Thursday, October 10, 2024

English majors and Career Preparation

Notes from the Modern Language Association's “Report on English Majors’ Career Preparation and Outcomes.” 

Script by Howard Rambsy II 
Voiceover by Kassandra Timm 
Whiteboard animation by Sierra Taylor

 


A Brief on Invisible Man

A summary and artistic take on the opening of Invisible Man. 

Storyboard by Nicole Dixon. 
Voiceover by Kassandra Timm 
Whiteboard animation by Camela Sharp 



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The Remarkable Reception of The Underground Railroad

A brief take on the reception of Colson Whitehead's powerful and ultimately award-winning novel, which was adapted into a series for Amazon Prime.


 

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Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Monday, September 30, 2024

A Roundup of Novels by Black Writers, 2014 - 2024


Here's a roundup of novels published since 2014. As always, it's a partial list.

[Related: The Beginnings of a Black Novel Timeline, 2014 - 2024 (coming soon)]

2024 
The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
James by Percival Everett
A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams
Long After We Are Gone by Terah Shelton Harris
Faebound by Saara El-Arifi
Ours by Phillip B. Williams
The Queen of Sugar Hill--A Novel of Hattie McDaniel by ReShonda Tate

2023 
Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
Every Man a King—A King Oliver Novel by Walter Mosley 
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
The Fraud by Zadie Smith
Lone Women by Victor LaValle
• Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis
A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo
Dangerous Love by Ben Okri
All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby
The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
Hide by Tracy Clark
Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo
River Spirit by Leila Aboulela
The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle by Tendai Huchu
Black Candle Women by Diane Marie Brown
An Autobiography of Skin by Lakiesha Carr
The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson
The Survivalists by Kashana Cauley
You Never Know by Connie Briscoe
Maame by Jessica George
House of Cotton by Monica Brashears
The Art of Scandal by Regina Black
Liquid Snakes by Stephen Kearse
Blue Hour by Tiffany Clarke Harrison
Gone Like Yesterday by Janelle M. Williams
Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb
Goodbye Earl by Leesa Cross-Smith
The New Naturals by Gabriel Bump
Promise by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Night Wherever We Go: A novel by Tracey Rose Peyton
No One Dies Yet by Kobby Ben Ben
Last Seen in Lapaz by Kwei Quartey
The Wildest Sun by Asha Lemmie
Decent People by De'Shawn Charles Winslow
Token by Beverly Kendall
Time's Undoing by Cheryl A. Head
Teeth, Claws, and Blood Red Heart by Fiona Zedde
Lucky Gril by Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu
Splinter--A Diverse Sleep Hollow Retelling by Jasper Hyde

Saturday, September 21, 2024

Farah Jasmine Griffin, Amiri Baraka, and Collegiate Black Men



I was recently re-reading the section in Farah Jasmine Griffin's Read Until You Understand (2021) where she's talking about her early encounters with Toni Morrison's work. Griffin was 13 when she first read Sula (1973). Can you imagine that -- reading Sula at 13? 

This past Thursday, I did something I've done each fall for nearly 25 years in a row: I introduced students to Amiri Baraka performing his poem "Dope." 

When the poem ended, I posed a question to the class of 60 first-year collegiate Black men. "What if you had encountered Baraka in high school or even middle school, who would you be then?" 

After becoming exposed to to Morrison's work at an early age, we saw what happen to Griffin. She became one of our leading scholars of Black literature. So what would've happened to us if we stumbled upon Baraka performing "Dope"? 

The guys and I had a good time imagining possibilities. Among other things, we acknowledged that we all would thought of literature a lot differently. Guys acknowledged that they would've been less inclined to refer to poetry as boring, if they had been exposed to Baraka. 

One student noted that he would've started thinking about and asking questions about Black people and African history. He focused in particular on Baraka's assertion that someone "killed lumumba." "Who's Lumumba, and why was he killed?" some of the students wanted to know.   

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