On The Help, Viola Davis, And "Black Art" Vs. "Negro Respectability"
It’s not that I need to see heroes or doctors or lawyers or Tuskegee Airmen as opposed to drug dealers or absent fathers or crack addicted sex-workers–or maids.
Category: Sweetness & Light
Lucille Clifton: Spell/Woman/Poet
Lucille Clifton is my absolute favorite poet in the world.
Why I'm No Longer A Black Poet
The way Black poets think about black poetry has been reduced to how and why we represent racial issues. We will not call it service literature, but we do want it to serve.
Happy Birthday, Langston Hughes!
February 1, the first day of Black History Month, also is Langston Hughes’s birthday!
Afropalooza Starts in TWO Days! Are You Ready?!
On February 1, my favorite month in the whole, entire year starts. That’s right! It’s almost Black History Month! Or, as I have renamed it, it’s almost time for “Afropalooza”! I had the “palooza” part, but I just couldn’t figure out the rest. One of my brilliant Twitter followers helped me by going through a few suggestions, […]
Guthrie Ramsey’s New Single from THE COLORED WAITING ROOM (Available Today!)
Today you can download “Stolen Moments,” the first single off Guthrie Ramsey’s CD The Colored Waiting Room–for FREE!
Reginald Dwayne Betts: Black Poetry, the Night, and Notes on Forgetting
Now I know scores of poets, and talk about poetry often, and it is often not nearly the bread it was before.
Dr. King Died So You Could Call Me Names (And Other Truths)
I attended a Historically Black College, and King Day was a super big deal. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, so that meant that the Alphas on the campus of Talladega College, my alma mater, used to go crazy on the holiday, which was both a day of pride and sadness, considering […]
Hip Hop and the Brokedown Contract
It’s dawned on me what is really wrong with hip hop: the music fails in its contract with African American literary and historical traditions.
Chocolate Breast Milk: A Review of The Help
It’s not the story of Black domestics that I resent–or that the novel the movie is based on was written by a White woman. What I resent are the tone-deaf, historically inaccurate depictions.