Dies at 86
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=102561817
.. and in reply ..
James Baldwin & the Fear of a Nation
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=122488038
Holy hell: Fred Phelps, clergyman, is on a crusade
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=99194321
Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan: the story behind the photograph that shamed America
...by Will Counts of Elizabeth Eckford attempting
to enter Little Rock School on 4th September, 1957.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=67822424
"I compiled this for a church presentation, and decided to share it as a good summary overview of Black American history.
[...]
The first Black people brought to America came in 1619, a year before the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower. By 1860, 3.8 million slaves accounted for one third of the total population of the southern states. Contrary to popular belief, however, not all blacks in America were slaves. By the year 1860, well over 11% of the total black population in the U.S. was free."
These 32 American men, and their peers, are producing literature that is essential to how we understand our country and its place in the world right now.
By AYANA MATHIS Creative Direction by BOOTS RILEY Nov. 30, 2018
LAST APRIL, KENDRICK Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/arts/music/kendrick-lamar-pulitzer-prize-damn.html .. for music. That’s old news, but it’ll never get old to me: Black male rappers have been so maligned as to render his award almost unimaginable to those of us who have loved the music for decades. At the ceremony, the prize’s administrator, Dana Canedy, greeted Lamar on the steps of Columbia University. “We’re both making history right now,” she said. And so they were: Canedy is the first black woman to hold her post, and Lamar — or “Pulitzer Kenny,” as he now delightfully, and delightedly, calls himself — is the first hip-hop artist to win the award. On the same day, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins was nominated for the prize for drama (he was also nominated in 2016). Last spring, “Black Panther .. https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/black-panther-movie ,” with its nearly all-black cast, surpassed a billion dollars in worldwide ticket sales. In May, Sean “Diddy” Combs outbid a rival .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/arts/sean-combs-kerry-james-marshall.html .. to purchase a Kerry James Marshall .. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/t-magazine/kerry-james-marshall-artist.html .. painting for $21.1 million at Sotheby’s. The sale was a triumph: A black multimillionaire bought a black artist’s painting for the highest sum ever paid for the work of a living African-American artist.
[INSIDE]
The writers speak: My favorite work of literature by a black female American is...
And more favorite works from men not pictured here.
What matters here, what’s more striking than the sums exchanged or the awards received, is the intense focus on works by African-American men in America’s artistic landscape, even as the problems of race and racial violence continue to plague the nation.
The last decade has seen a burgeoning multiplicity in America’s literature, with gifted black men writing novels, poems and plays of great import. Some of them have even come to the attention of the literary establishment. Here follows a woefully incomplete roll call: Gregory Pardlo, Pulitzer .. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/books/gregory-pardlo-pulitzer-winner-for-poetry-on-his-sudden-fame.html , 2015. Colson Whitehead, National Book Award .. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/business/colson-whitehead-wins-national-book-award-for-the-underground-railroad.html , 2016; Pulitzer, 2017. Tyehimba Jess, Pulitzer, 2017. Terrance Hayes, National Book Award, 2010. James McBride, National Book Award .. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/books/james-mcbride-and-george-packer-receive-national-book-awards.html , 2013. Ross Gay, Danez Smith, Fred Moten and Yusef Komunyakaa, National Book Award finalists. The list goes on, and I have not touched on the writers who are not yet household names, whose arrival I await in the manner of James Baldwin’s loving anticipation of his nephew’s birth in his essay “A Letter to My Nephew .. https://progressive.org/magazine/letter-nephew/ ” (1962), in which he wrote: “Here you were to be loved. To be loved … hard at once and forever to strengthen you against the loveless world.”.
[IMAGE]
The writers speak: My favorite work of literature by a black female American is...
First row, from left: ROBERT JONES JR., novelist; NATHAN ALAN DAVIS, playwright; ROWAN RICARDO PHILLIPS, poet; JAMEL BRINKLEY, short story writer; GREGORY PARDLO, poet; DINAW MENGESTU, novelist; MAJOR JACKSON, poet. Second row: MICHAEL R. JACKSON, playwright; SHANE McCRAE, poet; JAMES HANNAHAM, novelist; BRONTEZ PURNELL, novelist; ISHMAEL REED, novelist, poet and playwright; BRIAN KEITH JACKSON, novelist; DANEZ SMITH, poet; CORNELIUS EADY, poet. Third row: JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN, novelist and poet; JAMES McBRIDE, novelist; DARRYL PINCKNEY, novelist and playwright; KEVIN YOUNG, poet; JAMES IJAMES, playwright; JERICHO BROWN, poet; NELSON GEORGE, novelist; GEORGE C. WOLFE, playwright and director; De’SHAWN CHARLES WINSLOW, novelist. Fourth row: REGINALD McKNIGHT, novelist; PHILLIP B. WILLIAMS, poet; RICKEY LAURENTIIS, poet; MARCUS BURKE, novelist; MITCHELL S. JACKSON, novelist; MAURICE CARLOS RUFFIN, novelist. Creative direction by Boots Riley. Styled by Carlos Nazario
In that same essay, Baldwin also wrote: “This is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.” Now, in 2018, blackness is as lethal to black people as it ever was. Four days before Lamar received his Pulitzer, a white man in a Michigan suburb opened fire on .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/14/us/michigan-teen-shot-directions.html .. a 14-year-old black boy when he knocked on his door to ask for directions after missing the school bus. Hysterical racism throughout the country has spawned an epidemic of police violence so unbearable, so ongoing, that if I listed the names of the dead today, it would likely be incomplete by next month. Even as African-American writing currently experiences unprecedented mainstream appeal and critical recognition, the focus on black expression has another, uglier face: a deadly obsession with black bodies. Thus, it is possible for the Sacramento police to murder a black man holding a cellphone in his grandmother’s backyard and for Whitehead to win the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award within a year. How are we to reconcile these truths? Is the attention to black male writing merely a fleeting moment, or is it a revolution?
To be sure, there is much to celebrate, but these recent developments are not without complication. “I can’t help but think this comes out of the eight years of Barack Obama … and the backlash against him,” says Farah Griffin, an author and scholar of black literature at Columbia University. “And also the way in which black males have been seen as targets; we know there were women, too, but the people we can name are men.” This raises a crucial question about black women and (in)visibility, but more on that later.
To the subject at hand: It is safe to say that Barack Obama may be the most famous African-American man who has ever lived. He represents an erudite, sophisticated blackness that mainstream culture has historically derided or dismissed. But that omnipresent image of a powerful, untouchable black man reinvigorated a rage and fear of blackness as old as the nation itself. Slavery-era fixations and caricatures still titillate and terrify: Black men are a threat to order and the status quo, physically imposing and possessed of exaggerated sexual ability. Therefore, they must be contained. The poet Jericho Brown says black people don’t have the luxury of being quiet: Every black behavior, no matter how banal — getting out of a car, walking down the street — draws attention or ire. Black bodies, by their very existence, are turned up to the highest volume at all times. All of this is exacerbated by the fact of maleness in our sexist society: Men, even vilified men, outrank women in the hierarchy of being; they are more seen. It is in this charged reality that the work of black male writers finds itself in the spotlight.
To there is shy of halfway - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/30/t-magazine/black-authors.html
See also:
Maya Angelou, Lyrical Witness of the Jim Crow South, Dies at 86
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=102561817
.. and in reply ..
James Baldwin & the Fear of a Nation
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=122488038
Holy hell: Fred Phelps, clergyman, is on a crusade
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=99194321
Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan: the story behind the photograph that shamed America
...by Will Counts of Elizabeth Eckford attempting
to enter Little Rock School on 4th September, 1957.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=67822424
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