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Nicholas Carr from the Britannica Blog on Why How We Read Matters: “A change in form is always, as well, a change in content. That is unavoidable, as history tells us over and over again. One reads an electronic book differently than one reads a printed book – just as one reads a printed book differently [...]
In his essay, “How Invisible Man Taught Me to See,” on The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog, Victor Lavalle explores, among many things, what it means to be a black writer with a burgeoning white audience. For him, it means resistance to instinctual conclusion-jumping and, unexpectedly, fulfilling the wish of Ellison’s underground narrator [...]
My earliest reading of Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry, I believed and still contend that this novel is a defense of dark-colored skin. His portrayal of the light-skinned antagonists and the bevy of characters who subscribe to the “light is right” mindset are one-dimensional and often vicious. This is similar to what Richard Wright [...]
Emma Lou Brown is a dark-skinned black girl in the 1920s. born to a family reaching for status and desperate to avoid any semblance of blackness. For Emma, it’s a daily reminder of why everything in her life is wrong. Written in 1929, The Blacker the Berry is a fierce defense of dark-colored skin. At the time, [...]
During dinner a friend of a friend foolishly told me he didn’t read. My confusion at the notion turned to heartbreak, then I tried to reserve my judgment. He couldn’t have possibly known he was having dinner with a girl who goes to bookstores for fun. Seeing the disappointment on my face, he quickly [...]
Referred to as a “tragic mulatto tale,” an accurate description, yet one that has never interested me, Quicksand by Nella Larsen is about the most frustrating black female lead I’ve ever read–Helga Crane. She’s a woman whose eccentricities today, I imagine, would be imitated and fawned over. Her described beauty would be put [...] from random house It has been speculated that Uncle Tom’s Cabin aggravated the cultural conversation about slavery and planted the seeds for the Civil War. Whatever analysis is taken from the novel, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s serialized stories became relevant during a very particular time and place. So, what set the cultural tone for an unknown West African [...] from random house Ricky Rice is a former dope fiend and a surviving member of a suicide cult. And when he gets a mysterious letter to uphold a promise he made long ago, Ricky becomes a member of a secret society of paranormal investigators called the Unlikely Scholars. When the society is threatened, Ricky is [...] from coverbrowser.com It’s the story of pre-colonial Nigeria, groundbreaking because it was originally written in English by a black African writer. The title was taken from a William Butler Yeats poem. It features the story of Okonkwo, a young man struggling to maintain the old customs with the ones brought by white Christian missionaries. Gods and Soldiers, briefly [...] shani-o: Sometime early in the year (or was it last year?), I heard a radio interview on Philly’s public radio station with a man named Joel Berg. Berg was discussing ‘low food insecurity’ (also known as ‘hunger’) in the U.S. His energy and candor made me take note of his book, which came out just [...] After a walk by the Apollo theatre or a visit to the local music or book store, it’s clear that Michael Jackson is going to make people a ton of money posthumously. And as the media stories speculate on how he died, and people start barking for who owns what of his estate, the rights [...] *Note: We’re making this discussion a sticky post, and it’ll be at the top of the page all this week. Scroll down for newer posts. From Random House Benji, Reggie, Nick, Clive, Bobby, Randy, Marcus & NP (“Nigga Please”). Back when summers were idle, the coming of September meant reinvention and, in the meantime, there [...]
Your reading companion to Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor May’s book pick which we will be discussing on June 15th: “What are the origins of the strange compulsion that forces them to reach out to smooth, squeeze, pet, pat, bounce their fingers in the soft, resilient exuberance of an Afro, a natural, a just doin’ [...] Regrettably a long weekend has come and gone and, if you’re anything like me, the anticipation for all the wonderful “time off” in order to “take care of things” culminated in an uneventful weekend full of hair washing, reading, back-to-back viewings of Coming to America on Comedy Central, and the Pam Greer Blaxploitation marathon on [...] |
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