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 Read More
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 to become Read More
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 does with Read More
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, critics who Read More
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 added Read More
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 on magazine covers Read More
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 man to Read More
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 teamed up with Read More
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 reviewed Read More
Because of technical difficulties and an unusually busy work day, this almost became Your Tuesday Random-Ass Roundup. Sorry I’m late again. Your PostBourgie-approved weekend reading material: First things first, Stacia, one of our co-bloggers, is writing a novel and posting a chapter a day at her personal blog. What is this space for, if not Read More
